• Art,  scrap happy,  WIP Fridays

    project life: the month of February

    IMG_4261

    I am having a crisis of sorts here. I really, really, really like the idea of some weekly and monthly documentation going on in my life. I really, really like the concept of Project Life.

    However.

    just finished the month of February in the book. (Right up until just before Elliana entered the hospital). February was two months ago.

    I feel like I’m missing a process that would make this easier. The biggest hurdle for me already? The unique size of the pockets, which doesn’t match standard printing sizes. There is an awful lot of thought that has to go into which photos need to be printed and which orientation and then cropping all to fit. Which requires time. I don’t have a lot of that. Then, the photos, once printed, have to be trimmed to size. More time. I need a better way of getting photos into the album.

    Ideally, I’d love to be able sit down on a Saturday afternoon each week and quickly pop in the pictures and documentation for the week. Realistically, I’m often doing these three or four weeks at a go and I’ve already begun to forget what happened when and which things I wanted in the book and why. If I still participated in social media extensively, it would probably be easy to track, (and I found that very helpful in the past when catching up on albums)–but I don’t, and what is put on Instagram is self-explanantory and doesn’t really help me remember what else was going on that week that I didn’t choose to document publicly. I’m thinking, at bare minimum, even if I can’t sit down and scrap at some point during the weekend, I need to grab twenty minutes and my paper brain and remind myself of what I want to do so that when I do have a chance to scrap, it’s all there waiting for me.

    Thinking.

    IMG_4264 IMG_4265 IMG_4267 IMG_4269

  • scrap happy,  WIP Fridays

    Art Friday: progress, barely

    A tiny bit of progress this week when I was able to steal a few minutes waiting for something to load- I’ve gotten Elliana’s birthday week into the book, but it lacks journaling and pretty-ing up.

    ellybday

    The following week was Valentine’s week, And you can see the beginnings of that on the right hand page. I’m not sure what I want to put in the left. There’s also that long narrow strip in the right hand (Elliana’s birthday week) and the left hand (Valentine’s week), that I’ll have to decide what to do with.

    valentinesweek

    I haven’t made any progress whatsover in actually cleaning up. I am not a piler by nature. A gatherer, maybe- I like being able to see things, but I also like them contained. And if I can’t find what I’m looking for, I really get frustrated. I also tend to work better standing, I think because I can see the whole thing at once and not at an angle. The desk (a very old Ikea standby) does go up to standing height (or even bi-level, like a drafting table), but the space I’m in doesn’t really work well for the standing position. I also tend to be working on multiple projects at once these days. I am only very rarely just scrapping and I need to be able to move projects in progress around. Katherine posted the other day and she happened to take shots of her raskog carts in her sewing space…That has gotten me to thinking. Regardless, there has to be a complete overhaul of the space. It is absolutely driving me bonkers at the moment. I at least tidied up the floor before I took this picture, but you can see all the piles, piled…it’s all underneath and to the side of the desk, too.

    pilemess

     

  • scrap happy

    Art Friday: Scrap Happy

    oneofakindonecloseup

    This one is so close to my heart. It came together so easily- I ran across some old, old Foofala alphabet rubons that had long since run their course, which sparked the idea. A little bit of green watercolor, haphazard rubons, and off it went. Isaiah is going through a transitional time this year and he’s been very, very hard on himself. I just wanted to write a little love note of encouragement. I love the picture- it’s about two years old- his intense concentration.

  • scrap happy

    project life, handbook, weeks 2-5

    I got caught up on Saturday, so this is current to this last week. Printing the photographs is definitely an issue with this unique size (3 x 4). This wouldn’t be an issue in the larger Project Life Albums that take the standard 4in x 6 size. The photos in my handbook so far aren’t actually a full 3×4- I’ve been printing off the wallet size, which is 2 x 3. It leaves a big border around each pic. I’m okay with the look. I’m not so much going for style as I am substance here- I want to get these stories in a visual chronological place. The ones that are really important to me will always be made into larger, more in depth pages for a bigger album. I like the flexibility inherent in this. The first week I had a lot to show and say, so I took a two page spread. Weeks 2-5 are all one page/side of the spread, and the two weeks that it snowed take up a front and back of one page. The following week after that, there was really nothing photo worthy- I was very sick and there was a lot of house upheaval- I only had a few usable pictures from that week. So far, I’m really liking it. It’s quick and fast with lovely results.

    Week 2: week 2_3

    Weeks 3-4: week 3

    Weeks 4-5: week 4-5

  • scrap happy,  WIP Fridays

    art friday: project life, week 1

    IMG_4240 IMG_4242 IMG_4244Week one is done and in the books. Week two and three are in progress. It’s already become clear to me that a better printing option is going to be needed if I keep this up. It’s a total hassle every time I sit down to have to go into Photoshop, of all things, just to print the photos because of the size. It’s not the photo size that is the problem, it’s the printer, which isn’t set up for photo printing overall. I’m going to have to do a bit more research as to how others have handled printing for the handbook size and what work-flows they’ve used. Printing issues aside, I really like this format. When I do have pictures printed off, the whole thing takes me about ten, fifteen minutes, and the results are so gratifying without being overwhelming. Can it be? Can scrapping on a regular basis really be making it’s way back into my life? It feels so good!