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Week In The Life™ 2019 | Album Set Up + Approach

This year I decided to play around a bit in my Week In The Life™ album before the actual documenting week comes around.

Taking just a bit of time to look through your supplies, think about the stories you might want to tell, and have some general ideas how you might bring it all together is definitely worth your time especially if you are someone who likes working with some structure. I'm a fan of structure with a little flexibility thrown in for good measure. To me this means setting up some things now knowing that I might move things around a bit after I actually have my content.

If you're still on the fence about this project or participating this year I hope this posts inspires you to dive in with both feet. I'm here to encourage you along the way as we share our stories together.

With this project I often set up a design formula and then follow that throughout the album to create my foundation. I'm doing that again this year and sharing it with you in advance rather than after I've completed my album.

This year I'm starting my album with a 6x8 quote page from Hamilton. It's a sentiment that's been on my mind + heart lately and I love how it's used in the musical to reference times of celebration and pain. I find it to be a great reminder of the lens I want to live with in my own life.

Download the Look Around From Hamilton word art/PDF here.

Rather than showing every single page from my album here in this post I'm going to show you Monday so you can understand the design formula I'm following for all the days. In the walkthrough video below I've included a complete overview of how my album is right now with all the elements in place.

Let's take a closer look:

On the back side of the opening page I'm planning to insert a photo and then cut up the 4x6 "this week" card from the WITL Main Kit to add on top of my photo. I'll stamp the dates on the card in the line below "this week."

My design formula for each day begins with a 6x8 Transparent Divider. On top of that I've added a plastic heart and the rubber daily story piece from the WITL Main Kit. The plastic heart is stapled on with a tiny attacher stapler.

My content fo each day begins with a 4-pocket 3x4 page protector. Inside the pockets I've added a sentiment/quote card from the WITL Main Kit, a plastic number tag (Main Kit) and a day of the week transparent tag (in the same pocket for now at least), and then on the back side I've added a journaling card from the WITL Main Kit.

As I was putting the video together I decided that I would use the journaling cards in the WITL Main Kit as the jumping off point for my storytelling each day.

Right now I have them arranged in the following order:

Monday = This Week
Tuesday = Observing
Wednesday = Working On
Thursday = Tough Stuff
Friday = Highs & Lows
Saturday = Celebrating
Sunday = Giving Thanks

In past years I've generally approached my journaling via the lens of time (meaning I use times of the day to help me tell the stories of my week) and a more general overview of each day. This year I'm considering using those journaling cards as my story lens for each day. This means on Monday my lens would be "this week" and I'd be looking for and telling stories about what the week ahead looks like. On Tuesday this means that my lens would be "observing" and I'll use that as the lens for my day by asking and answering the question "what am I observing in my life" over the course of the day.

Make sense?

Remember that you get to choose your own approach for this project. If you want to wing it, wing it! If you want just a little bit of structure, create that for yourself. After doing it for so many years now it's nice to mix it up a bit and I like the idea of focusing on specific story lenses each day.

Next up in my design formula I'm adding the Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner 3x8 from the WITL Main Kit into a 3x8 Page Protector.

That's followed by the full page 6x8 Page Protector. I'm planning to add full page photos there and/or use the 6x8 Layered Template Set. Look for a video tutorial on working with those coming soon.

To complete each day I'm adding the daily 4x6 card from the WITL Main Kit to the 4-pocket Page Protector.

And repeat.

I know this isn't the same way everyone likes to tackle their album but I love the process of breaking it down and seeing how much space I have for my daily photos. This reminds me once again that the point isn't to include every single story from the day and every single photo I might take. The goal for me is to capture life right now and get it into a finished album. Doing this kind of work in advance helps me get closer to that goal. And it was fun: fun to see what I have to work with, fun to think ahead to a project I love, and fun to talk it through on camera.

ALBUM SET UP + APPROACH VIDEO

I filmed myself talking through and getting some things in my album for 2019.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below!