The project life app for my recent reads (September 2014)

I follow Megan of the Nerd Nest on Instagram, and I've really loved her monthly reads posts. After a bit of chat with her, I came up with something I hope I'll now be doing monthly over on the Book Blog, and possibly posting here as well: a PL Layout of the books read this month.

I did this early on - and okay, I could probably (certainly) re-do it better now, but I think I'll leave that for my October layout.

Now if only book covers came in nice 3x4 proportions.

How I'm using the Project Life App: #2 - Planning my physical layouts

Earlier this week I posted the first in my series of posts about how I'm using the new Project Life App.  That was about making 3x4 collages to easily print out as 4x6 photos.

This time it's about the major use I can see for the app: planning my physical layouts

This is possibly what most excites me most about the app (apart from getting sets of cards like Everyday Adventure and Just Add Colour a lot more cheaply and more enviromentally friendly-ly - yeah, I made up an adverb): being able to easily plan out my layouts and determine what sized photos I need to get.  

A few weeks ago, I had a week that eventually went out to two 12x12 spreads.  I had it sketched out (badly) and it took ages to work out which photos I wanted, how I wanted to collage them and etc.  

Also, I was very bad at sketching out layout designs, even on grid paper.  (This, by the way, is a photo from my bullet journal, which I've been meaning to blog about since about June.  Must do that...)

I can see this app making that process so much easier.  It's not seamless (creating collages means changing from layout to collage, remembering which photos and cards and possibly journalling you want, etc) but there's a lot less mental guesswork with this, because you can see the photos in the layout in front of you instead of having to visualise.

So, here's my layout for Week 38 on the App.  

 

In general, this was a quick-n-dirty job.(If you look closely, you can see I wasn't even sure which week it was - on the title card I've put "Week 37?" when it's actually Week 38.)  I started working on it Thursday when I had the first three photos, but it's changed a few times since then (for example, I originally had the title card in its traditional place, upper left hand corner.  But that meant that the story couldn't flow chronologically - and I generally prefer it to do so.  I had no photos to include from earlier in the week, and I really wanted to keep all the photos from the UnitingCare AGM.  (I'm still considering getting a 6x8 of the heart made from vegetables for another of my albums.  The design work is beautiful.)

So as the week went on, things shifted.  (And then shifted again, after I'd got the photos printed - see below).

Meanwhile, because this was never meant to be printed exactly as is, but was just about designing the layout, the filler cards aren't as important as they might be in a proper layout.  And, I was able to use them as sticky notes and journaling reminders.  On one on the right hand layout I have a mention of which week this goes with.  (Enhancement suggestion for Becky's team - the ability to view a double page spread together :-) ).  I also remembered on Sunday evening what a big deal the Scottish #indyref had been, and wanted to remind myself to do some journalling on that.

And so here are the photos of the finished layout, so that you can see the progression:

Obviously, the lighting leaves a bit to be desired.  The observant will also notice that some things have changed sides (it's a chronology thing).

This layout is also waiting for an insert.

It will actually be a Design H insert, but for Reasons (including editing the photo of my brother-un-law and his fiance, and the fact that I just damn loved the rainbow hearts from the Everyday Adventure kit (which I don't own physically) for this layout) I'm getting this printed via Persnickety Prints, and when it arrives I'll cut it up and put it into either a design H or a 3(6x4) Memerology insert I have.

So.  That's an attempt at showing you the major use I suspect I'll have for the app.  I love the ability to plan: so much easier than my bad sketch attempts at an earlier week.  And you know what - it also means I can do much clearer versions of my layouts for blogging!

How I'm using the Project Life App: #1 - Collages

So, the day I got it - which was the day it was released - I wrote up a fairly happy review of the Project Life app here on the blog.

My happiness has not abated, and - in part because I've seen people on the Project Life Australia/New Zealand group wondering "what would you do with this app when you've already got lots of cards and like a physical album", I thought I'd start a series of posts showing how I'm using the app.  Because I'm using it in a lot of different ways.

First up: the collage feature.

I like using 3x4 photos in my layouts.  It lets me have a few more photos, and because I take all my photos on my iPhone, there are a lot of times that I forget to turn the phone to landscape before I click - leaving me with all these portrait photos and a Design A first half left over from last week.

So most weeks I seem to be putting together collages of two 3x4 photos to be printed and then chopped up again.  I've been using the "A Beautiful Mess" app a lot, and also Frame Ur Life for more complicated 6x4 collages on those occasions when I have multiple photos.  But I find both of those very fiddly, and FrameUrLife has incredibly annoying ads.

So I'm really enjoying the collage feature on the PL App.

Below are three collages - all very simple - that I created for Week 38.

Of these three, the bottom two were made with the intention of printing them, cutting them, and (once I'd added some journalling to the "Currently" card), putting them straight into the pockets.  With the top one I only actually needed the App screen shot (of course the App was going to make it into my week's PL!), so I chose one of my favourite cards from the "Everyday Adventure" kit for the other side.  It's now sitting happily with my other 3x4s waiting for the perfect time to use it.

Next time, the main thing I plan to use the app for: planning layouts.  (It's just that I haven't entirely finished the physical layout yet and want to include those photos in the post.)