Project Life 2013 Wrap Up

I did it. Stand up and cheer while I take a bow. I have honestly never completed a project of this caliber and longevity before. I don't know what that says about me, but ill save that discussion for my therapist. For an entire year, every month/week I documented our every day life through photos. Printed them and then took them time to design a page around them, write our story and complete it. Every month/week of the year is in here. At first I started out monthly, but then went to weekly spreads because there was too much happening to fit onto one spread. I have fallen way behind, I have been completely caught up. I  have loved it and I have been slightly annoyed by it. But, in the end I am proud and am ecstatic to have this done and in the books (literally).So, a few things. I have literally been terrified of actually making a design decision concerning my title and end pages. So in week 2 of 2014, I made my 2013 title and end pages and ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM.  I really struggled making my 2014 title page because I wanted to make it the same as these. Seriously, that's how much I love them. I'll show you what I decided to do with 2014 later. But first let me tell you about my process, I feel like I struggled with this book a bit. If you look back through the archives, you can see the whole book beginning to end here, you will notice that I'm all over the place design wise. There are weeks that I love and then there are weeks that I think a 3rd grader did them. But, never the less, it is done and I found my style. So, here's how I found it.I was powering through, mostly behind which meant doing tons of layouts at a time. I was using the kits I had and the embellishments I had already. Sometimes I would get all crazy and make my own cards (nothing wrong with this, but for me this meant more non matching elements), sometimes I would mix crazy color schemes and add tons and tons of just stuff. But then something happened.The Midnight Edition.All of sudden it hit me. I looked back at all the layouts that I loved and realized: I like simple. I like clean. I like matching. This is the first layout I created with the Midnight Edition and I just love everything about it.The little square photos were always the ones that threw me off, I liked them and sometimes couldn't avoid them, but just could never figure out how they should fit on a card. I love the way they are all grounded in this spread. By adding another photo or a small embellishment surrounding it, they feel like they fit.  I also love the color scheme. Tons of white and then repeating 1 or 2 colors. Small bits of journaling here and there to tell the story. It all just works. In this spread, it is mostly all one story, expect for the top right corner. But, because of the repeating color scheme, it still fits. And all the pictures are high quality that I'm proud of. This is the game changer.This page is my birthday spread. These are the best 2 photos from that night and I feel like the repeating color scheme, but mixing of patterns, is a perfect way to frame the small amount of photos. It reminds me more of a traditional scrapbook layout. The great design makes up for the lack of photos in this one.This page is an example of a photo heavy layout that I had to get creative with how to include them all, but still be able to get the important stuff in there, like the date and a small bit of journaling. Again, the quality of the photos truly makes all the difference for me. When I feel like my photos are lacking, I tend to over embellish and rely too heavily on the cards to make up for it, so I worked really hard to get down to only GREAT photos and use journaling to tell other stories. Also, that bottom card where our Christmas tree pic blends into the printed trees, is that not the cutest thing you've ever seen?Since, I knew that doing December Daily was going to be too much of a stretch for me, I opted to keep going with my PL spreads. Again, so many great pictures were taken that I had to include. I chose my favorites and then just used printable journaling tags to add little comments. Still, the story gets told, but the photos are the stars.Now, onto my title and end pages. I wanted something beautiful and inviting. I didn't want something with a too many words or overwhelming details. So I chose a color scheme, black and white. I chose my favorite, simple, patterned cards and some 'introductory' type quotes. 'Where I stand' photos, or feet pics, are definitely our thing. So I chose our 4 favorites from the year before to show where we had been and to look forward to where we were going this year. Simple. No handwriting. No details.I did the same with our closing page. I went with neutrals again, gold/Kraft brown. I chose our 4 favorite feet pics and repeated the same pattern. I used the freebie Caylee designed and just printed it onto vellum and just slipped in over the card to say goodbye to 2013. Then, I just loved the "we were here'' card. So I put one of my favorite photos of us looking off into the distance to say, yes 2013, we were here. I love that these pages match. I love the clean design and I love this project.There were times that I loved this project, but did not love what I was doing with this project. But, I have finally found how to love the project and what I am doing with it. I'll share more tips and how I'm planning to tackle 2014 soon. I've already gotten multiple pages done, so I cant wait to show you! If did PL in 2013, what did you learn about your style?