Project Life: Week 4

I really love this photo of my kids seeing me off at the airport way back in January. I don't have nearly enough photos of myself with them. I need to remedy that. 

Here's a glimpse of my process for Project Life. I use Adobe PSE to adjust, size and add digital elements to my photos. I actually created a template of the pocket page style that I'm using. (Yes, I'm a nerd.) I lay things out digitally first to see how everything works together - rather than just printing photos and then changing my mind on placement, size, digi elements, etc., only to have to reprint my photos - yes, I've done that before. Many, many times. I'm sure this probably seems like extra work to some, but for me, this actually saves time. I also print out my digital "sketch" and use it as a guide when placing my photos into the photo pockets.

I use my Silhouette to cut several weeks worth of number cards at a time and just insert them into my album so they are ready to go. I find that with similar cuts, doing lots at one time helps save me time in the long run. You can see that I also have ephemera placed into some of the pockets. At this point I choose journal cards, patterned papers and come up with a color palette for the spread.

My week 4 starts at home in Michigan with snow and ice and ends in sunny California (for CHA) with Mickey Mouse. Yes, I went to Disneyland without my kids. Bad, bad mom.

I went a bit heavy with embellishments this week. I like it though.

Some great music themed die cuts from Silhouette. I love that they are just 99 cents and can be used again and again - and at just about whatever size you want.

I thought I'd share how I add photo corners with washi tape. You can totally eyeball it, but I like things to be squared, lined up, etc., on my projects. It's probably a sickness. Anyway, my cutting mat has these great angled lines that I can use for just such things. Yours might too. If so, here's what you do: place your photo along the 45 degree angle, lining up the corner with a horizontal grid line.

Add a small piece of washi tape, over the corner of the photo, along the grid line as shown. 

Add another piece of tape overlapping the first a bit, again lining it up with the grid.

Now wrap the tape ends around to the back of your photo.

Turn it over to take a look at your awesome photo corner and realize "Friday" is upside down. Thankfully washi tape is a very forgiving tape that can be easily removed and repositioned! Though I'm sure you won't need to...just me. I go to all the trouble of squaring up my photo corner only to do so upside down. Ironic. So very me.

I really love Studio Calico's wood veneer. Have I mentioned that before. Yes, I'm sure I have. These stars are one of my faves.

They are beautiful as is, but I also love to color them. Here I've used chalk stamping ink. Copic markers work great too as I shared in my PL: Week 2 post.

Completed photo with red wooden star and notice "Friday" is no longer upside down. "Excellent" is from this Ali Edwards digi kit. 

I used a 6x12 insert this week and trimmed it down a bit. I had to include the Frontier ticket holder - Elijah was infatuated with it. He was all about the ferret on the cover. I must admit, I love their whole animal theme myself. It's always fun to see what critter I get to fly with. Maybe we need a pet around here...besides the fish. Are fish really pets? You can't pet them.

I may have went to Disney without my kids, but I did at least bring home souvenirs - Perry for Elijah and a bracelet for Moya. I'm not totally heartless. ;-) That wraps up week 4. Now onto week 5...I really hope I can pull this off! As always, let me know if you have any questions.