A Week In The Life - Wrap Up

Back in April, I participated in Ali Edwards "Week in the Life" project as many of you remember.  Last weekend, I finally wrapped up my album.  Today, a couple pages from that album were included in Ali's final  reader submissions post on the 2010 project found here.  It is fair to say I was ecstatic.  You can find the entire album from the front cover to the last page here via our Picasa album.   Below are a few sample pages and some explanations of my overall strategy.

I chose an 8.5x11 horizontal album as last time.  This is really the only project that I've used albums of this shape and size for and I generally like that.  The cover had a pocket for a title. I added this one at the very end of the project to complement the overall feel of the album and I think it may be my favorite part.

The first interior page has a title page that uses the flower punches you'll see throughout as well as papers repeated  on the subsequent pages.  I don't quite love the title page, but needed to finish so I'm letting that go as I'm very please with the remainder.

Each day of the week includes one journaling page like this that is largely made from the blog posts you read here.  For each, I used the "Story of Today" digital template Ali used in the 2008 version of this project.  I flipped it on its side and used the larger portion for text rather than photos as she did.  On the right, you'll see I stamped a circle using a pop bottle over the appropriate day. The date on each page is also stamped.  The flowers all come from the same papers and same punch so the design doesn't distract from the story and photos.

The opposing page is a photo collage.  I made these each day in the downloadable (free) version of Picasa.  It is incredibly easy, but there isn't a tremendous amount of control over placement or sizing.  This actually was sort of nice in that it kept the fiddling to a minimum.  You can, however, make some changes and have it shuffle the arrangement until you find something you like. It was quick and easy, but I'm very pleased with the results.

 I printed all the collages via Scrapbookpictures.com.  It was my first time using  this site and I really liked it.  The shipping was inexpensive and they printed in many sizes, including the 8.5x11 ratio I wanted and wasn't finding elsewhere.  I also printed them with black edges (see collage below) which added a nice finished look.

The final piece of the puzzle were a few pages at the end that were made up of photos by theme.  These included pictures from our garden, food from the week, the farm trip, and our home. Each has a bit of journaling on why that theme is important. There is one sample on Ali's blog and another here.

I'm really please with how it all flows together and the end project.  It is a lot of work, but I so love looking back at it and having this brief moment captured.  This is a very weird week to have done this project in that so many unusual things were going on, but perhaps that makes it even better.  I hope you enjoy the pictures and thanks for playing along.