Heather Johnson Photography

For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you know that the UPS man made a delivery to my house yesterday that made me quite excited–he delivered the Project Life Baby Edition for Her! I have decided to finally tackle Holly’s baby album, and in seconds I had ripped open the box (seriously if you saw me you would have sworn it was Christmas or there was chocolate in there) and was immediately blown away by how beautiful the kit is in person. Remember, I rarely see this stuff in the flesh being digital and all, so it made it that much sweeter to see it, touch it, and spread it out all over the counter.

But honestly…I was also bit nervous. I hadn’t paper scrapped since early 2007, and even then my experience is spotty. I am sure I have at least a half dozen unfinished paper layouts in drawers somewhere! Following through isn’t really my strong suit, and I started to wonder if I had taken on too much.

Luckily I had a scrapbooking date scheduled with a friend last night, so I was sure I could get at least a little bit started. Turns out the product is so darn awesome I got much farther than that! (But didn’t we all know that already!?)

In a couple of hours I categorized and placed as many of the cards as I could, and to get a handle on the images part I have started putting post it notes where I see photos slipping in. I am sure many people before me have figured this out, but I was very excited to have thought up what I think will be an efficient system once I get the stack of photos back. Here is my plan:

1. Choose the photos on my hard drive that I want to print, rename them all with a number. (For example holly_1)
2. Write that number on a post-it and stick the post-it on the page protector pocket I want the photo in.
3. Most photo printers print the file name on the back of the photo, so my plan is to match the photo number up with the number on the post-it.

WA-LA!

I do need to find good journaling pens however. I tend to like a more medium versus fine point–if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them. I truly think that once I get the photos back from Persnickety Prints, and have my journaling pen ready, this will come together in a night or two. Thankfully I kept a personal blog from 2006-present so I have all of the stories and milestones ready to go!!!

I couldn’t be more excited! Would love to hear if any of you have completed or started a baby album and what tips or tricks you have to share. I am also super excited to share this, as my album will be very simple–I really will be slipping in photos and the cards and calling it done. I may use a brush or two on a photo…but that’s it. My hope is that it will inspire someone that may be a bit intimidated by the task!

Have a great Wednesday!

I, like many of you out there I am sure, spend WAY too much time on pinterest, galleries, and blogs looking at what others have been doing with their Project Life pages. (It’s too addicting! And yes, I’ll admit I have a problem–but no, I am not going to stop.) As a digi-gal it’s hard not to get envious of some of the embellishments out there, particularly those adorable little wooden people. I find that when I am out seeking inspiration I am often drawn to pages that are done with physical product, perhaps because at times these layouts are layered more with different papers? I don’t know….but it got me thinking.

What if I created some templates to go into the journaling spots? Little 3×4 templates that can be switched up with colors and different papers each week…it would be a timesaver AND it would get me a little of the layered look I am aiming for. (At heart I am still a pretty simple/clean-line sort of scrapbooker–but  as my style is evolving I am finding I do like a little elaboration here and there.) After more time than I care to admit to yesterday I designed my first journal card template–and wouldn’t you know it? I found a way to have some “little people!” On the left is the template, and on the right is my customization of it for my in-progress week 4:

I specifically made the template for square images as I always have instagram photos to incorporate and too often I don’t know what to do with them. They end of floating sort of strangely in the middle of a piece of digital paper, and I really want it to look a bit more thought out than that! As you can see the template has both a boy and a girl kiddo–all I did was delete the boy layer and scoot the girl one to the left. (If I had a picture of myself with both of my girls I would have copied the girl layer so that there were two of them and then deleted the boy layer).

Do you like it? Would you like it? I hope so! Here is the link to the free download:

Mom and Kids Journaling Card Template

I have put together quite a few more journaling card templates, and hope to be sharing them in my shop soon. If you end up incorporating it into your layouts be sure to send me the link, I would love to see it in action!

How is it possible that this project is more fun week after week?

Whole Spread:

Left Side:

Right Side:

I am going to take a page out of fellow creative team member Elise Blaha Cripe‘s book, and break my Project Life posts up into a few narrative categories. I think it will help those of you wondering about products, those of you curious about techniques used, and those of you (like my mom) who want to know what we have been up to this week!

