Project Life Week 3: November 27-December 3

Back to school. That's what this week was about for me. Trying to get back into the groove after a week long Thanksgiving Break + preparing for the end of the semester & exams. Yikes. Glad I'm past that! :)

So as you can tell, I added one insert. I used an American Crafts 6x12 Page Protector, trimmed just slightly at the top to 11 inches, to accommodate letter size paper. I trimmed down 2 of my French papers from class, I'm hoping this will give me insight one day into what I was interested in at this point in my life. 

I also added a journal spot from My Mind's Eye, that is much larger than the 3x4 spot, I wrote in my top favorite television programs at the moment. 

At this point I was still using Becky Higgins Grid Journal Cards for MOST of my journaling, and adding my own touch with stamps, mists, & labels. 

That's pretty much it. I tend to follow the same flow every week, giving the Project my own spin, making it uniquely mine. So... Until next time. 

As Promised... A NEW video.

I am definitely a nerd. The kind that gets excited when she finds a backpack that is also a Wookie. oh my. I love Star Wars, & I will never deny it. Thanks for watching I hope you enjoy it. If there is anything you would like to see in future videos, let me know in the comments below. :)
Until next time.

News

Hi! So it has been a couple of weeks since I have blogged. I've been busy with the start of the semester & a new job. More to come on that! ;) So I just wanted to get on here quickly and let you know that I have the next Project Life post almost ready to publish and I have a few new videos on the way as well, so keep you eyes out for that! Oh & one more thing, I decided to change the name of my blog too, so now it's Pieces of My Everyday, a reflection of what I feel like is most important to me. Okay, so that's it. For now!

My Process

So now that I'm a few weeks into sharing my Project Life I thought it would be a good idea to give you a look into how I go about creating my weekly layouts. I jumped into this project without a clear plan in mind, and when I say clear, I mean specific with all the details written out, pre-planned, anything. I knew what I wanted it to be, which is a complete story of what spending 1 entire year with me would look like at this point in my life, I knew that I had FAILED EPICALLY at every other project I have tried to start that entailed and entire years worth of photos, in one album that didn't include tons of negative space and lots of embellishment. So I wanted to give myself so freedom, without giving myself the ability to fail. Less rules = more capability, for me. So in the beginning, I felt like I needed my photos to at least kind of go in order by date. Today, I don't even think about it.

First off I should probably warn you, I'm slightly obsessive when it comes to the organization that works for me, in all of the areas of my life. So my photo organization works perfect for me. I create yearly folders inside of my main photos folder that came standard on my PC, inside of the yearly folder, there is a folder for each month, labeled like this: 01 January, 02 February, etc. This keeps them in order of month. Inside of my monthly folder, I have a dated folder, labeled like this: 01-01-2012, 01-08-2012, etc. That way if I know I need a specific day I can go straight to that folder. After I've moved my photos off of my camera into their rightful folders, I see which days I have "camera" photos for, if I don't have a photo on my camera for a specific day I reference my Momento App, I have all of my social networking feeding into it, this usually gives me an idea of what I did that day if I can't remember, and it will give me my other mobile photos such as my instagrams. If I don't have a camera photo I usually have an instagram. 

While I'm checking which photos I have for the days of the week, I am working out a general plan for my weekly layout. I usually draw my page protectors out on grid paper (Marcy Penner just shared some planning pages on her blog which I will probably be using from now on), with pen, then use a pencil to layout my photos, so I can erase as much as I need (which is usually quite a lot). After I layout my photos and journaling on my hand drawn plan I write exactly which photos I NEED to have printed for that weeks layout underneath, if I have instagrams I create 4x6 canvas, using the same technique I did here & place 2 2.5x2.5 or 1 3x3 photo on a 4x6 canvas, then I move them back to my memory card to take to my local lab. At this point I will usually get my photos printed within the next few days and I just put my PL on the back burner until after the photos are printed. Then if I NEED to make any changes to the layout I haven't written my journaling landscape & it turns out I need it to be portrait. So I wait to put everything together at once. 

I hope this gave you some insight into how I complete my weekly layouts. Everyone is different, but sometimes hearing, or in this case reading, how someone else does it, can help you decide if you need to make some changes to your process to make it fit your creative style more. I would love to hear back from anyone on how they approach their weekly layouts. :)

Next on my list to share is my tiny Project Life Bin, well to me its huge, but compared to what I've seen out there as far as PL stations, my is TINY. 

Project Life Week 2 November 20-26

So now that I am officially out there with my Project Life, I feel like I have a little bit of EXTRA motivation to keep me going, holding myself accountable if you will. So here's my second week

 I've been finding that I love to add inserts and extra smaller page protectors to my weekly layouts. It gives me the chance to add more smaller details, which to me is what this project is all about. I've been adding tons of memorabilia & smaller photos (i.e. instagrams & hipstamatics) into the smaller pockets

This week Ryan and I went to our "local" art museum (the High Museum is located in Atlanta, which to me is close enough for us to consider local) we saw an AMAZING exhibit called Picasso to Warhol, featuring 14 modern artists, for me I KNEW I would need extra room to write about what I loved about the exhibit and about the rest of our day in Atlanta. Not only did the insert come in handy there, but also for Thanksgiving.
I like to journal about everything, from what we ate & wore, to our schedule for the day. It was so nice having that bit of extra room for plenty of words.

Unlike most people, you won't find any pics of me shopping on "black friday" in my Project Life because I spent the day with the guys, I don't know many women who would choose video games over shopping, but I know I'm glad I did, no hustle & bustle over a few items I could get for a similar price later. I did think about going out, but just like most years I talked my self down off of the ledge, so to speak lol.

xxKatie

Hiatus

I have bad luck, through & through. I bought a new laptop in August & right at 3 months later, my hard drive FAILED... that's right, FAILED. So happy I'm OCD about backing up all of my photos & documents. So after unexpected crazy mishaps, I'm back on the blogging road. I have a LOT of Project Life to catch up on sharing. I've been so proud of myself, I love this project, it's so simple to keep up with & so much fun to make it my own. First off I want to share my title page.

My idea for this project is to document my life from the day I turn 24 to the day I turn 25. By only buying the Page Protectors and the Grid Journal Cards I have been challenged to creating all of the "FUN" stuff on my own. I've been using TONS of stamps, my Silhouette SD, washi tapes (like this, this, this, & this + MORE), my Tiny Attacher, pre-made journal cards from my favorite collections, & lots of pattern paper. I've been trying to keep it in my style by using colors I LOVE, like grey, yellow, teal, orange, pink, etc. I absolutely love bold hues of colors.

Because I don't think that sharing the title page is enough, I'll share my first week, which was November 13-19, it worked out perfectly for me that my birthday fell on a Sunday, so I made my week layouts run from Sunday to Saturday. Without further adieu,

I hope you enjoyed looking into my project life, I'll be in a week with my second week and so on until I can get caught up on my posts. Seriously, this was the best decision on a year long project I could have made. I love it so far, and if I can keep up the momentum, I know I will be able to succeed in finishing it. I have to say that the best part of this project is the community though, I'm apart of the Big Picture Classes Community, & I am always up for seeing anyone's project life, so if you want to share, leave me a link in the comments. ;)