Project Life® 2014 | Week Eight (Studio Calico Project Life® Kit)

Welcome to Project Life® 2014 | Week Eight (February 17th through February 23rd).

Each month during 2014 one of my Project Life® weeks will be using the Studio Calico Project Life® kit.

You can check out all the new kits for March (called Office Hours) over at Studio Calico here: Scrapbook Kit | Project Life® Kit | Card Kit

Here's a look at Week 8:

This week I really had fun playing with circles + enlarged photos. I've done enlarged photos before - sometimes they are 12x12 and sometimes 6x12. I think they are a nice visual break from all the smaller pockets. You can see other examples here (Paris), here (Ireland), and here (my skirt & boots).

I've got a tutorial for cutting those enlarged photos to fit into the pockets here.

I included two enlarged 6x12 photos from our weekend at the beach as an insert - these two are stored in a 6x12 page protector. The other photos from the beach will go into a regular layout.

These enlarged photos are printed here at home using an Epson R2000 printer and 13x19 photo paper.

Above is a look at the spread without the 6x12 insert.

I really like those cork circles.

For the title card I used a small circle punch to knock out the end of that label creating a nice little home for the cork circle.

For this love label I ended up cutting the chipboard letter stickers to fit onto the label (they were too tall). I was able to trim off the tops of the "L" and the "V" and for the "E" I cut it just below the top and and also trimmed part of the stem to make it fit. Loved using the heart as the "O."

The kit this month includes some cute and perfectly sized number stamps. I used Studio Calico's new Color Theory ink in Clean Slate to stamp them onto the currently card. You also might notice that I trimmed the top off of the cork circle - I like the look of things going off the edge.

Another way to use the cool designs from the journal cards is to cut them out and add them to a photo. These little scissors from Fiskars work great for that.

You can also insert cut pieces of the journal cards into an index tab ("at the moment" was cut from a journal card). I almost always add an index tab when I include a page protector insert.

The enlarged photo of me came from a little photo-shoot Katie and I did where I was trying on a bunch of eye-glasses from David Kind (full post on that here).

In my opinion there are three cool things happening here:

(1) PUNCH CIRCLES | If you happen to have a lot of Project Life® cards (whether from Becky's line or from Studio Calico or other kits) a fun way to work with them is to punch the pattern ones into circles. I used both a 1-inch and a 2-inch circle punch here.

(2) BREAK FREE OF THE GRID |Sometimes the pockets can feel a little restrictive (stay in your box) and it's nice to be able to play around with elements that cross over from one pocket to another whether that's a photo or pattern or embellishment.

Speaking of that I loved how Catherine Davis used the little butterfly stamp from this month's kit across more than one pocket: Golden.

(3) CLEAR 3x4 CARD |This month's kit includes 2, 3x4 clear acrylic cards. I used one as the back for my gathering of circles. If you're wondering what I'll do on the back, most likely I will punch some more circles (or maybe photos) and add them to the same spots on the back of the 3x4 card to maintain the see-through quality. These cards are pretty sturdy but you can also achieve this same look by cutting up some of your extra page protectors and adding elements and then sticking it inside the pockets. You can see how I did that in my December Daily® album last year here.

Writing on photos = yes. Always. I used a Fine Slick Writer to journal around the coffee cup.

SUPPLIES | 2014 | WEEK EIGHT

Project Life® is a product and a system and a lifestyle created by Becky Higgins. It can be anything you want it to be. The core pieces used in my album are available here. If you live outside the US check Becky’s site for more information on sources. View all my posts about Project Life® here.