On day 1, I sit and go through the photos I have for each week. You may remember, I have it set up so that Lightroom sorts them by week for me. So when I sit down I pick the photos for each week. It’s at this point that I also do any editing I need to do. I try to keep my photo editing for PL pretty minimal, and even do a lot on my phone before my pictures even make it to LR, so this isn’t always a huge task. I do mostly digital PL, so once I have the pictures picked and edited, I’m good to go. If you do physical PL, this would be the point where you should print your photos. Once I’m done, the hour is usually up and I walk away from my work.

On day 2, I take all of the photos and place them where they will be on my layout. This isn’t always a final placement, but it helps me get an idea of what I am working with. I start by opening the template I’m using and the pictures for the week. Then I start placing them, paying attention to a few things:

At this point, I also place my cards that I use each week: the week number card, and the highlights card. They are always in the same place on my layout, so I can drop them in pretty easily. If you are a paper scrapper, you could take your printed photos and slide them into the actual page protectors you are going to use, in the pockets you think they work best it. As this second hour wraps up, I am starting to have a pretty good visual idea of what my layout will look like. I save my layouts as PSD files and I am done for the day.

On day 3, I take some time and place the filler cards into the layout and the papers that I use to back some of my photos. I open all of the layouts I am working on, and go one by one, placing the cards and papers in. Usually, when I am working on a catch up project like this, I stick to one collection. It makes it easier to create a unified look on the pages and easier to pick out things that I want to use. Although I do this step digitally, it would be the same with physical products – putting in filler cards and cutting down papers to back photos. One thing I am always watching during this step is that I am balancing the colors and patterns on my layout. Dark colors should be balanced with lighter ones, and busier patterns with more subdued patterns. I don’t have any steadfast rules for this, I usually just go by what my eye tells me looks good. Now, after the third hour, I am really starting to see my layouts take shape. I save the PSD files, and I have completed this hour’s tasks.

By this point, I am putting the final touches on my layouts. Each layout gets opened, and I go pocket by pocket and place any embellishments that I want to use to complete the pocket. I don’t embellish the pockets a lot when I am in catch up mode. I usually just look for a few small embellishments that will pull the page together. Once the pages are embellished, I go through and add the dates to my week cards, the journaling to my highlights card, and any additional journaling I want to include on the page. Once this is done, I check my drop shadows and save the nearly complete pages, and I am pretty much done with my pages.

I save my final hour for saving and preparing my layouts to share and put into an album. First, I save in two sizes, one full size and one for web. Then, I run a script that splits the layout into 4×6 photos that I will print when I have enough for a full order. Finally, I take the time to upload to the galleries I share in. While this is usually a daunting task, because I stuck to the same kit for each of the layouts, I only have one set of credits for each layout. That saves a ton of time.