New Year!

Welcome to 2015.

Have a few things to share with you!

December album was a success! I took off on the idea to put all our Christmas cards in a ring album and built some story telling of the month around it. Got it completed yesterday! I'm thrilled with how it turned out and most importantly it helped rekindle my enjoyment of taking pictures and gave me my functional Photoshop refresher I needed to hit the ground running with our annual album in the style of Project Life.

Towards the middle of the month Ali Edwards launched monthly Story Kits in Digital format. This is a monthly themed class with guidance on the theme and several elements to help you put together pages or an album, whatever you wish, to get more variety and focus in our story telling. I love writing, her approach, and the prompts to help flesh out the thoughts I have based on the themes. These kits are also available in physical products, and they are beautiful as well! Digital just seems easier for me.

I plan to not just document the everyday as I've become accustomed, but also keep the monthly themes going throughout the rest of the year now that they are somewhat top of mind. Each month I'll do an introduction page or two+ with words and photos, then revisit the theme as the year goes on. For example, 'Firsts' was the theme for December 15-January 14. Going forward, as a relevant 'first' comes to mind or occurs, I'll use the digital elements, photos, words tell the story and relate it back to the original theme. I'm hoping this, and keeping my word of the year, 'balance', more present through words and photos will break up the monotony I was finding in recent years with this album.

Here's a little glimpse into the first couple pages of the annual album. I'm not much for sharing too many of our personal family moments and photos on a public blog but if a neutral page comes up or I can block out personal info as the year goes on, I'll certainly do so. I think it's helpful for people new to this whole thing to see how it comes together.

I've chosen some kits from both Becky Higgins and templates and elements from Cathy Zielske which are more earthtone in color. I'm also employing the lots of whitespace philosophy. It saves time and looks more clean. I tend to be all colorful in the beginning of the year and more plain as it goes on. I'm not too worried about matchy match this year....just whatever strikes me at the time.
Questions?
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C.