Day in the Life | Marcy Penner

Ali Edwards has set aside September 9-15th for her popular Week In The Life project. We've asked five of our Creative Team members to take on a recording and sharing one day with all of you. They'll each be sharing a project, their tips and tricks, and a video. We hope these ideas inspire you as you take on a Day or Week In The Life album!

Back in June I participated in Ali Edwards' Day in the Life. I went into it with a vision of keeping things simple and easy. I didn't want to stress myself out. This was important. I was pretty sure that complicating it would mean I'd have a bunch of photos sitting on my computer and no project to show for it.

And that wasn't what I wanted.

I pretty much knew I wasn't going to be able to carry along a piece of paper and a pen along with me all day. And I knew myself enough to know that I'd also probably fail at using any kind of app on my iPhone to record times and events. So in the end all I did was rely on my photos.

I let my photos do the talking. I relied on the time stamp of my photo and the photo itself. I knew I wasn't going to be journaling this great big epic story about my day. I wanted photos and bullet points... and for that this worked perfectly.

And did I mention it was stress free? I'm a big fan of less stress.

The Process

I decided on using a page protector (Design F) that had a lot of 3x4 pockets. I wanted to fill them mostly with photos and keep my title blog and journaling in the 4x6 pocket.

I added circles with times on them to my photos in Photoshop and just slid them in. I had taken out a few repetitive photos and looked for accent cards to fill in those spots.

For my title I cut out text with my Cameo and backed that with patterned paper from a 4x6 Studio Calico paper pad. At the end of my video I call it a 4x4 paper pad... which clearly, it's not.

I'm still trying to feel more comfortable with watercolors so to make sure I didn't goof anything up I took a piece of watercolor paper to experiment on and created my one accent card right on there, with a little help from my cameo. You can find out more about that technique and my card in the video.

I decided on using two large white shipping tags for my journaling, alternating them up and down. I typed out the times of the photos and a very brief description of what was happening. It worked out that I could fit the morning on one tag and the afternoon and evening on the other.

At the end I folded a ticket in half and stapled it on the edge of my page. I stamped the date on it with the intention that this would make it easy to find in my Project Life album, basically acting as a bookmark.

(supplies : kits - Steinbeck add-on, Marks & Co 4x6 paper pad; page protectors - Design F page protectors; tags - large white tags; die cuts - Silhouette Cameo; other - watercolor paper, watercolor brush, transparent watercolor papers)

Adapting for Week in the Life

I'm looking forward to adapting this project into a Week in the Life too. I love the idea of trimming down a pocket page protector or using a smaller size. Using one page per day and including all seven days in the middle of a Project Life spread (or in place of) would be a great way to include Week in the Life in your normal, everyday Project Life album. A simplified approach. Add a tab on each page with the date, or just numbered 1 through 7, and you're good to go.

I also like the idea of maybe documenting each hour. Capturing what happens at 8am, at 9am and so on. A neat day to day comparison and a different take on the topic.

Whichever way you decide to tackle Week in the Life I hope you enjoy it... now, and when you look back on it years down the road. It'll be worth it.