Project 365 or Project 52

I'm sure you have all heard of this concept - a photo a day for a year, or a photo a week for a year. The idea is to pick just one photo per day, and write a few words - philosophical, eventful, mundane, or not. But when you look back on the book after a year, you'll be so glad you did this project!

Well, I started  off in 2008 and got about, oh I dunno, 15 days into it before I started missing photos, swapping other photos for different days, making up idiotic thoughts to go with the photo of a cow pat ... etc. I failed. Or rather, the concept failed me.

These are all 2008 December Daily pages, using Designerdigitals products. The album remains unfinished :(

I am a hoarder. And a very busy lady. It's part of me. So choosing just one photo to represent the whole day, was impossible. I also didn't make a regular time to create the layout each day. So. Well. It failed.

Come 2009 and I approached the project in a whole new light. It took a while to figure out my own Project 365 mojo, and some of the layouts are so completely different to the rest of the book they look out of place. But it records everything we did in 2009. Everything. And I lasted the distance.

I think the only constant I kept with my 2009 Project 365, was the title!

Out of this experience, this year I learned that my Project 365 works best when I create a weekly double-page layout featuring as many photos as I choose to represent the week. And as much journalling as I needed to get off my chest. Or record what we did all week. Or all day. Sometimes so much happens in one day that I respond with a resounding silence when someone asks me "so, what have you been doing with yourself lately?". Uh .... let me think. What haven't I done? Where have my days gone? It comes with the territory when you have 3 little munchkins living in your house.

This year I am also creating pages ahead of time. And I'm scheduling them in my diary to complete them each Sunday night. So I just slot in my photos, maybe touch up a few elements, press save and call it done.

I'm up to week 13 in my created pages. We are only 5 weeks into the year (at the time of writing this). I find it relaxing to play with kits and create layouts ahead of time. I have made sure my weekly double-page template has photo slots for horizontal and vertical and lots of smaller square photos. So I always get most of the photos I want in. This suits me because I no longer print out my digital photos and slot them into traditional photo albums. So this album is a summary of the 6000+ photos I took that year, lol!

I sometimes journal each day in a word document I have saved on my desktop. Sometimes my memory is better triggered by the photo itself when I'm slotting in my photos. But most of the coolest details are recorded the night that it happens. So much detail. And it's just as well, for I have such a vague memory 2 days later!

This year I'm sticking to the one template. It's one I designed myself because I couldn't find anything on the market that suited my needs. I may change my mind about it halfway through the year. And that's ok too. My family hasn't oowed and awwed at my scrapbook designs when they've flicked back through the 2009 album. They've laughed at the photos, read the journalling, and remembered the moments.

And that's what it's all about, isn't it?