Project Life 2018

Meine PL-Titelseite - title page:

Letztes Jahr war ich PL-faul und habe im Prinzip noch nichts gemacht, immerhin aber genug Notizen und Fotos zum Aufholen. Das 2017er-Album ist der Einfachheit halber 6x8, aber dieses Jahr möchte ich wieder von Anfang an dran bleiben und zum großen Format zurückkehren.

Last year I was very lazy as far as Project Life is concerned. Actually I have hardly done anything but at least got enough notes and photos to catch up. The 2017 is in 6x8 format but this year I want to keep it up from the beginning and go back to 12x12 format.

Project Life-Missgeschicke

Last Saturday I tackled my Project Life Album for 2015. All photos and cards were already in and glued together until October. I still had to add dates as of mid May and there was no journaling nor embellishment as of the beginning of May.

Letzten Samstag habe ich das Project Life-Album von 2015 in Angriff genommen. Fotos und Karten waren alle drin, bis Ende Oktober auch zusammengeklebt, Daten mussten ab Mitte Mai noch ergänzt werden und ab Anfang Mai war noch keinerlei Journaling oder Deko da.

In order to keep it simple I stamped the dates. 95 stamped dates later I had got to 23 December and realised that I had not changed the year to 2015 on the stamp. After a small tantrum I started to correct the mistakes, in different ways.

Die Daten habe ich der Einfachheit halber gestempelt und war dann auch 95 Stempelabdrücke später beim 23. Dezember angekommen, als mir auffiel, dass ich das Jahr nicht auf 2015 gedreht hatte. Einen kleinen Wutanfall später habe ich dann angefangen, die Fehler zu korrigieren, und zwar auf verschiedene Art.

The most simple way was of course using the same card again where available and just stamping the date again.

Am einfachsten ging es natürlich, wenn nochmal eine gleiche Karte vorhanden war - einfach neu stempeln:

In some cases I covered the wrong date up with a suitable sticker and stamped the date on the sticker.

Teilweise habe ich das falsche Datum mit einem geeigneten Sticker überklebt, in den ich das richtige Datum gestempelt habe:

Sometimes I covered the date with another sticker and stamped the date elsewhere on the card.

Oder ich habe einen anderen Sticker zum Überkleben genommen und das Datum woanders auf die Karte gestempelt:

Another option was moving the photo on the card, thus covering up the wrong date, which in this case was originally stamped underneath the yellow part of the card, and then stamp the date elsewhere.

Eine weitere Möglichkeit war es, das Foto auf der Karte zu versetzen, damit den falschen Stempelabdruck (hier ursprünglich unter dem gelben Teil der Karte) zu verdecken und das richtige Datum woanders hin zu stempeln:

Several things were useful for this exercise.

Bei dieser Aktion kamen mir gleich mehrere Sachen zugute:

1. It is great to have a stash of identical cards, not necessarily from a Core Kit, as the Mini Kits also have 2 of the small cards. I have also participated in quite a few swaps and therefore have a large selection of cards.

1. Ein Vorrat an gleichen Karten ist toll. Das muss nicht immer ein Core Kit sein, auch die Mini-Kits haben die kleinen Karten doppelt. Außerdem habe ich aus Core Kits schon oft Karten gegen Karten aus anderen Kits getauscht, oft auch doppelt, so dass ich eine ganz gute Auswahl habe.

2. Bad glue can be useful. Although this was not the original intention when Project Life was invented I always glue the photos on the cards. The same applies to two cards in one pocket. Slightly Monk style, but I can live with that. Now, glue which does not stick well is usually not a good thing, but it was very useful in this case, as it allowed me to peel off the photos and stick them elsewhere. Photos printed with the Canon Selphy printer do not like being bent, so you need to be careful when peeling them off, but it worked.

My current problem is that I now also need to have another look at the layouts I made with the Scrapbook Adhesives glue roller to ensure that they do not fall apart too... I think it is very annoying if products made specifically for scrapbooking (and the corresponding price tag) hardly do their job for a year. Sorry, but I had to rant a bit about that.

2. Schlechter Kleber kann auch sein Gutes haben. Es ist zwar nicht so gedacht, aber ich klebe die Fotos im PL-Album immer auf die Karten und klebe auch zwei Karten in einer Hülle zusammen. Bisschen Monk, aber ich kann damit leben. Jetzt ist schlechter Kleber ja grundsätzlich nicht wünschenswert, war aber hier ganz praktisch, weil ich so recht einfach die Fotos lösen und versetzen konnte. Mit dem Canon Selphy gedruckte Fotos verzeihen starkes Biegen nicht gut, also ist da beim Lösen Vorsicht geboten, aber es hat geklappt.

Das Dumme ist nur, dass ich jetzt auch die Layouts, bei denen ich den Kleberoller von Scrapbook Adhesives verwendet habe, wohl nochmal anschauen muss. Nicht, dass die sich auch auflösen... Ich finde es mehr als ärgerlich, wenn für diesen Zweck gedachte Produkte, die auch nicht ganz billig sind, schon nach einem knappen Jahr die Segel streichen, das muss ich jetzt meckernderweise auch mal loswerden.

First layout of the year

Journaling: Project Life for the third time... I definitely still have enough supplies. This year I will try to keep on track better than last year.

Project Life 2016

Although I am by no means finished with my 2015 album I have already set up the album and title page for Project Life 2016. The title page is quite similar to the 2015 one but I don't mind this at all.

Ich bin zwar bei weitem noch nicht fertig mit dem Album für 2015, aber ich habe schon mal mit dem Project Life Album 2016 angefangen. Die Titelseite sieht der von 2015 recht ähnlich, aber das macht mir nichts aus.

