Heather Johnson Photography

Eight weeks.

So proud of myself for sticking with this project. For those of you wondering….I still LOVE it.

We were on the road at the beginning of the week, and had my mom in town the majority of the whole week, so there were lots of stories to tell and lots of photos. (I also ended up with two inserts. If you missed them, you can see them in my post from yesterday here.) I did, however, really struggle this week with putting it all together. Not because I didn’t know what photos to use, but because I have veered off track into my digital supplies folder. Last week’s dabble with non-Clementine Kit products has made me want to play around with everything I own…and that’s resulted in a LONG night of scrapbooking. (It’s 11PM on monday night, I just finished up after starting this at 7, and I have gotten myself so twisted up with trying to make it “perfect” I am not even sure I like what I ended up with!!!!)

Here is side one:

We had a bit of a snowfall in the beginning of the week, so I was able to play in the snow with Holly and make a snowman FINALLY. (One would think that living in MN would guarantee you a white winter, but this is sadly not the case this year.) Those images were some of my favorite photos of the week–I only wish I had written down the story of what she said somewhere in my layout. Holly has this thing of posing in sort of a “TA DA” like fashion with her hands way up in the air every time I point the camera at her and this particular afternoon I wasn’t having it. I wanted a nice smile and when I told her this she looked at me really serious and said, “Mom that’s not how I want it for MY scrapbook!” I just laughed and laughed–that girl is so like me it’s unbelievable.

I have started to let her take photos with my phone and my point and shoot camera so that she can make her own book in Shutterfly.  She is positively addicted, and takes it so serious it’s quite funny.  Like I said a few weeks ago, I believe in starting them young!!!! A four year old scrapbooker–Love it!

Here is side two:

This is the page the probably bugs me most. There isn’t a lot of journaling, so the page flows sort of weird in my opinion. I am not sure what I need/want to do with it…I might play around with this one some more. If you have any ideas, please leave me a comment!

This page does, however, hold my favorite picture of the year so far. Just love that one in the upper left! I had sat my camera down on the table while we were eating lunch, and I noticed that the screen on the back was still showing the photo of all of us. I quickly grabbed my iphone and snapped this picture–love how it tells the story of the afternoon in such a unique way!

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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 Jessica Sprague here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life here.

What a busy, busy week! I had thought I was going to be able to blog while my mom was visiting but between sick kids and later a sick mom, THIS mom ran out of time:) LOTS of photos this past week, and LOTS and LOTS of stories!

I might not have had time to exercise, but I did have time to finish my weekly layouts for my Project Life album AND two inserts.  Guess we know where my priorities are nowadays huh?! Because I am all digital, and print my pages into a photobook versus individual page protectors, I knew I needed a 12×12 page for my inserts. I was short on time, so I chose  to create a pair of  two-page layouts using Shutterfly idea pages. I went into detail about our weekend at The Farm  and our day at The American Girl Doll Store on each one. (For those of you who don’t know, my in-law’s home is affectionately called The Farm–it’s where my husband’s father grew up, and were he spent many hours during his childhood.)

I took some screenshots so that you all would be able to see how the pages turned out. Super quick and easy–a whole lot faster to put together than my weekly layout for this week.  I just knew that I opened a can of worms last week, I spent entirely too much time shopping, looking, and fretting about what to use and how to make it look.  I need to take a deep breath and remember that this is all about simplicity and getting it done. Searching for the perfect brush really should be something I do AFTER I exercise….not in place of it.  Right?

Here is my layout for our American Girl Doll Store visit.  We ate at the little cafe, my daughter just loved it! I was VERY happy with the photo that was taken by a nice grandmother nearby–the lighting in the store was excellent and she did a great job of zooming in and getting a great angle. How lucky are we to have three generations spending time together, and have a great photo to remember it by!? The b/w photos are courtesy of my four-year-old. She really is digging photography, I am so proud! (She is doing a great job to boot!)

Here is our Farm insert. SO wonderful to have a story about one of our favorite places on Earth! I discovered that my little Panasonic Lumix camera has all sorts of funky settings–including one called Film Grain.  The b/w photo of the barn is taken using this effect, love playing around with that sort of thing. In my photography business I am a into a much more “clean edit,” but in this album I tend to play around more with actions, filters, hazes, and effects. It’s fun to get creative! I have had some questions about my equipment, and it’s funny but 95% of my album is taken with the Lumix or my iphone. Only a photo or two each week is taken with my D700.

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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 Jessica Sprague here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life here.

What happened this week?  I opened a can of worms!

Remember last week when I said that I didn’t use anything BUT the full clementine kit for my Project Life album? Well…that all went out the window this week! When I started putting week seven together with the Clementine Kit, I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted more red, more pink, colors and things that would reflect Valentine’s Day.  (Which is special for more than one reason in our house, it’s also our wedding anniversary!) Anyhow, once I started getting a few new supplies, I couldn’t stop! Long story short I now have a ton of love-themed elements, brushes, and journaling cards…and can’t wait until next year to use it all again! I would love to hear what your favorite sites are for products.  I typically go to designer digitals, jessica sprague, or oscraps…but would love some more shops to check out.  (My checking account would disagree with this, but every time I buy something I justify it by saying to my husband aren’t our memories worth at least two dollars and ninety nine cents!?!?)

