Planning For Week In The Life 2013

Week In The Life is coming soon!

Monday, September 9th through Sunday, September 15th to be exact and you are invited to document your week right along with me.

This will be year 7 of this project for me.

I do Week In The Life for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons is to answer the question: what in the heck do I do really do in my daily life (and maybe even what in the heck am I doing with my life)? How am I spending these precious hours here on earth?

Here's something I know to be true: every single time I do this project I am inspired to make changes to the way in which I'm living my life. I do it not only for the awesome documentation opportunity and the supportive community, but I also do it as a way to examine the life I'm living right now.

There's something very powerful in reflecting the life we are living back to ourselves via photos and words.

SPONSOR THANK YOU

Before I get into more details I want to say a big, huge thanks to our title sponsors this year who will be appearing at the end of each of my posts during the week of documentation: 

• Studio Calico
• OnlineCardClasses.com
• Simon Says Stamp
• Big Picture Classes
• Me & My Big Ideas
• Unitprints.com
• Capture Your 365

We'll also have giveaways all week long. Big thanks to the following companies who are sponsoring giveaways this year: 

• Sweet Shoppe Designs
• Close To My Heart
• The Vintage Pearl
• Stuck On You
• Me & My Big Ideas

There are a couple spaces left if your company is interested in partnering as a sponsor. Send Katie an email for more information

DESIGN PLAN  | LOOKING BACK

When I first started this project back in 2006 (originally it was a class I taught at Creating Keepsakes University) I used a 12 x 12 album with divided pockets (originally a Scrapworks product if I remember right). Each spread represented one day and each pocket documented a particular topic: food, gratitude, work, observations and then stuff (collect bits of paper pieces from your life to add to collages that were then slipped into the pockets).

Here's a look at that first Week In The Life album:

The idea was to document all these specific topics (with photos and words using Daily Sheets) over the course of seven days and then come together in class to create the album.

We worked in what I call "production-style" where we created all the cards for food, then all the cards for work and so on.

It was a lot of work but it was such an awesome project.

And man is it fun to look back on today.

Over the last few years I've changed things up and simplified things - especially as digital and hybrid (printing out digital elements to use in paper scrapbooking) have gained momentum.

2007 | Created for Creating Keepsakes University event. This one also had two inserts that included gratitude images + a collage of "stuff" on the opposite side.

2008 | See completed album here.

2010 | See completed album here.

2011 | View completed album here.

2012 | View completed album here.

DESIGN PLAN 2013

For the last few years I've been using a Vanilla 8.5 inch x 11 inch 3-ring album from We R Memory Keepers. Inside you'll usually find 9-pocket divided page protectors sandwiched in-between regular sized page protectors. For this project you also need an extra set of 8.5x11 page protectors to have enough pages for a spread each day of the week.

I'll be sticking with this same basic plan this year and got my album and page protectors in the mail from Scrapbook.com this week.

I'll also be using the same set of Daily Pages to document my words for the seven days. You can download those for free here: Daily Pages.

For the last few years I have designed layered templates to use as the foundation of my album (these are available as either 8.5x11 or 12x12). The new set can be seen below and is available at Designer Digitals now. 

One thing to note is that I did include both "my" and "our" life options in these layered template sets (simply turn off either layer in Photoshop/Elements to remove the one you don't want). I'll have more details on just how to do that with a video tutorial coming soon.

These layered template sets include 15 layered templates: one title page, seven daily intro pages, and seven photo collage pages for mixing & matching. Here's a peek at the additional preview images (all are included with the one package):

In addition to these digital pages I usually include more traditional products inside the 9-pocket divided page protectors. I don't have a specific plan for exactly how I'm going to use those just yet, but I'm pretty sure it will include some journaling, some see-through elements, and some other embellishments. I'll share more about that as I create my own plan.

INCORPORATING WEEK IN THE LIFE INTO PROJECT LIFE®

I know many of you out there are loving the process of Project Life® and might have an interest in simply playing along in that album during this same week. I've designed two sets of 4x6 cards - one that includes "my life" and one that includes "our life." These sets include PSD (for editing), PNG, and a printable PDF for easy printing.

These will be available at Designer Digitals on Friday:

I'm starting to get really excited about this project once again. These albums are some of my favorites because they really do detail our daily lives during each of the specific weeks. Such an amazing thing to look back on over the years.

For even more information and specific links to all my previous posts go here: Week In The Life.

I hope you'll consider joining me!