Week In The Life™ 2022 | Special Guest Linda Jordan

Hi everyone, it’s Linda! I finished up my Week in the Life album and put it on the shelf alongside the others I’ve created over the years. Each year this project is a huge labor of love and each year I’m so thrilled to have it completed. Today, I’m super excited to be here to share a look into my album with you. 

I make it a point to always document Week in the Life along with the community, even if the timing isn’t great for my personal life. As a result, over the years, in addition to documenting  ordinary life, I’ve ended up with birthdays, vacations, celebrations, and purchasing a new house all in Week in the Life albums. The week that Ali chose this year, again, wasn’t great for me. I have to admit, I am just in a rough season of life, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth documenting!

I truly believe that everyone’s life is worth documenting, no matter what you are going through, and that you should always be the star of your own story. This year, in particular though, I made a conscious decision to focus my album almost entirely on myself. My daughter is seventeen so that means she’s not always central to what I do on a daily basis. Additionally, I am going through a divorce, so I wanted to focus more on myself than others in my household. 

I use Week in the Life as an opportunity to not only capture the active details of what is happening in my life, but to also make a point to capture specific details about the way things are right now. To do this, I create a plan going into the week that I call a “scavenger hunt” where I search for specific things each day to photograph, beyond what is just happening. This can be something simple, such as capturing your outfit each day or your morning cup of coffee, or something a little more elaborate, such as creating flat lays of objects or using specific prompts each day.

Going into the week, I created a checklist for myself to keep on track with capturing all of my scavenger hunt list items. I have to admit, I was a bit ambitious this year and didn’t get everything, but I was close! When it came time to put my album together I feel like I had a bit too much to fit, so in the future I will probably focus on a few less items.

The scavenger hunt list items I ended up including were:

something circular (to punch out as a circle) my daily planner a flat lay of objects I use in my daily life my outfit of the day a space in my daily life (e.g. my craft room, my cubicle at work) screen shots of things I use my phone for the news via Today’s Front Page specific prompts from the vellum pieces in this year’s release

After I captured all the details during the week, I created a formula to follow each day. This helped me get my album completed. I also know that some people like to put together day by day (e.g. Monday finished, then Tuesday, etc.) but, for me, I prefer to do all of a specific item. So I put together all of my cover photos first, then all of my journaling, etc.

One of the fun items I decided to do this year was document flat lays of objects that I use in my everyday life. I came up with 7 categories to document, one for each day. To capture these photos, I laid out all of the objects on a white foam core poster board in indirect sunlight and took a photo straight down using my iPhone. I then brightened the photos up a bit in photoshop elements. I’m also going to let you in on a little secret… I didn’t take these photos one per day. I spent some time on a couple afternoons during the week capturing these photos. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t happen on the specific day, instead it’s important that they happened at this point in time in my life.

Another item I decided to capture was a photo of specific spaces in my life. I paired these photos with large alpha stamping and some journaling about that space in my life. These included: my car, my cubicle at work, my bedroom, my daughter’s bedroom, my craft room, the kitchen, and my house. 

In deciding how I wanted to style my album this year, I decided to take a very hybrid approach and add a lot of details before I printed out my photos. Almost all of my photos were taken with my iPhone and they were all edited using the Color Story app using the Hollywood filter. 

For some of my photos, I decided to add digital handwritten text by opening my photos in the procreate app on my iPad and adding some doodled journaling with my apple pencil. My favorite pages in the album ended up being the final photos of each day where I just doodled a bunch of words that encapsulated the story of the day on top of one of my favorite photos from the day.

Once it came time to assemble my album, most of the work was done after I had edited and printed my photos. I added minimal embellishments and really let the photos be the focus. This helped me keep this project manageable and allow it to fit (barely) in one album.

Each day follows the same formula of pages. A few days I had to adjust my formula slightly to accommodate a few extra or a few less photos (is it just me, or does Friday always have the least photos?) but generally they all follow the same pattern which keeps the album cohesive and helps me get it finished. It feels so good to get this album completed!

Here is a look at all of the pages for Sunday:

I hope you enjoyed this look into my process & album and that it inspires you to finish up your album!  

You can see a full flip through of my album on my youtube channel here.

You can also find me on instagram: @lindalovescreating 

And on my YouTube channel.