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So what do you do when you are up to your eyeballs in scrapbooking projects? Add another one into the mix and get really excited about it of course! I only recently learned about commonplace books from Kristin at the Awesome Ladies Project, who then pointed me to Brandi Kincaid. Brandi's post "On Still Keeping A Notebook" is amazing and you should read it, but in a nutshell, a commonplace book is a journal for keeping ideas, quotes from books, notes and ephemera from everyday life. It resonated with me because last year I made a year-long digital 'Me' project instead of a traditional, family oriented Project Life. It included photos, recipes, quotes from Pinterest, funny things I heard, things I had been listening to/watching, random lists from my bullet journal (like my favourite real-estate from television & movies), funny things from Twitter and just an assortment of things I felt like adding about me and what I liked. I loved working on this project so much and I kept it going until mid-December when I felt like it was time to put it all together and send it off to Blurb for printing. I saw this book as a visual version of my bullet journal and planner and it is one of my favourite things to pull down from the shelf and look through (and one of my favourite things to make). This year, I decided to go back to a more traditional, family-oriented yearly documenting project and started a digital photobook for 2018. I like the minimal style of this new book with its focus on the photographs and a brief weekly recap, but to be honest, it's a bit boring to make. I really missed the freedom and the silliness of last year's book where I could include some Bob's Burger song lyrics, a photo of my Amy Winehouse funko, a funny quote from my kid, a great photo of someone's vinyl record collection from Pinterest and a recipe for a new cocktail. So last week and I started playing along with the 30 Days of Lists project (because, you know, I need some more projects in my life), making an old-school home-made minibook and having a great old time doing it. (It had been years since I made a mini book - I used to make them all the time - so I had to find and dust off my cardstock, chipboard covers and binder rings from storage.) I was enjoying the simple process of making the list pages so much, then I remembered the commonplace book idea and it all clicked for me. So here we are, a few pages in and I'm hooked. I am basically making 4x6 pages on cardstock, patterned paper or photopaper and putting them together with binder rings. I don't have a cover yet. This is exactly the project I needed. I can keep my family photobook uncluttered, chronological and photo-centric but still have a place for the silly, messy, random bits of my life. Plus, it's the perfect place for all the cool cards and paper things that come across my desk that previously had no place to go for this mostly digital scrapbooker. For now I'm calling it my 2018 Mini Book and I'm so excited to see where it goes. A place for all of my ridiculousness again - yay! Supplies: as a digital girl at heart, I am making some pages in photoshop. Others will just be scribbled notes on a 4x6, a full page photo or cute junkmail. I am planning to cut a bunch of papers and cardstock to 4x6 to have ready. There are no rules for this project, anything goes. I am sure there will be some overlap of stories with my regular 6x8 scrapping and my yearly photobook project but that doesn't bother me at all. The more the merrier! I am also taking Jamaica Edgell's mini-book workshop at Studio Calico (which starts tomorrow) because it popped up in my feed yesterday as though it was meant to be - I need to brush up on my minibook skills and I love her work so much. #MiniBooks #HybridScrapbooking #DigitalScrapbooking

