Home Base: Creative Pursuits - My First Project Life Album aka My First Foray into Scrapbooking

Hello! Happy new year! It's been a while, I know. The last part of 2014 was incredibly busy for me, and I really didn't have any time to spare for The Blue Purse. I felt bad about neglecting my little corner on the Internet, so I'm back, with a new year's resolution to always make time for this site. I hope I get to stick to it!

So it's a new year, and with new beginnings come new things. My new something is scrapbooking. It has always been in my life, because my mom made tons of scrapbooks for recipes, pictures, newspaper articles she loved, and the like. I loved it. I'm quite relentless about documenting things, and I really wanted to do some memory-keeping of my own, but I always thought it was a lot of work. There was too much cutting and pasting and whatnot for me so I never got into it.

Then last year, I discovered Project Life, and my thinking changed. With it, all you have to do is get an album, insert cards and photos into pocket pages, and you're done! If you're feeling more creative, and you want to do some cutting and pasting, you can too, with embellishments and other accessories. Project Life made scrapbooking so easy.

Over the past few months, I've slowly been collecting supplies. I looked for local suppliers because I really hate having to deal with customs and international shipping, and I'm so glad I found a few. I just got stuff I need for a basic album just to test it out and see how I like it. I also dug up the DIY supplies I somehow accumulated during my wedding preparations (cutters, alphabet stamps, Muji pens), then I bought a couple of Sharpies, pens, and stamps, and I was good to go. I had to wait until I had the time to actually do it though, and I finally found the opportunity during the long holiday stretch.

I decided that my first Project Life album will be about our wedding preparations. I want to print out all those pictures and stories from our wedding blog, and I had pictures printed out by our photographer from our prenup shoot. I figured, I would start with the official prenup pic pages, then I'll move on to the behind-the-scenes photos. After that, I will keep adding the rest of our wedding preps to the album. The next big project will be our wedding album, which will not only contain our official photos, but also photos from our friends and family.

I knew that since this was my first project, it was going to be the experimental one. I thought I would run out of supplies fast and find out what I really need after a few pages. I was right. I chose a 12x12 album for this project because it's going to be a hefty one -- a year of pictures and stories is no joke -- so I had lots of room. The problem was, I ran out of pocket pages with vertical pockets pretty quickly, so I skipped a few layouts that needed vertical pockets, as well as other layouts that needed different pocket orientations and photos that I didn't get prints of. Those pages will just have to wait until next time. Not going to lie -- I was pretty frustrated not being able to finish a project in one sitting, but at least I now know that I should take inventory of my photos and see what kind of page protectors I need first for next time. Besides, all the fun made up for it! It was such a joy putting memories into a book. I'm hooked!

   

I really think I'm borderline OCD -- my family and friends can vouch for it. I can sometimes get so hung up on the details that it takes me an incredibly long time to do something. Scrapbooking is not for the OC, kids. The first page made my head hurt, but the more I scrapbook, the more I'm getting past my OC-ness. I made a couple of mistakes, so I learned to practice first on scratch paper. I also didn't want to waste cards, so I challenged myself to find ways to still use them. I ended up with cut-outs adhered to other cards! Cute.

Our prenup shoot had an orange and blue theme, so I mostly chose cards that went with that color scheme. I loved that I could be as cheesy as I could be with the pages, because hey, you only do a prenup shoot once in a lifetime, might as well take the opportunity to be crazy sweet with it.

I love journaling, so I made sure I had a few notes in there. The hubby will also be journaling in the next round of pages. I already made him promise, heh. 

I did a layout for A, and a layout for me. It's really cool to see photos and cards come together in a spread. 

We had tons of photos so my main thing was to get everything in there. I only used a couple of cards per layout in most of the pages. 

I tried a new layout for the last page I did, using a different kind of page protector (didn't use it much because it could only take horizontal pictures and I found out too late that we had too many vertical ones). The hubby and I had fun thinking up things to put on the list card! Loved how it turned out.

Supplies Rundown: Project Life 12x12 Cloth Album in Midnight and Project Life Pocket Pages in Designs A (which came with the album) and G from Bee Happy, Project Life Card Shares - Coral Edition and Sunshine Edition from Life Documented Manila, wooden stamps from Divisoria, pens and scissors from Muji, Sharpies, Artline stamp pad, and 3M glue stick from National Bookstore

That's about it!  I can't wait to finish this project, and I'll be posting about supplies and suppliers for sure, so expect more scrapbooking posts from me soon. 

Have you tried scrapbooking? Have any thoughts on the topic? Hit me up in the comments box below.