Anyone thinking about next year?

Look at the cards of the designer Paislee Press. She has a lot of black and white cards. I like her Photo Templates.

 

Thank you Tracie for sharing about the Template Action by Mommyish as I just went and bought that ready for my 2018 weekly pages.

 

I agree with @FILIPPOK, Paislee Press has tons of amazing black and white cards, and I love that she has different themes and seasons.

I'm definitely starting to think about 2018, but I'm not sure yet what I want to do. I have used all of Jaimee's Ready to go pages this year and I love how easy it is, but I'm also in love with a more simplified look to PL. Hopefully over Christmas break I will have more time to think and come to a decision.

 

Well, this will be my first year doing Project Life and I am incredibly excited! I am on the fence on whether to do digital or hybrid, but my heart wants to do hybrid. I just know it is more of a time commitment and I am worried about getting burned out or not finishing... and I do not want that to happen.

What I know regardless- I am aiming for a simple layout. I want to focus on taking meaningful pictures and let the photography shine with the help of carefully chosen elements. I will most likely add a small white border around my photos whether it is a photo taking up the whole spot or a photo collage. I have made templates for 4x6, 4x4, and 3x4 spots that have room for multiple photos, journaling, or both. I want each week to be cohesive, but will use a different overall theme each week to keep it interesting for me. I've also been collecting and/or creating generic black and white cards and word art that can fit in numerous places.

If I do hybrid... I have been researching the cardstock and paper I want to order. I have Project Life pocket pages I ordered 4 or 5 years ago when I thought about doing it and did exactly nothing. If I go this route, I also want to order a few smaller insert pages for when I need the room and possible some envelope inserts. I also don't have a ton of embellishments, so will probably order those as I go.

If I go digital... I love Lynette's layouts for Project Life and the page protectors she uses. I would most likely do something similar to this.

So, I feel overall relatively prepared other than I don't know if I am going to create a digital or a hybrid album. I know it REALLY doesn't matter, but it is stressing me out.

 

I'm behind from August 2015-now for my physical Project Life ... I started in Dec 2011, so that's plenty complete before my halt. I have all my memorabilia still from the last two years-currently.

So! My plan is I really really really really really want to catch up! There have been so many big & little things in that time I want to remember & get in my books. I want to get back on top of this! It's a much different scrapping than my digi stuff & connects me so much more with my family when I do PL.

I don't know how, but I WILL catch up & keep going in 2018! Just need serious motivation!

 

For next year I have some holiday albums planned and want to cut back on my annual album pages. This year I more or less scrapped by week, one double page (sometimes 2) per week with one side PL style, the other whatever other style I felt like.
For next year I was thinking one double page per month...not sure whether I can do this, I am bad at limiting the number of photos. Well, maybe two double pages per month. And those in artsy pocket style. This year I used Amy Martin's templates which are super, but for next year I want to go more for a blended look. I have done that before and really liked how the pages turned out.

 

So, I have a plan.
Some of my favorite PL pages are my very beginning ones when I focused on the words more than the photos. I would sit down at the end of the day, or very beginning of the next and write on a 3x4 card the highlights of the day. I then used the Design A (4x6 on the top and bottom, 3x4 in the middle) and plopped a photo in. Usually 1 per day, but sometimes 2 from one day, and 1 from another.
My plan:

1. Write daily on the cards. Goal: to tag all my good writing cards over my school break so I'm ready for January to start. Also, may have to shop and buy more!
   
2. Set up my Templates ahead of time. Number by Weeks.
   
3. Set up my Lightroom smart collections for the weeks.

I realize this might seem like overkill, but my favorite ones are the simple ones with the words as the focus. I think getting too far into the Embellish all the things! is what forced me to need a break last year. So, I'm going back to simple.

 

My casual documenting method is working for me. As long as I scrap at least once a week (and usually it's more than one page per week), I feel like I include enough of my life in my scrapbooks. I scrap mostly current events and do it chronologically, with occasional blasts from the past. My annual album I just printed last month has 237 pages, and nothing major is missing. I think I'm going to just keep up with my habit of making Sundays my scrapping day.

Oh! I did start doing something new this month. When I scrap a photo I'm tagging it with a color in my files, which, on my iMac, puts a colored dot next to the file name. I used to always remember what I have scrapped and what I haven't, but this year there were a couple of times when I wasn't sure. So this is an easy way to see at a glance that I have scrapped a photo or not. It's only two clicks: just right click on the photo and then click on the colored dot.

 

I'm more or less going to continue what I've been doing. I do like to change up the main font for the year, the weekly card and the calendar cards. I always say I want to make less pages every year but always end up making more. So I won't limit myself on page number BUT I need to get going printing those books, still have to print 2016...
I've also been thinking that I want to include more of ME in my pages so I may do a spot where I place a photo of me and write a little about me at that moment.
I love using the monthly BYOC and MPM so I will continue with them for most pages.

 

Oh @bestcee You and I certainly think alike! I always set up the empty folders for Lightroom and also make a main folder on my iMac with each week getting a folder inside that. Since my photos auto sort by week, half the work is done before I start.

