MANDALA MONDAY AND WEEK IN THE LIFE

Happy Mandala Monday!! I'm joining Dawn this week showing our beautiful mandala's made from nature or food or shells anything that inspires you. I love starting our week with something so pretty. Mine is made from leftover birthday flowers, I love seeing these pretty colors together. I even cut up a stem and used it and the inside of the rose, this one sat on the table for a few days, just love looking at it. I did start out on the white tablecloth then remembered my yellow plates and so glad I did.

 

Thanks so much Dawn  for giving us the inspiration and letting us share this with you each week. Please stop by Dawn's and check out her mandala and see what others created too.

Today starts Week In The Life.... a more detail version of my Project Life album. This is my 4th year joining Ali Edward's in this amazing project. Each day we document by pictures and journaling our whole day for one week. She shares a link up every day so we can share our pictures/stories/lives with each other, LOVE THIS PART then you come back and share your finished album. It's so neat to see how everyone is doing their albums, some go digital, order a album from a printing service, large/small albums or anything in between. There is no right/wrong way, whatever makes you happy.

 

This year I'm going small with my album, a 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 3 ring binder, so CUTE! The picture above is my prep work from this weekend, getting some of it set up ahead of time helps motivate you/ME to finish it. I'm using journal cards from the Midnight Project Life kit and adding some homemade cards in also. The colors theme is black/white/yellow and some gray thrown in.

I cut down some baseball card protectors to fit this size and use for my journal cards and pictures. I made a day of the week card for each page using black paint and writing in my white gel pen. Dug out my old PL date stamp and used it on each day too. LOVE ALL THIS WHITE! I'm filling in some of the pockets for now just to get a feel for it and will change them around to fit that day later.

To make this even easier I'm ordering my pictures each day in a 5x7 collage format, you know how I love collages. So each week's spread will look like this,  the left side I will either write down or type out a description of our day, the middle is the 4 pocket protector and then the picture collage on the right side glued to the black paper for background. Super simple and just what I like right now. I almost went with fall colors but it's not very fall here yet so might just do this again next month and use my favorite fall colors. For now I'm enjoying these colors which is rare for me to use.

here is a picture of what it will look like with a collage on it. These were from my WITL in 2011, so fun to look back at these. It fits perfectly inside this page protector and fun to see so many photos from that day. Can't wait to fill up this new album!!

I will be here every night to share our pictures from the day before and might even do some of these pages the very next day so it will be done even sooner. I like the idea of doing the page while the memories are still fresh in my head and not forget anything. I will be taking notes thru the day in my notebook to help remember too. In the past I've added these right to the album, not sure if I will this time. Hoping my kids/hubby take some pictures this week too, like knowing it's a family effort and seeing their pictures of what they want to share in this album.

 

I admit this is a huge commitment and it's tiring some days taking so many pictures and having the lens in the family's faces for a week but the end result is so cool and so WORTH IT!! By Friday I'm usually ready to throw my camera out the window or looking for new fresh ideas of what to take pictures of  but it only lasts about a day then it's back again for the home stretch. Some days I take over a 100 pictures and some days only 20, I don't use them all of course but choosing the ones that matter most and will matter to us in 10, 30, 50 years from now. I sooooo wish my mom could have done this when I was growing up, would have loved this so much!!

 

If you have any questions please feel free to ask away in the comments! To see and learn more about this click on the Ali Edward's link on the right side of my blog. Even if your not doing this visiting her blog will be fun to read. She inspires me so much in this scrapping world of mine, she taught me how to slow down and capture pictures I wouldn't have thought to take. The way she writes also gets me writing more here on this blog about my family. She is a great role model for when times are tough you still keep going and thru it all taking photos and writing it all down.

 

Thanks for the wonderful pictures on my fall and sunflower post last week!!!

See you back here tomorrow with pictures from our lives TODAY!!! YAY!!