Project Life Week 44 (and a partial resolution to my PL crisis)

So last week I went on a rant about Project life and it’s frustrations for me. I’m the kind of person that needs a plan. If I don’t have a plan it stresses me out. So I’ve come to the realization that it wasn’t really PL that was causing me sleepless nights. It was my own inability to change and make some decisions. (And this was not all Project Life related, by the way. Turns out, I’m awesome at projecting). So after a few days of talking, whining, and eventually writing it all out, I think I finally have a plan of attack. And once I figured out what was really bothering me, I finally got some good sleep again. Yay!

Here are my conclusions-

I need something tangible. I need to print things, or have things printed, on a regular basis. I have fallen into the trap that I think a lot of digital scrapbookers find themselves in, which is printing procrastination.

I want to dabble in hybrid. A little. I will never be a paper scrapper. But I would like to at least explore other ways of doing it.

I need to simplify. I have too many products that are uninspiring to me or that I don’t have time to use. I need a fallback plan.

To catch up or not to catch up? That is the million dollar question.

I still really really love this project and I want to make it work for me.

So here’s the plan-

I need to print something on a monthly basis. Whether it’s layouts or a blurb book, or photos to hang on the wall. I need to get in that habit. I know it will make me feel better to have something in my hands. And once I’m finished with my printing backlog, if I need to, I’m going to print out my Project Life books quarterly.

I will get my hybrid fix by attempting December Daily for the first time this year. In a very relaxed non-stressful way. Which I will talk about probably next week sometime. Depending on how that goes, I have a fun plan for next summer when the Little Man is here. It will be a sort of Summer Daily using the physical PL products. (I told you we start planning for the summers 10 months in advance :P) Hopefully those two things will help me get rid of my Hybrid Rabies.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I finally broke down and bought the Cobalt digital core kit from Becky Higgins. I still think it’s overpriced, for several reasons. Most digital kits are not $20, even huge collaborative kits with a ton of papers and embellishments. It just does not make sense to have them at that price point, especially with the plethora of PL inspired  kits out there. And every other designer on the planet is offering journaling cards now, most of them very inexpensive or free. The real kicker is that the physical core kits are only $10 more. I’m not going to go on a rant about the cost differentials between physical and digital media and their ethical implications. Suffice it to say, and I’m sure this kills my chances for ever getting on the Project Life Creative Team, but I think the digital core kits are overpriced considering the market.

Having said that, I think a lot can be said for buying a kit for the purpose for which is was made. They are simple kits and what I want in this stage of the game is simplicity. So I broke down and bought the Cobalt kit to help me through the rest of the year. I mostly really like the kit, with two minor exceptions. The papers don’t always exactly fit the templates and require a little resizing. And the white of the journaling cards is super white. Most digital kits that have white papers or ellies have a bit of texture to break up the whiteness of the white. These are just a bit too glaringly white for my taste. But on the whole I’m pretty satisfied with the purchase, and will continue to use them until the kit I really want comes out.

The question of catching up or not is one that I haven’t completely figured out. For right now I’m just jumping in where I am now, and going from there. The documentation is all there, so I think it will be easy to come back to if I decide that’s what I want to do. I plan on making a separate area on the blog for my Project Life “album” and I’ll post any catch-up layouts there instead of cluttering things up here and causing confusion.

I think the one thing I can take away from all this is that Project Life/ Project 365 is a process. I’m not doing it the same way I did in 2010, 2011, or even the beginning of 2012. It’s an evolution. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s just a rounding up of my family’s memories and photos. It doesn’t have to be so complicated. I need to relax and enjoy it.

Now on to Week 44!

Template A by Becky Higgins
Autumn Spice Journaling Cards by Traci Reed
Cobalt collection kit by Becky Higgins
New York photo from New York Magazine cover
Atlantis photo from Nasa
Photos edited with Instagram
Fonts- Architect’s Daughter, Nightmare 5, American Typewriter, Lobster 1.4

This week included Hurricane Sandy, Halloween, a bunch of birthdays, getting a pedometer, and some decorations at Jason’s work. The second page showed me FINALLY getting the family tree collage up that I bought back in April, cooler weather hitting So Flo, a terrible example of auto incorrect, bad tech day, and DSD. There are pics from our early voting adventure and our first trip to the Green Market of the season.  I’m going to do “inserts” on both of those next week.

Speaking of inserts, I want to start including those in my PL posts. Why should physical PL’ers get all the fun of insert-y goodness? I’ll probably add them to the pages following the weekly spreads instead of putting them between though. But I definitely like the idea of putting them in there to tell longer stories, or when I just have a ton of pics with a similar theme.

Here’s one about all of our Halloween decorations around the house. A couple of the pictures are going to be repeats from earlier weeks, but that’s ok with me.

Credits:
Template F (modified)
Cobalt kit
1942 Report font

I made a second insert with photos that Jason took of his coworkers dressed up for Halloween. I love that he gets in on the fun of taking pictures. I’m not going to post it publicly because we didn’t get permission and I don’t want to bother putting all those hearts over every face.

So that wraps up Week 44. Thanks for looking 🙂