Project Life 2013

I had a great time doing Project Life last year. It has transformed the way I scrapbook and for now, at least, I can't imagine doing it any other way. I absolutely love the ordinariness of it. I love that it captures our day to day lives, and not just the 'big' moments. I'm already enjoying flipping through the album and remembering...and some of the memories are only 6 weeks old!

Cover page

There was no question I'd be doing the same again this year. I did consider that it might be a bit 'samey' and I think at times it will be - but isn't that the perfect way to document the passage of time. That photo of the front of the house? - looks the same. But look closely and aren't those bushes and shrubs so much bigger and bushier than a year ago? The view from the deck? - wow - 5 more houses built in the last 12 months, and that same old picture of the bedside tables? - you can peek at the book I was reading at the time and that I had a cold because the cough medicine and a box of tissues is visible!

I picked the seafoam core kit to use this year. I love the neutral colour palette it has and the simplicity of the designs - I don't think theres a card design I don't like and won't use!

Weeks 2 & 3

Last year I confess to sometimes taking 3-4 hours on a 'simple' double page spread. And whilst I loved every minute of that time playing and being creative I think Chris would like a bit more quality together time! So I want to still have fun with the creative side but in an effort to keep it more simple and straight-forward to put together I'm trying to use more of the kit and less of my own papers. 5 weeks in, and that seems to be working. The other thing that is working for me is to keep completely up-to-date with it. That way if I have a spare 10 minutes in the evening I can pop into my craft room and cut up that receipt or tag I just got and pop it into a pocket. Or spend those few moments resizing some photos. So by the time I come to put the spread together on the weekend it's already half done! My weeks are running Monday to Sunday and I'm generally getting the pages together on Sunday or Monday night!

Week 5 & a Vizsla!

This year I'm sharing my layouts on Instagram - if you're on a computer you can find my feed here or if you're using the app on your phone my Instagram name is brit_chick...

Project Life (weeks 17 & 18)

I've slipped behind a little with my project life. Thing is with this fabulous project is that LIFE gets in the way!! I'm not stressing it, because I've been so busy but I've been missing my creative outlet.

This weekend was the culmination of more than a year's work for me; organizing a conference for 185 child care professionals. It happened. And I was incredibly happy with how it all turned out. I've organized a couple of other events - a music event for around 2000 and a smaller professional event for around 50 in the past. But this was something different again. It was a new challenge and it's been an exciting time for me. The last couple of weeks have been full of those little butterflies of 'what if's' and 'what have I forgotten?' but it really did go off without a hitch and flicking through my delegate evaluation and feedback forms people seem to have been happy. I had a moment come Saturday evening when the last of our stuff was packed up and I was making my way to my car to drive home, where my eyes may have welled up a little - this was my baby....and it had flown the nest! Back in the office on Monday morning and there's still plenty of wrap-up work to be done. But in 2 weeks time the 'project' will be shutting down and I'll be reducing my hours at the agency. It's the end of an era!!

Not content with 2 days of working around 12 hours a piece on my feet and in brain overdrive, I then decided to skip the Sunday morning much deserved lie-in and do a 10km trail run race. My first 10km trail race!! Another amazing event by the Dirty Feet people. We took part in the 5km last year but I was ready for more of a challenge. A fabulous venue through Myra Bellevue Provincial Park with view of the city and lake (not that you can spend a lot of time looking when trying to skip your way across the boulders and streams!) Chris has sprained his ankle last Wednesday. Bad. Like me back in December. It swelled up much worse than mine, but we're experts in dealing with ankle sprains in this house and we were straight on the treatments and luckily he's been walking without crutches. But my fellow trail running companion was most certainly out of action!! It was a tough course - the first half at least - I think from km 3-5km it was just straight uphill walking - it was all I could do not to stop - but I didn't. I like my downhills and was flying come the half way point. In the end I finished in 1:16. Perfectly happy with that. I was surprised just how much it took it out of me. I was utterly gimped for the rest of the afternoon and evening!

Anyway. That's life. And before all the busy busy-ness kicked in, I did do some project life pages. These are weeks 17 and 18, covering the period  April 22 to May 5th - I can't believe it - it seems so long ago - this covers Chris's birthday and a visit from his Mum!

Week 17

and Week 18

As you can see I was incredibly short of photos!! Still I did LOVE this shot of the beautiful Lake Okanagan on my run so it was also a great one of blow up nice and big. I also added in some food packaging due to the complete lack of photos!!

