Saturday, August 22, 2015

Crafting Life Lessons with the Daily Diary Kit

Happy Saturday to you all. I found myself recently taking a lot of photos on a particular day. It wasn't officially a "Day in the Life" project but I wanted to document what a day was like for us this summer, the summer before we enter a new era of a school-going kid. I took out my Country Life kit to document it.


If there is one life lesson I have learned in crafting, it is to not overcommit myself to a project and to remember that it's okay to do a project on my own terms. This is no where near a full day documented. I didn't set my camera on a tripod to catch myself doing the daily routines; most of these pictures were taken with a few hours of each other. But this is pretty representative of a day in my life this summer even if it is lacking a few extra details.


Another life lesson I've learned in crafting is nothing will ever be perfect. There will always be something you wish would be different or could change on your page. But at some point, you've got to just let go and let things be as they are. I didn't particularly like the way this die cut heart made that picture feel too heavy. I worried that it made the whole layout a little off-balance. When I tried to pull it off, it was going to rip my photo so I had to let it be. So then I added a few other embellishments, using a red word art strip because having it be the same color as the heart made it so that it didn't add much extra weight. The small wood veneer heart in contrast with the larger die cut heart also seems to make it feel a little lighter, in my opinion. So is it perfect? No, but it works and I'm leaving it.


Another crafty life lesson I'll share with you today is that it's okay to go outside your normal style. On this "remember" card, I did several things that I don't normally. First, I made a smaller photo on top of a patterned card and then I included a lot of layers (for me anyway). It's busier than I tend to go but it was what I was feeling at the moment. I used to be concerned about all of my pages having similar styles so the albums seemed more cohesive, but now I've realized that nobody will ever be looking through my Project Life albums pointing out how varying the styles are. They will be more interested in the pictures and the stories. So I do each page how I feel inspired to make it and am no longer worried about overall album cohesion.

That's all I have for you today! I did an unboxing video for the September Daily Diary Kit called Show and Tell. You can watch it here.



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