Sunday 1 September 2013

Project Life Filofax - Test!

After my last post I decided I really needed to try out my idea for a project life Filofax. I love using a Filofax and really wanted to get into the project life craze, but all the different components of Project Life are too expensive for my budget.

This blog post is basically a run through of my last hour in my office. It didn't take long to develop the idea into something which looks pretty neat, in my opinion, and is much more cost effective.

First I took a sheet of personal Filofax paper. I wanted to use personal size as it's quite a nice inbetween size to use. However, most project life journaling cards (or other brands) are 3x4", too large to fit in any combination on a personal size page without overhang or overlap.

 
 
 
 
After about ten minutes of staring at the above combinations and trying to telepathically make them fit, I decided personal was not the one for this project. It needed something larger, that would allow me to expand my idea.
 
So I shook the dust off my A5 domino that I'd been using a few weeks ago for journaling and fell out with because I messed up the dates on my entries.
I'd cut out some templates (4x3" and 3x2") and used them to figure out how many journaling cards I could fit on a page. As mentioned before, most journaling cards are 4x3", so the 2x3" would either be journaling cards cut in half, or scrapbooking paper cut to size. (The yellow paper shows the 2x3" paper).
 
 
 

 
You can see there is a slight overhang on these layouts, but I don't think that will matter so much as I'll be using the other side of the paper for the following week. I'll be doing a week to view layout, so there is enough space on these layouts to do journaling for each day if I need to.
 
Next step: trying the layout out with my own pictures and journaling cards that match. Last week I ordered some 12x12 sheets of journaling cards, you get 12 cards per sheet and they cost the same as any other 12x12 scrapbook paper. I ordered mine from My Minds Eye, and they are from their Cut and Paste collection.
 
 
I cut the journaling cards out and placed them on my pages, keeping in mind that I'd want a mix of cards for journaling, photos and some decorative. Here's what I ended up with, and I think for the cost compared to project life it's a pretty great effort.
 
 
I added a few photos that I had in my stash that I meant to journal and never got round to it. I can see how much of a difference it makes when you co-ordinate the colours of the cards with that of your photographs. If I was sticking down and decorating these pages I'd use the alphabet stickers and accent stickers on the left (the stickers were 95p from the same collection as the journaling cards).
 
Here are a few more pictures:
 
 
 
I can feel a bit happier now I know I wasn't trying to do something that was impossible, I really look forward to starting this project! I think I'm going to research how people record information for their project, and then after each month I will order the papers etc. to co-ordinate with my photographs.
 
How exciting!