Raise your hand if you feel like you have some “catching up” to do with your scrapbooking.

I totally get it. And so does Kelli, a customer who recently shared her experience with us. She uses Project Life for documenting the here & now and is keeping up with that, but she has been sitting on pictures from a long travel experience that still needed to get into an album. In her own words …

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My Need. I wanted to create a scrapbook of my study abroad experience in Europe. I wanted to actually print pictures (taken in 2004!), use journaling I had done during the trip and eliminate a box of stuff I had kept. I have been too overwhelmed by this project to complete it for 8 years! I recently realized I could use Project Life page protectors and envelopes to capture this experience. Project Life gave me the versatility to bring everything together without it taking years and costing a lot of money. I truly think this is memory keeping at its best – a mix of everything worth saving in one cohesive, easy-to-do album.

My Approach. I began this project by pulling together all of the pieces related to my travel experience, including:
Photographs
Journaling
Memorabilia – coins, postcards, etc
Letters – cards and notes I received while abroad
Emails – those I wrote and those I received  (I did not blog at this time, but if I did, I would have also pulled material from my blog)

I set up an iPhoto library dedicated to the study abroad event. I organized my photos by event. Then, on paper using a sketch book, I began to “marry” the photos and all of the other pieces with Project Life page protectors by event (essentially as I would have for traditional scrapbooking layouts). This approach was possible because of the many different options of plastics now available. For example, on my title page, I knew I wanted to include a photo of me on the day I left for London and my airplane tickets. I also had a long piece of journaling to include. I figured out that a 6×12 page protector was best for the journaling, given its length. I thought that Design A of the Project Life plastics worked because of the tickets. Where I had extra spots to fill, I worked in a digital elements and patterned paper, or memorabilia that would fit anywhere.

For other events, I had more vertical photos than horizontal photos, so I would go with Design B. I had a newspaper article I had saved in one instance and it perfectly fit within Design E. This was the longest piece of the process because of the many things I wanted to include and because I needed to match the page projectors between multiple layouts (if I used Design A for the right side of one layout, I had to use it for the left side of the next layout).

After I had the design completed, I ordered my photos, and printed off the digital elements I wanted to use. I cut up the tickets I wanted to use and printed the emails and other items on the computer. Finally, I slipped everything into the page projectors by following my design sketches.

My Supplies. I completed this album using primarily what I already had on hand. I have to admit, I was tempted to go buy all new papers and kits. I was so glad I did not do this in the end, because so few supplies were actually needed to complete this album. Paper - Becky Higgins (Project Life Turquoise Edition – it happened to match!), Digital Elements - Ali Edwards via DesignerDigitals.com, Photoshop Elements, 3×4 Grid Cards – Becky Higgins (I used these up from previous kits).

Two other notes.

1. I decided to use my handwriting rather than printing out journaling cards, simply because it was faster and I knew I could spend a lot of time in making sure the printing was perfect.

2. I used Photoshop Elements to combine all of the non-standard photos into 4×6 or 12×12 print sizes. This allowed me to more easily order the prints, which I did via Persnickety Prints and Shutterfly.

I truly think this is memory keeping at its best – a mix of everything worth saving in one cohesive, easy-to-do album.  – Kelli

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Do you have a Project Life success story to share? We would LOVE to see what you’ve been able to do with your pictures and memories using this system. Email submissions@beckyhiggins.com and tell us all about it. Be sure to include pictures of your pages – and even parts of the process if you have pictures of that too!