Week in the Life: My Plan
I’ll be honest … I wasn’t going to do Ali’s Week in the Life. I tried to do it last year and I failed. Epic fail. Crashed and burned!
I took all the photos. I kept great notes. I enjoyed the process of gathering “material” and details from that particular week in July/August. But when it came time to put the pages together and create something from what I gathered … I hit a wall. I made a few layouts and hated them. They are the only scrapbooking pages I’ve ever deleted. I think the problem was I was approaching them as individual pages, yet trying to create a cohesive look. And I couldn’t get a “look” I liked.
Fast forward to 2012. I had no intention of doing Week in the Life. I just couldn’t see how it would work for me and I was so discouraged after my last attempt. Then I read this blog post from Nicole Reaves. She’s doing a Week in the Life, but with a twist. She’s going to focus on her kids and only her kids. I immediately thought that was the coolest idea ever. Both my kids just celebrated birthdays, so it would be so cool to capture a week in their lives at eight and three. And then do it again when they are nine and four. And so on … There are so many things about Shelby’s third year I don’t remember. I don’t remember what her favorite TV shows were. I don’t remember what her favorite foods were. I don’t remember if she said some funny phrase all the time. How cool would it be to capture their world, right now, as a record of their current age? Seriously, kids change and grow so fast. I want to freeze this moment and save it forever.
This got me thinking. Maybe I would do a Week in the Life, but just focus on Shelby and Cooper, but I still had the issue of how I’d put it all together. I remembered reading some blog posts from Nettio Designs (Lynnette) about how she used InDesign and Blub to create a book from her Week in the Life adventure last year. Her book is very sleek, simple and has a magazine feel to it. This was exactly what I wanted and needed.
Long before I ever used Photoshop, I worked almost exclusively in InDesign. I’ve put together countless newspaper pages and sections in InDesign. It’s what I know. And for a project like this, it’s ideal for me. I would be able to see all the pages in my “book” in a single document. This takes away the issue of struggling with creating a cohesive look from stand-alone scrapbook pages. I’ll be able to work on spreads (two facing pages) and design those pages together … as well as see and reference other pages in the book. Plus, it sort of tosses out the idea of using elaborate embellishments and streamlines the process and look. I’m going for simple, classic and sleek. I’d like to create a timeless book that will look great even 10 years from now.
Much like Nettio, I’ve gone ahead and download the InDesign PDF to Book plug-in Blurb offers; I’ve created my InDesign file using this plugin; and I’ve created two master pages (above) to use as templates through out the week (the starting point for my master pages look very much like Nettio’s … I’m using this as a starting point and will adjust depending on the content. I do however want to have one large picture per spread, which is something Nettio did). I’m SO excited. I really didn’t think this was going to work for me … but by attacking it in a different way and it suddenly makes sense.
I’m going to create two books. One fro Shelby and one for Cooper. I’m going to of course chronicle each day of the week … but I’m also going to borrow from Nettio and do some pages that focus on favorites and fashion. Shelby loves to dress herself, so it will be fun to take pictures of what she picks out each day. I also want to record some of their favorites, like their favorite TV shows, food, activities. I’m also thinking I’ll do a spread on their personal spaces: what their rooms look like right now; what are the most important “things” in their rooms; and why. This weekend, I’m going to make a few more master pages to cover the “favorite things” pages.
Thank you Nettio and Nicole. I appreciate the insight you all shared on your blogs. Your words really helped me wrap my head around how this project would work for me and fit into my style and workflow. You ladies rock!