Today I wanted to pop in with a quick post about the start of my 2014 Project Life Album. And with any luck, I'm hoping to share the rest of January and February at the end of the month. Back in January when I shared my Project Life essentials I also talked about what I was excited to change up this year! And so far, I'm really digging all the changes. For a little recap... not rounding corners, check plus, so. much. better!! ...adding instagram specific inserts - totally wish I would have started doing this sooner! ... adding more white space - this one is challenging for me, but I love the look of the finished spread so much more. ...the month to month seems to be working better, definitely less pressure. And as you can see by my title page, I'm using up some of my Studio Calico cards.
This year, I kept the title page pretty simple. I used a smattering of cards from past Studio Calico kits. I just slipped the cards in, added a few letter stickers and handwriting or painting here and there. My favorite is the empty frames card from Studio Calico, I added little paintings inside each frame. It was fun trying to decide what to paint - I wanted it to be somewhat representative of our life. I ended up including our last initial, our current address, a camera, coffee mug and chemex, our cat and lastly a vintage camper, our dream-in-progress.
For the first spread, I did pretty good incorporating white space, literally. I love the effect the black and white pictures add to this spread. I also used a lot of black and white journaling cards to keep it cohesive. I added various details about New Years, having my good friend Anne-Marie in town and some other little things from the beginning of the month. Like our date to Top Pot donuts!
I also finished my first dedicated Instagram insert. When I decided to add Instagram inserts, I actually got really excited. I've always gotten frustrated trying to take square pictures and crop them into rectangles - for me, that just did not work - at all. I knew I wanted to use a 12x12 with only square pockets, I found some through a different company on Amazon and so far I'm really happy with the quality. I I really like this style so far - it's much easier and the grid look is always a favorite of mine. For journaling, I just included all the original text from Instagram on one card in the bottom left hand corner.
So that's it! That's the start of 2014. I'm pretty stoked about the direction this project is going this year. And I've got a stack of pictures waiting to get added this weekend!