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Share your Style with Project Life

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com
As slow as my workflow may be right now, I feel I’m starting to find my feet in terms of creating weekly Project Life layouts in my own style. It is definitely more of a challenge for me than a 12×12 page right now, but it’s a good challenge and I enjoy that part of the process too, embracing a few things along the way that aren’t how I imagined but grow on me with time.

Curious to how other, more established Project Life scrappers find their process and style, I asked three scrappers with differing approaches to share some of their work with you today, along with the latest completed spread in Wonder Boy’s Project Life baby album.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

First up, a delicate entry from Annette Haring.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

Annette says: I approach my Project Life® with a variety of techniques, depending on whether my focus is the photos, the story, or if there are products or colors that have inspired a page.

This example is an insert, using a Becky Higgins Project Life® Design G page protector, and it will fit in between my main left and right spreads, which are primarily smaller 3×4 iPhone photos using the Collect app. I knew I had these larger 4×6 photos I had taken of my girl around her 4th birthday, and I wanted to simply highlight them. So I started with the photos, then added a “self portrait” that she had drawn with a gold pen. That led to me choosing more gold in the papers and product, and I adore that cute Lindsay Letters gold card! I love the repetition of the gold and the use of single embellishment to keep the focal point on the photos. I finished it off with a little journaling on a card from the Project Life ® Baby Kit by Becky Higgins, because I love the personal touch of adding just a little handwritten sentiment.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

Elise Blaha Cripe has recently made changes to keep her process achievable and her album relevant to her family.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

Elise says: I have switched up my Project Life process this year as life has become busier! My focus is on getting my favorite photos into our albums and that’s it. Because of this, I tend to start with the photos and then pick 3×4 cards and small embellishments that match in color and tone. I don’t do a lot of “extra” embellishing and my style leans toward simple for sure.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

Leena Loh has a beautifully detailed Project Life style.

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

Leena says: I’m now into my third year of Project Life and I have to say I’m still loving it! I wouldn’t say the same when I first started back in 2012, where I failed miserably in completing the year. Since then, I’ve learned and finally discovered my own style and picked up a number of routines that got me going throughout the second year successfully. I got into the groove and I’m definitely enjoying the memory-keeping journey. I have a fixed routine that I follow diligently every week. I would spend an hour over the weekend, usually on a Sunday, to upload all my photos taken for the week with my phone onto my MacBook, transfer them into my Project Life folder that I labeled by week and print them right away on my home printer. They would then go into my 12×12 protector. Thereafter I would pick my Project Life cards, insert them and finished off with some embellishments and journaling. I especially love using white or light base Project Life cards as they make my photos and embellishments stands out. My color selection would fall into places naturally as I don’t particularly coordinate my spread base on color theme. I just pick the cards based on the story of photos instead. This routine has helped me stay current and allowing me to enjoy every bit of documenting my day to day life!

share your style with project life @ shimelle.com

And here is week five for my current album.

project life baby book pages by shimelle laine @ shimelle.com

There are a few things that are starting to really endear me to this project, and they are coming from more freedom that I expected. When I started this album, I shared how I was using a few consistent things in each spread, thinking that would keep the layouts coming together relatively quickly because it would take out a few time-consuming decisions, and that is true, but I’m also embracing a freedom to use any supplies I love rather than just what is absolutely current. My favourite part of this project is looking at all the baby photos, of course, but the next thing in line is picking out all sorts of paper and crafty elements to mix and match together to create a new layout. For this week, I started with some elements from the Penny Arcade Studio Calico kit, but added in some old favourites too: Hambly and Sassafras. I may have muttered ‘I’m bringing Sassa back’ when I was picking out some stickers, because I really am that uncool.

The other thing I’m finding I really enjoy is the opportunity to tell a story that isn’t just ‘here’s what happened this week in chronological order’, but to focus on one element and get more in depth. The entire left page of this spread is about sleep. Seriously, it was such a big deal, I could write way more about it than one page, but this will do. I write this now, where we are at a much better place with sleep, but that particular week was a real, real challenge. Including the dread that some of you will no doubt notice in the top left: what do you do when the only position your baby will sleep in for more than ten minutes is the position you are never meant to let your baby sleep? Anyway, I’m getting off topic here, but the idea that I can say that side is going to be all about one specific topic and fit the rest of the week on the other side – that concept is something I’m really enjoying and I’m even planning ahead now taking multiple photos on one topic when I start to realise I have plenty to share.

And over to you… For those of you who scrapbook in this format, what do you find helps you love this project? What makes your album a little more you? I’d love you to share your thoughts.





Annette Haring lives near Austin, Texas, with her husband and their four year old daughter. She has been scrapbooking since childhood, when she loved adding memorabilia and photos to her journal. She loves to learn and to teach others and has recently been a contributing teacher to Project Life Lessons at Big Picture Classes, a contributing author to the eBook Project Dig Deep by Ella Publishing/Big Picture Classes, and has been on the Elle’s Studio design team. She shares her work on Instagram as well as her blog.





Elise Blaha Cripe is a blogger, crafter and business owner who lives in San Diego, California with her husband and one-year-old daughter. She designed the Seafoam Edition Project Life Core Kit and shares her pages as part of the creative team at Studio Calico.





Leena lives in Singapore and first started scrapbooking in 2007. Since then, she has been doing traditional layouts for about five years and made a switch to Project Life two years ago. Leena is currently on the Studio Calico Project Life design team. You can also find Leena on her personal blog Findingnana and Instagram where you can see her snippets of life on a daily basis.

