How *I* Project Life - weekly layouts, part 1

The most important thing to know about PL is to never let anyone tell you how it "should" be done.  PL in a way that suits *you*, not the way this blog or that blog says is their way. The majority of PLers have children.  That doesn't mean that you can't do PL if you don't have kids.  Believe me, I'm saying this as a lesbian who has no kids at all, but a girlfriend and two cats.  It may be difficult to include a camera-shy girlfriend, and the cats are currently taking over my layouts, but that doesn't make me any less a PLer than any Mormon (and a lot of PLers are Mormon) WAHM.  Nor does it make me any more a PLer than the Mormon WAHM who lives in Utah, or the single girl with dog who PLs a fabulously awesome seeming life.

People PL by theme (which I'm doing in my pre-2014 album and some mini-albums), by month, by kid, and by week.

Personally, I'm loving weekly layouts, and I've been doing them since November 2013.  I also have themed and event layouts and albums, and I'll share some of them with you later on, but this post is about how I go about a weekly layout.

Let's take Week ? As an example. Funnily enough, it's the week I'm working on at the moment. 

Generally, I begin by gathering together my photos. I have my phone and iPad set to send all photos to DropBox, and from there Picasa picks them up on my computer. I organise them by week (and sometimes also by theme, such a photos I've taken for use on this blog, but not for PL), and then decide on the basis of the photos what sort of layout I'll use for the week, including any inserts. 

For Week 26 I had lots of photos of the Yellow Submarine, a fair few of the brand new kitties, and also my friend Jo's Ember Card, announcing her ordination to the priesthood on the Saturday afternoon. 

I mostly end up using Design A for my layouts, which is based on landscape photos. It doesn't always work, but I'm now in the habit of mostly taking landscape photos so that they work easily. I have also found that I can successfully use the "A Beautiful Mess" app to collage portrait photos into a 6x4 landscape that can either go directly into a 6x4 pocket or be cut down to go into the 3x4 portrait pockets. 

Next I choose which core kit to use. In general, I choose a single core kit per weekly layout.  For the week of the Yellow Submarine, it had to be Honey, and lots of yellow. (The one exception this is the weekly review card at the bottom right, which comes from Azure. I'd already written this one out before I realised how much more yellow Honey was than Azure. As a kit, I mean.)

The portrait 3x4 card at the far right is a plain grid card that I've done some surface crochet on using the same yarn I used for one of my pieces for the Sub. It doesn't quite coordinate, but it was determined to include it. 

The double photos are from A Beautiful Mess, as aforementioned.

I'll be back in a few days with part 2, on embellishment and journalling.