A little prep work and my favorite things.

Hello everyone !! It's Mindi here.

First off, I want to say how excited I am to be here. I am looking forward to sharing lots of fun stuff with you over the next six months.

Today I want to share a few things : #1. How I have prepared my 2015 Project Life album. (well, albums) #2. A few fun pictures/examples of my favorite things.  Also a little sample of my scrapbooking style.

My approach to Project Life is to complete weekly spreads with the occasional event/trip/ect spread. I also like to add "STUFF" to my pages. This leaves them somewhat bulky. In the past I have always needed 2 albums and I have set up 2 albums for 2015.

This is what my album currently looks like. I have gathered a few items for my title page. I plan on getting some individual pictures of all of my family members soon to put in the album.

I went ahead and made some temporary title cards this year. I used the plain grid 4x6 cards and printed out the week # and the dates. You could most certainly use some scraps, plain cardstock or whatever you have on hand. You can also handwrite the information to save time.

I like to have these title cards in my album ahead of time so I know what week it is, more on that in a bit.

I'm a planner. I'll admit it. Especially when it comes to my Project Life. I have been using these planner sheets from Marcy Penner for years now and I LOVE them !!

I used a 8.5x11 page protector in between each week. Inside the page protector I added one of the planner sheets. The reason : It's right there ready to go. I don't have to go and print one ahead of time.

I use these planner pages to plan out my spreads. I can easily write in what photo is going where, where I want a certain journaling card when it is time to sit down and actually do my week.

I also use the smaller 8.5x11 page protectors to house my ephemera, school items, well you get the idea. Anything that I need to save from that week. I also use the envelopes to keep some items that I might want to use with that week. As you can see I have some items in the page protector that I want to use.

As you can see there is a place for the date on the page planner. I love it !

YOU CAN FIND THE FREE POCKET PAGE PLANNERS HERE.

The last thing that I like to do is to add a few plain journaling cards in each week. As the week goes by I can easily write notes on them. Things that we did, quotes, ideas, ect.

Over the years, I have found that these few simple things have kept me successful in creating meaningful Project Life albums.

Moving on now to a few of my favorite things.

A few of my favorite things to do in my Project Life albums are to use digital brushes and physical overlays. I just love, love, love the effect that it has.

Big photos have BIG impacts. I just love them ! My husband took this photo with his iphone while out on the job site. I cropped it to 6x12 and then printed it out onto 2 4x6.

I have also done many 6x8 photos and cut them up to fit into the pockets.

One thing I like to do with my layouts is to stick to a few colors per spread. I like to make sure that both pages keep to the same color scheme like in this spread. That is why I love the NoelMingon kits !! They are already color coordinated for you !

Another fun thing I always try to do is to document the little things, because these are the most important and precious to me. I want to be able to look back and remember these moments.

The first journaling card is of a small/funny moment that happened with my son. The next card I took the opportunity to document real life. My husband had been out of town for a better part of a week and I was at my wits end. I packed up the kids and dinner and we went to the park. I want to not only document the great things in life but the not so great as well. Because that is part of our story.

That is all I have for you today. I'm looking forward to creating with my Hey Girl kit and sharing it with you next time.