Week In The Life™ 2017 | How I Get Started On My Album

After a full week of documentation for Week In The Life™ I generally like to take a few days off just to take care of other stuff that needs attention and let the week's words and stories settle.

Then I start. 

I just start. 

Starting can totally be the hardest part. What in the world do you do first? There's not a right or wrong answer to this question and the more you embark on projects like this the more comfortable you will become with your own process and flow. Some people like to wait until they've printed all their photos and filled all their pockets to do their title pages, some people like to do it before the documentation phase even begins, and some people like to do it to get them going with their album after the documentation phase. 

This year I decided to begin with my title and reason why pages. They are super simple and I love them. 

Edited // I see that I have the end date wrong on the image above - I will fix that today!

I went with two full-page 6x8 photos each with text (Remington Noiseless font) typed on the photos in Photoshop before printing here at home on my Canon MG7720 printer using Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Photo Paper. 

Here's a look at each page within my album: 

I didn't share this photo that I took last week here on the blog because at first I thought I might use it for an upcoming Story Theme (you can hear me talk more about that in the video below) but as I was looking back through my photos from the week I thought it was the perfect way to start off this album and I love all the white space above the towels. I added our names and the date and then one of the chipboard pieces form the Week In The Life Kit™. 

For my Reason Why page I really wanted to include a photo with all of us and this was the only one I got during my documentation week. It's a super silly selfie of all seven of us and I love it. I did some edits in Photoshop to make the sky taller in order to create a home for my journaling and title and one of the rubber circles from the Week In The Life™ Kit. I use red line super sticky tape to adhere that rubber circle to my photo.  

My journaling for this page says: "A crazy, fun group of seven humans, each with our own thoughts and feelings and opinions and stories. This is our first year all under the same roof and it’s been quite an experience becoming “us.” This project is a look at what was going on and the comings and goings during one week in our house in April of 2017. Bring on the stories."

The "we are" word art is very similar to one you can find in the I, We, You digital package. 

A couple notes about what I'm using: 

• PRINTER // Canon MG7720 // This is a really affordable printer that has been great both for printing photos and for printing digital products. 
• PHOTO PAPER // Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Photo Paper 8.5x11 // I use this paper both in my Canon printer as well as my oversize Epson printer when I print larger pages (Epson SureColor P400).
• Week In The Life™ Kit

Here's a video overview about my starting place for bringing my words and photos together into this album: 

In the video you'll hear me mention both my Lens Of Joy workshop and my Hybrid workshop for getting significantly more details on my overall memory keeping process. Lens Of Joy is great for learning more about looking through the lens of your camera, establishing your story, uploading, editing, printing, etc. Hybrid is great for learning the basics of working with digital scrapbooking products on traditional memory keeping projects. 

Next up for me will be formatting my stories. I'm going to do something similar to what I did last year and take all my stories for the day and bring them into one block of text vs. adding words to each photo (which I've also done in the past). Remember, don't make it more complicated than it needs to be - and what's simple for me might be complicated for you. 

After I format my stories I'll move on to dealing with my photos for each day. I like to work one day at a time so I'll most likely start with Monday and whatever I do for that day (in terms of design) will be repeated for the other six days. I don't reinvent the wheel each day - I create a design formula for myself and I repeat it for each day. This makes the whole process a lot smoother. 

Two issues that often come up for people at the start of this phase of the project include: (1) attempting to choose which photos to include in the album and having a hard time making those decisions (usually meaning you have more than could ever fit into an album) or (2) feeling like you don't have enough photos and you're not sure how to go about this next phase if you don't have enough photos even to fill the pockets that come with the album.

Both are valid challenges, but don't let them stop you from moving forward. 

Remember, and this is super important, you don't have to use every single photo you took during the week for this project. Did you take five different shots of one activity? Pick and use just one photo to tell the story of that part of your day. Look for the photo that is most in alignment with the story you want to tell. It might be the setting (the environment) or it might be the subject (person, pet, etc) or it might simply be the feeling you get when you look at the photo. I generally pick photos that work together to tell an overview story of our day. Something from the morning, something from mid-day, and something from the evening with a few others thrown in. I like to have a mix of close up shots and far away shots (not usually of the same scene because space is limited) to tell the story of my day.

Also super important, you could totally do this project with one photo per day and just a whole lot of words documenting your day. Maybe that's what you end up doing with what you were able to collect this year and then next year you try to get more photos. You don't have to throw the whole project out just because you don't have enough photos for every single day. Think about the overall story you want to tell about your week and make that the focus of your album. 

Have fun and let me know if you have any questions about my starting place!