So I’ve been doing Project Life for 61 weeks now. Wow. Typing that makes it seem like a really, really long time. I started out hybrid. I couldn’t keep up, since I’m almost 100% digital. I switched to doing a digital version and I found my groove. But … I’m still a little slow when it comes to putting my pages together. Painfully slow if you ask me. I pour over every photo choice. Then every paper, journaling card or embellishment choice. It takes me FOREVER!

In December, I set a timer while I worked. I gave myself an hour to do a page. I never finished in an hour, but having the timer set made me more aware of how much time I was spending. I did shave some time off my process, but not enough.

This week, I tried something new. On Tuesday (I normally put my pages together on Sundays, but with the Super Bowl and such … I didn’t get to them until Tuesday), I sat down and opened the two templates I was going to use this week. Then, I opened up my photo folder and looked through every photo I took for the week. Then I picked and opened all the photos (stories) I wanted to tell. One by one,  I dropped them into a spot on one of the two templates. I didn’t do any embellishing, instead I just figured out what stories I wanted to document. As soon as the templates were full, I closed any extra photos I still had open but couldn’t fit (they can be used in an insert or on a full, 12x12 scrapbook page later).

Next up, I picked two kits to work with: the Seafoam Core kit and Mari Koegelenberg’s Today 2.0 kit. I also decided on which fonts I would use (Another Typewriter, Hero and Homestead), so my pages would be consistent and I wouldn’t waste time picking fonts for every text block.

Finally, I got to work making the pages look pretty. Now, I’ll be honest. It took me a good three hours to get both pages done. But, I also had other things to do at the time and I was multitasking. I think if I keep this workflow going, I can get everything done in two hours, which is a vast improvement over my currently average time spent (I’m too embarrassed to say exactly how long it takes me each week, but it’s more than three hours).

This is what I discovered: limiting my choices is a good thing. Less to obsess over. It’s also helpful to quickly narrow down the photos and stories I’m going to include from the very start. It gives me a better idea of what embellishments to use and how to assemble to overall look of the 2-page spread.

Here are my pages for Week 5 (January 27th to February 2nd):

And I did an insert (I shared this one earlier in the week), which features some of my self care goals for 2013:

Credits

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Are you doing Project Life in 2013? What do you love most about it? This week I linked up with The Mom Creative, a site filled with great Project Life inspiration.