Good evening fellow crafters! Tonight I would like to talk about how I am approaching project life for this year. I will also discuss about the supplies I will be using and why I think I failed to complete last years PL.

Well let’s start with why I didn’t finish PL 2013. I get bored very easily. I also become discouraged and unmotivated when I try to go crazy embellishing my weeks. Plus I had my baby boy Max and that really put PL out of my mine. I stopped my weekly pages about a few weeks before I had my baby boy and as the weeks went by I thought I would never be able to catch up. I was pretty bummed out because I was really excited about Projectlife. This year I decided to be more prepared. I have tons of pl stuff and I knew I couldn’t give up on it so I decided that I would need to be more organized.

Yesterday I was searching the web on how others start and end their week so that I can go ahead and mark it on my calendar and in the process I found this amazing blog post by the super talented, PL dt member, Cathy Zeilsky. Her “best tips” post is the best advice ever, well for me at least. She talks about setting “smart albums” for the weeks on iphoto(Mac users sorry) and what’s cool about that is that you can set rules for each album and have a range of dates like for example week one album has a date range from the 1st to the 5th so that means that any photos uploaded between those dates will not only be in your photos but in the smart album. Genius!!!!!!! Instead of having to search the photos it already does it for you. For more great tips you should definitely check out her post.

Another thing I will be doing differently this year is not going crazy about embellishing. I have a lot of projects I work on I don’t want to be wasting a good amount of time trying to embellish my cards only to be unhappy with how it looks because it’s not like the ones I see from the super talented design teams of PL or studio calico. So I decided simple was better for me. I think I can manage that.

So last year I went hybrid and did both digital and physical layouts. I purchased so many digital kits and also stocked up on some mini kits. I also signed up for Studio Calico’s PL kit. I was overwhelmed with so many choices. This time I decided I would use just one kit. I had purchased the jade edition kit from HSN last year which came with the album, core kit, dividers and 60 page protectors. Now project life is suppose to be fun and easy so I am determined to keep up with this years album using just this kit. I may take a few things from here and there but my main kit will be the jade edition.

Now for other embellishments and tools. I believe having a few AC thicker stickers are a must and a packet of mini alpha stickers. I will be using some thickers I have been hoarding and the snap sticker set I purchased from michaels. I also will be using Lawn Fawn’s milo and Quinn’s abc stamp set and also the Amy tangerine stamp set I received from a kit last year. I have also precut some tags I downloaded from studio calico and as for my writing tool I will be using a smash book pen. I just love how it writes. Other tools that are a must is of course your paper cutter and a round corner punch.

So far that is what I plan to use and I hope it will make it easier putting together my weekly pages.

Here are photos of my front page, left side of week one and the some of the supplies I will be using.