Project Life...

So around Thanksgiving of last year I decided to take the plunge and purchase my very own Project Life kit from the incredible Becky Higgins.

If you've never seen it you really need to check it out. It is genius in a box. There are all these cute little cards for journaling and decorating, a spot for a picture a day, a date stamp, page protectors, a beautiful binder. EVERYTHING.

The main concept is to take a photo a day and then journal about them.

I thought about doing that.

And then realized that I really sucked at it.

So I decided to use the materials as just a generic annual family album.

One of my favorite things about the album is that is has these beautiful month dividers, so if I want to look at February pictures I just turn to the February section of the scrapbook via the nifty divider tabs. It is also in a 3-ring binder so nothing is stopping me from adding my own traditional scrapbook pages throughout the book. Like I said, genius.

So I finally got around to printing off my photos from January-Valentine's Day. I used mostly 4x6 photos but I followed this tutorial from one of my favorite bloggers, Erin at Sunny Side Up. She does a fabulous job of explaining how to create 2 wallets from a 4x6. You get 2 2x3 pictures out of each 4x6 which cuts down on printing cost. And I found that if I just selected wallet size in the printing options they were much too small. Erin's technique works perfectly. They are the perfect size for the spots in the middle.

I just trace a journaling card around the photo to round the edges and stick it in the album.

I am almost caught up through January with the journaling. I hope to get totally caught up this weekend, but I wanted to show you a little bit of what I have been working on.

(this is what my living room table has been looking like this week)

Here are the pages that I have completed so far for this year:

(album and cover page)

(pages 1 & 2, but I collaged them backwards for some reason)

(pages 3 & 4 . again, backwards, oh well)

(pages 5 & 6...why are all my collages backwards!! epic fail!)

I love that Becky provides a date stamp in the kit. It makes it so much easier to remember exactly what day something happened!

Since I didn't take a lot of pictures in January, and I didn't get to take any of when I wrecked my car, I scrounged up some coordinating scrapbook paper, cut it to size, and used it as a background for the business card of the collision center that worked on my car. I then used one of the tabbed journaling cards to journal about the wreck itself. Worked perfect. This is a great example of how versatile this kit is.

I am really pleased at how it is coming along!

DON'T FORGET! The give-away for the Valentine's mini closes at midnight TONIGHT! Check out my post here to read the rules and to comment and qualify!

Happy Friday everyone!

The weekend has arrived!

I am linking up here today to showcase my sweet-tea idea from my 14 Days of Love.