
I am so excited that I have finally been able to make progress on my Project Life album so I am starting off with a photo of my completed page! My photos finally arrived. I hadn't inserted photos since mid-July. Now I am working on adding the journaling and the ephemera. That is the time consuming part.

I had fun with water colors on several of my journaling cards to highlight certain words. And as you can see above, I did some stamping and watercolors on the back side of a journaling card. It's all the influence of my art journaling. It is so much fun I don't want to stop playing.

Here's my DIY Date Card/Weekly Title Card. I cut a piece of patterned paper down to 4x6 (I used a 6x6 paper pad) and swiped a few coats of gesso on it to make a space for stamping the week's dates. I let the gesso dry between coats.
I bought Project Life in 2010 and never finished my album. I tried again this year using the same kit and half way through I decided there were a lot of the journaling cards that I didn't want to use because I didn't like the colors.
I sorted through all my journaling cards and set aside all the ones I didn't want to use. The rest I divided into color families so I could use them all on one page to bring a sense of unity and flow to each two-page layout. WIth the remaining cards, I have been using the backside and adding my own personal touches to those. Nothing fancy.
I plan to use
Project Life Core Kit - Amber Edition, the DIY date cards, & the Grid Journaling Cards
to finish up my 2009 album & make my 2012 album. I may also buy the Clemntine Core Kit to mix it up a bit. Those two kits and some of my own personal touches using the Grid Journaling Cards
, may even get me through 2013! We'll see.
But what I can't wait for are the Signature Black & White albums and the Amber album. I love that beautiful orange!
Before we get to the photos, here is what I bought on Black Friday (in addition to the Amber Core Kit:
Photo Pocket Pages - Big Pack of Design A (60 Pages)
Not a Project Life/Becky Higgins brand product, but a totally great addition to a PL album. I can't wait to use these:
Photo Protector - 6 x 12 for 4x6 Photos - Horizontal 10 pk
100 Journaling Cards - 3" x 4" with Grid Design
but they are now sold out! Hopefully, they will have them back in stock in time for me to get a couple extra boxes before I return to China. Fingers crossed!
WEEK IN PHOTOS
Saturday, November 19
Braden wanted to make a scrapbook page after he saw me create this one, so I let him pick out a couple of photos, some supplies and go to town. It turned out great!
Sunday, November 20
We went to Ikea to find a coffee table once and for all. The only one we were interested in buying was sold out! They won't be back in stock until January so we still don't have one. Our Ikea tradition is ice cream cones after typically one+ hour of shopping. I pass, though, since I don't like vanilla ice cream. They are only one kuai each (approx 15 cents).
Monday, Nov 21, Tues, Nov 22 & Wed, Nov 23 - NO PHOTOS: it was a rough week and I was so focused on other things that I completely forgot! I will insert significant emails and maybe some news stories of the week. Paul was in Singapore.
Thursday, November 24
Nicholas talked us into going out for dinner on the "real" Thanksgiving even though it isn't a holiday in China. We found Grandma's Kitchen and walked there through the embassy area adjacent to our apartment building.
Photo #2
It was fun to go out. (The table next to us was full of people from Major League Baseball [MLB] working in Beijing.) The food was not so good, but the dessert (I had apple pie) was pretty good. Next year we'll try NOLA instead!
Friday, November 25
Nicholas' poster advertising the Upper Elementary Winter Concert was featured in November's Friday assembly.
Photo #2: The night before our big Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. I spent the day food shopping and baking pies and sweet potato casserole. The sweet potato casserole is the one thing non-Americans have never had yet think is delish! I need to double the recipe next time so we will actually have leftovers. Another guest had never had pumpkin pie and raved that it was delicious. Perhaps he is hinting at something... too bad they don't sell frozen crust over here or I'd think of making him one of his very own!
Now for a glimpse at my latest art journal pages. I hope to keep this up even after my class is over on Thursday. :(
To See everything PROJECT LIFE on my blog, click here.
PROJECT LIFE INSPIRATION FOUND ON THE WEB
A beautiful album documented on a blog in Finland.
ART JOURNAL UPDATE
My internet is has been annoyingly slow on some days so it makes watching the videos for my class almost impossible to watch. What I usually do, is load the page, click play on the video, walk away and return a few hours later after the entire thing has played through once, then I replay it.

On really bad days, the internet is so slow that I lose all of my pages even the ones that alreay have videos ready to play. So, on those days, I skip watching videos. This happened alot last week so I've skipped over one of our two page spreads and moved on to the next assignment. I'll go back to it when class is over. I have a thing about 'keeping up with class.'
Besides, once I saw what we were going to be doing, I could hardly wait to get started. This totally reminds me of doodling I did as a kid. I'm not exactly sure at what age. The huge difference, though is the addition of water colors. I've never worked with water colors before. They make the doodles look sooooo cool! I love this!
It couldn't be more fun.
It was so much fun that I forgot to write my journal entry for the day. I'll do that when I am done posting! Oops!
Some details photos...
To see my ART JOURNAL posts, click here.
Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to link me to your blog if you are posting completed Project Life layouts. Or give me your best Project Life tip. I'd love to hear.
Or do you art journal and blog about it? I want to stop by and see. Please link me to your blog so I can be inspired!
What a fun, inspiring post! My best PL advice is to start a blog for it! That has been the key to my success. Then when I get behind, I can scroll through my blog and know what photo goes with what journaling. And more importantly...the journaling is all done. I just print it out and stick it in my binder. I was hand writing them on Becky's cards, but when I got behind this summer (ahem, yes I got behind too!!), I figured out with hubby's help, how to size my Word document to the journal card sizes!!
Posted by: Rebekah | November 29, 2011 at 09:26
Love the PL pages... i'm struggling to finish/keep up with mine this year, too. I did one last year but it turned into a "regular" scrapbook instead of the photo-a-day type of thing. Looks like this year will be the same way... but at least I'm doing SOMETHING, right?
Posted by: Thoughtsalonglifeshighway | November 29, 2011 at 10:34