What we were up to this week:
Our big event of the week was a trip to the Children’s Museum. We invited friends along, which was wonderful for Holly. She is definitely at the age where the more social she can be the better. Personally I LOVED watching Marie’s reaction in the toddler room–she was excited about everything and I can’t wait to take her back. Other than that outing, however, we stayed pretty close to home and had a lot of routine going on. I enjoyed documenting Holly’s newest drawing obsession (from week to week it varies, but when she is into something it becomes the ONLY thing she draws for days) and capturing Marie’s smiles. She really lights up a room. I have an insert in the works regarding this, but because it involves me printing photos and figuring a lot of stuff out before hand (something this digi girl does not have lots of experience with) it might take until the end of the week to reveal.

Techniques used this week:
Lots and lots of brushes. Perhaps my most favorite thing to put on my photos, and definitely one of the most popular items in my stash of supplies. Don’t know how to put brushes on photos? Ali’s video will walk you through it.

Supplies used this week:
Project Life Design A Templates and In Review Papers from One Little Bird Designs. All elements are from the In Review Element Collection except the key , the polaroid collage (banana fish studios), the word arrows, and the doodled arrow. All the brushes are from designerdigitals.com (99% of the time by Ali Edwards) and the Week in Review card is Cathy Zielske’s. Many of you have asked about the double matting–particularly where to find the stitched inner mat. It’s a free download at Jessica Sprague. The version available now is just one layer, my version was two, which enables me to separate the stitched layer from the background. This will get you started if you like the look and hopefully I can teach myself how to create rounded edges in photoshop and I can provide an inner mat for you in the not so distant future. I just learned how to create scallops–so the sky is the limit if the baby cooperates and naps! I double mat mainly so I can have more pattern in my background AND to avoid any accidental cutting off when printing into a Shutterfly book.

Other Thoughts:
All in all, not my favorite week but that happens. I really love how my week one and week two came out, this one unfortunately seems a little subdued in comparison. If there is one thing you know about me is that I like my patterns and my bright colors!

I have a scrapbooking night scheduled with a friend tomorrow so let’s keep our fingers crossed I will make huge strides in Holly’s baby book AND childhood book. I have been holding onto her preschool stuff since 2009 and I am FINALLY going to do something with it. WOO HOOO!

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Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins. It can be anything you want it to be. To learn more about Project Life check out Becky’s Website. The pieces used in my album are available through acdigitals here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life here.

I want to start off this post with a disclaimer–I am completely self-taught as far as Photoshop is concerned so the way I do things might not be the “right way,” but it’s the way that I managed to figure it out, so it works for me. If anyone knows a quicker way to do something–by all means show me the way and leave me a comment! My other disclaimer–this is my first tutorial type video. I hope it explains everything well, and isn’t too confusing or too fast. I am still disappointed with the quality of it….I can’t quite figure out how to change that or what I did wrong. (I am thinking it might have something to do with the SD/HD settings so I am going to attempt to fix it.) But I knew a lot of you were waiting for this so I have posted it anyway. If you don’t enlarge it, it looks much better.

In my Week One layout last week I took the time to recolor ALL of the elements I used to match the Seafoam kit. (One of the HUGE plusses of digital scrapping!) I received a lot of comments and emails asking me how I did it, so I thought making a little video would help those of you that are interested in accomplishing the same thing.

Sometimes seeing a video on a blog almost stresses me out–I am often in a hurry, and I don’t necessarily have the time or desire to watch one….so if you are like me just know this…there are literally only two menu buttons I use to get this to work–the eyedropper (to sample color) and the paint bucket (to recolor whatever it is I am looking to recolor). BOOM. That’s it. That’s how easy it is. I say all of this because I swear I saw a tutorial like his on another website once and I never watched the video–finally figuring it out how to do it by accident on my own. If I had known how to do this last year—wow. Let’s just say I would have had a lot more fun with my pages! I really thought it was more complicated, and if someone would have just written that it was two steps I most likely would have taken the time to watch the video…..

Are there any other techniques you have seen in my pages that you have wanted to learn?

Please let me know and I will put together another tutorial. I hope to make this a weekly, or bi-weekly series on the blog if there is enough interest. Like I have said before, I am a huge fan of digital scrapbooking and I really enjoy showing others how it all works and what fun they can have with it.

Here’s to a great week! I have been working more on my baby album for Holly so some more peeks at that to come up soon!