Project Life

Week 1 of #VeraDocumentsLife

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It’s Day 9 of #the100dayproject and Hallelujah! I am still on track.

  • Day 2 – Week 1 page
  • Day 3 – Week 2 page
  • Day 2 – January 1 page
  • Day 8 – Week 4 page
  • Day 4 – Week 3 page
  • Day 7 – My Yearbook Plan
  • Stitches & Words | Day 1 - Yearbook Cover
    Day 1 – Yearbook Cover

What I’m Liking

  • Printing photos – I’ve decided that I actually love my Canon Selphy printer. It’s not the best quality, but it definitely gets the job done.
  • Recalling stories – Thanks to my Passion Planner for making this task a bit easier.
  • Alphabet stickers! – Really, letter stickers are all the embellishment I need. But I am loving chipboard elements and vinyl stickers too.
  • The Project Life App –
    • This is where I check if the photos I have are good to print (the app alerts you if the resolution is too low for a 4×6 print (or a 12×12 if that’s the template you’re using)).
    • I also use this to collage two photos into a 4×6 print, to be cut after printing and inserted in the 3×4 pockets of my pages.
    • The free form text tool for adding words to my photos. The app allows the addition of .ttf font files and already I am thinking of downloading other font types for future use (that can easily go crazy).
  • This daily creative activity inspires even more creativity.
    • I organized my small stash of alphabet stickers and other embellishments!
    • I am also already wondering about the other albums I want to work on – what form they will be in (printing pages or bound photo albums).
    • Coming up with ways I can add more stories into my pages even when I don’t have the photos to go with them.

What I Don’t Like So Much

  • Some days I spend more than an hour working on this project – I love every second of it and wish I could do it all day – ha! But I am trying to be more conscious of NOT spending TOO MUCH TIME on this. The only way to sustain this for the full 100 days (and beyond – for future projects) is to NOT think it requires much effort and time (and money).

Finding Joy

I can’t think of anything else, really, that I don’t like about doing this project. The truth is, I am enjoying it. And I am finding joy. It also inspires me to live a life worthy of those pages I make.

Last weekend, the husband and I explored the streets of Binondo to sample good food. We made new memories. It would have been easier to stay at home the entire weekend – eat, sleep, Netflix, repeat – and that would have been okay too. But actively documenting our lives through photos and stories moved us to do more.

I have yet to be caught up with this year’s book, when I do, it will only take once a week to stay current. I will then have the rest of the 100 days to work on my other albums. Can’t wait.

#the100dayproject – Vera Documents Life!

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For the third year in a row, I am signed up for The 100 Day Project. Check out the link to find out more, I hope you decide to join in or follow along.

Beginning April 2, I shall be embarking on a journey of a hundred days of memory keeping.

Memory what? Memory Keeping!

Are you familiar with Timehop? Or the Memories app on Facebook? It shows you something from your feed from the same day of each year in the past, for as far back as when you joined Facebook. It could be one of your own posts, or one you were tagged in. Honestly, love that feature!

It’s an automated way of showing us what we were doing, thinking, or even found interesting in the past. We have no control over what shows up though; sometimes even stuff we didn’t mean to memorialize just come up. Truly, it digs up stuff we forgot we ever posted about.

Still, it’s a pretty nifty app, don’t you think? There are times when it shows a past aspiration, a dream project, or even just something I said wanted to do or a place I wanted to visit. Sometimes that reminder is enough to push me into action (in case I didn’t take action before). Sometimes it’s a strong reminder of what I had already forgotten.

What if the app is discontinued? What if Facebook shuts down or you lose access to your account?

I have just been notified of my 10 years on Facebook. If I get locked out of my account, how will I get back those 10 years’ worth of posts, albums, memories?

Memory Keeping is anything you do to document your current life or past experiences, so it can later on be reviewed and/or enjoyed. It could be your way of telling your story and making your mark. It can be a piece of family history that gets passed on from generation to generation.

Many of us treat our social media feeds as the sole avenue for memory keeping. We setup albums of our most memorable occasions and experiences. When we’ve reached milestones, we mark the occasion by posting about it.

