DIY Album for Project 365×2009

—> Another post about Project 365 / Project Life albums… not interesting to many, except maybe those that are taking a photo a day for a year. So, if you aren’t one of those people, feel free to skip this post! 🙂

In the midst of keeping my 2010 Project Life album current, I am working on putting together my Project 365 album from 2009 (oh, how I wish I had been able to get my hands on Becky Higgins’ Project 365 kit for 2009. It would have been so much easier than making this DIY version!).

Even though I kept up with taking pictures daily and journaling via my blog, I am finding out there is still a lot of work involved with putting the album together (figuring out the look and feel for the album so it is cohesive, editing photos to add the day of the year and do any color correction, printing photos, creating + printing the journaling cards, and putting it all together with minimal “scrapbooking”).

The album, so far…

The album is a 12×12 American Crafts cloth D-ring in chestnut (brown) and I have added many packs of 6-up 4×6 page protectors to it.  I am using My Minds Eye’s Tres Jolie series of scrapbook papers in the Tres Bien collection to tie the album together (think warm rich red, orange, gold, green, aqua and brown in stripes, dots, paisley and plaid designs).

The title page for the album is pictured below. Nothing really creative or exciting, but it is basically done. I may add a headshot of each of us somewhere on there, but for now am leaving it as is.

I am trying to keep the design very simple to make sure it gets done (my version of simple still seems to involve too many steps…).

January’s first double page spread is pictured below. Again, nothing all that exciting design-wise. My goal was to have the pictures and captions be the focus of the album.

The following January spread is pictured below. Since I’m only doing one header card per month, the color from the header card is carried through on the journaling cards.

February’s first few pages are pictured below. Again, the header card only appears in the first spread for the month and the color from the header card is carried through on the journaling cards.

And March’s first spread is below.

For occasions that I want to include more than one photo from a specific day (like vacations or holidays), I am going to add 8.5×11 page protectors to the album (divided and non-divided depending on my photo needs).

The rest of the album is coming together and already has the majority of the remaining photos in place. I have about 125 photos left to edit, print and put in the album. Then I need to make the journaling cards for almost 10 months worth of photos.

The journaling cards are more complicated to make than I’d like, but oh well (I use a paper punch to create the decorative strip of paper for the top of the card; print the journaling card then trim and attach the paper strip to the card; and lastly use the date stamp from Becky Higgins’ Project Life kit to indicate the date).

It probably seems silly to be so keyed into this project but I want to get it done and I need to get it done so I can guiltlessly (is that a word?) move onto other projects when the time comes. I know this album will be something we will enjoy like looking back on in years to come but we can’t do that if I don’t finish the darn thing now!