It’s been soooooo long since I’ve put together a project life spread. Remember last year, when I toyed with the idea of switching to an 8.5×11 format? That didn’t stick. I love the size and it’s turned out to be the ideal format for documenting their school life but for our annual albums, it just wasn’t working. Then, for a brief moment I thought about going to a 6×8. But deep down I knew that size would never work for me. I like including a lot of photos and I can only imagine how many albums I’d go through just to document one year.
I then experimented with the 9×12 format. Honestly, I thought I was going to love it. For someone that thinks 12×12 is too big but 8.5 is too small, 9×12 seems to be the logical choice. But after I put together that layout and didn’t love it I got to thinking maybe it’s not the size that I’m been struggling with, but the actual pocket configurations. The 3×4 ups just isn’t clicking with me as much. And I’m sort of obsessed with the 4×6 portrait orientation right now.
Enter Design D pocket pages. It has four 4×6 UP pockets and four 3×4 wide pockets. I rarely take portrait oriented photos so I’ve never given this pocket design much consideration. But…it turns out, the 4×6 up spaces are ideal for diptychs (which I love including in pl spreads).
I used templates from 4×6 Photo Templates Vol. 4 to make the currently photo inserts and the diptychs.
Because I had a lot of photos I wanted to include, I also used a Design H insert.
Here I used a journaling card from Say Yes To set. The original card said “happiness” which I didn’t think fit all that well with my journaling so I made a “found” label and used that to cover the happiness text.
I think this might be my new go-to formula for Project Life this year.
PRODUCTS USED
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Pocket Pages
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Photo Templates
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Journal Cards
Say Yes To and More Or Less and striped transparency card from On My Desk
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Photo Editing Tools
Photos processed using presets Replichrome Presets or PicTapGo, both by Get Totally Rad.
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Project Life is a memory keeping system created by Becky Higgins. Read more about it HERE. All of my project life entries can be found HERE or browse the entire project life gallery HERE.
Great idea! It pains me whenever I have to crop off some details at the edge of a photo for the 3×4 orientation so this is a great solution. I also like how Design D allows you to include the natural “space” in the landscape orientation (vs cropping a landscape photo down to a portrait) so it feels less cramped but with the same number of pictures.
Yes, you said everything that was on my mind…except you did so much more eloquently. 🙂 Thank you so much for stopping by!
I absolutely love this. So simple and clean. This is what I have been looking for. Thank you!
Thank you so much! Btw…took a peek at your blog today and I was drooling over your hand lettering pieces. Your work is beautiful!!
I adore Design D. Use it all the time.
And…I adore EVERYTHING you do Manda!! Your PL is one of my all time FAVES.
Beautiful layouts!
If you don’t mind sharing, can you please specify which font you use?
Thanks 🙂
I love the simplistic design of these pages & would also love to know the font used too.
Sam
http://rainboweunoia.blogspot.com
This is just… WOW. There are no words.
Liz! Welcome back your gorgeous PL spreads. I’m with you on the 12×12. The albums are cumbersome, but they do allow so much versatility. I’ve been such a stickler for the Design A pages, but since I like to include looooots of photos (and mine are mostly landscape), using Design D might really work for me! I’ve been using a lot of Design E because I love all the pockets, but I don’t have a ton of portrait-style 3x4s. Thanks for posting – this is really inspiring 🙂 xo, Catherine
Hi Liz,
I am a fan of your work. Everyday as soon as I log in to my system at work, apart from google news, paisleepress.com is the next thing I open. I am really in love with your work. I want to create a project life album but the problem is that I live in India, and I am not able to get the albums and kits shipped to India. 🙁 . Is there a way by which I can get these stuffs shipped to India.
I’m a big fan of the project life photo books, they really are a wonderful way of combining photos with text and other items full of memory. Love the composition here, really beautifully done!