Plan for 2017

So far, so good with this plan (I know... it's only the 12th of the first month of the year.. lol!). I have completed four pages so far, and I truly love them. I have finally been able to accomplish the clean style I've always envied without having to cut out photos or journaling. My template process is much quicker now as I just go chronologically line by line. At first I thought it was a waste that I got the expanded template maker set by Mommyish with my plan to keep things simple... but it's been a godsend with being able to get the exact size I want without having to add filler shapes. When I have events with more photos or photos I want bigger, I plan to just do them in order but just dedicate a page (or set of pages) to the event. It is freeing to not worry about making sure I have two pages for everything... but it is a bit weird still with knowing when to work on my pages. I just have to gauge when I think I have enough to put on templates and work on my pages then. I'm afraid that if I don't develop some sort of routine, this will be my downfall this year.

 

Thanks @dawnmarch! I guess the first thing to take into account is how much other scrapping do you do? I do very little outside of PL... I will do a couple theme albums throughout the year (like trips), but the majority of my scrapping is PL. I am on track to have monster books printed this year with the rate I'm going with pages, but I'm okay with that. Last year my books were/will be significantly smaller than previous years because I tried to stick closely to just two pages per week. I had planned to scrap regular pages of events to add to the book, but I really struggled to keep up with those. In the end, I had cut out a lot of photos that I thought were going to get their own pages and pared down a lot of the stories I had planned on telling. Plus, I'm not even done with with books 2 and 3 of last year because my plan started to break down! All of this made me a little sad and I knew I needed a new plan. It does freak me out a little with how many pages I have per week so far, but I'm beginning to know what works for me and what's important to me and I'm just running with it! And I have to say... having the clean look I've always craved without having to cut out photos makes me way too happy!

 

Here's the link...

https://the-lilypad.com/store/CU-Pocket-Template-Maker-2.html

You can make almost endless combinations of pocket sizes! I love being able to decide the size and orientation of all of the photos I want to use.

 

Aaaannnndddddddd.... now I've hit the wall that I hit two years ago (with making as many pages as it takes per week) and what caused me to change my plan last year.

I've run out of stuff to use this month. Not really... but I'm weird about reusing the same stuff in my books. Once I use cards, I mentally "retire" them and although I'll continue to use the kit for other projects, I won't use it again in my PL book. When I download stuff, I usually have something in mind and use it right away. My new plan may end up being very expensive (or I'm going to have to get over my hangup about reusing stuff)!

 

Welcome @Sindee! 6th year? That's great! This is year 5 for me (although I haven't quite finished last year yet). I love the clean and simple look... that's what I'm striving for this year. You sound a lot like me on this... this is basically the only scrapbooking I do which is what is driving my urge to include it all. I do make travel books too... but that's about it (I do make an attempt at Document Your December each year, but have yet to complete an album).

 

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll have to work on that since it's something I'm not real good at. For now, I'm going back and reusing some collections from early 2016. It's been long enough since I've last used them that they feel "new" again.

 

The first option you mentioned is how it's beginning to evolve. With fewer photos it seems like a color or two really seems to stand out on the spread once I get the photos laid out. Like the set I'm working on right now, when I looked at the photos they are predominately dark (black or grey) with pops of red. So I decided I wanted to work with a black and white collection. I ended up reusing the May 2016 Storyteller which had grays, blacks, yellow and a pop or two of red. Somehow I see a blue theme arising in my next set of photos. Right now I'm using the same set of cards for both pages of the two page spread, but that might change when I have a multi-photo event.

 

Yay! I figure that if it doesn't work, I can easily transition my project back into weekly spreads. But it's going to work!!

It took me a while to embrace this idea and really wrap my head around it as well. My plan for last year was NOT working at all for me, so I started looking at new ideas earlier in the year than I normally do. I'm really liking my pages so far and that you pretty much read them like a book... line by line, left to right. It has so simplified the whole process of picking and laying out photos. Due to getting way behind with last year, I've also tried to be good with jotting notes down for each day at night in my planner/diary so I know what we did for my journaling and to jog my memory about photos and where to find them (some are in my camera roll, some in our family's shared iCloud album, some in texts, etc).

Hopefully with both of us working on a similarly structured project, we can help each other out when we get stuck!!