 

 

 

In the meantime I am trying to catch up on 2015 and my Selphy printer is working overtime. At least I have completed photos and cards until August.

Derweil macht der Selphy Überstunden für die große Aufholjagd für 2015. Immerhin hab ich jetzt schonmal Fotos und Karten bis einschließlich August drin.

Happy New Year

Happy new year to everybody out there :-) Hope you had a great start into 2016.

After a nice party with neighbours and friends yesterday I decided to take it easy today with just a little bit of planner setup and some Project Life catchup for 2015.

Frohes neues Jahr euch allen :-) Ich hoffe, ihr hatten einen tollen Start ins Jahr 2016.

Nach einer schönen Party gestern mit Freunden und Nachbarn wollte ich es heute mal locker angehen lassen mit einem bisschen Planer-Kram und Project Life-Aufholjagd für 2015.

 I made a laminated title page for my Heidi Swapp Memory Planner, leaving the back blank to store some washi tape.

Ich hab eine laminierte Titelseite für meinen Heidi Swapp Memory Planner gemacht. Die Rückseite bleibt undekoriert, damit ich dort ein bisschen Washi Tape aufbewahren kann.

 

 

 

And does anyone have any idea what this could resemble? I would say it's a sea horse, but standard interpretations last night always seemed to be a hairdryer or a bra.  

Hat jemand eine Idee, was das sein könnte? Ich würde ja sagen ein Seepferdchen, aber gestern waren die Standardinterpretationen immer ein Fön oder ein BH.

Project Life Card

Inspired by a card shown by Dani Peuss on Instagram/inspiriert von einer Karte von Dani Peuss auf Instagram:

Project Life Layout

Not for the actual Project Life album, but rather about it. I have resisted the trend for many years, completed my first PL album in 2014 and still love it.

Last Friday there was another challenge evening in my favourite forum with snippets of the design team members' works with the current kits as inspiration. I liked the structure paste circles, punched out pieces with paper behind them and the general mixed media touch and used these as the inspiration for the layout:

The supplies used are mostly from the current kit as well, except for the cameras, enamel dots and journaling card (from my stash) and the some die cuts and the cork arrow from last month's kit.

Project Life 2015

Although the 2014 album is not fully finished yet (December pages are missing journaling and embellishments) I have started on the 2015 album. Here are the 2014 and 2015 albums:

I used to have American Crafts albums with plain colours for my layouts and the houndstooth one was the first patterned one I got. The initial intention was plain for layouts, patterned for Project Life, but with the large variety of nice patterned fabric-covered albums available I may change my opinion on that. Anyway, the PL 2015 album has this pretty woodgrain pattern.

Here's the title page:

A little break from art journaling

It has been quiet here for a few weeks again, so before I get caught up on current stuff here's a little recap of the last few weeks. Currently I am taking a little break from art journaling and scrapbook more.

While working on Project Life I have come to the conclusion that most of my layouts and especially the Project Life pages are too personal to share, or there are too many parts I'd have to hide, so most of them will remain in their albums and won't appear here. The good news is that with the not strictly weekly approach it has been easy to stay caught up. In fact I am a bit disappointed when I have completed a page and need to wait for some days to have passed and new photo prints to arrive.

The Project Life box is well filled now. In fact I probably have enough cards for at least a year. The ever increasing amount of nice kits does not help and I have cut back on shoe shopping already.

The other resolution is also progressing well - I have created and used some more clustered embellishments and donated most of my punched butterflies along with other scrapbooking supplies at a recent scrapbooking event - more on that later. Here are new embellishments:

Some cards:

A mini album made at a workshop:

There is an accordion album inside, again with pictures too personal to share.

It's been a while

Well, a while at least since the last post. In the meantime we celebrated Christmas and the arrival of a brand new year, so I wish all of you a very happy 2014.

Hm, I should have folded one the corners on the sixth. Never mind now - it is the only one of the six I did not send to anyone. Actually I did not send any Christmas cards, although I made around 50. Most of these were commissioned by colleagues or for a charity Christmas market and some went into my card box for next year. Instead of Christmas cards I sent some New Year's cards to a few friends.

For the third time in my life I have taken New Year's resolutions, this time some crafty ones.

1. Use up scraps

When browsing YouTube for ideas on resolution 2 (see below) I came across some great ideas for do-it-yourself embellishments. I raided my envelopes of small and box of even smaller pieces of paper and can announce that the lid fits the box again. Instead there are lots of punched pieces of paper stacked away in various other areas of my craft room waiting to be turned into something like this:

I did not count them, but I have probably punched hundreds of circles and butterflies and quite a few border strips.

If you are insterested in what inspired me I recommend this video - the embellishment creation starts at 2:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dD2JQohcvM


2. Start a Project Life album

The divided page protectors have been sitting in my drawer for a long time now. Actually I just wanted to do divided layouts, but since I have not done much traditional scrapbooking in the last four years or so for various reasons they never got used. Well, now they hopefully will.

To kill two birds with one stone or work towards two resolutions with one cut I prepared 4 x 6 and 3 x 4 journaling cards. My page protectors have various designes - the Becky Higgins design A and another set for six horizontal 4 x 6 photos. So all scraps that were large enough were cut into 4 x 6 or 3 x 4 cards to prepare for Project Life. Some are plain cardstock, others are patterned paper, a few more embellished cardstock.

I store these in a cardboard box from Aldi (1.99 EUR/around 2.70 USD), which I embellished slightly. Then I added some dividers to the two drawers in the middle. The labels are attached with non permanent glue dots so that I could easily change them.

The little book on the top holds ideas and notes for Project Life.

The weekly approach will not work for me most months, as either I do not take enough photos or too many at a time. Each month will therefore have as many spreads as required and possible.

Watch this space as of February :-)