Project 365 - 2011 Edition

I'm getting a bit of a late start this year. Not having a computer of my own to work on whenever I need to/want to has been as much a bane and it has been a blessing. I've been working on making my journaling cards and design cards a little at a time. I decided to go with stripes and polka dots this year. Creating my projects in Photoshop Elements 2.0 actually came much easier this year due to all the practice I had last year - even making some digital scrapbook layouts!



I already have my binder and divided page protector sheets - all assembled and ready to go. My photo file is constantly being updated with daily pictures - edited, labeled and ready to upload and print.

My big challenge now is getting everything printed. I've located two online printers who do 12x12 scrapbook pages. I'm thinking I'll send an order to both and see which one I like better before ordering the cards for the entire year. And then I have to get all the photos printed. I've always used Shutterfly for my photo printing. Of all the online printers I've used in the past, I like them the best.

Eventually, I'll be able to put everything in the binder. And hopefully, that day will come soon!

PSE Photo Editing

Now that I've figured out how to make collages in PSE, I had a super easy time putting together 5x7 sheets of the pictures I want printed for the baseball sleeves in my Week in the Life 2010 scrapbook. Of course, even though it was pretty easy to do, it still took me several hours, as in about 6!, to get them all edited and ready to print.

These are my baseball card pictures for Friday. With a couple of exceptions,  I ended up with 12 pictures for each day. It was really difficult choosing the photos on some days, other days, no choice at all, (because I didn't take very many).

And I still need to finish up the other collages yet. I can't decide if I want to add a strip with the day of the week on the collage itself, or add that in later. I'll think on it. Next step is to work on the opening pages. I plan to do my journaling first and then import the photo so I can be sure to print the sizes I need for each day's opening page. I kept a running list of daily activities (with the time included) that I'm going to print out and put in somewhere...I'm pretty sure I'll be adding a few more pages. One of my extra pages is a large picture of a rocket launch during one of the evening ball games. Very cool. And only in Florida :)

Week in the Life of Us - 2010

Today begins the first day of journaling and photo taking for Week in the Life 2010. You can find more about the project on Ali Edwards blog. I'm already in the habit of taking pictures everyday thanks to the Project 365 I've been doing. But this week I'll be taking pictures all day long! As well as lots of journaling.

I've already put together my binder, a simple 8 1/2" x 11"  3-ring binder I picked up at Target. I made some embellishments using the pattern of the binder. My embellishments fit in the baseball card page protectors. I still need to find some full 8 1/2" x 11" page protectors. I know I have some somewhere...I also  have some ticket stubs I made in PSE that I'm going to print out and use on the pages. For my journaling each day, I think I'll use a notebook. That way I can carry it along when I leave the house - which is almost every day now that it's baseball season!

This is going to be a lot of fun!

Project 365 album

I finally got my order of 12x12 divided photo sleeves from scrapbook.com and I absolutely love them! At first I thought the openings were only on one side, but happily, I was wrong. I do wish, however, that the pockets opened from the tops instead of the sides. It would make adding ephemera so much easier.

For the moment I've only put the pictures and journaling cards in place. I have a collection of bits and pieces I'll be adding in as soon as I sort through them.  Waiting on the sleeves put me behind on this project a little bit. I also need to order the February pictures. After spending an hour writing the days of the week on each photo (and messing up a couple of them) I decided that I will now be editing each day's photo in Photoshop Elements and adding the day of the week to the picture before sending it to be printed. It takes a bit more time on this end of the project but will save me loads of time on the other end of the project! I super excited to finally have everything in action!

My Project 365 designs!

I did it! I actually designed my own cards for my Project 365! I found a color palette that I liked from one of the fabulous artists at COLOURlovers. I found several I'd like to use someday, but I could only pick one! Then I loaded it into my Adobe Photoshop Elements program and starting playing around. I went through several versions before I settled on a design that I really, really, love.

Here are some of my cards:

These 4 cards are for that empty 8th day-of-the-week spot

This is my favorite Week Of card!

And check it out! I figured out how to make the striped bottom with the curved corners like in the Becky Higgins 2009 set! It took 3 tries and quite a bit of logical thinking to get it right, but I DID IT!

Whooohooo! I love it!

Now I just need to order some divided page protectors and pick up an album and I'm ready to go. I've already printed January's pictures and I'm anxious to get them scrapped. But, with everything I have on my plate now, I have a hunch February will be almost over before I get around to it :( 

Project 365

I am, of course, embarking on another year of Project 365. This year it seems to be referred to as "Project Life", which definitely has a ring to it. I looked at the kit available at beckyhiggins.com but the colors just don't...sing...for me. So I'm hesitating.

I decided to play around with my PSE instead. I figured I would, at the very least, figure out how to use the program! And turns out I was right. I've never understood layers before, and playing around really helped. Knowing that I wasn't going to mess anything up really kept things from getting too stressful!

I had downloaded the free card set from Becky in 2009 and printed the cards myself. So I took one of the cards and loaded it in PSE and played around with changing the colors. That was fun and all, but I wanted to change things up a bit. So I started figuring out how to erase things and add in other designs, use brushes and add in text. It was so fun! I can't wait to really get into this program and make some amazing layouts with it. I see so many ladies (and a few gents) on the net designing some very lovely layouts using all digital elements. So I want to learn more!

These are some of the cards I've made on my own so far. I haven't decided on this colorway yet, though!

Cute, eh? I can't decide if I want to go with a more vintagy style or a rock-n-roll style. Maybe I'll just go whole hog and mix and match! Off to play!