Project 12 January 2013

Hi!

I'm excited to share my January Project 12 layout with you.  You can also check it out on the Gossamer Blue blog here.

January flew by.  As I've mentioned before I'm currently in my final student teaching placement before I get my teaching and Master's degree.  That means school all day and homework at night and kids in between.  It has been a big undertaking but my family is a house of rock stars so with....  86 days until graduation, the end of the tunnel is near and we are all very excited about that!

I got a new iPhone for Christmas and have been taking a lot more photos now that I have a better camera.  I take all the event photos with my Canon, but the everyday stuff that tells a deeper story of us is usually captured with my phone.

In planning my layout for the month, I started by emailing myself all the photos I wanted to use from my camera roll.  I use a standard Earlybird wash for my photos, and anything I hadn't uploaded to IG was edited and sent.

Tip:  Put your phone on Airplane Mode, edit, and it'll save the photo to your camera roll without flooding the IG gallery.  IG says the upload failed but still saves the photo.  

I print all of my IG photos at 2.5 x 2.5.  I had 8 photos this month.  I laid out my page protectors and then organized my photos from there.  I wanted to be chronological without bunching the photos up.  One of the reasons it takes me so long to get my layouts done is because I'm actually really methodical about how I do things.  I wish I could be more spontaneous but it just isn't in me, lol.  

Once my camera photos were organized I went to my digital files for other photos that told our story.  Morgan's birthday monopolized our month so I had to pick between them.  I took a lot of portrait shots on her birthday so that made a photo easy to choose as I had to pick between the horizontal shots for a 4x6 slot.  I then chose two other photos of my girls that also told our story.  As you can see by their placement on the layout, I'm intentional about those two.  Two words:  visual triangle.  I'm all about having a visual triangle without it being obvious.  

I created a card for my layout "title".  I'm going to have it on the upper left of every layout.

I was then equally intentional about patterned paper placement.  I think I'm going to use this same layout in my page protectors all year.  I chose several prints from my Gossamer Blue January kit leftovers as well as bits from my stash.  I'm all about using up bits from my stash.  I like letting the prints be seen so that future generations will know what design was like "back in the day" and such.  In fact, in one 4x6 slot it's nothing but a piece of Pink Paislee patterned paper.  I love the color palette and the overall design and didn't see a reason to add to it.  Like I said, photos were scarce this month and I didn't want the whole layout to be about Morgan's birthday weekend.  I am planning layouts and mini albums with all of those photos.  

I also had to include kid art.  Payton draws the best dogs.  She told me this was the best dog profile she had ever done so of course I had to include it.

I also have to make a quick note about grief.  We lost our pup Cooper this summer as you know.  The kids seemed to recover quickly unlike their parents.  As time has gone on, however, Cooper has started to come up more and more often.  Grief works in mysterious ways.  They really miss him.  We all do.  I still think I hear him outside sometimes and things happen all the time that remind us of a story with him in it.  That stinker.  

I also included a quote on my layout.  One of my favorite Pinterest boards is my "Words" board, and I want to start including some of the fun quotes I come across.





I know I've used my little chevron arrows a lot but I'm not tired of them yet, lol.  As you can see, they were intentionally placed too.  You can also tell by the colors used in the design that most things were placed with a purpose.

Bonus:

I'm going to be creating digital files every month for my Project 12 layouts, and thought I'd share my work with you!  Each month there will be a month card sized to fit in those 4x6 slots, as well as a quote card.  Right now my plan is for those to fit in a 3x4 space every month.  I always size my digital elements a little smaller, becuase I'm a girl who likes a border as well as a good fit, so I wanted to share that too.  You can download a copy of the printables here.

Have a great day!  Davinie