Deconstructing Project 365

Almost two years ago, I reluctantly started doing Project 365. I saw plenty of wonderful inspiration in the gallery and I thought it would be so cool to look back on how our days had been spent. I wish I would have done this when my kids were babies. I say "reluctantly" because I wasn't convinced it was something that I would follow through with because I'll admit it, I like scrapping what I want and I generally don't use templates. I think templates are fabulous but I like the freedom of a blank screen. I started the project at the beginning of 2010. I wanted it to be simple in hopes that I would follow through with the project each week. I created a basic template that you can find below. I included seven pictures and a little bit of journaling regarding each picture.





This is what I learned from the first year of Project 365

- I can do it and it is pretty simple if I use a template and stay caught up
- I love having a record of our daily lives
- it wasn't a problem to take a photo a day

When I began thinking about continuing the project in 2011, I tried to figure out what I really wanted out of the book. I would say that the first year, I was just kind of trying it out to see if was something that I could commit to. I found out that I could indeed keep up with the project and enjoyed it. I also discovered that there were some things that I wanted to change for 2011.

1) Journaling - our lives are SO busy that I knew I wanted to record more of what goes on in given week than the description of seven pictures. I love the way that my dear friend Elena who is also on the Creative Team at DD did her journaling for 365. She just listed random things and I followed her lead for this year. I am able to include so many more details with this method. I will certainly be following suit for 2012.

2) Focal photo - I decided that I wanted to include a larger focal photo on each page to make more of an impact.

3) Special Events - In 2010, my book contains exactly 365 photos....one for each day regardless of the day. I decided that I wanted this book to be more inclusive of our lives and that means including special pages for birthdays, holidays, trips, fun family outings. I think that this has been my favorite addition to this years book. I have so many more photos included because of these fun events that I wanted to document on a larger scale. You can see the bottom spread in which I have Quinn's first field trip on the right. I like this because if I fall behind in scrapbooking, I know I still have record of it right here in this album. Honestly, 365 takes the pressure off and allows me to have more time for what I call "fun scrapbooking".

4) Quote - I take a lot of inspiration from what others are doing. My dear friend Carol who is also on the Creative Team at DD has an awesome book going this year. She included in her album quotes that she liked. I LOVE that idea and was quick to incorporate it into my own album. On the bottom of each page, I wrote a famous quote. I really enjoy finding these quotes but I know that I won't do that part again next year....I'm running low on quotes.

5) Color Palette - I used a neutral color palette and color photos. I'm pretty sure that I will use neutrals again for 2012.

I'm just starting to think about next years project and what I want it to include. I thought if you were interested in going on this journey, it might be helpful to hear what things did and did not work for me. I would highly recommend it. My advice would be to just set aside a time that you will complete this project each week. My pages take me about 25 minutes to complete and I know that years down the road, I am going to love having a record of our entire year at my fingertips.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!