I finally got round to finishing off my first week of Project Life 2013. Click through the images to go to my gallery on Two Peas where you can view the images in more detail.

This year I am using the Seafoam Project Life Kit from Elise Blaha. I love the colours, they are naturally colours that I would use and using a kit makes it so much easier and more co-ordinated. It took me a while to do this layout as I was figuring out the best way to use the kit but I like how it turned out.

I didn’t have many photos for this week, I really need to work on taking more photos, and more varied photos. All photos are iPhone photos, it’s the easiest and most convenient way for me to document my daily life. I’ve got a new Bamboo Wacom tablet that I’m still waiting to hook up to my iMac and when I do I’m planning to start using that a lot more. I’m still figuring out the colours in the kit, I have just realised how aqua coloured this page is!

I seemed to have got the colours in this page a bit more balanced. I included my 2013 manifesto in this page, it ties in with my One Little Word for 2013, ‘change’. I’m also going to add a quote in each week, this one is from Batman. I got a lot of Batman stuff for Christmas and the Mr also bought me Batman on the Wii U, I’m not a huge gamer but this game I really enjoy. The Rebels went back to training this week and I managed to snap some action shots whilst they were training. I’m hoping that 2013 will be different for me in roller derby. I was heading for a roller derby burnout last year and I’m putting things in place so I won’t get to that state again this year.

Have you started your Project Life in 2013 yet? How are you finding it? I’m slightly behind but I’ve had a difficult start to the year and I’m making templates etc so I can find efficient ways of keeping up with Project Life this year. I’m adjusting to using a kit but hoping it will save me time in the long run.

I started Project Life back in April, and I did it religiously, every week for 2 or 3 months. I loved that it gives me a way to document the everyday little things that would otherwise go unmixed. I love that it got me using my camera (albeit my iPhone one most of the time) more and more. I love that it got me really thinking, and writing about the world around me and what was going on. I fell in love with Project Life, and scrapbooking started to enter my life in a big big way.

Then come the summer things got hectic, life got in the way and Project Life fell by the way side. I decided towards the end of 2012 that I really wanted to continue with Project Life but opted for doing it digitally. I was struggling for time, space to store all my supplies, craft space to use to do my weekly spreads and it was getting a bit overwhelming. Going digital seemed like the answer, I spent so long at the computer anyway that I was sure I could fit it in. I already knew how to use Photoshop anyway so there wasn’t much of a learning curve. I set about downloading some free digital kits and started Project Life again but this time digitally.

I did well, I did a few weeks and then December came and things got really busy and my planning went out the window. Over the Christmas break I sat down and brainstormed Project Life and what I wanted out of it, the barriers I faced doing it and what I was prepared to do to overcome those barriers. This formed the basis of my 2013 Project Life plan.

I’m going to continue with Project Life in 2013, but I’m going to make some changes.

• I’m sticking with one template for most weeks, I’m undecided on which one right now though (any suggestions welcome?).
• I’m going to stick to a plain title card just with my hand-written date on, helped by my new Wacom tablet I bought at Christmas.
• I’m going to continue to include a Tweet a week at least, I like that I can combine different social media into my memory keeping.
• I’m going to include a quote for the week that has helped me that week or sums up that week.
• I’m going to use Elise’s sea foam kit for 90% of the layout. It is such an awesome kit in the colours that I naturally choose anyway so it makes sense. Plus the journalling cards have some great prompts on to help me out.
• I’m still going to plan throughout the week in my notebook and assemble the layout at the weekends.

I know that seems like a lot of rules for a fluid project but I think that by having these rules/guidelines in place now it will really help me not to get overcome by Project Life and to help me enjoy it more. It got to a point where I thought of it as a chore, and I never want to think of memory keeping like that. It is something fun, something that I will look back on in years to come and smile at.

So with all that in mind here is my 2013 cover page.

It uses the Seafoam kit and I then used Skitch on the iPad to add the handwritten bits (until I get my Wacom set up for the computer). I added in a quote and the three words in front of our are the three things that we (the Mr and I) really want to work on this year. We want to work on building (and recording) our story and work on making changes through the year (also my One Little Word for 2013). I used inspiration from my previous title page to help as well and I looked at my Pinterest board for inspiration.

Are you doing Project Life in 2013, do you find having rules restricting or helping?

So this is from a month ago, I’ve had so much going on that I only just got round to finishing it this week. I’m a month behind on Project Life but that’s fine with me, it’s not an issue. I know what I need for each layout and I’ve got them all, I just need to sit down and do it. I’m hoping to find some time over the Christmas break to catch up so I can start 2013 fresh and stay as up to date as I can.

