This year I decided to get started on a photo album. I wanted to have some way of displaying my photos in seasonal order, and when I came across mentions of Project Life online I realised that was the way to go.
Project Life is a scrapbooking system, where you have album pages divided into pockets to hold photos. You can do a little bit of scrapbooking or journalling if you want, but basically the idea is to shove the photo in quickly and be done! I like this way of doing it because personally I find a lot of scrapbook page layouts a bit over the top, and in particular I don't want to start doing something complicated and then spend the rest of the year feeling guilty because I haven't kept up with it.
The first page inside is a half spread. I wasn't sure what to put here and then I remembered my monthly flowers collage. In Photoshop I cropped it into six 4x6 parts. It didn't print too badly considering the original collage was sized for the web... I guess photo printing has improved a lot over the years!
This is my first spread for January. It's worked out so far that I have two double page spreads for each month. I'm not worried about putting the pictures in chronologically, but I am trying to keep a consistent colour scheme across each spread. We'll see how that goes, but it was easy for January... there was a lot of pink this month! If I didn't have enough photos for all the slots I used patterned paper in a matching colour.
My photo sleeves aren't the official Project Life ones, but they are the same style. I chose the ones which have four 4x6 inch horizontal photos, and four 3x4 inch vertical photos. It's a good universal size for photo printing - I use Photoshop to put two 3x4 pictures together on a 4x6 size canvas, then cut the photo in half once it's printed. I don't print at home because I don't have a good enough printer, and it's just as easy to go to one of the instant photo places at the mall.
In the March spread I felt that the photos needed to be tied together a bit more. I put corners cut from pink patterned paper over the corners of some of the photos. Then I did a bit of journalling. I was going to stay away from that but some of the photos needed captioning, plus the slots which were just patterned paper were looking a bit bare.
So, journalling it is, and I'm happy with that. You think you will remember what's going on in all the pictures but that won't be the case in a few years. I better go back and caption some of January's pics too.
That's my photo album! I really like it - it's like my blog but more tangible. I need to get on and finish April's pages now.
Are you doing Project Life, or any sort of photo album?
