A little bit of everything.

I seem to have taken a lot of photos during the second week of January and ended up with 3 pages for my Project Life book and still have enough for a fourth. I also finished up my "Rabbit Boy" page and participated in a MIS (Make it Scrappy) online event. During an MIS you are given a set of guidelines and a 2 hour time limit to finish your page and submit it to the gallery. This one was also a template challenge so you used a template supplied by the forum. It was fun.

 

I have also been learning some new techniques in Photoshop, some of which I should have learned a long time ago. For instance I have only recently  learned how to effectively use masks. I've also been learning about transparency tricks and how to use custom styles and actions to save more time. Today I made my first piece of digital washi tape and also a piece of distressed patterned paper. For years I have wanted to play more with Photoshop and the digital scrapbooking has finally given me an excuse. 

Always something there to remind me

So many little things remind me of his absence. Ordering free photo prints tonight and just as I am uploading them it hits me that this order should be full of pictures of newborn William and it's not and it breaks my heart all over again.

More then a scrapbooking thing

I feel like that even though I have been journaling a lot that I need another outlet for things and I think even though this started as a scrap-booking thing that this is still the perfect place for me to do this. After all Project Life is, well, about life and as awful as it is bad things are also a part of life. I entered a page about William in a contest and I won and I am very excited about it. I know there are people out there that think it's taboo to air your grief in such a public way but I am not one of them. I need to tell people about William. I need to share him with the world because he is and will always be my son and he deserves as much as acknowledgement and Charles and Henry. As painful as it all is I am never going to ignore my thoughts and feelings for him, nor will I let others do that. He existed. As early as a few months I felt his little fluttery movements. As he got bigger, I felt him kick and roll around inside of me. There is nothing like the feeling of holding a life in your hands like that.

Tuesday while reading an article about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, through a series of comments and youtube videos I came across this song. It describes everything so perfectly. 

Loosey Goosey

It has come to my attention that I am going to have to approach this pretty loosely and not make too many guidelines for myself. The first week I didn't have enough photos for a 2 page spread. The second week I did 3 pages and then realized I left out the photos for an entire day that I definitely want to scrap. Of course I may just make traditional pages with those. I just can't decide.

An Attempt at Project Life

Week 1

Project Life is a scrapbooking and photography concept. Some people do it purely through photography and others do a scrapbook. You can use the traditional paper, scissors, and adhesives. You can buy kits of products such as the Becky Higgins line of supplies -both traditional and for the digital community. Or you can just do your own digital thing using a variety of digital resources. That's my plan. My goal is to do a 1 or 2 page spread for each week of the year documenting not only the big events but the little details of life as well. Project Life is all about scrapping every part of life and it's about doing it efficiently yet artistically though beautiful layouts and lots of journaling. I take so many pictures and there is no way I will ever be able to traditionally "Scrap" them all. The digi-scrapping is faster and also lends itself to being able to use more photos if you want to. I intend to wither print the 12x12 layouts at the end of the year or  maybe have them printed as a 12x12 coffee table book.

Here is my first page. I didn't take a lot of photos the first week of the year so this is it for now although I may go back and do a spread about some detail of our life like what our house is like or the cars we own at the time. That's what Project Life is about - documenting all those details so that later we can remember everything.