Big Honkin’ Layout Share, featuring 2005, wedding, Christmas, travel, and an old school Project Life page

I have been scrapping my booty off lately! Here are a few of my latest pages.

First up are the new releases from the GingerScraps designers.

I think this might be one of my favorites, ever. As I mentioned last week, I’m working on scrapping some of my 2005 memories. One of the biggest themes of that year was all the traveling back and forth that Jason and I did to see each other. The honeymoon collection could not have been more perfect to scrap that! The map paper, oh I love it so much. I’ve been trying to come up with fresh ideas for photo-less pages, and the Word Paths were a great jumping off point in my design. I’m really proud of this page.

Journaling reads- Being in a long distance relationship involved a lot of travel for both of us. After that first visit, we tried to get together once every month or so. He would fly to Nashville or I would fly to West Palm. Those visits were one of the lifelines of our relationship. We measured time by how long it was until we would see each other next. So many of our conversations centered around planning the logistics of our visits, where we would stay, what we would do together. Thinking back, I remember it was hard, but it was all so worth it to see each other.

Credits:
Honeymoon Collection Bundle by JB Studio and Meagan’s Creations 
Word Paths {You & Me} by Little Rad Trio

I’m working my way through wedding photos this year too. I’m so glad that I didn’t scrap all of them when I first started. I like that my wedding pages reflect the evolution of my style, and aren’t stuck back in my 2010 style. I have hundreds of photos, so I figure I’ll scrap a few each year, and I’ll be finished sometime around 2075-sh.

Credits:
Skip A Beat by Luv Ewe Designs

Tracie, from Clever Monkey Graphics released a couple of Christmas kits this week, so y’all know I snatched those up! You can’t have too many Christmas kits, right?

The first one documents our doughnut obsession.

Journaling reads- Let’s not talk about the amount of Christmas doughnuts we ingested this year…. Dec. 2014

Credits:
Holiday Cookie Exchange by Clever Monkey Graphics

And the next one shows off some more photos from Four Freedoms Park, where we stopped on our way to Louisiana. I’ve already done a few pages about it, but I wanted to do one that showed how they had it decorated.

Credits:
Merry and Bright by Clever Monkey Graphics
Day By Day by Dagi’s Temp-tations

Last year, I took the Catch Up with Project Life class at BPC, where I made several pages for my 2011 Project Life album. (Which I just realize I never shared here) I’m coming close to finishing, and I’m pretty excited!

That year I made a single page spread for each week. So I knew Dagi’s new templates would be great to use for my next unfinished week. In a stroke of scrapping serendipity, the colors in Blue Heart Scrap’s newest kit worked out just perfect for that week too.

It was neat looking back at our “old old” apartment. You can just barely see the little Kitty head peeking out from around the stairs.

But I have to say, thank goodness for Rad Lab, because a lot of those pictures were kind of rough. I’m resisting the urge to try and fix the photos in my PL pages from that year before I get them printed. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Credits:
Make Memories by Blue Heart Scraps
Day by Day template by Dagi’s Temp-Tations

I have lots more pages to share this weekend. It has been an amazingly busy scrappy month around here!

*I am a Creative Team Member. This means that I receive free products in exchange for making and advertising layouts for designers. However, the opinions expressed here are my own. The enthusiasm expressed here is definitely my own. See more of my CT layouts here.

Catching Up with Project Life- Challenge One

Earlier this year, I decided to take a hard look at some of my projects and to see what it would take to actually finish some of them. I made a document in Evernote, which I would revisit from time to time. I made Next Action lists, and slowly worked through them. My plan was to finish some of these projects sometime before 2025 or so.

Enter Catch Up with Project Life, a class at BPC.

The first lesson mirrored what I’d already been doing, and gave me added incentive to make more progress. Assessing my gaps took a lot of work. My first couple of years’ worth of PL files were a Hot Mess. That was before I’d settled on a naming structure for my files, plus some of them were in a program that I no longer use (Pixelmator) and my computer couldn’t figure out what to do with them. It took HOURS to straighten out 2011 and 2012, but I did it!

2013 was easier to sort out, but I got pretty discouraged looking at all that I needed to do to make it come together in a cohesive way. (That was the year I did PL three different ways, remember?)

2014 isn’t too bad. I’ve finished the first volume, and I’ve made decent progress on July-September. The summer months are going to be a challenge, but I’ll talk about that in a later post.

The hardest (but most fun) part for me is always the question of what form is my finished project going to take? I have a different plan now that I’ve really assessed the cost of my different options.

2011 will definitely be a blurb or artscow book. I had that intention from the start of 2011, and I think it will work best.

I had originally wanted to print out 2012 as individual LO’s with inserts, like I’ve shown here. The problem with that is, it will be crazy expensive, even though I’ve printed out several weeks already. So that probably will be another blurb book. I’m a little disappointed, but I can’t justify spending nearly $100 to get all those pages printed out when I can get a cheap book for $30.

2013… I just don’t know yet. It makes my stress levels skyrocket, so I’m putting it aside for now.

So that’s where I am right now. My goals for the class are to finish 2011, and continue on with 2014 as usual. I’ll get to everything else eventually. I’m feeling pretty confident. I love that the class is set up as a series of challenges, and the lessons have been fun and informative so far.