The “left side” of my week is all about the Valentine’s Day party that my daughter Holly threw for her friends, and the “right side” reflects the rest of the week.  I had originally thought I was going to have an insert for the party, but I didn’t end up with nearly as many normal week pictures as I usually do so I settled for using a design A template page for the party.  (Incidentally I completely understand why people gravitate towards that design–now that I have used it a few weeks I can’t seem to use anything else!)

Here is the right side:

I didn’t know how I was going to incorporate Holly’s super cute artwork from school since it was so large, but having her hold it worked perfectly–I just love the photo in the upper right hand corner! I also love my new photo of Marie–is she not the cutest baby?! Unfortunately that’s the only photo of her this week…turns out this week is a little heavy on Holly. I will definitely have to have a baby photo session with her soon! The rest of the photos detail us on our anniversary, and Holly opening up a Valentine’s Day card from her grandparents. I even changed things up for the title card–I absolutely love the calendar date stamp from Splendid Fiins! I have a feeling I will be using them A LOT.

Here is the left side:

Here we have lots of stuff party related.  Holly stuffed goody bags on Thursday, I set the little tables up on Friday night, and I have barely an actual party shot in the bunch!   It was so busy, and so fun, that every time I grabbed my camera I was distracted and hardly got ANY photos!

This week I added thumbnails of all of the products I used. (Personally I loved finding these on other’s blogs in the event I wanted to purchase something I saw on a layout.)  The only products I wasn’t able to link up were Ali’s.  To view her products, click here.  As far as everything else–click away and happy shopping!!

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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 Jessica Sprague here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life here.

Project Life Clementine Full Kit (Jessica Sprague)	Project Life Templates (Jessica Sprague)	Valentine Bingo Cards (Jenni Bowlin)	Printed Boy and Girl Icon Tickets (Jenni Bowlin)	Calendar Cards (Splendid Fiins)
Love Journaling Cards (Splendid Fiins)	Love Freebies (Elle’s Studio)

I have had a few questions lately regarding my process for recording my family’s memories every week, and since I am putting the finishing touches on my seventh week as I write this–I thought it would be a great time to address this question!

I am very much a complete-as-I-go-along type person when it comes to scrapbooking.  I constantly change my mind, add things, subtract things, enhance things…you get the picture.  (It should come as no surprise,then, why digital is a much better option for me!) To make Project Life work for me, here are my steps. I will start by describing my organization:

1) Everything Project Life PRODUCT related, i.e. the clementine kit, the templates, and any elements/papers I have picked up to go along with my album are kept in a Project Life folder on my desktop.  Once inside that folder I have sub-folders labelled full clementine kit, templates (this folder includes not only page templates, but 4×6 and 6×12 templates as well), journaling cards, elements, and papers.  I also have folders for my layouts which include weekly .psd files, the web versions of my layouts, and the Shutterfly versions.  I am pretty sure once I upload the layouts to Shutterfly I am going to delete the .psd file eventually.  (I am not going to change the layouts, I trust Shutterfly not to lose them, and the files are quite large which after awhile will cause a problem.)

2) Everything Project Life PICTURE related is stored within Adobe Bridge.  I know a lot of people use iphoto, picasa, or Adobe Lightroom…but I developed a rhythm when I first started my photography business of using Adobe Camera Raw–and really don’t have any reason to change it since it really works well for me.  Within Bridge I have a Project Life 2012 folder, which is then broken up into monthly and weekly folders that I upload to consistently throughout each week. I am always looking at my photos and rating those I like (and/or will most likely use) and deleting those that aren’t right for whatever reason. I have also created a random folder within each month that houses the photos that I will use in my month end mosaic.

I start playing around with layouts on Sunday morning of each week (my weeks run Sun-Sat) and typically finish them up Sunday evening or Monday morning.  I have no idea how long I spend on it all each week because I am always grabbing five minutes here or five minutes there!

I really try and keep everything as simple as possible, which is the only way I can think of being if I have any hope of completing this project all year.  My “creative space” right now is a plastic Menards table and a laptop (see photo above)–definitely not cute, but it’s functional! With a small baby and a small house you gotta go with what works!!

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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 Jessica Sprague here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life here.

As I finished up my first month of Project Life a few weeks ago, I realized I had quite a few photos that didn’t make it into my weekly layouts. After deleting those that were blurry or unusable I decided that I would try to make space in my book for the others as well….because truthfully there were quite a few in the bunch I really liked! (And since I am writing a letter to my girls at the end of each month, I was left with an empty page, so it seemed like a perfect idea to place the photos there.) I looked around in the 5+photo layout options on Shutterfly–and picked the large 2×2 grid.  Here is a screen shot of it in process:

I think I just might end up putting some colored blocks with type in some of the squares, not too sure yet.  I am just happy to have more photos OFF of my hard drive and INTO a book. It is going to be so nice to actually be able to enjoy our photos and memories next year!