Credits: The Silver Reed by Heather Joyce and I Believe In Miracles by Pink Reptile Designs
With the new year just around the corner, many scrapbookers are planning on starting a new project. Here is a list of a few ways to consider documenting your 2013.
PROJECT 365 or PROJECT 52
To do Project 365, you commit to taking at least one photo every single day for an entire year. (Hint – go easy on yourself if you miss a day here and there!)
I’ve seen Project 52 interpreted as a photography challenge (52 weekly photos) and as a scrapbooking challenge (52 layouts). It’s whatever works for you!
- Confessions of a Project 365 Quitter by Steph
- Four Months and 11 Days by Janet
- About P365 at Photojojo
PROJECT LIFE
Project Life was created by Becky Higgins. Using a simple grid format and pre-sized journaling cards, you can document your life quickly and consistently. It can be paired with P365, but it does not have to be! Some scrappers do a 2 page spread every week and others scrap as they have material. You could even do it on a monthly basis. Project Life is whatever you want it to be.
NEW 52
Peppermint Granberg of One Little Bird Designs and Christine Newman of Listgirl started the New 52 project. Basically, you try something new-to-you each week, take a picture and write about it. You can note it on your blog or scrapbook about it.
TAKE TWELVE
The “Take Twelve” challenge encourages you to take 12 photos on the 12th day of each month.
- Some of Katie’s 12 on 12 blog posts
- Take Twelve
MONTHLY ROUND-UP
At the end of every month, Katie answers a standard set of questions. It’s a wonderful keepsake to see what has happened each month – and can even be the starting point for future scrapbook pages. I haven’t done a round-up every month, but I have scrapped a few and I love how easy it is to answer the simple questions and document an entire month.
- Round-Up Your Month by Katie
- Katie’s Monthly Round-Ups
MONTHLY FAVES
Lynette at NettioDesigns documents her favourite things and moments from each month. What a great and positive gratitude project!
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
Ali Edwards documents a Week In the Life each year. This project aims to capture all the little moments in a typical family life through photography and journaling.
- Katie on her Week in the Life project
DECEMBER DAILY
I love to follow Ali Edwards’ December Daily album as she documents her family’s December days.
- Pinterest boards for December Daily – here’s The Daily Digi’s December Daily board
- Katie’s fun and easy approach to December Daily
- The DigiShow episode about December Daily
Are there any other projects that you would enjoy learning more about? What projects are you considering for 2013?
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I did Project Life this past year, and am now catching up with the last six months because I fell behind. Not so bad though as I am doing some major power scrapping here so that I don’t start 2013 way behind. Anyway, here is what I learned from this past year:
1. I got bored with the same old templates that are part of Project Life. By about July, I was buying other templates and mixing them in.
2. I got bored with the coordinating product lines that go with Project Life. At first, it was so simple. Then, I started to feel that my subscription to the Digi Files was going to waste! I love all the kits we get but I wasn’t using them and that was a real shame.
3. I went back to the USA (from Japan) for one month over the summer with my children. That trip included so many memories that I wanted to scrapbook, not just the everyday life stuff, and I ended up making several more pages than usual…this is how I fell behind. I really dreaded going back into August and finishing those layouts because it was taking so long! Looking back, I wish I had made a separate theme album about our trip to the USA and then I could have taken my time on it, and it would have been fun.
So, with these three major lessons that I learned, I decided to try again with Project Life but to take a slightly different route:
1. I am going to use templates that I love, and I am going to mix it up. I just bought some from Sweet Shoppe Designs yesterday, and I have some Janet Phillips templates that I think are perfect for PL.
2. I am going to choose digi kits from each month’s incoming Digi Files so that I can feel satisfied that they are being used.
3. For long vacations to the USA (if we go in 2013), I will narrow it down to one or two lay outs and then add the rest to an ongoing theme album about our trips to the USA.
I also do One Little Word by Ali Edwards, and that keeps me going all year round. I love that it is just for me and focuses on my life and how I am feeling rather than what everyone in my family is up to. My OLW albums are my treasures.
2012 was my first year to learn about any of these. I did Oh Life! daily from Dec2011 – June then VERY sporadically after that. I need to learn how to NOT write a novel everyday and it will be easier to stick with!
I did “Katie’s” RoundUp for 9 of the last 12 months
I took a picture 200 of the last 363 days… and scrapped those for 3 weeks in the digiProject Life style.
And, lastly I did 12 on the 12th 6 times.
It was a good year. I’m trying to be happy with the all of the moments I captured & want to decide which style I liked best so I can stick to just one or 2 projects this year and hopefully complete them
I had not heard of Oh Life! until I read this thread. I kind of remember now that it was a pick on the Digi Show at one time, but it must not have registered. I found it now and signed up. Last year, I used Day One (also a pick from Peppermint), and I used it until August, but I got tired of the multi-step process – typing into my tiny iPhone. Then, emailing each entry individually to myself, and then copying and pasting the entries into one document and ordering them by theme, and then finally pasting them into my project life pages on PSE. Hopefully Oh Life! will be a little more stream-lined. (I was never able to get it to sync to my dropbox properly anyway!)
I’ve been doing Oh Life! for a couple of years now, but my plan is to go back to P365 this year. I love the two years’ worth that I did, and find that unless I do it every day, I just don’t get around to doing monthly summary spreads, etc.
I do like the idea of 12-on-the-12th, though. Might add that to the mix.
And I gave my mom a “Family News” scrapbook for her birthday (the day after Christmas) with the promise to send her 8×8 pages of photos and news at least once/month this year. She’s not on Facebook (has a hard time using a computer due to a stroke) and will really enjoy a hardcopy snapshot of our lives, I think. Plus I can keep one for me, too!
Love the incentive that this blog/site always brings! It’s the first blog I read each day and it’s always a treat (just like your podcast)! Thanks for all your hard work, your viewers/listeners really appreciate your efforts (special thanks to Katie for bringing PSE info/insight on the podcast, too).
I am considering a NEW 52 project for 2013 that is limited to try out a new recipe every week. I am planning on making a recipe card for each dish and have a little special cookbook by the end of the year. If that project turns out well I might consider a NEW 52 project involving other areas the following year (I suck at following through with long term projects).
Shimelle Lane runs several projects throughout the year, such as “Journal Your Christmas” and “Learn Something New.” And the best part is once you sign up for one year you are automatically enrolled each year. How Awesome is that!
Her website is:
Shimelle.com
I love Project Scrap, hosted by Shabby Princess on her blog. You take two pics a week and she gives away a two-page spread template each month to scrap them with. The 2012 templates are all available on her blog right now, but I’m assuming she’ll bundle them in her shop like she did with the 2011 templates when 2012 started. I don’t know for sure that she’ll do it again in 2013, but my fingers are crossed!!
Cool idea! I just went to check out the site, but didn’t see anything about “Project Scrap.” (I did see a free downloads area – nice!) Do you have a link…?
Next year I will start my fourth Project Life and I’m planning to add some of these other projects – like Katie’s Roundup and maybe New 52 – to it. I think it’s a great place to put that kind of thing. Shrinking everything down to a 3×4 or 4×6 card seems much more do-able for me.