Project Sara, Episode 1: What is Project Life?

It has come to my attention (and really, I should have realized this from the beginning) that not everyone knows what I’m talking about when I talk about Project Life, even if I’m posting pictures of my spreads.  My apologies for this oversight.  So, in this first “episode” of my Project Sara series of posts on here will be an introduction to Project Life.  I’ll start with telling you about a conversation about this very subject with a friend of mine.  She asked me what the difference was between Project Life and traditional scrapbooking.  So I said it like this, you know how all rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles?  Well, simply put, MOST Project Life is scrapbooking, but not all scrapbooking is Project Life.  I say “most” Project Life because some people do digital layouts and are, therefore, in my opinion, NOT scrapbooking even if they’re adding digital embellishments and things to their layouts before sending them off to be printed professionally.  I’m also not saying that hand layering and embellishing is superior to digital layouts, but it’s how I prefer to do it.

 

This is how Becky Higgins’ website describes it: “Project Life® is an ultra-simple, über-stylish solution for getting your photos off your phone and computer, out of boxes, and into albums. Gone are the days of cutting, pasting, buying oodles of supplies, and spending hours on an album. Or even hours on just one page.”  (FYI, I and a lot of people that do Project Life still do buy oodles of supplies.  It’s all personal preference as to how you want to do your album, just know it’s not “required” like it is in traditional scrapbooking.)

 

Okay.  So, what exactly is Project Life?  It’s a concept created by a lady named Becky Higgins.  It’s a way of chronicling your life.  The vast majority of people that do a Project Life…project…do it week by week, so you have weeks 1 thru 52 in your album if you do it that way.  However, I do not follow this method.  I will have a title card for the month (instead of one for each week of the year) and then just chronicle my month until the next month starts, and I start that with, of course, the title card for that month and so on.  The basic idea of Project Life is to simplify while still having elements of tradition scrapbooking…just on a smaller scale.

 

Project Life uses pocket pages.  Like traditional scrapbooking, but it doesn’t normally use the 12x12 size pocket page (unless you’re doing a digital layout, then you might use that size).  There are many different types and sizes of pocket pages to choose from.  I have been exclusively (so far) using the one that has two 4x6 at the top AND at the bottom of the page and then four 3x4 pockets across the middle.  This is the standard and most popular pocket page for Project Life participants.  I do have a bunch of other pocket page varieties and plan to start trying them out to see how I like them.  The one I’m most excited about trying out is the 12x12 page that has nine 4x4 pockets in it.

 

So, how is Project Life like traditional scrapbooking?  You can embellish your photos and journaling/filler cards like you would embellish a traditional scrapbook layout, just not so big and 1-event centric.  You can cover many different events all on the same page just by using different photos and embellishments and then you can tie them all together with a common theme like you used a certain type of embellishment (like tags, for instance…but it could be anything) in all or most of your photos/cards…or you use a common color with all of your embellishments. 

 

So, I hope this answers any questions you might have about the basic idea of Project Life.  If it does not, please leave a comment and I will do my best to address the answer to your question in a future Project Sara post. 

 

Also, I just want to say to Carina…I HAVE MISSED YOU!  WELCOME BACK!