I still have incredibly lofty dreams of getting my 2014 Project Life album complete (see previous weeks here.) I think I've got maybe ten spreads out of thirty-eight actually done. So... yeah. There's still hope! Ha.
I thought it would be an interesting blog post to share my process for putting together a Project Life spread for a week that I'm traveling. Thirty-seven was spent in the Bay Area, first at Hero Arts for an event and then in Palo Alto with my brother, then a very short bit in San Francisco. Here's what goes on in my crazy head for making it all come together.
Since I was traveling for the majority of the week and left on a Saturday, I documented this week from Saturday until Thursday. Usually I go Sunday to Sunday but because I left for my Oregon trip on Friday, I wanted that whole trip to be included in a separate spread so I wasn't breaking up the story.
This is a screenshot of the folder containing all the photos I took that week. All of them were taken with my iPhone. The first thing that I do when I start working on Project Life is look at the entire batch of photos that I took that week, then narrow it down to the ones that I absolutely want to use. Sometimes it's hard to choose because I want to use a lot and sometimes it's a challenge to come up with even four that I think are great + a good representation of what happened that week. How do you narrow down your photos?
The second step for me is to grab a piece of scrap paper from my desk and sketch things out. I write in the photos that I know I want to use, then add in filler things - like cards or journaling. My album this year is more about photos, less about words. And fillers. I just wanted it to house a lot of photos. Instead of hand drawing a sketch, there's now a Project Life app for your phone that will easily help you lay everything out. Super helpful for planning, especially when you're using all phone photos.
The third step is to bring the photos into Photoshop and crop them down for printing. I take most of my photos in square on my iPhone so they're ready to go for Instagram. I edit all my iPhone photos using the VSCO and Snapseed apps and usually make any changes to them in Photoshop. For quite a few of my Project Life photos, I will add text directly onto the photo in Photoshop before printing them out. I love how this looks and it quickly adds journaling here + there. Journaling is my least favorite part.
Here's the left side of the spread. I continued to add the week number onto a photo of me like I did in all of the other spreads this year. You can see that the order that some things get changed around from the original sketch. When I go to put things into the pockets, sometimes things look better lined up in a different order than I originally thought.
All of the paper + embellishments for this spread came from my Second City line. The products are now available at Scrapbook.com. I especially love the transparency pieces in the die cut pack. I cut down a few papers from the 6x6 pad to slip into the pockets here as well.
I like scrapbook products that make it easy for me to keep my journaling short + sweet. The top card is another piece from my Second City die cut pack and I added in some stickers from the Elements Sticker Sheet. Another thing I've done a lot in this album in particular is writing on my photos. Again, very short + sweet. When I travel, I save every single piece of paper. Tickets, business cards, menus, etc. It all comes home with me and maybe 25% of it actually makes it into the album. I love having those little pieces from trips in there.
I hope that you enjoyed seeing my process for putting together a Project Life spread based around a week of traveling. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I'm happy to answer them!
I'll be teaching two new classes using the Second City line at Paper Tales in San Diego, California on October 18th. Excited to start a round of in-store classes with these fun products. Hope you'll join me - info found here.