Good Morning/Afternoon and Evening one and all, Virginia here from Celtic House blog, with a post regarding Project Life - now I'm from Yorkshire and we tend to be a little, frugal - yes that's definitely the word - frugal with our money. So when Project Life posts started to appear I was mighty giddy, until I started looking at the cost implications, new style plastics and even more albums, hummm I don't like paying for those at the best of time. So I left it on the back burner, chipping away at me telling me to join in.
Then at Christmas hubby bought me a photo album, a strange item to purchase a serial scrapbooker (I tend to only have printed the photos I intend to use in scrapbook albums) so you'll be puzzling as to why. Well because it looked like this
And anyone who knows me knows my blog is named Celtic House as we have a huge affinity with these beautiful, intricate patterns and I oohed and aahed over the gorgeous cover but inside I found this.
A rather unimaginative interior of a now standard photo album. Mmmmmmmmmm, so I got to thinking, the book takes 200 photos, so on the grounds there are 4 photos per 'page' this means there were 50 pages, take into consideration the front paper pages that you always get with these sorts of things, I'd got myself a book with yes you guessed it 52 pages.
So at the beginning of the year, I decided to do my own 'version' of project life. I set myself a standard layout on publisher (but word or similar would work just as well). With photos that fitted onto these 'mini' pages, I created a few titles and some journal blocks and I was good to go. Now once a week I pop along to this document, change the photos for ones relevant to that week, change the title headings and the journaling and alter the font colours and in a single sheet of A4 paper I manage to create project life!
Now what makes it even more 'amazing' is that I like many other scrapbookers, end up with loads let's say it again LOADS of scraps from layouts and despite generating cards for birthdays and Christmas I still have more leftovers, the fabulous thing with this is that I get to use up the weeks 'scraps' in my book! Quite simply I end up with 4 days which measure 6" x 4" (the plastic inserts for the photos) and then have to split the remaining three days between the two spine strips - maybe an example would be more beneficial. On the more 'boring' days (which we all have let's be honest) I just journal the events and put them on the spine, the more interesting days often end up with titles and photos so I use them in the photo slips!
Here you can see '4 days' in the photo slips and the remaining 3 days on the spines. I have the standard measurements for the spines on my craft desk so once I've created a layout I set too trying to generate enough colour co-ordinated 'days' for my book - I've been amazed at how quickly I've used up the scraps and each double page has become somewhat colour co-ordinated and completely different!
I even managed a project life week using 'gelli plate' off cuts recently
The front of the book (without the plastic wallets) I used a slightly different layout to complete but overall the book is now taking shape and will be our documented 'lives' from 2013. The other positive with the book is that the manufacturer has taken into the account that the photos will generate some depth, so they've given enough space in the book for it to grow, without necessarily damaging the spine!
Finally, whilst the humble photo album might not automatically inspire you, let's not forget being a photo album it should technically be acid free, which means it's prime for scrapbooking, so don't walk on buy past those albums next time, open them up and see if they inspire you!
Catch you later folks!