I thought it would be good to sit down and take stock of all the projects I have in the works right now. Some are year-long and I'll add to them as we go, some are hangovers from last year (or the year before, eek!). 1. YEAR LONG PHOTOBOOK I wrote about this project last time. It's still going and I'm happy with the framework and finding it easy enough to keep up with. 2. BOOK OF ME This is a project I've joined in with at Awesome Ladies Project - you can read more about it here. It's a year-long project with monthly prompts, guidance and group discussion. I'm enjoying the deep thinking and introspection. 3. FOOD TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK I had bought some inserts last year and didn't touch them until recently. I had planned to be more hands on and get a bit messy in these books but my inner digital/minimalist/perfectionist just won't let me so I figured out I can make pages in photoshop, print out in full and just glue in. I wanted to keep the book to one topic so food was a no brainer. I love having a place to document favourite recipes and meals out. For this project, I'm sticking with a black and white theme using mostly digital products from Paislee Press, Ali Edwards and One Little Bird. 4. #30 DAYS OF LISTS This is a sweet, short project I have just started. I'm a long-time list maker and have always wanted to join in with this community but this is my first time (30 Days Of Lists). I was days behind but found a format that worked for me and made it easy to catch up. I'm printing the prompt and number on kraft 6x4 paper (I tried actually stamping, but I am a disaster so I'm sticking with a stampy font instead) and just handwriting my lists. I'm not agonising over this - just getting it done and moving on to the next one. I'm pairing each card with a photo and will use binder rings at the end to put it all together. 5. REGULAR 6x8 LAYOUTS I'm still making regular 6x8 digital pages for my binder. I am using Ali Edwards Story Book album and am on to my second one since starting my 6x8 obsession last year and have no plans to stop. Because I didn't do a traditional family documenting project last year like Project Life, I needed a place for the little (and big) daily stories and 6x8 has become a perfect way of documenting those. I have been a subscriber to Ali's Digital Story Kit since the beginning and this is where I use most of those kits. I keep my pages simple and concentrate on just telling the story. 6. 100 DAYS OF ALL ABOUT ME This was a project created by Kristin at the Awesome Ladies Project that I started last year (see the details here). Kristin now has a book for sale if you want to join in and make your own 100 Days project. Mine is very simple (as a 100 day project needs to be!). I'm using a small We Are Memory Keepers Instagram album, making the pages in photoshop and just sticking a photo on the back of the previous page. I'm up to day 75 and plan to finish it up soon. The prompts are awesome. 7. #52weekends This was a year long project from last year that I haven't finished. After doing December Daily I thought I would keep it going for 2017 but make a spread for every weekend. I kept it up until August but then we travelled a lot - I just need to finish. The simple format of a large photo paired with some journaling and a collage or smaller photo makes it easy to go back. I'm also in the habit of writing about our weekend every Sunday evening or Monday morning when I'm at work early so the recaps are there. I was planning to print this as a book but then changed my mind and sized it down to 6x8 and put the pages in a cute Snap binder. 8. USA TRAVEL BOOK 2017 I started this photobook when we got back in October 2017, but took a break. I always need a bit of distance from a holiday so I started back up with this project last week and I'm about half way through. 9. FIJI TRAVEL BOOK 2016 This one is neglected and barely started. I will get there one day! Plus, we went for my brother's wedding and I owe him and his wife a photobook. So that's it for my projects. Some are easy and some are more daunting but they are all things I am happy to work on. #ProjectLife #DigitalScrapbooking

I usually have some kind of plan for scrapbooking when the new year rolls around. Not this year. A few weeks in and I still had no clue about what kind of year-long project I wanted to do (or if I wanted to make one at all). I was really happy with my 2017 me-focused project. I received the Blurb Trade Book just before Christmas and loved the end result.The photobook option is great because it takes up a lot less space and is much easier for us to take down and flip through, so I've decided to do something similar. I am going back to a more family-oriented chronological book that will focus on the photos but also have a weekly recap about our life. I call it Project Life even though it's not the traditional PL format. I have done a previous book like this that was split up by month, but this time I'm dividing my book by seasons - I always need some kind of structure and I like how life changes with the seasons. I'm making 6x9 pages in photoshop and using very simple templates for the photos and words. For the Summer break page, I've used the Paislee Press Summer Vibes digital kit and I'll probably do something similar for the other seasons. So far so good - I've printed some pages out as I always do just to test what it will actually look like on paper. I hope the weekly recap won't become a chore. So that's the plan for 2018 Project Life. #DigitalScrapbooking #Plans #ProjectLife