That’s all good, but if it’s the only way we preserve our memories, what happens when those sites go away? Have we learned anything from the demise of Multiply and Friendster? Is there another way we’re documenting our lives?

We take loads of photos everyday but apart from uploading to social media, most of the time those photos are just left sitting in your phone albums, or on computed hard drives. Who sees them? Don’t wait for first-hand experience when technology fails. I have lost plenty of photos due to computers crashing or hard drives failing. Sayang naman those photos.

This project is my way of preserving those memories and turning them into something tangible that we can enjoy now, and for years and years to come.

Project Goals

For many years I told myself I will be printing my photos and creating Project Life albums to record our life. I’ve amassed a lot of supplies and spent a lot of money towards this intention. So far though, I have one photobook for a day tour of a local museum, another one documenting my first ever 5k run with my girlfriends, and a 30 Days of Thankful album. I’ve got a few weeks’ documented for 2015, maybe 2 or 3 spreads from other years.

Here are some of my Memory Keeping goals:

  • Make a photobook of our Bangkok 2017 trip.
  • Make a photobook of our Taiwan 2018 trip.
  • Do a 2018 Yearbook.
  • Start and get caught up on our 2019 Yearbook.
  • Do something with our Wedding photos
  • Make a photobook of our Palawan 2018 trip, or include pages of it in our 2018 yearbook.
  • Track older photos and figure out a central storage (could be cloud-based) that will allow me to easily get them into books and printed.

I have no illusions of completing ALL of this in 100 days, but if I do, wouldn’t that be ever so SPECTACULAR? My goals for these hundred days though, would be:

  • To get started!
  • To do SOMETHING Memory Keeping related each and every day
    • Go through course/s in the BH CLassroom (I purchased the Photo Tips + Workflow class while it was on sale, but it’s still available on full price right now. Also thinking about getting the Yearbook class, on its final 20% off sale TODAY!)
    • Select + edit photos
    • Print photos
    • Work on Journalling
    • Put pages together
  • Use my existing supplies!
  • Share my progress.

#the100DayProject Inspiration

On Instagram, I follow the #the100dayproject to be inspired by others who are creating something every single day. When you do that it can be easy to feel intimidated about how beautiful others’ work can be, or how much progress they are making. Instead, I choose the inspiration that comes out of their accomplishments.

Here are some accounts or hashtags to checkout, and hopefully they move you to do your own #100dayproject:

#the100dayproject

Amanda of mooandboohandmade

Elise Joy (she’s so amazing, really a creativity/productivity peg!)

I’ll re-share others also on my Instagram in the coming days. 🙂

You can do any of the following to follow and support me as I document life:

  • Follow me on Instagram: http://instagram.com/verabear
  • Follow #veradocumentslife
  • I will figure out a way to share the URL of my blog’s Facebook page, haha 🙂

I hope you follow along and tag us if you decide to do your own 100 day project!

30 Days of Thankful – November 2017

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Finally, after years of just watching from the sidelines, I have completed a 30 Days of Thankful Album <happy dance!>.

Every November since 2012, Cathy Zielske has done this project “to help (you) remember all that is good, from the tiniest of things in this life to the most humongous, to everything in between.” Every year, I follow her posts with the full intention of joining in. In 2014, I even got as far as signing up for the private Facebook Group created for anyone who needs inspiration and support for completing their projects, yet year after year, I end up with nothing.

It doesn’t matter that it took me five months to complete an album that was meant to be done in 30 days – what matters is that I did it!

Here’s a flip-through video of my completed album:

I loved working on this album and being reminded to find joy in the smallest of things, and to be grateful always.

