Digital Scrapbooking Designs by Penny Springmann, Hybrid Crafts, and Photoshop Tutorials

The last album I scrapped and printed is from 2007. 2007! I simply can’t keep up and it bothers me.  Between family life and designing there isn’t much time left to create my own pages. So when I discovered Project Life this summer,  I knew I found the answer.  I decided to start PL in August when the boys went to school. I ordered my pocket pages, planned my first few spreads, the pockets arrived, and then promptly sat in my closet for months – UNOPENED. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t make the time to start the album. I didn’t even take the time to OPEN the package. UGH!

This December, people began discussing their 2012 projects: 366 (hello, leap year!), 12, 52, etc.  All of their excitement was contagious and reminded me of the box sitting in my closet, so I dug it out from behind a pile of dirty clothes and began to plan our album.

Here are my plans for this year’s album:

• keep it simple – At heart I am a simple scrapper, and I want the album to reflect my style
• use a mix of digital and hybrid
• involve everyone – I’ll do this through interviews, note cards, school/craft projects, etc
• take a family picture once a month
• journal about each week (not my strongest area)
• don’t stress: if I fall behind, it’s ok  -  if I forget to take pictures, it’s ok

I know if I stick to a plan, I will be able to follow through. If I don’t complete a full year, however,  no worries. I’ll still have a wonderful collection of memories to share with my family.

I decided to go with a 6×12″ cover sheet followed by a spread of the boys as my title pages. I knew I wanted to go with a crazy family theme, so I had the boys pose in front of my “crazy” drapes (aren’t they awesome?!) doing crazy poses.

This is how it will look in the binder (I’m waiting for the signature binders to be released before I purchase one.). I might create a second page divider that reaches out to the beginning of the  third row of pictures on the boy’s spread, so it is cleaner. Here it is for now:

Here are both pages:

Here is a closer view of the title page. I used different layer modes to create the title.

Here is a close-up of the boys’ spread. Once again I used layer modes.

I don’t think I’m going to follow a strict plan of one week equals one spread. Instead, I think I’ll simply see how it all falls in place. Here is week 1 of 2012.

I tucked an old E string from J’s violin into the new beginnings journaling spot.

One thing I’ve experienced so far with PL that I didn’t expect is how enthusiastic the boys are about the album. Both boys expressed how much they like seeing me print and write about things that JUST happened. PW loves that I included Sammy(his fish), and he wants to know if I have extra picture pockets for HIM to use! Why, YES I do!