A recap, round-up and tips for keeping a Project Life binder scrapbook.
Somewhere amidst the excitement of 2016 and the prospect of beautifully untouched days to play with, I utterly forgot to prepare my promised Project Life follow-up post! At the very end of 2014, I watched a video of Lily’s and decided right there and then that I’d document my year abroad via Project Life, a new sort of scrapbooking.
Project Life is a pocket system style of scrapbooking, a simplified method of keeping memories safe in a beautiful fashion. It's a great way to keep tangible records of happy memories as well as to unleash your creative side, no matter how simple or technical you'd like to make it.
'Cultivate a good life and record it.'
Throughout my binder, you can palpably watch as my tastes, themes, mood and inspiration shift. I started with a very busy design and no real color theme, simply slotting in photographs chronologically and adding decorative details, moving onto something more minimal and Instagram-inspired. On the whole, I worked around photographs printed in classic 6x4 and 2x3 formats, collecting business cards and tickets from places I’d been and including a couple of slots for written notes. I'm yet to complete my November and December spreads, but you'll still get the gist of my scrapbook for the year, I suppose.
A tour of my 2015 scrapbook
Do I have time?
It’s worth mentioning that I tended to work on my scrapbook a handful of times a month. I thought I’d have time at least once a weekend to sit down and scrap but fell into a really good groove of printing batches of photos once a month (or huge batches after a particular event!) and then taking my sweet time to get the photos and additional cards in properly. Here and there, I’d scribble in some notes and thoughts of particular days but it’s mostly just a photographic reminder of one of the best years ever!I always say that I find it hard to pull out good memories because when there are bad memories or tougher times, those will always annoyingly overshadow them. But flicking through my exceptionally heavy scrapbook has truly reminded me of SO many amazing moments from the year gone. I’m sure I’ll look back into this album and wistfully recount memories when I was a flighty early twenty-something, making jet lagged decisions and impulse buying my life away!
Should I start a scrapbook?
For those who commented throughout my Project Life series and dithered about doing so… I’d recommend… YOU DO IT! I’ll say now as a fair, advanced warning that it’s a fairly expensive hobby but of course it is what you make it. As an example, I wish I’d found the Pinterest community earlier on in my Project Life mission. Other PL’ers share their page spreads, free printables and ideas in abundance and it makes me want to restart my own! The decorative cards can be pricey but I’d always recommend not buying a set until you’ve got your first set of photographs printed and laid out. Then you can deduce where you have room for decorations, whether you want to fill them with momentoes, etc. The beauty in Project Life is that you can use it however you wish!
My tips and tricks
- Do keep a box for your photos, tickets and other momentoes ‘to be worked on’.
- Stick to (heh, see what I did there?) two or three types of washi tape and/or Project Life card themes for a more well-rounded scrapbook.
- Experiment with page layouts!
- Consider sharing folder sheets with friends. If a friend of yours is also making a scrapbook, it’ll be more fun to use different sheets because I guarantee you won’t finish all 50 pages of your own pack.
- Don’t rush. Take your time to finalise a layout before moving onto the next.
My kit
- Project Life by Becky Higgins Binder - Seafoam Edition
- Becky Higgins Photo Pocket Pages - Big Pack of Design A (60 pages)
- Notes and Things Value Kit
- American Crafts Value Kit by Heidi Swapp
- September Skies Value Kit
My 2016 contains no hard-set plans. Aside from a niggling wish to travel and explore, I genuinely, for the first time in a while, have no real plans. I’m not even sure what’s for dinner tonight! It’s a bit of an open book, hence my idea to keep another annual notebook instead of create another Project Life album. I shared my 2016 notebook in another post as lots of people enquired after it and you know I adore my yearly projects!
