Bourelle Show-N-Tell: Scrapbooking.. There is time!

A lot of moms would love to scrapbook everything their little one does.. but let's be honest. We have a million things going on at all times.. plus, hardly any quiet time to sit down and actually scrapbook-- AND enjoy it.

I have always loved scrapbooking, since I was in middle school. I still have all my old scrapbooks- SO fun to look back at. Yes, scrapbooking can become a very time consuming & expensive hobby. My mom knows all about that. Check out some of her scrapbook pages...

One of Zane's 1st B-Day pictures

My niece Scarlett

Zane- 1 year old!

Our Engagement <3 8/29/11

My hubby and I on our Wedding Day <3 8/25/12

Wedding Dress photo shoot I did.

Memorable *March Scraps of Darkness kit* - Scrapbook.com

My beautiful Mommy and Me!

And her scrapbooking room in her basment... Craft room!! Organization is key! She literally knows everything she has and where it's at!

My mom's scrapbooking room/wedding planning room :)

Ok, so she is not a new mom and has the opportunity to have some quiet time to make these beautiful, extremely creative, and detailed pages. (Is she not the most talented scrabpbooker ever!!) So what about the moms that don't have the time and/or the creativity???

Well, my mom introduced me to Project Life last Christmas when Zane was only 3 months old. This is the perfect solution to mommy's who do not have a lot of time to scrapbook and also great for people who are not as creative as they would like to be. The one downside is that it can get be expensive. However, you don't have to go overboard just to get started. Also, my mom said the prices are coming down a bit! BIG plus!

Ok, so what is Project life? There are several things you have to buy to get started. This can be a great gift to someone or to ask for yourself :)

1. You need a scrapbook to store your pages. They have ones specific to Project Life.

They have different colors/styles

2. Then you buy pages. These are just platic sleeves that go into yur scrapbook where you add your photos/project life cards. They have all different types of styles and you can buy them in bulk (all different styles at once for just one style at a time).

One design they have for the plastic sleeves.

Another page option

You can even buy variety packs...

3. Pick an edition (or two).
I found some editions on amazon for $20 on sale (originally $30). Yes, they can be expensive, but these big editions can last forever. I have several and have barely put a dent in them and have completed one big book.
There are A TON of different editions. You can pick the style you want. You can see from the picture that there are pre-made/desgined cards (big and small) These are the cards you put into your plastic sleeves with your pictures. You can write on them and even get a little more creative by cutting pictures and gluing them to the cards. (i'll upload some pictures of mine at the end). She has a ton of different types of cards- some where you can write to explain the picture/plain decorative cards/cards with wording on them already/ cards with pictures/ etc etc. This is why it is so easy, if you just want to throw something together (and maybe come back to it later to personalize it more) you can do that, and it still looks great.

KIWI Edition

This is just an example of what some of the cards can look like. A lot of the time, you don't even have to write anything on them, unless you want to. They make specific ones to write on.

ALSO, each card has a design on each side. So if you really think about it, you definitely get you bang for your buck here. Since each side is decorated... you can use less cards. You're putting each card and picture into a plastic sleeve that you will see both sides of. Once you finish one side of the sleeve, turn it over and create another page... Some of the cards will already be done for you. Of course you can put a different card over it if you want.

4. Print pictures. Enough said.
5. Basically, all you do is design each page the way you want it. Add pictures where you want them and cards where you want them.
She even has holiday and special occasion cards. If you don't want to buy an entire edition, you can purchase smaller editions... less expensive and more specific to certain pages you want to create. The one pictured below only has 100 cards.

Smaller editions are available as well.

Here is a great picture of the scrapbook and just one edition. Each edition comes with a TON of cards!

So you may think, this is still a lot of work and time consuming..

WELL, there is also DIGITAL Project Life. Yes, you can just create your pages on the computer or your phone and get them printed at a later time. I have been using this more often recently. Mainly because all of my pictures are on my phone. Basically, I just downloaded the app and you can create pages right there on your phone. I forget how much the app was.. it comes with 4 free "kits" (that's what they call the editions on the phone app). However, you can buy more kits (between $1 and $2- so pretty cheap!).
Now, I am not sure how much it costs to get them printed- I haven't gotten that far yet.. I've just been creating pages. I will figure this out though and let everyone know.

Like I said, you can also do this on your regular computer. http://www.digitalprojectlife.com/ Very similar to the phone app. The editions are more expensive on the webiste.. Not sure if it's because they have more options (probaly so).

Just like anything else, you can really get intense into Project Life. They have all kinds of different things you can buy and add to your pages. But what I love about this is that it looks good even if you dont. If you've only got time to slip some cards and pictures into plastic sleeves- you can do this! Plus, if you're around a computer- even better!

Here are some example pages I found by just googling Project Life. If you want to really get some ideas/examples just google images "project life"- they have some great pages on there.

I can tell that this person added some of the lettering you see, like the "yum" "boo", etc. She also cut pictures down and added them to cards so she could write a little bit about the picture. This is an example of someone taking more time for each page.

Look how simple, yet beautiful and elegant this page is for a wedding. Love this!

Here is a very simple page. This person just added their photos and one card to explain them- and done! EASY!

Obviously this page doesn't have any pictures, but I wanted to show how easy it was to just add cards and it still looks cute. You don't have to be extremely creative to make a Project Life scrapbook look amazing. This also gives you a good idea of what the cards can look like.

So, here are some of my own pages... Don't ask my why some are upside down.. I faught with my computer for an hour trying to fix this! I finally gave up.. but you get the idea!