Ali Edwards's Blog

Project Life® 2018 | Week Twenty-Five AE Creative Team | June 2019 Stories ...

Week In The Life™ 2019 | Bringing It All Together Part 1

I've been diving into bringing all my content together into my
Week In The Life™ album and loving the process.

To see my starting place before the documenting week - meaning a few things I set up in my album in advance -
check out this post which includes a couple pages at the beginning of my album and most of Monday. I'm one of those people who basically sets up a design formula and then follows that throughout the rest of the album. It simplifies the process overall and takes away some of the choices for each day - that's a welcome thing for me.

I decided to separate out my journaling again this year rather than attach words to each individual photo. I do this mainly because it makes the entire process take less time and I don't mind at all having all my words together in one place.
More on that below.

My enlarged photos and my journaling were all printed here at home using a Canon MG7720 printer. I used Epson Ultra Premium Glossy Photo Paper for my photos and Neehah Bright White Paper for my journaling.

If you are looking for additional ideas I love how Amy set up her journaling pages. Check that out here.

A complete supply list can be found at the bottom of this post.

Let's dive in:

My album starts with the printable "look around" quote (
you see and download that here) so that means I had a full page on the back to work with. I looked through my photos and selected this one from Anna's soccer practice to create a home for my "this week" title card.

I cut the card down to fit onto the photo and then used
this super cool rolling date stamp to add the days. I love it for the font and for the break from the other one I use all the time. Above the "this week" card I added one of the paper die cuts from the WITL Main Kit along with a chipboard asterisk.

The next page is a calendar that I printed from iCal on my computer. I used a six hole punch to add it in and folded a portion of the page over to create a flap.

On top of the flap I considered adding a photo but instead decided to play with some of the pattern paper I had here on hand. I cut this text piece to the size of the flap and then I cut out one of the floral designs from this 1 Canoe 2 pattern paper and adhered it on top of the text pattern. I took a lot of floral photos this past week (it's that time of year here) so it felt consistent with the story I was telling to add in that organic element. And it was fun.

On top of the floral cut out I added another one of the die cut pieces from the Main Kit along with a chipboard asterisk.

Along the outside edge I added an Avery Index Tab and used a stamp from the Highs + Lows stamp set (no longer available at this time).

On the back of the calendar I adhered a "reason why/we are" page. In my journaling here I established all of our ages with a short review of our week and what my overwhelming feeling was at the end of the week. Sometimes I do this kind of page in advance and set an intention for the album or a reason why. This time I decided to do it at the end and focus a bit more on who we are and my feelings at the end of the week. Either way works.

At the top of that page I added a heart chipboard from the Chipboard Bundle.

The next step in my process was to print 2 enlarged photos for each day that are the size of the page protectors. These are 6.75 inch x 8.25 inch. I used the Week In The Life™ 2019 6x8 Layered Templates Vol 6 on top of one photo for each day. You can check out a post on how to work with those layered templates here. I'll be adding 3x4 photos and embellishments this weekend.

I adhered those two page protector sized photos back to back and used the 6 hole punch to be able to add it to my album.

As I mentioned above I decided to keep all my journaling together and simply copy and paste from my blog posts. This year I decided to make these pages 6x8 in order to slip them into the 6x8 page protectors. I did need to add a few additional full page page protectors on a couple days to accommodate more journaling. You can also switch the sizes between the enlarged photos and the journaling pages if that works better for you (meaning make the pages with your journaling the size of the page protectors).

In my process video you'll hear me talk about this process and my belief in literally starting with the story. To me this means that I deal with my words first and I don't leave them until the end of the process. This allows me to make sure that I'm not sacrificing the words for anything else - I am giving them their home first and making everything else fit around them.

I used the 4x6 cards from the Main Kit as a title for each of the first pages of my joruanling. I trimmed them right at the bottom line, keeping the date and good day/bad day sub head.

Monday happens to include 4 pages of journaling (two pages front and back in page protectors). Inside the words spread I added the 3x8 page protector and the food paper pad from the Main Kit.

On the back of each of those daily 3x8's I'm planning to add a 3x8 photo of food or drink.

Again, not all my days will have this many pages of journaling but this is the basic format I'm following as I'm bringing it all together. After my journaling I have the 4-pocket 4x6 page protector ready for my additional photos.

So that's where I'm at right now! I'll share more as I make additional progress.