Time spent on Project Life....

Edited: Thank you for the comments everyone. There were several questions in the comments sections. I think that some of my previous blog posts linked up in this page will be helpful to you. If you don't find what you're looking for in those posts, feel free to ask more questions.

Okay Project Life friends, this post is photo heavy so I'm going to try to keep my thoughts short. I've been reading a lot about how some of you have put your Project Life albums aside for various reasons. You don't have the time, you forgot to take photos, it takes away from your other scrapbooking. I get where you are coming from. It a time commitment for sure to keep up to date on Project Life albums....whether you are doing it in it's simplest form or getting scrappy with it.

For the sake of today's post, I'm speaking from the perspective of going scrappy with Project Life. You want to add fun embellishments and accents and papers. You want to add scrapped inserts. But the problem is that a weekly layout is taking up too much time. Like 5 hours or more a week. Again, I know where you are coming from.

Today I'm going to share my thoughts with lots of photos for examples. My personal concern is this: I want to continue to work on my Project Life albums in a scrappy fashion but I need to reduce the # of hours I work on my albums per week. Our busiest time of year is coming up with Spring sports, day time track meets, gardening, a lively puppy...and soon to be summer break for the girls. For the last 2 years May is about the time I get behind. 17 weeks behind in 2011. I don't want to go there again. I took a look through my albums to do some analyzing. I noticed a few things that might help reduce the time I spend per week on them. Note: When I have 5 or more hours to work on my albums, I love it & I'll continue on as normal. But if not.....

3 x 4 Journaling Inserts:

This is where you write the stories, the events, what went down with a particular photo. The next 6 photos shows what I've been doing lately which is time consuming. Adding small photos to the 3 x 4 cards.
Adding lots of different kinds of embellishments. Plus stitching.
Printing journaling cards...
Stamping out words and titles. Using my vintage typewriter for journaling.
Adding lots and lots of little tidbits.
Making each 3 x 4 insert look like a mini layout of its own. I love it all but when time is a factor, these extra additions are real time suckers.

So now take a look at the next 5 photos. If you do a comparison to the above 3 x 4 photos you'll see a big difference. Still embellished but much simpler. Still used my typewriter because my handwriting is big and loopy. I used a Project Life core kit journaling card for the base.
Another standard card with hand written journaling, a simple strip of patterned paper and a little stamping. No extra embellishments. Super fast.
A Project Life grid card that I had previously stamped with a Studio Calico frame. Easy to pull from my stash. Again, hand written journaling. A simple tag from a shop kit I made earlier. Very simple. Note: LOVE the Week in Review cards and will try to incorporate those weekly still.
More typewriter journaling with very minimal embellishments.
Hand journaling on a Project Life journaling card. A few stickers. Stickers are simple and make quick work. Result: When time is spare, I will definitely be paring down the embellishments.

4 x 6 Photo Slots:

Originally designed for a simple 4 x 6 photo. Plain and simple. I love that these have become mini canvases in my album for me to get scrappy.

Smaller photos so that I can fit multiple photos onto a 4 x 6 insert. With the added bonus of embellishments.
Absolutely love it but again, a real time sucker.
Since I don't do much traditional scrapbooking, I'm okay with spending time on these inserts. IF I have the time.
But if not, these little layouts can take on a mind of their own.
You want each one to be like a mini page. Sometimes it's just not gonna happen this way. There's too much other "life" stuff going on. Or I notice that I'm getting a few weeks behind. Which leads into a month behind....or more. Not a good place for me because then I start feeling guilty for not keeping up. Or like it's a hassle. Note: That is NOT what Project Life is about. It should always feel enjoyable and like something you want to do.

Now look at the next set of photos. A big observation I made is that I really like the weeks where I went back to adding 4 x 6 photos. The photos are more visible and the weekly spread looks less cluttered.

I still added some journaling on my grid labels. Plus some stickers and accents here and there.
But overall the 4 x 6 slot is filled with a photo. I don't have to make a 4 x 6 base and add more to it.
The embellishments are there but it takes so much less time this way.
Plus it makes printing at home a breeze. I simply print a 4 x 6 photo and don't have to worry about what size I need the smaller photos to be.
This also keeps my purpose of doing Project Life in perspective. My weekly layouts are to be an overview of the week. A photo per day so to speak. By reducing the # of photos I select each week, I'm keeping that goal in mind.
Weekly Dated Inserts:

I do love these and plan on going back to them when possible. I insert them into the top, left hand corner.
They may or may not have a photo but the goal is to record the timeframe of the week and perhaps make a title for the main theme of the week....if there is one. Like this week I took 2 road trips.
Or the week of Valentine's Day. It makes the weekly spread seem like one large layout with a title...just like a traditional scrapbooked layout. So these are coming back. And use that date stamp to record the timeframe of the week. I noticed some of you are numbering the weeks (like Week 1, Week 2) instead of using the dates. Cool.
What about the extra photos?

I love my extra photos. I want to include each and every one of them. You too, right? Well we can't do that all of the time, especially if we take a lot of photos. And with the nifty cell phone cameras it makes it very easy to snap more photos every day. I'm with ya. Some of you are keeping up with your traditional scrapped layouts too. This is a terrific way to add in layouts with those special photos. I wish I had more time to do that.

But what I have noticed in my albums that I LOVE are these collage pages with TONS of photos on them.
Typically Instagram photos in the square format. My printing program allows me to make a simple collage. I just select the photos I want and hit print....with a few custom adjustments.
Reduced in size so I can fit a ton on one page. This just might be my saving grace for reducing the time spent on Project Life weekly layouts: I'm going to reduce the # of photos I use per week (we'll see how my plan works).....and I'm going to make a monthly collage of the rest of the photos I still want to scrapbook. Probably not a lot of journaling. Just photos that capture our life. All on one insert page. A little scrappy, maybe just photos sometimes. Maybe Instagrams, maybe just a collage of reduced 4 x 6 photos. Maybe at the end of the month....maybe where I need to fill a back page of another insert. My plan is to just go through my iPhone photos & regular camera photos and see what's left for that month. I can already breathe a sigh of relief.
I'm going to start with making my weekly layouts a little simpler if I don't find those 5 or more hours to get really scrappy. I'm not going to feel badly anymore that I didn't use a certain photo for the week. I'll pick it up at the end of the month. We'll see how it works.

So what are your thoughts?

Are you holding on for dear life? Breezing through? I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you are with your Project Life. And again, if you're going digital or simply adding photos & journaling cards or only doing a monthly spread on 2 pages, it all counts. You're doing it! Isn't it awesome?