I chose one paper pack for this week and stuck to it, mostly. It was a chevron pattern and I picked out a few colours to go with. I think it worked well, although I’m not sure if the chevron pattern is too much, your thoughts? Not many photos this week, I’m working on that for future weeks!

I wanted to include a programme from a roller derby bout I NSO’d at but the pocket was the wrong way round. Simple solution, I got the jpeg of the programme cover from the organiser and I just put it in sideways, you can still read it and it’s more about the memories than the presentation right? The “Hacked” title is from a font I found called Ransom, I think it suits the text and the concept really well. The rest is either done in my handwriting font or a plain text font.

I didn’t realise how pink this page was till I finished it. It doesn’t matter though, the subject of two of the pockets are pink themed. There’s two tweets this week, only because I couldn’t decide which I liked better and I love that one about my sister discovering Evernote, she’s really starting to “grow up” and settle into a working routine and I love seeing her grow. There’s some blurred out text about some friends and their struggles and even though I don’t think she reads this blog I didn’t want to break her trust. After 5 months of fighting I finally got my new work chair as well so naturally that had to go in there somewhere!

I’m still loving doing it digitally and I’m finding there is no where near as much pressure. It suits my lifestyle so much better, especially given that at some point in the next 12 months we will be moving out of our house and moving in with the in-laws!

3 weeks down and I’m keeping up, I am so surprised by this, really surprised! I think digital is the way forward for me, it suits me and my personality and my schedule so much better. Those of you on Twitter will have seen that this weeks spread was put together at the early hours of the morning this weekend. I couldn’t sleep so I got up, put in a DVD (Private Practice and Batman Forever if you’re interested) and I set about putting together my weeks spread.

There’s more photos this week, I’m working on getting more photos of the everyday, I’ve also included some screenshots in this week.

I really like the instagram photo layout in the top right, I wanted something a bit more “scrapbooky” than just a photo and some text, I think it works well. Most of the journaling on this week is done in a font that I made of my handwriting, it’s not perfect but I like it non the less. The two photos are ones that were doing the Facebook round and they were very apt to what I was doing/feeling at the time. The bottom is a message I got on Facebook from a friend, it’s blurred out for privacy of both of us.

I’m loving that Instagram photos are just the right size and resolution for the digital project life templates. This page is a real mixture of my week so it’s a bit jumbled, but that’s how my week was so that’s how my layout is. We had a beautiful morning one day this week so I stuck a photo of that in. The photo of me is on some Kraft paper and a washi tape brush, the brush was twice as thick so I sized it down to the size that I needed. I spent a lot of time on my blog and Pinterest this week so I just took some screenshots of them and put them in there.

I’m going to be sharing a post in the next week or so about how I organise my project life spread and how I plan it because I changed it up a lot when I made the switch to digital.

I have fallen back in love with Project Life! I was finding it a chore but doing it digitally is so much better. I can do little bits here and there when I get a chance, I can write up some journalling on my iPhone when I’m in the waiting room at the doctors, I can tidy up some photos when I get a spare 5 minutes at the computer. It all comes together so much easier and although I don’t think it looks as neat it looks a lot more like me.

This week there appears to be a lack of photos. A lot happened this week and I wanted to get that down and that meant words rather than photos, and that is 100% fine with me. It doesn’t look as pretty and it doesn’t flow as well but this is my record of this week, and this week there needed to be words. Some parts are blurred out for privacy of me, and the people involved.

The far left of the middle row is a facebook status from the week, but I’ve covered up the names, photos and responses of the people involved. The bottom right is some journalling but instead of blurring it out I’ve hidden it as I really like the journalling card that it’s on. The middle image is part of a pin from Pinterest. It’s a nail tutorial that I tried out, I’m totally not a girly girl when it comes to doing my nails but I really enjoyed trying this one out, and it even kind of worked! I’m finding ways to include my weekly tweet in my pages and I’ve gone back to this “Tweet Tweet” card that I used in my previous paper project life layouts as I think it works really well. The hand written title was done using Skitch on the iPad, which then syncs with evernote and I can just copy the jpeg into my layout each week, I like the simplicity of the title card.

I always struggled with this layout when I did the physical pages but it’s a lot easier in digital as I can rotate the images and embellishments as needed and make them fit. The two photos on the right are Instagram photos that I cropped to fit. I took a photo of the program from the roller derby and added it in there. I was really worried when I swapped to digital that I’d lose the emphemera that I used to include. I’m trying to include it and scanning it in or taking photos of it is proving the best option at the moment. The cloud embellishments are from an Echo Park pack that I purchased. I wanted something to break up all the journalling and the colours matched perfectly.

Do you do digital project life, how do you make sure to include the “stuff” whilst still doing it all digitally?