Hi, this is Harkee from AS they grow with my first post as a member of the Pretty Paper Studio Design Team! I’m so excited to be part of this and for the next few months I will be sharing some pocket scrapbooking layouts using the Becky Higgins Project Life easy memory keeping system.
I was first introduced to Project Life by my amazingly organized friend Mel of More Organised who has been successfully using the Project Life system for years. I am an obsessive photo taker but have been terrible at creating photo books or albums with my photos as it all seems a little too overwhelming at the end of the year. What’s great about the Project Life system is that you can create pages as you go along or whenever you have time, whether that is on a weekly, monthly or longer basis – there is no need to do the whole album in one go for printing. I have been so happy to find a whole range of official Project Life supplies available right here in the UAE through PPS and so my new hobby has begun!
For this month’s “Anything Goes” theme, and considering it is my first Design Team, post I thought it would be appropriate to start at the beginning and finally make a start on my baby girl’s album (poor second child doesn’t have any albums of her own yet)! The super cute range of baby girl themed products available on PPS were also too good to miss.
The products I selected for this project were:
- Project Life Classic Faux Leather D-Ring Album 12″X12″ | Baby Pink
- Project Life Photo Pocket Pages 12/Pkg | Small Variety Pack 4
- Project Life 4″X4″ Cards 12/Pkg Baby Girl Edition
- Project Life Chipboard Stickers Baby Girl Edition
- Project Life Corner Rounder Punch
- Pentel Arts Sign Pen with Brush Tip – Black
I picked the pink faux leather D-Ring album as I use a similar black faux leather album for our family album so they will complement each other nicely. I also like the 12″x12″ size as it lets me add lots of photos and Project Life cards per spread. There are other sizes available though if you would prefer to put together a smaller album. The 12″x12″ size album comes with a sheet lifter to protect your pages, a 6″X12″ envelope page which is great for keeping memorabilia items, and 10 photo pocket pages in two different designs.
The beauty of Project Life is that it can be as simple or as detailed as you like. At its simplest it can be a case of just slipping photos and Project Life journaling cards into pocket pages and popping those into an album. More creative types can add embellishments, stickers, mixed media pieces, create their own insert cards and anything else they can think of to add their own character to the spread.
The first step in my process is usually to consider what photos I want to include in the spread and what Project Life cards might complement them. It often works well to pick photos with a common colour theme or thread running through them and pick out cards to match or contrast and complement. Here of course the colour had to be pink for my baby girl and I decided to use the photos from her newborn photoshoot by Frog and Thistle Photography which I still haven’t put in an album!
Looking at whether I have portrait or landscape orientation photos helps me decide which type of pocket pages I will use. Most packs of Project Life theme cards come with portrait and landscape variations so I base the page choice on the photos. However, in this case I picked square 4×4 Baby Girl Edition Cards so I wanted to use pocket pages that have 4″x4″ slots. The Small Variety Pack 4 includes various layouts including all squares and squares plus portrait or landscape. Since I had selected both portrait and landscape photos I decided to go with one of each of those (Design Q and Design R).
The photos I selected fell into two groups, one light and the other darker, so I had to find a layout where each page worked by itself but the two pages also flowed together nicely. I find it quite useful to place the photos and cards down on a table in the positions they will be in the pocket pages and then move them around until I am happy with the overall look. I moved pictures around a few times and eventually came to a layout that moved nicely from light to darker across the two page spread. In fact in the final spread you’ll see I swapped another two cards around at the last minute to get the perfect flow.
Once I have decided on the layout, the next step is to use the corner punch to round the corners of the photos. This is the easiest, funnest punch I’ve ever used! It cuts so nicely and gives a professional finish to the photos and overall look of the spread as the corners then match the rounded corners of the Project Life cards. I now feel like I want to round the corners off everything!
I then selected a few stickers from the Baby Girl Chipboard pack to add to some of the photos and cards. These add a lovely textural element to a spread, adding a bit more interest and can help tie a theme together across the two pages. The “sweet and strong” sticker describes my little one perfectly so I had to use that one and the others worked really well in the spaces I wanted to fill on the pages. There are loads of stickers in a pack so they can be used throughout a whole baby album if you want. The only warning that I would give is that they are pretty sticky so don’t rush it, make sure you take your time with the alignment as you probably won’t get a chance to reposition it (as I learnt the hard way)!
With the photos and layout ready the only thing left was to write on the journalling card. The Baby Girl Edition cards (like most other Project Life card packs) are double sided with journalling cards on one side and decorative images and designs on the other. I picked a sweet journalling design with a little floral element on it that echoed the flowers in the baby’s headband. There are a lot of things you can write on these cards to record your memories. For a baby of course you could record all the birth statistics, places and dates or how you felt at the time. However, I wanted to do something a little different and decided to letter one of my favourite baby girl quotes that is so true for my little girl, “Though she be but little, she is fierce” from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Brush lettering is something I’ve been getting into for the last year (although not practiced as much as I would like to)! It’s lovely to be able to add in more personal elements by bringing in other creative elements you enjoy and it records those for posterity too. For this quote I used a black Pentel Art Sign Pen with brush tip. It is so easy to use with its flexible tip and writes really smoothly. I bought a multipack so have a whole bunch of colours I can use for my projects, although here I decided to keep it simple with the black.
And there you go, the spread is finished – it’s as simple as that! Now just to slip the photos and cards into the pocket pages and pop the pocket pages into the album. I love the finished spread, it takes me right back to remembering the baby days and I know my daughter will love to keep looking at it too! It was so quick and easy to put together using the Project Life album and supplies that I am feeling even more inspired to work through and start filling up her baby album. You’ll have to wait till next month to see what special memories I tackle next!
I hope you enjoyed this project photo tutorial. If you have any questions please feel free to ask them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Happy memory keeping!
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Are you ready to join in this month’s challenge? Here is what you need to do:
1. Create a project with the theme “Anything Goes”.
2. Upload your project images to the challenge photo album “November 2017: Anything Goes” on the PPS Group Facebook page (not on the main fed).
All entries are due by November 30, 2017.
Challenge winner will receive a prize pack worth AED50.