My Inspired Journey

I spent the last weekend in Los Angeles on an Inspired Journey, organized by the wonderful Ginger Nelson and Teresa Collins. I had been to their other big event - Inspiration Unlimited (IU) back in 2010 and now there's a huge wait list to get in again, but to help accommodate some of those poor wait list souls they introduced a brand new event - Inspired Journey. It was a third of the size of IU and held in Manhattan Beach, CA. We had 4 great classes - 2 by Teresa Collins, one by Sande Krieger and 7 Gypsies and finally one from Rebecca Cross of Pink Paislee. They were all so wonderful and different it would be hard to pick a favourite!

It's always difficult to explain to my family and non-scrapbooking friends what 'the point' of these events is. This event we took 4 classes. The teacher creates a complete project with instructions, we get given a class kit with all the supplies (papers, embellishments, stickers, ribbons etc) and we follow along in class. Sometimes you learn a new technique, more often it's playing with a new style - frequently I've created something totally out of my regular style and comfort zone and ended up loving it and using the concept again and again! What's so nice is that you come home with completed projects (well, in theory you do. There's often so much to put together we don't finish in class. Or you want to add photos later so you don't stick down all the embellishments until the photos are done!) One particularly great thing is getting to see and play with some of the latest releases from the manufacturers (many companies will bring out new lines twice a year) and of course the opportunity to shop at the on-site store!!. But the biggest 'point' of these events is the people. This is my fourth big scrapbooking event - I've been to Houston, Phoenix, Vegas and now LA over the last 5 years and by far the biggest and most important reason to keep going back is the friends I've met. I've met some wonderful, creative people who I stay connected with via the internet throughout the year, but there's nothing like catching up face-to-face. This year I realized that Anita and Paula who we sat with in class this year were actually at the event in Phoenix in 2009 and we'd participated together in some of the same swaps and corresponded on the event message board - this year we actually met in person!!

None of my projects are completely finished but I have plans and ideas brewing!!

This was the the class sample of the home decor piece that we created in Teresa's first class.

We had the blocks of wood and stuck them together, painted and decorated however we wanted (there was a full rainbow of paint colours, glitters and patterned papers so they all ended up different!). Then the original concept was to be a calendar display, so we also had the calendar pages and embellishments to decorate exactly as per the class sample. Once I saw the project I quickly decided I would want to use it as a mini chalk message board either on our kitchen counter or entryway table. So I painted mine black.I plan to distress it up a bit then paint one side with chalkboard paint. The other side I stuck pretty much to the class plan and cut out the calendar pages which then clip to the top. I've yet to embellish, and I might also use it to display a favourite photo or quote. But you get the idea. I loved wandering the room to see the variations on the theme - with the same 4 blocks of wood it's amazing just how different each one was turning out! It could seem easy to offend the teacher to want to do something different to the class sample but Teresa is so fantastic; she wanders the class gushing over all the variations and encourages everyone to 'make the project their own' - this one we had so much scope. Mine seems pretty boring really!!

The next project was by Sande Krieger using 7 Gypsies products. I've always loved their products - it's all vintage, steampunky style, but on my own I never know what to do with it all! Left to my own devices I'm a pretty clean and simple girl so layers, vintage, and messy inky edges just don't sit well with my OCD tendencies. However, here is someone that will lead me through making a completely gorgeous cute mini book perfect for a travel trip (uh, hello China trip?!) I LOVE it. The class was crazy fast but I hung on by the skin of my teeth, and finished off the hole punching in my room later that evening. Seriously this baby is ready to go...Now I have no excuse not to create a complete little mini book on our China vacation (and to think I was just about ready to not bother this year!) Just print the photos and stick on in...(Here is the link to the completed book that Sande did - it's so awesome!!)

On day 2 we had our second class with Teresa. It was a 7x9" binder with lots of decorated pages. Her favourite 'pink' made it's appearance.; truthfully it's not my style (can you imagine Chris and his bike on a nice pink page?!) But, again with a little playing around I picked out the blues and yellows, played down the pinks and ended up with yet another super cute mini book. (Oh, and the fact I'm going to be a furry parent to a beautiful little girl puppy dog in six weeks time will make the pink pill easier to swallow from here on in!!) So Meli's 'baby' book is waiting for her - all I need are the photos (well the puppy first I guess!!)

The inside pages;

Finally was a class project by Rebecca Cross from Pink Paislee. I followed this project to the tee. It was so different to anything else I've made. We used a file folder as our base then added in extra file folders cut into pieces to make extra flaps and pages. Difficult to describe and the photos don't do it justice - it's one of those great projects that you have to have in your hands to explore all the 'nooks and cranny's and textures! Again - finished except for the photos, and in our project kits a bunch of extra embellishments to bring home to add on when the photos go in for that finishing touch!

Finally, like I mentioned above. These events are about the people and the friends I've met. I'm amazingly bad at taking photos at these events so this is the only shot I've got. At the end of the evening, on our last night, after a few cocktails on the Hermosa Beach pier - Good times!!

