Project Life 2012: October

My inspiration for this month is Helvetica -- every graphic designer's favorite typeface. 

Everything looks sooo good in Helvetica!!

Black, gray, white - my all-time favorite color combination :)

 

Looks more of a food diary, haha

 

  

 

Downloaded the 'crap' card (left) from Cathy Zielske's blog entry, "Taking the Crap Out of Scrapbooking--a new motto for an old approach"  By 'crap', she means: "expectations of how you're supposed to do something, keeping up with the latest trends, stuff that gets in the way of creative living, painting the rosiest picture of your life you can find, and any other obstacle that removes your personal enjoyment from this hobby." Every scrapbooker/crafter must read this article. Very inspiring.

My last page

Some close ups:

Pinterest quote

My attempt at calligraphy

Supplies:
Eagle A4 black binder from Office Warehouse, Baseball card sleeves from Neutral Grounds, Free journaling cards, patterned papers from Quality DigiScrap Freebies blog, All About Scrapbooking paper, Adobe Photoshop, scraps, washi tapes from Bee Happy

Organizing Craft Supplies

This blog entry is for the Yellow Violet House's "Tips On Organizing Your Papercrafting Kalats" Contest. They're giving away some scrapbook storage goodies to the winner (I'm eyeing on that 13x13" pocket organizer for 12x12" sheets, hehe!)

Cabinet #1

1. Recycle

Use toilet paper tubes as gift wrap holders

I organize my washi collection according to color so it's easier to find the design that I need. Plus it makes it more visually appealing, I just looove staring at them (washi hoarders can relate to this ;-) )! I used to store my tapes in Ferrero boxes, but my collection keeps on growing so I transferred them to bigger containers. I found this watch organizer at home & used it for my washis instead. And then I recycled a chocolate box that we got from my mom's friend (can't remember the brand) 

Don't throw away these takeout boxes, you can reuse them for storing small supplies :)

2. Use binders, clear books and notebooks

I also store some supplies in clear books, binders & notebooks for easier browsing. I can take note of all the materials that I have and choose designs/patterns without consuming too much time. I got all of these file organizers from National Bookstore.

Organized according to color 

I compile the cards that I receive into a notebook. Got this idea from the Griffin and Sabine books.

Yes, almost all of my supplies are organized according to color :)

This envelope is perfect for letter, A4 and legal sized sheets.

 3. Store items vertically to maximize space

 I don't have a craft room so I try to squeeze everything into two cabinets! 

 4. Organize books and special issues by topic 

Cabinet # 2

5. Group magazines by month

It's better to group magazines by month instead of by year. This system works for me. Whenever I need inspiration for a themed layout, (Christmas, for example) I can just get all December issues at once. I used to arrange the magazines in chronological order but I always get lazy to put them back to their respective places after I read them. 

Those are my tips so far.. :)  I'm still looking for ways to organize the new supplies that I hoarded last year (chipboard/magnetic/clear alphas and 12x12 sheets) Please share your ideas/suggestions! :-)

Project Life 2012: September

I learned about Project Life through different craft blogs in 2011. I was looking for traditional scrapbook layout pegs and noticed that most of my favorite designers' posts were all about PL ---  is  traditional scrapbooking dead? :(  It didn't appeal to me at first because I thought that it requires discipline and commitment (just like Project 365 --which I failed to complete - hehe). I thought that it's a year-long challenge of not missing a week of scrapbooking, and that it's a time-consuming process. I only got interested in it after seeing Tracy's post on our online Facebook crop held last August:

Left: Tracy's Project Life spread • Right: My Color Inspiration

 A lot of scrappers were inquiring about how her PL system works...In one of her comments, she said, "No worries, Project Life is easy. You can start doing this anytime and leave it if you feel like not doing it. The project will still be there." Poom! I just need to let go of my perfectionism and not worry if I miss a week!! There are no rules to follow!

I gave it a try and got the same materials that she uses. Local scrapbook stores do not carry Becky Higgins' products so Tracy used baseball card sleeves from Neutral Grounds as alternative. Since it's cheaper to buy the sleeves in bulk, my scrapbooker friend, Shine, bought 2 boxes and split the contents with me, Carmela and Diane. I got too excited about this project that I spent most of my free time looking for Project Life ideas on blogs and Pinterest, dreaming of what my pages will look like, downloading a LOT of free journaling cards from One Velvet Morning and Quality Digiscrap Freebies and sharing links to my new crafty friends!!

I couldn't wait till January 2013 so I started right away... Midyear. September 2012. (there is no right or wrong way of doing Project Life!) :) Here are some "rules" that I set for my project:

Do it monthly instead of weekly. 

It's easier to keep up this way...there will be no minimum number of sleeves required. If I get too busy, I can just do one spread for the month. For the dividers, I reused the 2011 personalized calendar that I got from Shai.

Choose a Color Scheme for each month.

I looove Becky Higgins' kits but they're not available in our country yet so I had to improvise and use materials that I have at home. This month's color scheme is based on Me So Scrappy's Tweet Beginnings kit. 

Use only one font per month - for a cohesive look.

Chose my top 1 font for my first month!

Here are my pages:

Page 1

Pages 2 and 3

Page 2

 

Page 3

Pages 4 and 5

Page 4

Page 5

Pages 6 and 7

29 Ways to Stay Creative layout - From Pinterest

I placed the cards that didn't match my color scheme on the last page.

Titles in Futura.

Supplies:
Eagle A4 black binder, Baseball card sleeves from Neutral Grounds, Free journaling cards, patterned papers from Me So Scrappy's Tweet Beginnings kit & Quality DigiScrap Freebies blog, All About Scrapbooking paper, Adobe Photoshop, scraps

Currently creating... (Jan 2013)

1. Vietnam 2012 photobooks

My Metrodeal coupons will expire in less than a month (waaaah!) so I've been devoting most of my free time to designing my two photobooks. (This explains my lack of posts over the past two months.) I'm almost done with the first book (Ho Chi Minh) and now I'm selecting photos for the second part (Mui Ne). I've got 60 pages to go!! Can't wait to get my printed copies!

2) Project Life - December 2012 
  
I still need to write some notes on my journaling cards -- and then I'm done!
  

3) Project Life - January 2013

Yesterday, I took a break from Adobe InDesign (my photobook software) and worked on my 2013 PL layouts on Photoshop. I chose a colorful palette for this month:

Hope to finish the photobooks soon so I can finally blog about how much I love Becky Higgins' memory-keeping approach! Will share my layouts here :)

2013 Craft/Design Goals

(Inspired by Drea and Liz Tamanaha's blog entries)

Happy 2013!

Create, Create, Create!