Preparing for 2020 Project Pages

Hello friends and happy new year!!

I am so excited for my scrapbooking year to come and I truly hope that you are, too. One of the most integral parts of my scrapbooking plans for 2020 is to continue documenting our everyday moments with pocket scrapbooking. Today I am going to share with you some of my plans for tips for preparing for creating project pages with pocket scrapbooking this year.

I have been creating weekly project page spreads since 2011. I keep these pages super simple so that I can be successful with them. Some may call that boring, but boring works for me in terms of getting these everyday memories down in a chronological way. I really love that I can crank out a spread so quickly and even lots of pages in a relatively short amount of time if I’m falling behind.

There is a great thread in the Project Life/365/52 forum here at the Lilypad where community members are sharing their plans for 2020 Project Life. I highly encourage you to take a look at that after reading this post for even more ideas and product suggestions!

Commit

My first suggestion is that you decide if you want to do this kind of scrapbooking. If you’ve never done it before I would suggest giving it a try! And, if you’ve done it for years, you may be ready for a change and may even decide that this kind of scrapbooking isn’t what you’re looking for this year. Whatever the case, I think it’s important to decide if it is a project worth pursuing and if it is, committing to it. Seeing a year-long project like this through is going to take a higher level of commitment and it’s important to decide if you’re up to it. This project can also be immensely rewarding…my family LOVES looking through my albums!! If you commit, I suggest telling someone and even putting it in writing.

Make a Plan

Okay, now that you’ve committed to 2020 Project Pages, the next step is to make a plan for your year. There are a ton of ways to complete project pages and it will be important to decide on a plan that will work for you from the get-go!

I strive to create a two-page spread for each week of the year, but I also have a plan for weeks that don’t have enough photos to fill a two page spread. When that happens, I combine two weeks on a two-page spread, with each week on one side. I also scrap in 12×12 format.

I wrote a post two years ago about preparing for success with pocket scrapbooking. In that post, I shared all the decisions you can think through in formulating YOUR plan for project pages. Take a look at that and work your way through each of these decisions in making your plan.

Set Up Lightroom Collections

The next step that is important to my success in completing project pages is setting up collections in Lightroom. With these collections, my photos for each week are put into a folder. Now, when I’m ready to work on my project pages my photos are already culled.

This year I took out a 2020 calendar and a notebook. Then I wrote out the date for each week of the year. This helped so much when I was creating my Lightroom smart collection for this year!

Gather Your Supplies

In the “make a plan” step, one of the decisions you’ll think about is what supplies you’re going to use. I take this a step further and gather all of the supplies that I’m going to use throughout the year in one folder.

This “project life” folder resides within my Digi-scrap folder, where I keep all things digital scrapbooking. In this I have subfolders for each year since 2012. In the year subfolders, I have a folder for the template I’m using, a folder for saved pages in tiff, jpeg and web format, a folder for my cover page template, a folder for dated weekly pngs (which I created), and a folder for edited photos named by the week.

This year I created my own dated weekly pngs to use throughout the year. I’ve done different things for each year to create a weekly title card and I’m excited to use these weekly pngs. If you’re looking for dated weekly journal cards or pngs, these Weekdates 2020 cards from Sabrina’s Creations would be fantastic!

Create Your Cover Page

Lastly, I suggest creating your cover page to get yourself excited to kick-off your 2020 Project Pages!! Seeing this cover page from Polly Jan has me super excited to get to work on my own cover page using the freebie from Scrapping with Liz!

My first project page spread for 2020 is already completed and I’m excited to share that with you as well.

The left side and right side of this spread can be found in the gallery for credits.

I followed my own advice that I have shared with you here and I’m thrilled to begin a new year of scrapbook in this format! Do you have plans for creating 2020 Project Pages?