Back in January, I wrote about my experiences with the Project Life system of documenting your life.  I identified what I believed where the things I did that resulted in an annual album that only included 2 months and about how I over-complicated the process.  I also wrote about my resolve to pick up where I left off and come up with solutions to keep up with this.

And I have, but there’s been a bit of a fly in the ointment:  the actual photos and printing them.

The CVS Pharmacy that I use has a policy that you have to order $5 worth of photo printing or else they charge you a $1.50 surcharge.  If I only need 7 pictures during a week (about $1.40), it’s not very cost effective to print every week.  I’m not pleased with the quality of photo that comes out of my printer and I think the cost is a bit prohibitive.  Also, at the moment, it would be helpful if I didn’t find extra ways to spend money :-).  My idea of using a sticky note as a place holder until I amassed enough photos to print at CVS just isn’t working.  And this little fly threatened to squash all my enthusiasm.  Doesn’t take much, huh?

BUT,  I was listening to yet another podcast, this time from the DigiShow where the whole show was dedicated to talking about Digital Project Life.  Funnily enough I already had the digital Project Life core kit that matched my paper kit, so I was really interested in what they had to say.  I’m not completely sold on the whole idea of a digital Project Life, mostly because I love the touch and feel of paper, photos and all the bits and pieces I like to include on the page. On the other hand, I’m not actually making all that happen and I’m missing out on documenting my life in the process.  So I listened to what the panelists had to say and midway through the discussion, one of the gals mentioned that she designs her pages in the 12X12 size, but then has them printed as 8X8 pages.  The pages have the same look of the pocketed pages of Project Life, they’re just printed as one sheet.  This really intrigued me, especially because at Persnickety Prints (an online printer) you can print at 8X8 for $1.  That seems like a lot for a page, but I know by the time I’m done with a paper page, I would be spending way more that $1 per page.  And Persnickety Prints has sales throughout the year, so I could save up my pages and wait to print during a sale.

So everyday, when I sit down to my computer, I open up my Project Life page for the week in Adobe Photoshop Elements, drop in the pictures I want to remember for the day, journal my thoughts, add a few digital embellishments and hit ‘Save’.  So far this has been working for me, both cost-wise and actual follow-thru wise.  Here’s an example of my work.

I love tweaking my  do-overs! 

“Mom, this will be great for those times when Ellie does something silly or cute and you want to write about it quickly and easily.  Oh, wait, I don’t think you have disk space for all that!!”