Project Life Week of November27-December 3, 2011

It's almost Christmas Eve by the time this goes live. I hope your holiday is merry and bright and filled with love & laughter, family & friends.

Today I have a Project Life layout scheduled just in case you get a chance to pop on the computer. This week presented itself with an interesting pile of photos. I had a few holiday looking photos and then the yellow VW bug photo. There was no getting around that bright yellow car. So I decided to focus on the color yellow and just work with it. By using yellow through my 2 page spread, I was able to balance out that main yellow photo a bit. I also did a fun application of some ruffled ribbon to the outside of my page protector. I'll talk about that a little later down the post.

Here's my left side of my 2 page spread. I didn't make a main dated page this week because I thought the photo of my December Daily album cover was good enough. I added a simple label sticker that had the week typed on it. This week you might notice that I also started using my new printer, hence the white border around my photos. I love how the white frames the photos so I'll probably continue to print with the white border.

This week was a mix activities including starting my December Daily album, working on the girls' Lounge room, documenting photos of Charlie harassing the cats, a funny photo of Jordan and more basketball.
On my right page, I experimented with Diptic photos and the ways they can fit into the journaling card inserts. I discovered that if you use a Diptic layout that has a vertical division, you can trim those photos in half, insert them into two separate slots and they still look like one photo. Here on this full page view you can see how I used the Diptic photos to create a vertical look to an otherwise usual horizontal layout. I'll show you more at the end of the post.
Here's my journaling cards starting from the left side of the first page. I used My Mind's Eye stamps and mini garland, Chevron patterned paper and a Chevron bag from my Etsy shop.
I embellished the front of the bag and then used a Large Manila Tag to journal the story. All of my Kraft colored patterned papers are from My Mind's Eye. For the metal clip, I used a small silver clip, removing on of the clips and then smashing down the metal parts with my hammer. This way the clip lays more flat in my album.
Here are two Project Life journaling cares that have been embellished with patterned paper, stamps, chipboard pieces and a packaging piece from the Pottery Barn bean bags that were delivered this week. If you look closely you'll see that each one of my journaling cards has been stamped with the tiny star border from My Mind's Eye with gray ink.
The last two journaling cards on the right side of my 2 page spread. I used more patterned paper, some tickets from My Mind's Eye, misted chipboard stars and some small letter stickers.
On this 4 x 6 photo of Josey playing basketball, I added a smaller square photo. I like that this shows her playing both defense and offense.
And here's the fun application of the Diptic photos and some ruffled ribbon that came in a Studio Calico kit. This takes on a 6 x 12 page protector look but all of the photos were put into the regular Project Life inserts. The top square is one 4 x 4 Instagram photo slipped into a 4 x 6 slot. On the right of each 4 x 4 photo I used a 4" piece of a ruler accent from My Mind's Eye plus added a journaling label that was made with my vintage typewriter.

The middle 4 x 4 looking section is actually a Diptic photo that was cut vertically down the center of the photo. Each half was slipped into separate journaling slots. But if you butt them together in the middle it still looks like one 4 x 4 photo.

The bottom 4 x 4 section is another 4 x 4 Instagram photo that was slipped into a 4 x 6 photo slot. On the left side now, I had some blank space. I thought this yellow ribbon that I'd been hoarding would fit in perfect with the yellow theme of this week's layouts. I thought about cutting it up into 3 sections and adding to each photo but then it hit me.....just use Scor-Tape and adhere the ruffled ribbon to the outside of the page protector. A fun and dimensional look. It's kind of neat to be thumbing through the album and then come across this 3-D ruffly ribbon that you can touch from the outside.
Here's a close up view of that Diptic photo that was cut in half vertically. Love this idea and I've already used it several times since this layout.
Here's that 12" strip of ruffly ribbon. I might try this with other trims too, who knows?
And that's it for today. After the holiday I'll have some more informative Project Life posts going up on the blog. These will include a 2011 review of some of my favorite memories and techniques I used this year.....a view of my Project Life organization.....a listing of my favorite Project Life supplies.....a reminder of how I'll use my new calendar system....and some good tips on how to get started with Project Life in 2012 if this is your first year. I'll also give my thoughts on how it feels to have a full year of every week of my family's lives documented. Two full albums of memories. So awesome.

And with that, Merry Christmas everyone. :)