Paula, Anita, Me, Florence & Melannie

Project Life weeks 7 & 8*

So going on vacation causes havoc with Project Life. Especially when we leave mid-week!! (I've told Chris that next time we go away it has to be on a Sunday!! - OCD?! - me?!!?)

Obviously I had so much to share, but I want to do a mini-album of our trip too, so it was figuring out what goes in Project Life and what goes in the mini book. And really that took me the longest time. Too much time - it's supposed to be simple! I felt I had 5 separate 'parts' to these last few weeks - the part week before we left, Beijing, Macau, Hong Kong and the part week we got back.

My week 7 runs from Sunday 12th February (as normal), and covers before we left, the travel (2 days since we lost a day crossing the International Date Line!) and our first day in Beijing (really just a ta-da! - we're here kind of entry!). So it's only a 6 day period.




My 'week 8' isn't really a week at all. It covers the 4 days we were in Beijing. (18th - 21st Feb)




To follow are my 'week 9' (again won't really be a week - it's 9 days in Macau and Hong Kong, 22nd - 29th Feb) and 'week 10' (will actually be a week and a half - the part week we got back and all of the following week at home - not much happened so I'm combining them, 1st - 10th March)

I always said I'd be cool about having different date ranges for each spread, but actually when it came to it I had issues. I mostly wanted to keep the week numbers 'correct', hence the final week being a week and a half - this way it gets me back on track without missing anything. I'm finding so many others taking part in this project refer to the weeks of the year, and for ease I'd like to follow along the same format, plus it helps keeping my head straight!

Project Life weeks 3 & 4

Scrapbooking with Project Life seems to have exploded this year! It's everywhere! Like me, so many people are saying how it's driven their creativity, and yet there's no rules or pressures - you really can make it as dressed up as you want. It's been said by countless others....but I'm still Loving It!

I've been keeping up with a double page spread per week. I'm traditionally a 'week starts on Monday' kind of girl but because the 1st was a Sunday so far I've just rolled with that being the beginnging of the week as far as Project Life goes. It's also suiting my creative playtime...I normally get busy on Saturday's whilst Chris is at work - since Sunday's are our only day off together I certainly don't want to encroach on that precious time.

So without further ado here are my Week 3 and Week 4 spreads;

Week 3 Spread

Week 4 Spread

Loving Project Life!

I have started off the new year with a bang! I've got my creative mojo back and I'm absolutely loving it! This year I decided to record our lives using the Project Life system. I bought a bunch of page protectors and a Turquoise edition core kit back in early December and I was itching to start ever since. So roll on the first of the year and I was mad for it!

I love that Project Life simplifies things in so many ways. I had bought a selection of different styles of protectors but with a little further thought I think I'd like to stick with just Design A which gives me 4 horizontal 4x6 pockets and 4 vertical 3x4 pockets. The core kit has journaling cards, and patterned paper cards which you slip into the pockets along with a selection of photos and any ephemera collected over the time period. I'm planning to tackle this project on a weekly basis and dedicate a double page spread per week, although I'm completely open to extending a spread to cover any time period since I plan to always use my top left 4x6 pocket as the 'title' where I'll record the dates covered in that spread.

Week 1

Love, love, love this! Like I said it simplifies, and yet for me it's totally got my creative juices flowing because right now I'm enjoying playing a little lot more! I have dug into my stash and pulled out heaps of bits and bobs of product I've hoarded and stored it all on my desk in a basket - as well as using just the core kit cards I'm wanting to add other scrapbooking-y type elements. And whilst I'm sure I could pull off a spread in 1/2 hour I'm spending half of Saturday just playing and being creative. And man, have I missed it!

Week 2

It's given me opportunity to pull out my lovely collection of embellishments and all those scraps of patterned papers and RE-discover my love for scrapbooking.

I'm back! And I love that this is such a 'in the moment' way of scrapbooking. Roll on the next 50 weeks!

Some scrapbook layouts

Got to a crop at local scrapbook store; Paper Arts and got some new layouts done - the first scrapping I've done since we got back the UK! Had such a great day, will be going back again in another weeks time! All the layouts were based on the Cathy Zielske class 'Design your Life' I took last year at Big Picture Scrapbooking. My 'homework' was long overdue!

Absolutely loved these photos I took at new year. (you may have seen them earlier on the blog!)

These photos were from this time last year! Our trip to Eden in Cornwall with my Mum and Dad. I seem to recall I had trouble with a whole host of the photos when we were moving from the different bio-spheres the temperatures were changing so much the lens was fogging! But we really were that close to the cute robin (before the days of our zoom lens!)

And finally for now one from our family trip to Chicago for the wedding. This was our bus tour outing to the city and the Chicago Bean - all very cool!