Project 365 Specifics

I have had several questions about my Project 365 for 2011 so I thought I would share a little bit more about my approach to this album. I knew there was a direct correlation between keeping it simple and me actually doing the pages each week. When I first started to scrapbook, I did so as a means of documenting life and putting my pictures some place rather than a box. Now....I would admit that it is 50/50 between wanting to document life in addition to my desire to create. It is a win-win!

By doing this project, I feel like I can be "free" to create whatever "fun" pages I want because I have so much documented in this album. In a nutshell, I don't feel the pressure of having to create a page for everything because I still have it documented in this book. AND to be perfectly honest with you, when I am looking to do a...what I call "fun" page, I will go through this album to jog my memory.

My approach to this project last year, included these four templates. I used Jelly Alpha No. 18 by Maplebrook Studios for the word "Week". I used an alpha for this portion of the title because I knew it would be there every week and I could easily change the number of the week by using the text tool.

In this album, I included "special events" pages in addition to the weekly pages. I felt like this made my album so much more complete than my previous run at this project. When I selected which template to use, I always wanted the large photo to be opposite one another (one on top and one on the bottom) to give the page balance. You can't really see my journaling because it is so tiny but it was just basic tidbits about our entire week and not what was just pictured in the photos.
Each year I have learned something new from this project. I thought about using this same template set again for 2012 because I REALLY liked it but decided to do something different just to stay fresh. I'm in the process of finalizing my system for this year. I'm excited to get it rolling.

All products are from Designer Digitals. If you would like to see the specific credits, you can find them here.

It really IS a manageable project. I just kept to a schedule in which there was a specific day of the week that I did my page. It felt good to do a little recap each week and didn't take long at all. I will admit that I was nervous headed into this project the first time around because I don't like starting something that I can't finish. I quickly learned that it really wasn't a big commitment if I just spent a little time each week. My album should be here in a day or two and I cannot wait to share it with my family. I know that years down the road...I will really enjoy seeing this recap of our life "back in the day".

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Creative Composites

Creative Composites starts in less than one week and I'm so excited. As many of you know, I taught Blending and Beyond this fall. I will admit that I was giddy when I looked in the gallery and saw the beautiful layouts that everybody was creating....it was a blending bonanza! I decided that I wanted to teach another course that expanded on Blending and Beyond. I started working on this course in the middle of Blending and Beyond and I'm excited that we are getting so close. In this course, I will demonstrate how I use blending and blending modes for color enhancements, filters, creating motion and sequencing of photos. I'm looking forward to class starting next Monday.

This course is designed for people who have taken Blending and Beyond. I will be offering Blending and Beyond in February. The structure of Creative Composites is very similar to Blending and Beyond. It is made up of a series of demonstrations which include an outline of the demonstrations. There will also be three live webinars. The biggest change with this course is that I decided to prerecord all six demonstrations. In the fall, class participants received three prerecorded videos and three recordings of the webinars in which I did a live demonstration. I feel really good about this change.


I really enjoyed putting these layouts together and I can't wait to see how everybody interprets them. I have gone ahead and posted all six layouts and the credits in the class gallery at Creative Passion. The class forum is also open so if you are all registered, you can head on over and take a peek. Registration will close next Monday.


This is the layout that I will be demonstrating in the first week of class...








All products are from Designer Digitals.

Putting a class together is no easy task and I certainly did not do this by myself. A huge, HUGE "thank you" to Tami Taylor, my husband Jeff, Debbie Hodge, Pattie Knox, Linda Hoenstine, Katie and Randy Pertiet, and John Morton. This class wouldn't be possible without the help and support of all of these wonderful people!

I also just wrote an article on repetition for Get it Scrapped. You can find it here.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Final Album for Project 365

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the holidays! 2012 is here and I can hardly believe it. There is just something about the new year that makes me feel like I am getting a fresh start. I really worked hard to finish up my projects for 2011 so that I could indeed have a fresh start. I don't like lingering projects. I'm very much a "get it done" kind of person.

This morning I plopped in my last picture for Project 365 and ordered it. It feels really good to have this album complete. I REALLY enjoy this project. This is the second year that I have done an album such as this. The kids were just going through the first one yesterday again. My first attempt at this project was to include a photo a day for the entire year of 2010 and that is exactly what I did. When the album came back, I wished I would have included more photos from our special events day so I decided to do that for 2011. I feel like this album is a lot more complete.

There has been a lot of talk about Project 365 and variations of it. I think that there are a number of people who are interested in attempting it but scared for the long haul. I can say without reservation that this is the easiest project for me to do. I love photography so it certainly isn't a problem to take a photo each day. I use a very basic set of templates. I happened to create the templates for 2011 inspired by a template that I had seen of Anna Aspnes. I have a set night each week that I plop the pictures in and that is about all. It really helps me enjoy scrapbooking more because I don't feel stressed to keep up. In fact, I will go through my album to jog my memory of pages that I still want to scrap. I would highly recommend it. Keep it simple, keep it fun and at the end of the year, you have a whole year documented...what could possibly be better than that. I wish I would have started this years ago.


If you are interested in taking a peek at my entire album, you can find it here.

All products are from Designer Digitals.

This week my goal is to figure out my approach to 2012. I know it will be clean and simple....I just need to figure out the rest.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!