Over the last few years I gradually moved from making mostly 12x12 pages to 8.5 x 11. Here in Australia, wide format printers are expensive and not easily available, so as a digital scrapbooker it was nice to have a finished, printed page for my album rather than storing up pages for batch printing a few times a year at Persnickety Prints. I also just started to favour starting with the rectangle page over the large square (and found it much easier, physically, to flick through my 8.5x11 albums than the big 12x12 ones). When Ali Edwards first introduced 6x8 Story Book Albums to her store earlier this year, I immediately ordered three. I had made a lot of 6x8 projects over the years - a couple of December Daily albums, some photo books and Project Life one year - and the albums can be hard to find. I had never even considered making day-to-day scrapbook pages that size until I saw Ali doing that in her class content, it just seemed more a project size to me. One afternoon I decided to give 6x8 a go and made this hybrid spread about my work space using various digital elements from Ali's kits (including the Hybrid class). I printed it out, stuck some letter stickers on and called it done. I quickly made another using the Build kit about my son's Lego and was hooked. That first month, I put 21 layouts into my little greige book (I counted). Amazing! I would have been lucky to make 21 layouts in the whole of 2016. I started sharing in the Facebook group and Instagram, singing the praises of 6x8 like a crazy person. It's been five months since I made that first little layout and my first album is almost full. I've been trying to distill what it is about these pages that has reinvigorated my love for scrapbooking. Obviously, it's a size thing. These layouts are just so cute, like they have been shrunken down, and I love flipping through this little book. The mini size means less room to work with but as a minimalist, that totally works for me. I don't really need more room to tell my stories. I'm getting down to the essence of what I want to say and which elements support the story. There is something less intimidating and formal about this size. I feel like I am free to make a page about anything, things I probably would have felt were not significant enough to dedicate a whole 12x12 page to if that makes sense. I've made pages about my favourite cardigan, the freezer burritos I make my husband for work, a really good burger I cooked for dinner one night and how much I was looking forward to Twin Peaks being back. These little everyday stories make me so happy. In terms of design, I'm used to the rectangle shape of 8.5x11 so it's just a matter of shrinking everything down a bit. I am a big fan of full page photos in scrapbooking, so 6x8 is a perfect size for that. A full 12x12 or even 8.5 x 11 photo is HUGE so I use that technique sparingly at that size (it needs to be a great photo for me to enlarge to a full 12x12), but at 6x8 I'm making so many double spreads. It's not difficult to come up with a full page of journalling on the opposing side compared to the bigger sizes, where a full page of journaling is a lot. I'm so thankful to have tried something new that ended up working for me. Something I need to remember in other parts of my life too! SaveSaveSave #6x8 #AliEdwards #DigitalScrapbooking #HybridScrapbooking

Another travel page (so many travel pages in my future). After making my Foot Photo spread, I thought it would be fun to look at the trip by the numbers. I found this airport photo (so many airport photos) and knew that Ali's Numbers and Go kits would have the perfect embellishments. I use this technique a lot - full 6x8 page photo with some embellishments and words on top. Easy and quick. The hardest part was doing the math! SaveSaveSave #USATrip #6x8 #AliEdwards #DigitalScrapbooking

In September/October our family travelled around the USA. Even before we went, I had an idea to take a photo of our feet in every city we visited (for two we didn't even leave the airport but it still counts!). At first everyone thought it was a bit weird and annoying every time I yelled "FOOT PHOTO!", especially if we were running to make our connection. But by the end of the trip they were all on board. When we got back home, one of the first pages I made about the trip was this little 6x8 digital spread. I used a few digital elements from Ali Edwards's Go digital Story Kit and just kept it simple with some titles and a bit of journalling. Triumphantly I held my finished pages up to the the family and said "See, it was worth it!" to which they replied..nothing, because they were too busy watching YouTube videos on their iPads. But I like it. #DigitalScrapbooking #AliEdwards #6x8

After so many years doing Project Life (see my thoughts on that), I was ready for something different this year. I wanted a smaller printed book I wanted to put whatever I felt like in it I wanted it to be very personal to me I wanted to be free of chronology and expectations I wanted to have fun working on it I wanted to make digital pages I wanted a loose format to follow I wanted it to turn into whatever it wanted to be I wanted the reader to know me I decided on a Blurb trade book at 6x9. I know the quality won't be as good as a regular photo book but I'm not bothered by that. I quite like the idea of something a bit more rough and imperfect for this project. I started in December (can never wait for the new year when these ideas strike) with a blank 6x9 blank canvas in Photoshop and started making an introductory page. Then I made a page about some things I was enjoying right now, then another, then another. I think I made ten pages that first afternoon. I had no rules for what would be included, when I would work on it, or how long it would span. Sometimes you just need to try a few pages to see if the idea works for you - Beta testing if you will. I loved it. I also printed a few pages off just to see how the size looks, I like to do that when I'm working on a long project that won't be printed until the end. It is not chronological and I just make pages when I feel like it. A random hodge-podge of things. I have some simple templates I use over and over with lots of white space and I have kept the fonts consistent so there is a cohesive look. It's now October and I have 115 individual pages saved. I have no plan of when to finish but I'm thinking of corralling everything in January and sending it off - I can always start another one. There is a nice mix of things I am enjoying right now (TV, film, books, recipes), lists of favourite things, things I want to do, song lyrics I love, quotes that speak to me, pretty pictures, day to day photos. I think it's going to be a really special book (to me) when it's finished. Most weekends I make a few pages and I find myself looking forward to it, it doesn't feel like a chore this year. I haven't abandoned my family's stories either - I am making a lot of 6x8 pages that tell those. I'm so looking forward to holding this little book in my hands.SaveSaveSave #DigitalScrapbooking #ProjectLife #LifeStories

