Year-o-logy

A few years ago (2008) I decided to keep a little pocket calendar in my bag and updated to include birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, events and under each date- there was a small amount of space to add notes and journaling.  After each month was complete, I would tear the calendar out and print out a few wallet size photos of some of the events on the calendar.  I would take these and my Personal Scrapper Kit of that month and create a monthly layout.  This is one of my favorite scrapbooks because it represented our Everyday life.  The happy & fun moments as well as the Dr. Visits, the meetings at work, dance classes and sports practices.

In March I received my kit from PersonalScrapper and it featured Simple Stories Year-o-logy line and I decided it has been a few years- I want to do it again.   This was also my effort into participating in a Project Life sort of album, a Take 12 project without the whole commitment.  It is sort of my hybrid of the two.

So what did I do?  My regular routine when downloading photos is to organize all photos by year and month.  So it was easy for me to open up Picasa (I have photoshop elements but find this way easier for me since I have not experimented with PSE enough)

I went through the Monthly folder and starred each photo I wanted to use. 

 Once I went through the month, I would go back to my starred photos and pick 12 photos. 

 I then created a collage with these twelve.

I used the text tool to type in the numbers on each photo and printed the collage out.  

Next I looked for Journaling cards and parts of the pattern paper that

represented each month

and create a layout.

Each layout has a Bingo month card and either journaling on the layout

or tucked behind the layout.

The journaling cards have a list with each number on the photo and

a caption.

I tried to mix special occasions, events with everyday life (like the strawberries growing in the garden in the above layout and the kids playing in the pool)

I have lots more layouts- come back soon for our next Theme: Science!

Best Wishes,

Lydia