How I Project Life Now

     Here's a quick little break down of how I make my Project Life pages. Well, how I've been making them lately. ;)

First up, I pull up all my photos from that week in Lightroom and then quickly run through them all starring the ones I think are PL candidates.
 

Then, I select just those that I just starred by choosing "rated" under the filter section. After that I weed out a few based on how much space I have and which stories I really want to tell. I've come to realize that I don't have to put every...single...moment...that I capture in my PL album. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that. I mean, I've never felt obligated to scrap every photo before, not sure why I felt this way. 

Anyway, once I have them nice and narrowed down, it looks something like this.

Much better. I export all of these to Photoshop and then print them. The Instagram pics get printed at 3" square, two to a 6"x4" sheet, the horizontal photos from my big camera get printed at 6"x4" and the vertical big camera pics and other iPhone pics get printed at 3"x4" on a 6"x4" sheet.

I used to print them out onto regular printer paper as drafts and then get them all printed at Costco and swap them out. But, I fell behind very easily this way and I've really not been happy with the quality of the prints at Costco so now I print at home. I like it much better this way and I've started printing my regular scrapping photos at home, too.

Once I've got my photos printed out, I lay them out on two 12x12 sheets of white cardstock that I've drawn the pocket lines on. I first saw this idea on a process video by Mercy Tiara here. She does it so she doesn't have to drag out her album to work on her pages and doesn't have to keep pulling items in and out of pockets. It works sooooo well for me. 

This week, I had so much from Audrey's first day of school that I realized I was going to need an insert. So, I cut a sheet of 12x12 white cardstock in half and made a template for my insert as well.  Here are all of my photos and memorabilia laid out on my templates. I cut down two of my 3"x4" photos to 1 1/2"x3". Mainly because I couldn't decide between the two and wanted to keep both of them. 

Next, I chose the paper line I wanted to use. I picked Yes, Please by Amy Tan. Mainly because I was lured into buying a paper pad of it when I found it on sale for $6 at Marshall's and after hearing Noell Hymann rave about it on PRT. So, I had it and I knew I darn well better use it!

After getting my papers situated, I used one of the cut apart sheets and added some flat embellishment and glued everything down.

 

Then I finally rounded all the corners. I used to do that to my photos ahead of time and would wind up moving something so that I'd need to redo it. Then, I did it at the very, very end only to realize that it messed up some embellishing. So, now I do it after gluing, before embellishing. (Probably more info than you needed here.)

The last step is to do my journaling, embellish everything and create my title card. I like to create it last so that if I need another pop of a certain color I can add it there without worrying if it goes with a photo or not.

So, here's the finished pages, all set up in their page protectors. Mickey lost another tooth, I had my first PTO meeting, and he did his first homework as a first grader. I also included a few things that Aud and I did while he was away.

Here's my big man waiting for the bus by himself for the first time, while I watched from the window.

The insert is all about Audrey starting her second year of preschool. She had her Open House on Wednesday and her first day was actually a Friday! She was glad to see the guinea pig, Callie, was still there because she switched to the am class and it's a whole new group of kids. 

 

The last page is some everyday stuff, a collage of pics from the 50th birthday we attended and just really photo heavy.

 I used part of a Nordstrom's bag as the background for this pocket. Aud and I went shopping with my mom and ran into my sister-in-law Theresa, my two nieces and their aunt from their dad's side. It was pretty funny because my mom and I always seem to run into Theresa everywhere!

So, that's my current process for Project Life. It's interesting to see how my approach has changed over time. If you are a Project Lifer, has your process changed or stayed the same?