I love scrapbooking.  I’ve been scrapbooking for a very long time.  I believe I was in the 6th grade when I got my first scrapbooking album.  It was this big yellow album with brown paper.  All I basically did was attach memorabilia to the pages that I am fairly certain were not acid and lignin free. lol  I added stuff to that album up until I headed to college.

I resumed scrapbooking in 1997 because I wanted to do an album of my mission pictures.  And once I got started I was hooked.  As more and more product was released for scrapbooking, the happier I became.  But I was slow, so I wasn’t getting many pages created.

In 2006, I switched to digital scrapbooking.  At this point, I think I love digital more than I ever liked traditional (although there are things I miss like the physical act of tearing paper).  And I am much faster.  But I still find that while I love the pages I am creating, most of pictures (and memories) go unscrapped.

That brings us to 2013.  I really want to start creating pages that tell people a little about what is going on with me, right now.  In 2012, I did Project 52.  I am working on scrapping those pictures now.  And it definitely gives you a snapshot of my year.  But for this year, I wanted more (although I’m still doing Project 52).  So for 2013, I am going to do a Project Life album.

For those of you unfamiliar with Project Life, the concept was created by Becky Higgins  The purpose was to allow scrapbookers to quickly combine journaling and photos to create “memory albums” (my term).  This originally started out as a paper concept, but has recently become very popular in the digital scrapbooking world as well.

So far, I am loving Project Life.  I am using Evernote to keep track of all the information I want to remember throughout the week.  I chose Evernote because I have it on my Mac, my Galaxy S III, my Nexus 7 and my iPad.  So, I can access it any time I want to jot down some info.

All my pictures taken with both my Galaxy S III and my Canon XS are uploaded to Dropbox.  That way all my pics are together in one location when it’s time to scrap.  (Plus I have copies of all my pics back to 2011 stored in the cloud.)  I may start using Lightroom 4 as well to create collections of the pics to speed things up further, we shall see.

While I can use any product for Project Life, I do have a few things in my stash that are Project Life specific and I have all of those in a special folder so I know where to go when I am looking for journaling cards or other Project Life items.

Now that I have told you a bit about how I am approaching Project Life this year, let me show the completed two-page spread.  I think it does a good job of providing a look at the first week of 2013.  I am really happy with the way it turned out.

This layout was created using Geek Chic from Mommyish Designs; Trim It Edges #1, JC Personality 2 and JC Blanks #1 from Merkeley Designs; Project Life Journal Card Freebies from Cathy Zielske and Word Art Titles Weeks 1 – 52 from September Blue.  I created the templates I used myself and now I can use them for future weeks.

If you are doing Project Life and sharing your layouts online, leave me a link in the comments cause I’d love to see them.  Even if Project Life is not up your alley, take the time to get your memories down somewhere.  Future generations will thank you for it.