Daily Life Scrapping Weekend - Day 3

I had a busy, happy weekend, what about you? After the launch of my fanpage I went to the Chinese New year party - and, judging by the crowd, it was somehow looking like China, lol. We ate at a restaurant we never went before, and then walked around the festival. We lost the parade this year, but saw the lion blessing some stores and getting feed with lettuce!
Today, I went to do a test for a graphic design college scolarship - they´re one of the best GD courses in town, and I´m not sure if I was good enough on the test - Their test didn´t have a specific habilities part, and covered all subjects of High School - and I didn´t have phisics on high school and had very few chemistry, since the place I studied was a humanities school for kids teachers... I scored enough in the multiple choices test to pass, but I need to be one of the top ranked to get full scholarship and I can´t afford if I don´t get it. When we finished (my hubby was still trying the same test, but for the Marketing school), we went to the 60th birthday party of my sister-in-law´s father, in a amazing restaurant, and had great fun! I for sure have a bunch of new memories to scrap, right?

Today´s theme is a question that once in a while I hear in different places: Where to find inspiration when you want to scrap but you´re not sure how to start? I´ve made a list of links that I have used for inspiration last month

Pinterest: Is it the worst internet time consumer, or the scrapper´s best friend: May be both. Here are my must go boards for pocket style/daily life scrapping inspiration:

-The Emily Files P52 2013 board - she completed it! Sometimes it´s good to remember that it´s possible. She don´t use blocked style, so her board have nice ideas to make some different stuff;
-Marisa Lerin Layout Love daily life - really inspirational and eccletic in style;
-Shanyrvr digi scrap Project life - she has great findings for pocket style;
-Cynthia Ludow Project life - Great inspiration for pocket style both in digital and hybrid/paper works.
-Amy Owens Project life - Amy has collected different kinds of inspirational stuff on her album, including photo inspirations, quotes, prompts, and, as you can imagine, pocket style pages.

Blogs: I admit I don´t follow too many bloggers that talk about Project life, but this post would be incomplete if I didn´t mention the freebies, layouts and long posts about Project life I read on Scrumptiously during last year.

Challenges at stores: I love to browse store forums for challenges, they always help me keep moving on my goals. Two stores I follow started challenges related to daily life scrapping this year, and, so far, they´re going very well: With Love Studio and Scraps and Pieces.

Now It´s your turn:

Show me where you find inspiration for daily life scrapping on the internet, and also your own places where you post your pages or inspiration boards. I want to see a little bit of everything: Blogs, pinterest boards, flickr or facebook groups, challenges on other communities... You may comment it here or post on my new Facebook Fanpage!

Daily life scrapping weekend day 2

Hello! Today I´ll talk a little about templates.

There are three kinds of useful templates for those who are working on daily life albuns: The WordArt templates, and Layout Templates. Word art templates come in black .pngs and can be recolored to match the colors of your page. I´m planning to do a tutorial on how to work with them in some days. Journal card templates may, or may not, be layered, but are also made in a way you can make your custom stuff with the colors you´re working.

Layout templates are the main theme of today´s post. They usually come in different layered file formats, in a way you can clip your papers and photos. They are intended to save time and help you preview how your layout will come out even before you get started on them. For me, the most difficult pages to create are the "blocked" style ones. I think it´s difficult to imagine where to put each photo without one of them. And, when I try, I make a mess on the layers when I deceide to move something for other part of the page. Fortunatelly, there are many designers that offer templates specially designed for people doing daily life albuns, either on blocked/p365 style, or on project life/pocket style.

To give an example, I´ll show you the newest release from Joyful Expressions: This kit is called Project Life: February templates (clicking on the preview you´ll go straight to the store where you can buy it):

Project life template series from Joyful Expressions are made for up to seven photos in the same page. If you don´t want to put that many pictures in a single page, you can make paper blocks, clipping different papers to them and either leaving them blank, using them to journal, or using embelishments on them. Jennnifer´s goal is to make one template pack for each month, releasing when the month is turning. Those templates are very intuitive to use, and also to made small changes if you need. This was January´s pack:

And this is the layout I made with bottom right template:

You can notice that I changed some things on the template: I switched places between the long journal block and the three bottom picture places, and I reduced the space for the second background paper, in a way that the bottom paper shows a bit more, and also added two elies on the big journal block. I am very satisfied with this layout, and I think I´d never do it without this template. I mixed kits again this time: some things come from Snow Capades (can you see that I´m in love with this kit, right? I´m using it a lot) and others are from Rainy Days by my friend Melo Vrijhof. The wordart on the bottom right is also from Joyful Expressions.

Extra hint: Do you wanna try Joyful Expressions Word Art Templates? There is a great word art pack waiting for you at Joyful Expressions blog. 

