Project Life Update (Cover & Week One)

I have already gushed and gushed about my love for this project...so I'm going to jump right into my update for the week.  First...I threw together this cute little title banner for my weekly update posts.  LOVE that the digital elements are available to purchase and download immediately!!!!  (more on how I will be incorporating these elements below).

This is the opening page of my 2012 album.  Totally love the idea (and FREE printable from Cathy Z) for a 6x12 title page.  I tweaked the idea a bit and cut one of my 12x12 papers in half, printed the title on cardstock, cut it out and incorporated a photo.  I raised the cardstock with pop dots for a little more dimension.

On the back side of the 6x12, I have photos of the kiddos.  LOVE, LOVE these photos from Stacey Clack Photography!  (you're the bomb Clack!)

Since the photos were only 4 inches wide, I attached them to another patterned paper, used a few digital elements in Photoshop Elements to jot down the kid's ages, and adhered a big fat ribbon I had laying around that kind of matched.  MAN, those kids are cute!

Found these cute little acrylic letters and just stapled them right to the paper and photo.

January 1st fell on a Sunday so I struggled with how to approach my first week since I lay out my weeks Starting with Monday ending with Sunday.  I decided to use this space for my One Little Word. 

(See this post to know why I'm including this.)

As the photo above shows, I'm hoping to include some little blurbs about each kiddo.  Maybe about Dan and I too?  I did this last year, and I liked the little "snapshot" of who they were at the beginning of the year.  They have changed so much!!!!

Here is my first week.  Again, since January 1 fell on a Sunday, I just grouped it all together and did 8 days in a spread.  Oh well.  I put my title page on the top right corner so my Friday, Saturday, & Sunday are together.  Weird?  Maybe...it just seemed to work best last year, so I'm going with it again eventhough I'm going with the weekly approach vs. photo a day.

Left Side.  Some DSLR photos, some iphone photos.  Trying not to abandon my camera, but that darn phone is just so convenient!  Since I've been using Instagram photos a ton over the past few months, I keep running into the obstacle of what to attach my square image to?  Last year I used my 12x12 patterned paper, my bi-fold journaling cards, random scraps of paper...but a thought occurred to me...

Why not use the digital papers I purchased that coordinate with the kit???  DUH.

So that's what I did.  I always crop my photos in PE before uploading them to Costco anyway...Why not just put a patterned paper behind the 3.5 x 3.5 instagram  and print it as a 4x6?  (added a shadow behind the image so it looks more 3 dimensional.)  Saves my 12x12 paper, and only costs about $.13 each.  May seem like a lot of steps, but this process has become pretty streamlined for me.   The entire digital collection is about $20, I've already used it a bunch!  LOVE!!  Thank you Becky and Jessica Sprague!

      

I'm linking up over at The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday.