Week In The Life™ 2021 | Special Guest Jennie Rey

Hi! Jennie here! It’s done! My 2021 Week in the Life is in the books! 

As you might have read in my previous post. I was never this prepared in the 12 years I participated in this project. I had my ‘design formula’ ready to go and my album all planned out. During the documenting week I had my daily sheets at hand and meticulously wrote everything down. It helps a lot but it still took me a couple of weeks and every spare minute I had to finish this album because this is a VERY BIG project! It takes time and that’s okay! Having my finished album in front of me makes me so incredibly over the moon happy and I just can’t put it on the shelf yet! I am so very happy you are willing to look at my album because here in the house everybody but me is pretty done with Week in the Life (but why tho..!) so thank you!! 

On the last day of the documenting week I was able to get everybody in one place and get a self timer photo of all of us and isn’t it the best way to start my album?! I cropped it into a half circle in Photoshop and used one of the digitals from the Week in the Life Prep Day to make a transparency to put on top of the photo. (If you haven’t purchased the Prep Day yet, you really should! So much amazing content!) On the backside I used a digital patterned paper from Vicki Boutin and another Prep Day digital file for my reason why, the circle on top is a journaling card from the digital 2017 December Stories by the Month kit, that card really says it all!

I pretty much stuck to my plan and started with translating my scribbles from the week into seven portions of journaling per day (that seemed to fit best) and stamped the times on top of my journaling. It works best for me to do these little tasks in batches, so I typed out all of my journaling, stamped the times on top of it, assembled my half circle piece, attached it to the page using washi tape and so on! 

Next step was to select and edit my photos. I started with a photo of our dinner for on the backside of the plastic half circle and then a big 6x8 photo to start each day with. I also selected two photos for each day and cropped those into a half (8,25 inch high) circle and attached those back to back. 

Next I had to select photos to crop into quarter circles for in my 2x2’s page protector and I did struggle a bit with this portion! I had planned to randomly put photos, ‘stuff of life’ and die cut pieces in the pockets but that didn’t work out that well! Not every photo can be cut into a quarter circle in a random direction, so eventually I made two different layered templates in Photoshop to be able to plan my photo placement. Here are links to my templates: template one and template two.  I also decided to fill one side with photos and the other side with my collected ‘stuff of life’. In one of the pockets I put the fabric circle with the day on it and on the backside a piece of patterned paper with a heart sticker from Ali’s mini kit. 

Because those quarter circles looked pretty busy and to make sure they stayed in place I decided to make transparencies in the colors of the plastic half circles and cut those into 2x2 squares. I attached a photo on one side and a piece of ephemera (cropped into a quarter circle) on the other side. I think it does look less busy and I really like that there still is a see through effect! 

To also make it a bit more easy for the eye I decided to use a photo of the sky behind the 2x2’s page protector. I took a photo of the sky each day and made a screenshot of the weather forecast: it is really funny to see how changeable the weather can be here in The Netherlands. 

I selected two more photos to go back to back in the shape of a half circle for each day (I really love those larger photos) and for each member of the family I selected a 3x4 photo and a 4x6 photo and dedicated one page each day to that family member. They each were so kind to fill out the ‘this day looked like this’ card (and we had a lot of fun filling one out for our cat!) and I asked them to choose one word to describe themselves. They came up with a lot of crazy answers and I did warn them that it would end up in the book! I used one of the digitals from the Prep Day to make a 3x4 transparency and used the digitals from the main kit to make a few more of those die cut circles, and stamped their names, their age and the chosen word on top. On the backside I put a circle of the same Vicki Boutin paper with their embossed initial on it. I also filled out the ‘today’ card with a few fun facts about their lives right now. 

 Last step was to include one of the layered templates for each day. I did already decide on which one to use for the day when I was selecting the photos, some days there were specific topics that deserved their own page (a photo shoot, my son’s engagement, the self timer shots of all of us) and the other templates I used to document what I was watching that week, random screenshots from my phone, things I overheard during the week and the one with the cameras I used for the projects I was working on that week. I added the same colorful patterned paper as a background for all of them and added a digital file from the Prep Day on some of them. 

And that’s it!! Another Week in the Life album to add to my growing collection and I couldn’t be happier! I am so grateful for this project (Ali, you are the best!) because this time next year, nothing will be the same!

Thank you so much for taking a look at my album! A sped up flip through can be found on my feed on Instagram: @thereypie or find a bit slower version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PbuEwc-qioM

Related Posts

Sign in or sign up to comment.

8 thoughts

  1. justlisa says…
    06/09/2021

    wow! I just love your album and consistency! great ideas!

    Reply 0 Replies
  2. Eljay86 says…
    06/09/2021

    Thanks for sharing!! Great ideas :).

    Reply 0 Replies
  3. inouyeflo says…
    06/09/2021

    Wow! So many words, so many memories! Love it!

    Reply 0 Replies
  4. mcbce says…
    06/09/2021

    Love the idea of a sky photo with the weather forecast each day. I hope I can remember that for next year! Thanks for sharing your beautiful album.

    Reply 0 Replies
  5. Jeannew says…
    06/09/2021

    This is just incredible! So creative and full of color and life. I love it!

    Reply 0 Replies
  6. Adyleesmommy says…
    06/10/2021

    Amazing! Love it!

    Reply 0 Replies
  7. meegs says…
    06/11/2021

    Lovely album! Also, many thanks for the templates! Can you check the second template? It doesn't seem to contain the template data when I download it. Thanks again!

    Reply 0 Replies
  8. PrinzessinN says…
    07/19/2021

    I love your album. Could you please check the second download? I receive the message that this is not a valid psd file. Thank you.

    Reply 0 Replies

Sign in or sign up to comment.