Project Life Week 6

I told myself back in December that I would give Project Life a try.  And I did try it, right on cue, the first week in January.  Annndddd...my layout, or whatever you want to call it, for the first week was just awful.  Nothing felt like it was coming together correctly.  So I shoved it to the side and tried to forget about it.  I tried very hard. But - I really like the idea of Project Life or Pocket Pages.  My "regular" scrapbooking tends to focus on my thoughts about a person or thing, or I create layouts simply because it makes me happy to do so; I stopped chronicling everyday events on my layouts quite awhile ago.  I wanted to find a way to still keep track of those events and this seemed like a good way to do that.

I tried again, and what you see is the end result.  And you know what?  I LOVE it!  It took me awhile to finish.  I am a slow scrapper anyway, and I could not resist embellishing.  The end result, though, was well worth it!  This is what I started doing to help me along.

1.  I keep a daily planner so that I can write down different appointments and design team deadlines.  I started writing a sentence or two each day in my planner about something (or some things) that stood out to me.  This takes less than a minute, and I can refer back to it when I am creating my weekly project.

2.  Whenever I take an Instagram or cellphone picture that I think I might want to use, I immediately email it to myself.  This not only gives me all the pictures I plan to use right in my inbox but I know by looking at my email exactly what day it was sent.  

3.   The first time I tried this back in January, I was using papers that had a weird beige cast to them rather than a true white.  The papers had no journaling cards and no solid patterns that would allow me to make good journaling spots.  For me, the color scheme and patterns made it very difficult to match anything up.  While my colors don't have to match perfectly, they shouldn't look "wrong" together - for lack of a better description.  This time, I used a collection that had lots of tags and cards; the colors weren't an off shade that made them clash with other collections either.  Things went much more quickly with significantly less muttering and gnashing of teeth!

I may backtrack and re-create the first five weeks later on, but right now I am just happy to be moving forward!

I primarily used FANCY PANTS Wonderful Day and Trendsetter collections to create my week's project.  Here are a few close-ups:

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the number six and the doily used on this:

I love big journaling spots like this that already contain a cute graphic.  Of course, I couldn't help layering an extra cloud sticker to the top of my card!

This tiny bag that is holding my journaling tag was simply glued to the top of my pocket.  The bag came with some scrapbook supplies I received in the mail, but it was so cute I couldn't throw it away.  I added a few gold rub-ons and tiny enamel dots to dress it up.  I love how the cheerful stripes of the tag show through the bag, don't you?

This is the right side:

It was important to me to include a few personal words of encouragement to myself as I am on a quest to start living a healthier life.  Because they were personal, I enclosed them in this sweet envelope that I embellished:

And that's my Week 6!  I have no idea if what I created was right or wrong or even if there IS a right or wrong with Project Life, but I am happy with the end result and that makes it right to me!