Project: Photo Journal

The need for this project stemmed from several areas in my life. First of all, I'm a firm believer in everyday documentation. Personally for us, I use a combination of this blog, Instagram, journaling and photography to do that for our family. The problem with all but one of those avenues is that they're all digital mediums. And being a photographer in the digital age, means that I have thousands (yes, thousands) of pictures on our hard drive that have no life outside of being viewed on a screen. Doesn't that make you sad? (wait, that's just me? ok.) 

I wanted some way to be able to enjoy photographs of our everyday life that was more than just clicking through them on our computer. Scrapbooking was the obvious solution, BUT I don't like traditional scrapbooking, it's just not my style. And also it's easy for it to get expensive. If I pay a lot for something I put pressure on myself to not mess it up. I didn't want that for this project. I wanted to be able to have freedom to create without fear of making mistakes. And (although I need to be more consistent) I love journaling. I love seeing entire pages filled with handwritten words. It's beautiful. Now all I had to do was find a way to combine my love of writing, photography and the need to document our life! 

If you follow me over on Pinterest, then you've probably seen where I drew a lot of inspiration for this project. I filled up this board with lots of ideas and, being such a visual person, it really helped with what I wanted my end product to look like. 

I started out with a simple sketchbook (I think it cost a little over $10). 

My way of getting quality pictures printed in a cost effective way was Shutterfly. If you sign up for account, they send you emails all.the.time with coupon codes (I can get tons of pictures for sometimes under $10!) I recommend at least signing up for it if you want to try something like this out.

 I used the free computer program Picasa to create collages of the pictures I wanted to use so I could later cut them out to fit the format of my photo journal. 

All that was left to do after that was figure out my page layouts and use things like journal cards, doodles and lots of washi tape for simple embellishments

 Each page is different and has it's own style. Some a little more ornate and some very simple. I like that nothing is the same. 

It's a far from a perfect system (notice all the mistakes? ha!) but it works for me. I divide it up a month at a time because that seemed like the best way to not get overwhelmed by all that I wanted this journal to show. Once I pick out the images from each month I want to use, I get them printed and journal away! I've found that it's somewhat therapeutic for me to take the time to do this. And I believe that being able to flip through these pages and remember all the mundanely beautiful, fun, hard, momentous and wonderful things that have happened in our life is something that I will always treasure. 

So there you are, just a way that I've found to preserve memories and life happenings around here. I love that I can leave this book out on our coffee table for us or other people to pick up and remember what's happened in our life over the past year. I really hope I can keep this up in future because I believe it's so easy to not remember the everyday things. Our life and what God has done with it is too precious of a thing to forget. And really, that is reason enough in itself to take the time to do a project like this.

 I know it might not be your style and that's totally ok! I just encourage you to find someway that works for you to document your life and do it! What are you waiting for? :)