Preparing your project

Welcome to “My Happy Life, The Real Story”. It’s time to get serious and prepare your project. Besides all the wonderful goodies that you will receive in every Saturday 2012 newsletter created by different designers, we will have a monthly blog post full of tips and inspiration for keeping up with this project throughout the year.

Today I will share some tips for preparing it. Remember the quote by Alexander Graham Bell ‘Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.’ Well I believe that this also applies to this project before starting it.

Daily, weekly or monthly?

First you will have to decide whether you choose to document your story daily, weekly or monthly. Documenting your life day in day out can easily get overwhelming and knowing from the start if you want to create a layout per day, per week or per month is best. I personally choose to create 52 weekly layouts using at least 365 + 1 (for 2012) daily photos. This will be my guideline. Of course there will be days without photos and of course there will be days with more photos, but having a plan and trying to stick to it has helped me a lot in the past. And please always remember to stay flexible throughout the year. This is only a guideline. If you choose weekly layouts your can easily insert single daily pages for memorable happenings or events, whereas you can change from daily to weekly or even monthly layouts when you are lacking time or feel like you cannot keep up the set pace.

Which size?

Which size do your want to create your scrapbook? 12×12, 8×8, 6×6, 4×6, 8.5×11? You will be less flexible with this decision later on. For example if you create your pages in 12×12 inches you will have to be careful to write your journaling big enough to be readable if you print at 6×6 inches at the end. Square or rectangular? After having created your layouts in square format during the year you certainly don’t want to get back to them in December to fit a 4×6 or 8.5×11 inches format. Considering how or where you will print your book at the end of the year will help a lot with this decision. Blurb, shutterfly, artscow, viovio, picaboo… you name it. They do offer a lot of different sizes and you may want to choose your favorite. Personally I will print and bind my book at home. That’s why I am flexible to use a customized size which will be 21×21 centimeters which equals to 8.3×8.3 inches.

Prepare your supplies

Now that we are done with all the technical thoughts, let’s move on to the most fun part of the preparation. Which digital scrapbooking supplies are you going to use for your project? You certainly have the right to go wild and choose your supplies as you create your pages throughout the year. The advantage of the concept I am going to adopt is that the pages of your final project will reflect a certain consistency. Using the same or a similar color palette, the same font the journaling and the same daily numbering system are a plus. The base for my pages will be my kits:

Document It Bis Maxi Kit as a complement to my
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Document It Maxi Kit. They were both designed with this project in mind.
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But I certainly don’t want to only toot my own horn here. There are a lot of other kits which are perfect for a year-long project.

Murano Maxi Kit with a wide array of colors for endless possibilities.
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Pin It Up Maxi Kit full of rich energetic colors sure to accent an array of photos and concepts.
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Dear Diary Maxi Kit for a digital whimsical art journal.
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Color Me Different Maxi Kit is a sophisticated blend of warm pastels accented with crisp black borders.
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Jake and Emma Maxi Kit meets handsome with sweet and is perfect for both men and women.
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Important tip

Before you start to create your first page you will have to be aware of the eventual page bleed. Whether you print at home or upload your pages to a print service, to avoid unwanted trimming it is best to not put any important journaling, photos or elements into the area of approximatively 0.5 inch from each edge of your page. Be especially careful if you use papers with borders because these might be partly cut off.

Now you are set!

I hope I could give you some helpful tips and get you started. Enjoy this project, create a lot of pages and don’t forget to share them in our Happy To Create Gallery.

Of course this blog post would not be complete without me showing off my first page for 2012. Consider me up to date and yes I do already have one day (January 4) without a picture and I haven’t even stressed about it.

Layout ‘Week 1′ by Caroline Kaiser. Ingredients used Document It Bis Maxi Kit, Document It Maxi Kit, Pin It Up Maxi Kit.

Next blog post in February. Meanwhile check out the free gifts in every Saturday 2012 newsletter. If you are not signed up to our newsletter we invite you to remedy to it and sign up for free.

Thanks and see you around!

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