My Next Documenting Project

During our lockdown in Sydney this past Winter, I have been getting my scrapbooks in order.

I re-made a 2010 paper Project Life album into a photo book (it was the perfect mindless creative lockdown project - I wrote about it here) and set off to turn most of my digital layouts from printed pages in albums into photobooks (both for space and ease of reading).

So far I have I have done my 2020 and 2021 8.5x11 layouts, my 2020 and 2021 travelers notebook layouts and the first of probably four books of 6x8 layouts, starting at 2017. You can see

flip-throughs of these printed books on my Instagram TV channel.

I've also been keeping up with my little 6x9 grid spreads which are my low-stakes version of Project Life for this year and a simple way to use my iPhone photos and journal cards. I will probably finish this one up at the end of the month (December will be documented in December Daily) and send it off for printing.

Seeing all of my random layouts printed together as books has given me some perspective. I've grappled with the concept of making 'albums' over 'pages since this post I wrote in 2019:

"What I think I'm getting at in this post is that I want my albums to make sense to me and to anyone who might look through them. I want to think about the best way to organise my work and for that to add to the story aspect of scrapbooking rather than just be a filing system. I don't have an answer but it seems that I really need to think about what I want my albums to be and then make pages that fit that. Put the album first perhaps". Layouts v Albums - Should Our Scrapbook Albums Be More Than Just A Filing System?

So I wanted to find a way to document for 2022 that felt like I was making a book rather than just a series of one-off pages. A place for longer stories as well as Project Life style thing, but not following a repetitive template week after week.

I've been doing some art journaling during lockdown (with a real Moleskine and actual paints and pens) and wanted to see if I could incorporate that vibe into a photo book to document our every day, while still following my minimalist bent.

This is the very confused and convoluted brief I scribbled to myself:

>> cohesive look (fonts, style) but no rules in terms of what goes in there

>> a grungy, homemade feel

>> a visual diary

>> a home for my drawings and art

>> not daily (but it can be)

>> some pages will be dated, some won't

>> digital (probably 6x9 trade book because they are cheap and I won't feel bad filling it with nonsense)

>> a bit smash book, a bit bullet journal, a bit scrapbook, a bit art journal, a bit Project Life and a bit travel journal (if the travel was my everyday life)

>> a place where a deeper, longer story can sit alongside something not so deep

I've played around a bit and these are some of my pages. I'm starting now because I know from experience that leaving an idea on the backburner for 1 January guarantees I will lose all sense of it. I used to be a January-December stickler when it comes to projects but I've let go of that. As long as the dates are on the book spine and cover, I am good. If this project goes quiet over December I am OK with that too.

Note: These are 6x9 digital pages. I've been going through my old digital stash and enjoying some of my finds like digital masking tape from Katie Pertiet, which is the perfect amount of hand-made grunge. I'm using my Agenda digital stamp set a bit because it works well for the diary feel. I'm also loving anything date or calendar related (I found a whole folder of digitals with that theme and think they will work well too).

Thank you for indulging me as I once again overthink my scrapbook plans - it really is my super power (but it does help me to lay it all out like this). x S