I don't plan to write daily as I'm happy writing ON the photos but getting those cards tagged is a great project. I think I do have most cards done in LR because I LOVE designers who put card in the file name!

Like @tkradtke I have loved my Mommyish-made templates, but I would like to make some more ones. LOL I'll have to relearn the system since I've spent the year using the batch I made with the 1st edition. i've yet to use the 2nd version.

I too am debating doing a weekly page which I don't know I'd like since I really do like having coordinated pages opposite each other. OCD-ish? However 2 pages for each month would be an easy 24+ page album. it's a hard decision...

@Mrivas Yes, yes, yes. "I love using the monthly BYOC and MPM so I will continue with them for most pages."

 

LOVE the Mommyish Template Maker 2! It has so many different sizes you can use to change up the pages.

I don't do traditional Project Life, I don't really have that much to document. Instead, I go by major events. I haven't even started 2017 and I might have 3 pages done for 2016, but I want to try and keep up with it in 2018. We'll see, we'll see.

I'm going to keep with my quasi-simplified layouts for the events pages (and for my Disney scrapbooks which I am also behind on, but only by a trip and a half) with the photos being the main focus, then journaling, then embellishing. I just need to focus on getting stuff done.

 

I wish I had done it so many different years in my life. Even if I did 1 page a week. Like my husband and my first year in Boston. And one of the years we were both in school full time. And the year before I got married. And of course, any year when I was a kid or in high school. It's been fun to see how much changed between 2013 and 2016 (I took 2017 off). You probably have more than you think to document!
Random photos I've found that make me smile: old apartments. Old car. old friends. old computers. old phones! You don't realize how much you truly forget. I love one of our scrappers here who documents spreads of her unmarried, no children life. It's fun to see.

 

I always think I want to do something but it feels like my life is so boring (work, home, clean, grocery) so I usually drop it very quickly.

I do plan on doing a better job of taking photos so hopefully I have some more interesting things to scrap this year.

 

@krscraps & @rdjrneace & others
Single, childless person here who DOES do PL! And especially this year, I've been VERY thankful I have, with my father passing away this summer. I have so many simple moments captured that I otherwise wouldn't have.
So don't think your life isn't worth it. Because it IS. Even if my life is boring, it is my life and I am actually quite enjoying it.

--

I will be switching from MPM to Storyteller this year. Which is a big thing as I have been a MPM subscriber for 2+ years. But I feel like Storyteller is going to bring me more for less money. (I'm getting especially annoyed that I always need to buy a paper pack on top of my subscription as it only comes with solids) And since I've acquired a big stash of neutral pieces that I will be mixing in, it's going to work out, I'm sure. I have actually made a folder with neutral PL stuff, like cards in b/w/craft and word art.

I will also go with date tags instead of day tags. So now I add little tags to my photos with monday, tuesday, etc. And in 2018 the tags will say the actual date: january 1st, march 16th, etc.

I will stick with Mommyish Template Maker 2.
I will also stick with my page size: 20x25cm.

I will keep up the double-spread per week. I'm not sure yet about the week cards I want to use. New ones for sure though!

And of course I need a new font. Which I haven't decided on yet.

 

Long before there was that which is known as Project Life, I did a project I called "Week In Review". I had read a photography blog about photographing a photo a day (which I think they called Project 365). I took it one step further and scrapped it. One note... I have no children or spouse so yes, my life can be quite boring. But looking back on those layouts, it is quite interesting to see how things were in my life 9 years ago. Yes, I did this project in 2008-2009-2010. I did 52 weeks from August 31, 2008 to August 28, 2010. I carried a point and shoot camera in my purse and made it a priority to take at least 1 photo every single day. I got to the point that I took a picture of the gas prices at least once a week because they were changing so much back then (I went by several gas stations every day on my way to and from work).

As for how I scrapped them, I made it very simple. I picked out a 12x12 template that I used every single week. It had 11 photo spots so I could switch around where I placed the photos each week. I also used one kit that I happened to have that had a lot of different papers so any spots that didn't have a photo could have a nice patterned paper. I used no embellishments, nor did I journal. I had the dates for the week in the same photo spot each week and in one of my other spots, I had a calendar of the month. I had found digital stamps of the months for those years somewhere and they were perfect for what I was doing.

I did a cover page for the album with this quote by Aaron Siskind on it... "Photography remembers little things, long after you've forgotten everything".

I have been doing DYD this year and I just may start doing PL in January and start documenting my life as a retiree. But, again, I will probably choose one template and one kit with lots of papers to use each week. I may see if I have the kit I used before because I really loved all those papers it had! (BINGO... I still have the kit and the template!)

 

Oh! I'm so glad to hear there are people out there without kids that are successfully doing PL! Thank you for posting @berniek and @HavaDrPepper . Its several years since I have tried PL as I always feel, that with just hubby and me at home there's not much to scrap but I think I will give it a shot again next year. It may kick start my photography again too!! Now to think about how I will go about it!

 

I just found that I had posted my Week In Review layouts on my blog and they are still there. The pictures do show up for me but they are located on Photobucket so who knows if they would show up for anybody that looks at the blog. In case anyone is interested, here is a link to the first entry I made: http://havadrpepper.blogspot.com/2008/09/week-in-review.html