20 August 2014



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17 Comments for Share your Style with Project Life

  1. Louise Fortune Says:

    Hi Shim – absolutely loving your PL layouts. I have been using the photo pocket style of scrapbooking for the last three years. I had hit a slump in my scrapbooking life and hadn’t scrapped for over 3 years when I jumped in to this style of documenting my families lives. For me flexibility is key – My core process is sticking to just one page a week, I use an inset if I have taken more photos than usual or there is a specific event, that warrants a whole page of its own. As a byproduct of this project I design and print my own filler cards too.

  2. Monica Says:

    I began scrapping in pockets in 2012, but I didn’t call it project life. I made a simplifed version of your Document: I made one side per month and last year I made two, and sometimes more, pages per month. This year I make one side per week and I love it. What I love about this way of scrapping is how I tell small stories that otherwise wouldn’t be documented and also that the format of each little layout gets done so fast. And I love the challenge to make a page full of small layouts work together. Even if I love this format I will not give up the old way of scrapping, since I love that too, though the way I scrapbook big layouts has changed because of my project life-scapping.

  3. Gab Says:

    Love all these pages – I really like seeing other people’s take on PL

  4. Monica Says:

    I started scrapping with pocket pages in 2012, made an simplyfied version of your Document: and lived it. I made one side per month then and last year I made two, and sometimes more, pages per month. This year I make one page per week and I love it!
    What i love about project life is that I get to document small things that would never get a big scrapbookpage and hence never be seen in my albums. And I also like the challenge to make all these small layouts work together to make one big. I still love making big layouts too, but project lifing has actually changed the way I do that now.

  5. Leanne Edwards Says:

    Getting my groove back!!

  6. Mel Says:

    Lovely pages. I’m still on the fence about PL, but it’s good to see creative renditions of that system.

    Also…thanks for getting “Bringing Sexy Back” in my head. Now, I’ll be listening to THAT song play over and over all day long. Gives John Legend a break, at least. ;)

  7. Darlene Says:

    Shimelle, we all may have to chip in and get you a Nanny for one day a week. I am so missing your process videos. Give the baby a hug from me.

  8. Noell Hyman Says:

    I love this entire post! And I especially love your idea of giving one side to an entire main story, and then having all the rest of the random details on the other. I do often concentrate a page or a spread with a single story, but not with the deliberate right/left weekly process that you’re developing.

    What I finally found worked for me in PL is to stick mostly with a single color (sometimes adding a second accent color in smaller amounts) and lots of white, black, and grey as neutrals.

    I don’t worry about embellishments until I’ve chosen all my cards and gotten everything in place. At that point I only add embellies where they’re needed for balance or interest. Sometimes I’m out of time and I just move on without worrying about the final embellishment step.

  9. Therese Says:

    I have been using Project life since 2010 and the best part of it is going back through the books! Seriously, I use them as references for dates, names, etc… and just love remembering small parts of our life.

    I have a weekly system that keeps me current. I print photos weekly on Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Get them in the pockets and start my 15 minute batch work on PL between laundry and other chores. I pick inserts, add letter stickers, journal and finally add embellishments. It is such a relief to know that I have captured that week’s small but oh so important details.

    I wish I had had this system when my kids were babies – enjoy!!

  10. Bi Medeiros Says:

    What a great idea to gather these creative ladies (and yourself) to talk about a subject every Project Lifer would love to hear about! Lovely to see different styles and creative processes described this way, thanks for sharing!

  11. Wendy Jeffus Says:

    Love all of the PL pages! Thank you for sharing yours of Wonder Boy!

  12. Christine Says:

    I’m a dabbler in PL. What I really want to say is you are doing awesome! This time in a the first baby phase of life is hard and you are making stuff, running a blog and raising that boy. Wow. Give yourself a pat on the back Mom.

  13. Leighbling Says:

    Am loving your updates, Shimelle. And Wonder Boy’s PL style album is beautiful. Each spread I fall in love with the colour scheme – this red and pink one is just lovely, and I don’t often enjoy pink.

  14. Lisa M. Zepponi Says:

    Your PL pages are so adorable! I am not a PLer but I do like to use them as a supplemental to LONG stories, similar to to your 12×12 page with coordinating PL page album, but not that specific.

  15. ARC Says:

    I love this post – so cool to see how different people approach the same thing.

    And I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of using a side to highlight a larger story or theme.

    I’ve been doing (and completing) PL since 2012 and I LOVE it. It was my gateway drug to real scrapbooking :)

    The first year I did it weekly until my 2nd daughter was born in October, when I switched to every 2 weeks. I MUST have the entire year fit into one 12×12 album, and biweekly is about right for that.

    2013 I did biweekly but just recently completed it due to some major construction at our house. I did continue taking photos and was able to “reconstruct” my PL pages by looking at my calendar, my one line a day journal, my email and my Facebook feed. Not as difficult as I thought it would be!

    I caught up on 6 months (yay!) of PL 2014 in about a month doing the same thing – I selected about 20 photos per month and am doing 2-4 pages per month and not worrying about strict chronology. I also decided this year to use the same page protector style all year (Design A) which dictates how I print my photos and makes it much easier.

  16. Lorraine R Says:

    I love this post – although PL – is still something way beyond me – I would never remember to take enough photos. I know what the experts say about sleeping on the tummy – but if that is the way he is more comfortable. I’m 47, have 6 older siblings, and when we were born, my mother was encouraged to sleep us on our stomach if that is what we wanted. We all survived. So what feels right to you Shimelle! (I still often fall asleep on my stomach)

  17. angela Says:

    I just love this post. Thanks so much for sharing different ways to do PL/Pocket Pages. I scrap 12 by 12 and am happy with that even though I do have PL supplies that are never used but someday with be! I also say to you like other commentors: You are doing great as a new mom! Remember you know wonder boy better than anyone else does so trust your instinct.

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