In December I blogged about my December Planner Album. I fell in love with the format and decided that I would create albums like this to document 2015 instead of the pocket scrapping albums I’ve been doing over the past few years. At the end of December I started working on my January pages. I created and printed about two weeks worth of planner pages, hoping to incorporate my to do lists, notes, memories and pictures on each page. My plan was to complete each page at the end of the day or early the next morning depending on my schedule for the day and then add photos to the blank pages at the end of each week. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for this system to fall apart. Unlike my December album where I could do Christmas themed pages everyday and it worked out no matter what. I found that in January this didn’t work that well and sometimes I wanted to use themes that weren’t reflected on the pages I’d printed. I also ran into issues where sometimes I just had too much to say to fit in a 3″x4″ space. So I reevaluated and decided that in the end this project won’t work as a planner for me as I’d hoped. But also I didn’t abandon it altogether. With my new method it’s definitely more of a journal than a planner, but I’m loving how easy it is for me to type notes right onto my template (using the same one I created for my December planner) and not feel like I have to do anything with it right away, because everything I need is there. I’m so excited to share a few of my February pages with you.
Here’s a glance at how I have everything set up in my scrapbooking software. I had a lot to talk about on this day so there are lots of notes.
I love that with the way I’ve changed my goal with this album I’m now able to give myself more space for journaling. Instead of four 3″x4″ cards I’m now just using two cards and then a fun paper that I cropped to 3″x8″ to give myself more room for journaling. I love using bigger collections for this project so that I have lots to choose from throughout the month the cards, papers and elements that work best. For this page I used Just Jaimee’s Storyteller Collection, Quinn.
For this next page I ran into an issue. I had enough to journal about but I didn’t have any pictures.
I decided to print and cut the logo that my brother created for a tabletop gaming club that we’re organizing. Even on days I forget to take photos I usually find it easy to find something to add to the blank left page. For instance yesterday I played a game with my daughter. During the game I didn’t think to snap any photos but this morning I grabbed a shot of a few of the cards from the game. You can also include memorabilia (or photos of memorabilia), use the space to write more about your day, or even use the space for a monthly overview of TV you’ve watched, books you’ve read, places you’ve gone. etc. For this page I used a smaller kit, One Little Bird’s Halcyon Journal Cards and Elements. I love the orange here and thought it helped convey all of the happy positive things that happened that day. I also knew that writing things by hand would be a fairly rare occurance so I’m using The Sarah font that Heather Joyce created from my handwriting on some pages. All the other journaling will be done with Heather’s various typewriter fonts (oh how these make me happy!).
For this last page I didn’t have a lot to write about. My daughter was sick and we literally spent most of the day curled up in front of the TV watching YouTube videos.
I did have a great photo to fill up my blank page, though, and found that the lack of things to talk about was a great excuse to use some of the filler cards included in the current Memory Pockets Monthly offerings. I rarely ever use filler cards in my pocket scrapping, but I love them so. I adore how they add just a little something extra to my pages.
This project has been a bit of a journey since my first album in December, but I love how it’s changed and I’m sure it will continue to evolve throughout the year. I love pocket scrapping still, but I have three years worth of albums that I’m still working on and I love how this album offers me a bit of a streamlined approach that I never seemed to be able to find with pocket scrapping (though others do this wonderfully). I’m able to keep up with project while catching up on my pocket scrapping albums, and in the future if I decide I want to turn this into a pocket scrapping album I have all of the information I could possibly need to create that.
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