This project also helped me come to terms with how I’d like to approach memory keeping:

  • I love memory keeping and the Project Life system. I almost chucked off scrapbooking as something I would never really get around to doing. I have a lot of physical products, and I also have the App. It seemed like I would start an album, make a few pages, and then never finish anything. I thought it was something I already needed to give up and get off my plate so I didn’t have to feel bad about not accomplishing anything. Completing this project changed my mind.
  • Having a home printer is important for me to stay on track with documenting life. By the end of the first week, I had completed my cover and the first six pages. Then I ran out of Paper for my Canon Selphy printer. That really set me back big time. I know fully well that I can still build my title Cards and journalling, then add the photos later – but for me it needed to start with the printed photo. Not having the printed photo felt like a mental block from going forward with what needed to be done.
  • Color coordination and embellishments are not all that important to me. Although I had always admired scrapbookers who do great embellishments, and have cohesive album pages – I realized that mine didn’t have to look that way.
  • Stamps are wonderful tools that you can use over and over again for your pages, but I just can’t stamp effectively. Maybe my ink pads are low quality, or maybe they‘ve dried up or lost their pigment after I’ve had them so long and not used them. I don’t know. I may really just be awful at stamps.
  • Alpha and number stickers are LOVE. I don’t have a lot. When the self-imposed moratorium for spending on hobbies is lifted, I am getting more. Gifts are WELCOME too. 🙂
  • Maybe not everyone can read my handwriting but I’m not about to let crappy handwriting stop me from adding journalling to my pages.
  • Speaking of journalling – I didn’t plan it, but it just came naturally to journal in English. Next time, I’ll try to express myself in Filipino or TagLish (Tagalog-English).
  • Great photography would be awesome for my pages! But not having great photos is just another roadblock I’d rather not stop me. Not all my photos are great, but they are photos that show what life is right now, and THAT’s what’s important.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE DOING THIS ALBUM? I really, really do.

Supplies: 6×8 album, photo pocket pages, and assorted cards from Project Life by Becky Higgins

2 of 100 done!

My Project Life Corner

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Last week, I made a honey-do list for my Husband, and also for one myself. Both were lists of declutter and cleaning projects for the two of us. Each having designated areas around the house. 

The very next day, a Wednesday, the Husband dove right into it – not really minding the lists but just tackling pile after pile of stuff around our living area. 

  

I came home and got handed stuff to sort and a big bag to dump garbage in. And the dust clouds got stirred and lost items got found. 

 The biggest and happiest thing I got out of the exercise was this – my very own Project Life corner:  

I bought my very first PL core kit thru Amazon in 2011 but never really completed an album. A big factor was not having a dedicated area to just access everything, but also mostly because I was being too hard on myself.

There was so much inspiration out there but I didn’t use it to my advantage. Instead, I kept obsessing about having to make stuff look prettier that I ended up not making anything. I had the front and back covers done for 2011 and then redone for 2012. And then just 1 and 3/4 of a spread in total.

Among the found stuff was a bunch of Instax prints from 3-4 years ago. I quickly made a spread using the cards I had on hand and plain Washi tape. 

  

 I felt happy having completed the spread in 15 minutes. Later on I went back to write a quote on friendship on that journaling card. 
Prior to having this corner, I’ve had a PL revival already courtesy of the App. But that story’s for another day. What about you, how do you document your everyday life? 

Gifts 2012: Digital Project Life

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It’s been YEARS since I gave anything to my best bud Jo. I didn’t even get her anything for her wedding. Not a very good friend, am I? (You’ll remember Jo from this post, my pretty BFF) She currently lives with her husband and their son in the deserts of Dubai (so far!).

This year, I so wanted to give her something for Christmas. I also wanted to give her baby boy a gift and I felt bad NOT shipping out anything when he was born. It would be nice for him to get something from his Auntie Vera all the way from the Philippines, hehe (feeling!). But I couldn’t decide what to get them.

Then I thought about this photo collage, one among many that Jo started sharing in Facebook as soon as the little guy was born:

kenzie

This collage is basic digital scrapbooking! (And isn’t Kenzie just such a charmer even as a newborn?)

What better gift can a Project Life fan/stalker like me give a friend, than a gift of Digital Project Life? I asked her if she would be interested, and she said yes!

So today, I went shopping! I got her the Digital Project Life Class from Jessica Sprague:

GIFT__Digital_Pr_50bc474555c23

and, the Project Life Baby Edition for Him Full Collection from ACDigitals:

bh_baby4him_fullpreview_grande

I am excited to see what she creates with these!

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