Since I was at Blissdom through Saturday and then shooting the new Bloom book club selection videos all day Sunday, I couldn't complete Project Life Tuesday in time. Thankfully, faithful Mom Creative reader and Project Lifer Sarah from The Arena Update graciously agreed to guest post. I hope you enjoy her layouts and I will be back next week with another double whammy (just like last week!). Sarah did a great job and I know you are going to love her pages.
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Happy Project Life Tuesday everyone! I'm so excited to be guest posting this week while Jessica recovers from Blissdom. Allow me to introduce myself: I'm Sarah Kooiman and I write a little blog called The Arena Update. Most of the time, I write about my three boys (Isaiah – age 4, Micah – age 2, and Thomas – 6 months) and the hazards that come with being the mommy to those crazies, everything from sleep struggles and bloody noses to tornado-level tantrums. I'm also a teacher, waitress, and die hard Packers fan. We're working on paying off our debt Dave Ramsey style, in the midst of trying to sell our house, and losing weight together as a couple. I can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@slkooiman) so let's connect!
This is my third year using Project Life as a way to document our memories. For the first two years, I did the Photo 365 approach, a photo for every day. This year, I have loosened the reins a bit and I do a layout for each week. My favorite thing about Project Life is how versatile it is and how it's best feature is its simplicity. It can be anything you want it to be. Play. Enjoy. Record your life.
Ok, enough jabbering. Bring on the Project Life!
(You can click on any of the photos to make them bigger.)
This week, I used the usual Design A protectors, a 6×12, and a 8.5×11 page. Here's how it looks when you open up this week.
The left side is a huge mish-mash of things this week! I used date overlays from Ali Edwards, Cobalt Edition digital papers, and Tiny Templates from Cathy Zielske to make the most of the photos I had. To be perfectly honest, this is way more digital mumbo jumbo than I usually attempt, but I decided to push the envelope a bit this week, considering the occasion. I also experimented with adding journaling stickers to photos for the first time. I apologize for the smudged ink – clearly, I was using the wrong pen.
When I used my corner rounder on the last journal card, it snipped off a bit of the letter “S.” I just decided to leave it alone because I really don't want to stress over this album being too perfect.
I really liked the idea of including this collage of a few of the shows we're watching on TV right now. Might be fun to look back on in a few dozen years!
The flip side of the 6×12 is a collage of photos (again sized to 6×9) that I made using Picasa. Same cardstock, coordinating ribbon and stickers. You can also see the 8.5×11 page up next where I printed out an entire blog post I wrote about my son asking me some serious questions about faith. It was such an important moment in his life that I really wanted to feature it. This is a simple way to do that without really doing anything fancy.
Finally, the right Design A finishes off this week. In addition to my regular photos and journaling cards, I also included a couple more treasures I found online.
Wow! Thanks so much for inviting me to invade your blog today, Jessica. I had a lot of fun!
Your turn:
Hi! I really like your pages. I joined in the Lisa Leonard instagram photo thing too hehe. Your style is so clean, but still has the scrapped and cared about feeling. Thanks for sharing your week with us!
I kept my fingers crossed that I would win the gift certificate, but alas. No such luck! It was neat to see so many people share their favorite pieces though.
I have to chuckle when you say my style is “clean” because I felt like this week had way more going on than I usually do! I tried to cram in so much!
Thanks for sharing your pages this week – what fun they were to oogle over! I too used the Miss Tiina cards on my page.
Thanks! This was the first time that I busted out the free downloads, including the Miss Tiina cards. I liked them so much that I actually swapped them out for a couple of my title page cards!
Thanks for sharing your pages, Sarah! I love the variety of cards and ‘bit’s you’re using. That 6×12 page is adorable!
Thank you! It was actually a really uneventful week where we stayed at home most of the time, so it was hard to include the actual “bits” of life like movie stubs or stuff like that. I had to improvise a bit!
Nice week. Thanks for sharing. You must be a busy lady with those little people.
Oh yes. I have three little Engergizer Bunnies, to be sure. 🙂
Hi Sarah,
How nice to see you being a guest here for Jessica. Your pages look great and love all the added special touches you gave it. I like the 6×12 of your son, so cute and you made into scrap style, WAY TO GO!!
Enjoy your week!
It was so fun to do some more “traditional” scrapbooking for this week, something else I’ve never done before for Project Life. Glad you liked it!
WOW, You are busy, Sarah! Great pages! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Liz! I was honored to shared on Jessica’s site today.
Thanks for sharing your pages Sarah. I love including your favorite TV shows. I keep meaning to do that.
Thanks again for hosting the link party, Jessica!
I think I may end up having to do another collage later for the different shows we watch later in the week though. Monday and Tuesday are our busy TV nights!
Lovely spreads! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for having me!
I too just now getting my “old school scrap on” in Project Life. I LOVE it, I especially love that I don’t have to.
Sarah can you tell me how you did the television show collage – my nights are Wed/Thurs – I just realized I could do a screen shot of my DvR list … I’m esp. curious to now how you got such clear images of the shows. Thank you!
thanks, too for the links to new (to me) fun stuff – and Jessica, as always – thanks for this fun weekly Project Life connection!
aside: what font is this?! ?
Nathalie, to be perfectly honest….I kind of cheated a little when it came to making the TV collage. I did a Google Image search for the shows I wanted to use and then saved my favorite image results. From there, I used Picasa to create the collage in a 4×6 size. If you haven’t used Picasa before, it’s a free download online. You could also easily do it in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements as well. Hope this helps!
Thanks Sarah! I’ve pulled off of Google before too but it seemed like your images were so crip – I’ll have to keep playing with it and learning photoshop – Cathy Zielske’s tiny templates are perfect for stuff like that too.
I love, love, love looking at everyone’s pages and would love to comment on all of them but am having problems with commenting on some blogspot blogs – the word verification won’t let me comment. Is there something that can be done to address this across the people who are going to be posting regularly here?
Helen I run into that too!
Great pages Sarah! Absolutely love the photo collage of your favorite TV shows (we are fans of Smash & Castle too!). Also love the pic of your son w/the solid food…classic face.
Thanks for sharing your pages with us!
I just wish Smash and Castle weren’t on at the same time! I don’t have DVR, so I usually watch Castle when it’s on with my hubby and then I watch Smash online when I get time.
My poor baby is really struggling with this whole concept of solid foods. There’s been a lot of those faces!
Loved how you used my freebie, Sarah! Looks adorable.
Awesome, thank you! I love how it adds such a unique spin to a photo.
Wonderful guest post! Great pages, Sarah! Off to check out your blog, as I’m a mom of 2 insane boys and always love to commiserate with other moms of boys, lol!
I’ve often heard the saying that “There’s a special place in heaven for mothers of boys.” I believe it! Welcome and thank you for checking out my stuff!
Great guest post. Your pages look wonderful this week. Nice job!