Capture 2013

2013 is here and I am so excited to start a fresh year of memory-keeping.  As many of you may know if you follow my blog, I document our year using a simple set of templates that I create each year.  I document the little moment as well as the big moments.  I have a weekly page as well as many other pages throughout each week that tell the stories that I want to tell.   This will be the fourth year that I have done this project and I love it.  It has transformed the way that I document our lives.  I can look at 2012 and know that I have documented just about everything from our daily lives to the highlights.

My system is very simple and very graphic.  My motto for this project is "less is more".  I use a very graphic design and plug my photos and journaling in each week.  It takes me between 10 - 15 minutes to do a page because I don't use embellishments and the pages are so easy to create.  By taking less time on each page, I feel like I can record more about our lives and for me that is what it is all about.  Yes, I create lots of other types of pages for my children's albums and our family albums but this album is where I have EVERYTHING.  In 10 years, when life slows down a bit (if that ever happens), I can open up these pages and find the journaling and photos for the event and create a different type of page if I want to otherwise I can just feel good that it is documented.

I really liked my system for 2012 so I knew I was going to stay pretty true to that system.  My favorite parts of my template system for 2012...
      - Large photo on one side (I love using large photos)
      - I used two different colors of solid cardstock on each page (besides the journaling and photos that was the only thing that I changed for each layout)
     - I used overlays when I could to give the look of patterned paper while still using only solid cardstock
     - I created a series of templates with the same design but had various numbers of photos on each template
     - The templates made it so easy to create pages fast and I recorded A LOT in 2012

As I created my template system for 2013, I wanted a slightly different template system just to keep it fresh. The only other thing that I wanted to change was that I wanted my photos on the right to be a little big bigger so I created about 12 templates with various arrangements on the right.  I'm really excited about this system.

Here are my first few pages.  It was Amelia's birthday so it was her week of pages.

Once again I am only using two solid colored papers.  I created a striped overlay for the background as well as strips of black (reduced opacity) on the angled strips of paper so it looks like those strips are two-tone.  You will see that I did add photo corners and I changed the colors on them.  If I get tired of doing that, they will just be gray.  "Simple" is the name of the game for me.

Memory-keeping can really be whatever you want it to be.  I love creating lots of different kinds of pages but this is the foundation for all of my other pages.  This is where I go to find the photos and stories that I want to scrap.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

Thanks for stopping by!