Welcome to the (first?) Daily Life Scrap Week(end)

I thought it could be a nice idea to share some insights about daily life scrapping with you, as I´m very excited with the progress of my 2014 album and I see this excitement about Project Life in different communities I´m at. So, as I have plenty of things to write about, I deceided to dedicate a week  some weekende to post about it. The posts will be different from each other - some will contain texts, maybe tutorials, products I tried and liked, and whatnot... Maybe there´s a freebie or two waiting for you all someday too! Before I start writing my heart out - yes, I´m in a wordy phasis - I´d like to invite you to interact here at the  blog: Do you have any doubt about daily life scrapping? Do you have something you´re desperately seeking and can´t find? Do you have advice for me (I´d like to here!) or maybe want to invite me for a CT guest spot? Don´t feel ashamed of comenting, or even sending me e-mails (to loriensworkshop at gmail dot com).

Daily Life Scrap Week: Day 1 - My Experiences and what I´m doing

If you are following my blog, you probably know that I am trying to put a daily life album together this year. You may even remember that in the beginning of last December I was scrapping photos from January at my daily life album for that year (if you don´t remember that post, check it - theres something you may there). I stopped the 2013 album at Chinese New Year (Last weekend of January).

It wasn´t my first time trying to put a daily life album. In 2012 I tried a hybrid A4 shaped. Take a look on a pages I´ve done for that album - oh my, I like the digital better, lol:

But, guess when this album stopped being done to never get touched again? Yes, at same time as the 2012 one, at Chinese New Year.

Another thing I tried to do last year to document my life was to write, at the end of each month, seven random words things about the month, to put as the month introduction at the album in a page with a photo of myself that month (so I try not to forget to have pics of myself). This one was made with Hey!Robot kit by Scrappiness Designs:

At the first months, it worked like a charm. But then, I was feeling that only words weren´t enough. And I lost one of the months words (I thought I´ve wrote them on my personal blog, but I didn´t), I had a month that couldn´t simply be described in few words, and, in October I´ve given up doing this. But the idea still sounds good to me, just needed some tweaks to keep working... Now that you know what I´ve done before, time to know what I´m doing this year.

How I plan to manage my 2014 life album:

1) Like on the other years, I´ll avoid putting pictures of my cats on life photobook. I take lots of pictures of them, and if I put them on the album I could easily have more cats than people and places on the pics. They will appear only if it´s somehow important, or as placeholders.

2)Also like other years, I assume that my everyday life is made of routine, but not only about it. I´ll try to keep a balance between routine and occasions, alowing myself to scrap about what I please. Although I admire lots of people who take photos everyday and do p356-style albuns, it doesn´t suit my style, at least for now. And, if I have lots of pretty photos of a specific day, I may chose to put more photos on that day (and none of other day).

3) I won´t divide my album in weeks, as I don´t feel my life is divided like that, and I´ll give me the freedom to make whole pages for days I really enjoy - even if they don´t fall on the same double page on the photobook, and, at same time, I´ll give myself the freedom to scrap about totally different things on the same page. I also allow myself to work with two or more kits at the same double spread and to change kits for the next double spread as I please (I can keep the kit from the last one or not).

I deceided this based on what made me procrastinate with 2013 book - sometimes, I was overworried about form, or how to make all the photos of the same thing fall on the same page, that I ended up on a creative block. 

I guess pictures will help you understand better on what kind of freedom I´m allowing myself. Do you remember this spread? It´s for January first (on the left) and second (on the right), made with Snow Capades by Joyful Expressions and I shown it some posts ago:

It´s a super traditional P366 spread, right? Looks what comes next:

Left page is still from Jan 2nd, right side is from Jan 3rd (yes, it´s same event on that hybrid page I shown you above, I attend to it at same place every year, this year was the thenth) and a journal description about the next few days. What is more, this page is made of a blend of different kits from different designers I found on Pixel Scrapper. As I have the option of downloading single elements there, I almost never download the full kits, getting only what I´ll use (and often I get the assets while I´m making the layout...). If you are interested, the full list of credits is here.

4) I will use lots of templates, to help keep pages good looking and in hope that this will save me some time - what isn´t still happening, lol. I take more time on this kind of page than on a 1photo+cluster traditional ones. I´ll talk a little bit more about templates tomorrow.

5) To the opening page of each month, I´ll keep the 1 photo+journalling model, but, for the journaling, I´m planning a flexible list of topics that may be covered, that includes the month´s weather, my mood, what I´m doing that month, the most meborable days and so on. I made the January page this night, based on the instructions of a Scraps´N´Pieces Speed Scrap, hosted by Amy´s Designs:

This page was made with The Best is Yet to Come blogtrain portions by Jessica Art-Design, Scrumptiously; Digi Dewi designs and Catherine Oslon. If you want to check this blogtrain, the list is here and some portions will only be available till tomorrow.

Thanks for reading this long post, I´d really like to hear for you about (daily) life scrapping or anything else you want to comment!