I am a big fan of the year-long scrapbook project. Even though these projects are a labor of love, there is something special and valuable about capturing a little bit of your year each week - the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. I made my first Project Life album in 2010 using the physical kit from Becky Higgins. It was hard work but worth it in the end to have this record of our year. I did five more years in various forms (one year I did 6x8 but I needed three albums and that wasn't sustainable) but generally stuck to the 12x12 Design A week-to-a-spread format. I started with the physical kits for a few years, moved to making digital pages which I printed and put into page protectors and then finally I made a Blurb book using Cathy Zielske's digital templates in 2015 (my favourite version because it's so compact on the shelf and easy for everyone to look through). As an aside, I actually stalled around August that last year but I was able to spend my January work break finishing up in just a few days because a) it rained a lot that week b) Cathy's templates were simple c) I had enough photos and d) I had a habit of sitting down every Monday morning and writing a paragraph or two about our previous week so I could continue my format of adding a weekly recap to the project. I think I spent two or three days catching up August to December, sent the files off on a Wednesday night and by the following Monday I had the printed book in my hands - amazing turnaround from Blurb. After being immersed in Project Life those few days in January 2016, I was ready for something new for the coming year, so I played around with some simple, graphic templates for a year long project that would change things up a bit. I wanted a smaller format in a printed book so I went with Blurb's 8x10 hardcover. I switched to a monthly format and made about 12-15 pages per month on average using a set format of full sized photos, collages, a monthly title page, a snapshot page of what we were watching etc and a final review page of journaling each month. I really enjoyed working on this book and switching up the format made it interesting again. The only downside was not having anything to show until January the next year when I could finally send my paged off for printing. I generally spent a session or two each month putting the pages together, generally repeating the design each time and writing a recap at the end. I loved the process and the end result when I finally got the book in my hands in January this year. That brings us to this year. Seven years in and ready again to do something different. I thought about the things I loved and didn't with all of those projects. I like a set format, but at the same time it can get boring week after week or even month after month. I like documenting our year but I've done it for seven years. I like having a year-long project to work on, but it can start to feel like a chore. After grappling with the thought of letting go of Project Life for a year (and it does feel like a loss after so many years) I realised what I wanted to do. A book about me. Yes, all of my previous books have been from my point of view, but this one would be much more personal and it would be my story, not everyone else's. I wanted to make it digitally so I can have it printed as a book at the end of the year in a smaller size. Blurb has a 6x9 trade book and although the quality of those is not as good as a regular photobook I'm OK with that for this project. It would be part scrapbook, part smash book, part Bullet Journal, park Travellers' Notebook. It would be random, messy, casual, imperfect and personal. Photos, google images, stories, words, screen shots, movie posters, journal cards, quotes, lists, plans, recipes, song lyrics. I'll share some more about my 2017 project in the next few days. #ProjectLife #HybridScrapbooking #DigitalScrapbooking

I'm an avid amateur cook and cookbook collector. The kitchen is my happy place. I wanted to keep a record of the meals I've made from my favourite cookbooks and make some little notes about them so I decided to make a 6x8 binder. I used Cathy Zielske's Six By Eights digital templates to make a page for each cookbook then printed them onto matte photo paper, adding details about the book, author and a quick summary. I've hole punched them and put them into a 6x8 Snap binder and I write notes about what I cook from that book and on the back of each page. A fun little project that is easy to add to and look back on. #HybridScrapbooking #6x8 #FoodCooking

