You have probably heard this story before. Way back when, I started out as a paper scrapbooker. Then when Ella was born in 2005, I discovered digital scrapbooking and swore I would never touch paper again. And then life got too busy and I stopped scrapbooking altogether.
Last year, I quietly tiptoed back into the scrapbooking world using Project Life. There was no digital option available at the time so I used the physical product and even went so far as to use my own handwriting (something I had never done before even in my paper days).
This year I thought I might type my journaling cards, but other than that I didn’t expect much else to change when it came to Project Life. But then I decided to try the new digital products and was reminded of all the things I loved about digital scrapbooking.
Thus began my minor identity crisis. Was I a paper or a digital girl at heart? I spent the first few weeks of the year creating both digital and physical pages trying to figure things out and settle on one or the other. But the answer to my question, I realized, was that I am both. And so I decided to create my pages both digitally and with the paper product in 2012. This may seem like a lot of extra time and duplicate work, but surprisingly it really isn’t. By the time I get the digital version for the week done, the majority of the work for the physical pages is already done. I mostly just have to print and slide everything into the page protectors. Project Life is all about simplicity for me, so I would never attempt this if I thought it was taking too much extra time.
I have been designing my pages in Photoshop using the Design A page template and the Clementine kit. I love doing it this way first because it allows me to see exactly which photos I need to print and what sizes I need them to be. Here is my Week 1 digital spread (click the photo to view larger):
Then I send my photos off to be printed and print out my journaling cards on my home printer and that digital spread turns into these physical pages:
As another example, here is the digital version of Week 2:
And the physical version of the same week:
My vision is to have the physical album be our family book, which I will still be able to fill with the “extras” of life (cards, school work, etc.), and then use the digital pages to create smaller photo books for each of my girls at the end of the year.
I am not sharing this with you because I think this is the best way to do things. In fact, I don’t expect this approach to work for most people. Realistically, I know that the majority of you will prefer one method over another. The last thing I want to do is make things seem more complicated since that goes against the whole spirit of Project Life in the first place. What I am hoping is that seeing Project Life used in different ways gives you a good sense of the options available and hopefully helps you figure out the best way to document your own story.
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