Here are just a few of the Project Life “glamor shots” we’ve been receiving lately. So many people have been receiving their products lately – very exciting! Everyone is welcome + encouraged to submit their photo to projectlife@beckyhiggins.com any time! We love to see your pictures!

I want to congratulate our randomly selected winner from this week’s Annie Sloan Chalk Paint giveaway. Hey, Susannah in Columbus, Ohio - it’s you! Shoot an email to shadesofamberinc@earthlink.net and they’ll take it from there.

On to Feedback Friday … uh, well – actually it’s Saturday this time.   ; )

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Wondering if you could recommend a good paper trimmer? I’m asking my husband to get me one for Christmas and I’m not sure which one to ask for. There are so many out there!

There is a new trimmer on the market that I really like. It’s from American Crafts and is called Cutup. You can learn all about it HERE. Lately I’m especially putting the scoring blade to good use for when I need perfect, clean folds, but of course it’s a great trimmer too – and several great blade styles to choose from.

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How true-to-life are the colors of the new products in person vs. what is shown via computer?

That completely depends on your monitor. Your monitor and your friend’s monitor and my monitor are all different and colors will read differently on different computers. There’s no way to get 100% accuracy. So if something looks brighter or more dull than you were expecting, the good news is that all the colors in both Cobalt and Clementine Editions are really, really nice.  : )

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Any news on when the shipment to New Zealand is likely to arrive?

I believe product has arrived this week to both New Zealand and Canada as well! For anyone living outside the U.S. please be sure to contact your distributor directly for questions regarding timing and availability. Find your distributor HERE.

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The new Signature Binders that will be available shortly – are they the faux leather material or are they a different material because of this pattern? 

Our classic Signature Binders are a coated paper. They are so pretty and completely wipe-able with a damp cloth if needed.

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Do you know if the Signature Binders will be on Amazon in time for Christmas?

No, unfortunately not. But we should have them in stock on Amazon (for U.S. customers) by the New Year, or right around the New Year. And soon after that for everyone else outside the U.S.

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I’m all new to Project Life and can’t wait to start with my personal project in 2012. Unfortunately, in Europe we have to wait about 2 more months until the kits become available for order. As I’m not good at waiting, I consider to use the digital layouts in the meantime and get them printed as a photo book. I’m puzzled and interested in your opinion: Which Project Life option do you prefer and why? Thank you very much in advance for your input!

I strongly encourage everyone to do what works for them, and what makes the most sense. For me personally, I do both. I do a family yearbook with the digital photo book option because they’re smaller/skinnier and I can print multiple copies so that each kid gets a family yearbook each year. (Remember: we’re switching our photo book platform to Shutterfly and that should become available just before Christmas!)

I use the physical product for our kids’ individual scrapbooks because this is where they can each have more photos + details about just them, and it’s also a great place to store the physical “stuff” (papers, art, memorabilia) that is theirs. I’m going to be addressing this in more detail here on my blog the week after Christmas – in time for the New Year. Scrapbook organization/approach is a hot topic and lots of people are wondering the same thing.

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I recently stumbled upon Project Life. I was excited and slightly overwhelmed at the same time. I’m thinking about jumping on board in 2012. Any advice you (or anyone else) can give 1st time ‘Project Lifers’?

Excellent question. My goal with Project Life is to help people (particularly newbies or anyone just feeling overwhelmed) SIMPLIFY the process of documenting life and preserving memories. My advice to you, and anyone in that same boat, and most people for that matter … is to keep it simple. All the title cards and journaling cards are already designed and look fantastic. You don’t need to do a thing to them. All you need to do is add your pictures and write some captions and memories and whatever notes you want to write, on the journaling cards. That is all.

There’s a lot of talk about the “365″ approach. Certainly that’s a fun way to use Project Life. The idea is to represent each day of the year with a picture. On one layout, you’ll have the title card + 7 photos + 7 journaling cards. That’s it. What a fun way to represent everyday life as it is right now!

BUT … that can be quite the ambitious project if you haven’t been doing much memory-keeping up to this point. You may prefer to just use the Photo Pocket Pages to slip in whatever pictures you want, and have whatever theme you want for each layout. No rhyme or reason. No rules. Just stick them in + get it done! My friend Brandi did something like this earlier this year. She printed nearly 300 favorite family pictures from 2010 – everyday pictures, travel pictures, pictures of the kids and activities … and just stuck them all in pockets, adding some journaling notes, and that’s it. DONE. No cutting. No pasting. No designing anything. No “creative” work at all.

Brandi literally scrapbooked an entire year’s worth of pictures in a full album – in less than a day. Man, I love that.

This is exactly what Project Life is for. SIMPLIFY. The beautiful thing about Project Life is the flexibility. Many want to play more and get a little creative, and that’s great too! As you visit my blog and see the things I share on facebook + twitter, you’ll find a lot of inspiration for what kind of everyday pictures to take, what kind of memorabilia to keep, and fun ways to jazz up and personalize your pages more. All of this is fun and inspiring but do not think for a second that you need to do anything more than stick your pictures in, write some notes, and that is it. Bottom line: Project Life will fit your needs – whatever they are. Project Life doesn’t have boundaries. You set the pace.

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Becky, I am curious as to what you are going to use next year for your Project Life – Digital? Shutterfly photo book? The 3-ring binder version? Just curious.