Sometimes I need to pare things down and get back to basics. This hobby can feel overly complicated and if I've been away from it for a bit, I can feel like I forgot how to do it. I had been looking at this little icon on Spotify and thinking I must make a page about this playlist I've been listening to lately at my desk. Just a little story. I always start these hybrid pages in Photoshop Elements, just so I can see where everything will fit. I start with a 6x8 canvas and draw a square the size I want my photo and mask the photo in (just dragging it straight from Google Images), then I measure my letter stickers and make a rectangle roughly that size so I know where the letters will go and finally I write my journaling. To print, I turn off the photo and rectangle layers so I just get the journaling printing onto my 6x8 piece of cardstock. Then I drag a copy of my photo layer to a new 4x6 canvas and print that out on photo paper. To finish, I just cut the photo out, glue it on with some foam dots and stick the letters on. Easy. This page really speaks to my minimalist self and reminds me that a little photo, a little title and a little story is enough. #HybridScrapbooking #6x8 #DigitalTips

I made this simple 6x8 digital layout this morning about our family roller-skating adventures. It is a simple design - a black and white photo, a journal card (cut down to just the title) and two elements from the kit. I've had this photo since Christmas - I love when you open a kit and know exactly the story you want to tell. TIP FOR THE DAY: It's easy to cut down digital elements like journal cards in Photoshop Elements. Just make sure you have the element selected in the layers palette then use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the part of the element you don't want and hit delete. ( I cut this card off just under the Totally So Awesome tagline). ITEMS USED: #DigitalScrapbooking #AliEdwards #6x8 #DigitalTips

#shannan #married with two kids #part-time corporate job #sydney australia #scrapbooker #klutz #reader #dork #great cook #music lover Scrapbooking and cooking are my favourite things to do. TV is a close third. Luckily I am an introvert and love being at home. I started scrapbooking in 2008 when my daughter was little. It was something I was vaguely interested in for a long time, even though I didn't really have a great understanding about what scrapbooking really was (or could be). I've always loved writing and have kept journals my whole life. As a teenager, I would add in everyday stuff to my diary like music charts from the record store (I'm old!), concert tickets, magazine clippings, photo booth pictures and just general stuff. When I got older, I kept a journal on the computer. When Zara was born, I worked on a photo album for her up until she was about one. One day I came home from shopping with a ton of photos (literally - I had accidentally printed way too many) and decided I might as well start scrapbooking. I went to our local Spotlight store where they had a lot of scrap stuff and bought some patterned paper, letter stickers and an album. I still remember making those first few pages and how much I loved the process. It was so much fun. Those pages aren't very good when I look back and they lack journalling, but it was a start. And it was fun! This is my very first page (I remember loving that patterned paper so much even though my letter stickers are so matchy-matchy that you can't even read it!) And this is the first page I made that I LIKED (probably about twenty pages later). I am naturally inquisitive and a researcher so I did a lot of online research about scrapbooking. Somehow I found Ali Edwards and Cathy Zielske who taught me so much about this hobby. I bought books and magazines and immersed myself in this crafty world. And I made a lot of pages. I learned that I could make pages about me or our everyday life (thanks to Ali Edwards) and that I could use my computer for journalling and titles (thanks Cathy Zielske). I made heartfelt pages about my daughter, silly pages about Ikea, fun pages about music and television, and introspective pages about myself and loved it all. I would set myself up on our dining table while my daughter slept and make pages - some good, some bad. By the time my son was born, I was finding it hard to deal with the constant mess (no scrap room) and started to look into digital scrapbooking. I got a Macbook Pro in early 2010 and learned as much as I could about that side of scrapbooking. My love for scrapbooking has ebbed and flowed but it's always there. I can't imagine not being a scrapbooker now. It's a lifestyle isn't it? I mostly make digital pages and photo-book projects in a minimalist style, but enjoy doing some hybrid projects (mainly because I still have a healthy letter sticker habit). I would call myself a simple scrapbooker - not many fancy techniques or trends on my pages. I have a communication degree and that background in page design, typeface, advertising and professional writing comes in very handy all these years later. In 2019 I opened my online shop for digital scrapbook supplies - Shannan Pages Shop (HERE). You can find layered templates, guided album kits, digital journal cards and other digital goodness all in a minimalist, simple style. I share my current work regularly over on instagram as shannan_pages Thank you for being here!