I am embarrassingly behind on my 2021 Project Life album. Heck, I still need to finish last year's as well. This year I am using two 9x12 albums that I picked up from Scrapbook.com. I thought it would be fun to put together a quick little post with some tips on how to catch up quickly.
When setting up my album for the year, I use little sticky notes to mark the week number and corresponding dates and they go in the bottom left corner of each two page spread. If I have a vacation or event scheduled that I don't want to forget to include in the album, I'll write that down on the sticky note as well. Marking the two-page spreads helps me out incredibly when I'm going back through all of my photos and need to remember what goes where.
Another little tip before we get into things is to download the Google Photos app on your phone. You open the app, sync all of your phone photos with the app and then can DELETE them from your phone! Not only does it clear up all that space on your phone but you can access your photos on your laptop or desktop too. No need to AirDrop or transfer your photos when you need to print them. You just need a Google account. Absolute lifesaver.
Ok, so here are the five(ish) steps I use to get caught up on Project Life. While this isn't technically a step to include, throw on some good tunes (you can find my PL playlist on Spotify here) or some Netflix and get in the groove.
Step One: Choose Your Photos & Make Edits
While everyone will do this differently, going through and pulling photos for a just week at a time works best for me. I also go in and make any necessary edits at this time (brightness/sharpness/color correction, etc). For instance, if I'm working on Week 12 I will scroll to that week, choose my photos and save them to my desktop. Once that is done I move on to Step Two.
Step Two: Batch Print Your Photos
I have a few templates I created for printing my Project Life cards. (You can find them in my Etsy shop here) Once I have a full sheet of photo cards, I save that sheet to my desktop. Because I like to batch print all of my photos I actually go back to Step One and choose another week to pull and get ready for printing. Think of it as a 1 2 Step. Kinda like Ciara. *dances around room* Once all of your sheets have been saved, print them all together.
At this point if you use digital journaling cards you could type those up and print them with your photos. I like to add my photo cards to my album first so I can see how many spaces I have for journaling/filler cards.
Step Three: Trim Like Your Life Depends on It
Pretty self explanatory here. (For my batch this morning I'm pretty sure I trimmed for 10 minutes straight. Enough time for Harry, Hagrid and Slughorn to mourn Aragog and for Harry to get Slughorn's memory. IYKYK) I like to keep each week's cards together which makes it easier to insert them into the correct week in your album.
Step Four: Type Up Journaling Cards & Batch Print
Since I hate my handwriting, I use a lot of journaling cards. If you decided to type and print them with your photo cards you can skip this step. I have some links on my FAQ page to the journaling cards I use the most in my albums.
Step Five: Add Your Embellishments & Filler Cards
Now for one of the best parts. Break out your stickers, stamps & filler cards. Mark up your cards and move them to pockets.
Congrats! You're done! Until next week that is.
Feel free to leave some of your go-to tips and tricks in the comments below!
Happy Scrapping!
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