As mentioned in another question above, I have been doing both and will continue to both. Digital photo books for the family yearbook and physical product for our kids’ books. More detail about my system coming soon – video style!  : )

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Regarding the digital Project Life elements on JessicaSprague.com, do they take into account bleed for printing as they look pretty close to the edge?

Be sure to check your print settings.

1. When you go to the initial print screen in Photoshop, you will need to do a couple of things. Make sure that the “Scale to Fit Media” box is unchecked. Then click on the “print settings” button.

2. Under the print settings, click on the borderless option for your paper.

3. Click on the “Page Layout” tab and make sure that the expansion is set to “minimum”.

Images + tips from Laurie at JessicaSprague.com. She adds: These print screens won’t match yours because it is specific to my Epson printer, but you should have something similar. The main thing is that you want to make sure that your printer isn’t trying to expand your image. A lot of times when you choose a borderless option for printing, your printer thinks that you need to exand that image to fill up the whole sheet. This is what we don’t want to happen. If the image is expanded then we won’t get the true size of the journaling card and it won’t fit in the page protector.

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My husband and I don’t have kids. I often wonder if I do Project Life who will want or care about my interests and legacy since we don’t have kids?

Of course I don’t know anything about your close friends or extended family or anyone else who might have a personal interest in looking at your pictures and memories, but I am quite certain that you are loved and that many would be interested! But here’s the thing. There are two grand purposes to Project Life.

1. LONG TERM: Leave a legacy, tell your story. Leave a record of your life + memories to pass on to others, including your posterity.

2. SHORT TERM: Enjoy the experience and the process of preserving memories through pictures and written words.

So in your situation, #2 is what applies the most. Even if no one ends up with your scrapbooks, the fact that you are taking pictures of your life and documenting your memories, your successes, your struggles and everyday mundane stuff? Just going going through the motions of that are literally making you more aware of your existence. You become more keenly aware of your blessings, which makes you happier. You are more conscientious of how you spend your time. Quite possibly – it can result in you making changes for the better. All because of the act of documenting life.

Isn’t that so cool?

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Becky, I have being using Project Life for the last 3 years. I would love it if all my Project Life binders had the same type of spine, label holders and are the same width. I also love the design from the past years. Have you thought about reissuing the previous binders with the new awesome quality of the current binders?

Yep, that’s exactly what we’ve done! The past designs (Amber Edition + Turquoise Edition) are now available in a brand-spanking-new Binders. Same design but much-improved quality and even the label holders on the spine! Of course we also have our new designs (Cobalt Edition + Clementine Edition). And the Signature Binders (coming soon, as mentioned above) are going to be the same quality, same dimensions, and same label holders on the spine.

If we happen to bring back the Original Edition of Project Life (our very first one introduced 2 years ago that is currently unavailable), we will certainly make that binder design comes back in the new + improved format as well.

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Is there any hope of Shutterfly offering any of the other designs in the future? Would LOVE to have Cobalt available!

Shutterfly was only able to select two of our designs for the launch of Project Life on their site – Turquoise Edition + Clementine Edition. I really, really wanted all editions to be available but that wasn’t my choice. You asked about hope. My hope is that Project Life on Shutterfly SOARS. My hope is that lots of people play with the designs and see how easy it is to drop pictures in the templates that are already designed. If everyone enjoys the Project Life photo books and Shutterfly recognizes its popularity (for lack of a better word) well then maybe they’ll be interested in picking up more of our designs. I think we’re all in a wait-and-see state of mind. I personally can’t WAIT for you to SEE Project Life on Shutterfly. I’m already itching to get a book started myself.

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I just purchased the Clementine Core Kit and other products to use Project Life for my family history. I just haven’t figured out how it will work.

That is awesome! I would love to see more people do something with those older pictures and I think it’s terrific you’re taking on that project for your family. Depending on how many pictures you have, and what kind of pictures, you could do something like this: Use the Scrapbook Dividers (sold out but coming back next month!) and use those to create a section for each ancestor. Within that person’s section, you can just include pictures + information about them in random fashion, or you could have a layout for childhood pictures, a layout about their work, a layout about their hobbies or travels, etc. It’s hard to give feedback about this unless I know the specific circumstances like how many pictures you have and what kind of memorabilia you have, etc. But I’m sure the ideas will come!

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I’m sure you knew this concept was going to fly. I wonder if you and David have dared to think just how big your business may grow.

Honestly, we don’t have much time these days to dwell on those kind of thoughts. We just work hard to make things happen + do our best to carry out the vision for how Project Life can be a blessing to so many people. We are so grateful for how it is impacting people’s lives. As for the first part of your comment, we did absolutely believe in this concept. It is because we believed in it that we risked a lot (and spent a lot out of our pockets) to start our own company in 2009 and bring Project Life to the masses. Not a day goes by that we don’t feel grateful that we did that. It was the right thing to do, at the right time. We continue to be very grateful for so many happy and loyal fans/friends/followers/readers/customers/Project Lifers … and we look forward to the continued journey with you guys.

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{ a favorite comment }

Jennie wrote: My Project Life kits (yes, I ordered Cobalt & Clementine!) came today, but my hubby insists I can wait 11 days til Christmas to open the box. Men…they just don’t understand! I’m probably more excited than my kids for Christmas!