Blog: Day in the Life | Nicole Reaves

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!

I’m excited to be playing along with Ali Edwards Week in the Life project this year. Today I want to show you how I put together a Day in the Life spread using leftover supplies from previous Studio Calico Project Life kits, and how you can expand these ideas into documenting a full week.

How I tracked my day :

For this spread I chose to take photos with my phone out of convenience. I’ve been really happy with the photos on my iphone 5, and I knew I would be printing fairly small photos, so image quality wasn’t a huge deal to me.

I printed Ali’s Daily Sheets she has available for free on her blog to keep track, hourly, of what I was doing, eating, and thoughts that came to mind. Jotting down notes throughout the day was a big help when it came time to sit down and do this layout. I kept it out in a central location (for me, it was my kitchen counter) and tried to write as many notes as I could – knowing I would likely forget the little (and often important) stuff by the time I was going to work on the spread.

After the day was complete and I had chosen the photos I wanted to use, it was easy to tell how many journaling cards or what ‘filler’ I was going to need, based on what divided page protector I was going to use. I simply laid out the photos and quickly scanned for what colors were dominate. Then I went through my Project Life stash and grabbed journaling cards that I thought would be relevant to this spread and match with the other colors I was using.

Here’s a quick video of how my spread came together + what I chose to document.

How to expand these ideas throughout a whole week :

I photographed some pretty everyday scenes + events in my Day in the Life spread – food, a couple selfies, and the stuff of life. It can start to feel repetitive after a couple days though, so here are a few ideas to get you through seven days of documenting :

·Find something or someone else to focus on. Perhaps choose a particular family member to ‘follow’ each day.

·Change your perspective. Try looking up (or down) more. If you have small children, get down on their level and photograph what they see. Want to document the weather? Take a picture of the sky, or your shadow if you are enjoying a sunny day.

·Consider doing a mini photo tour around your house (your favorite room, a project you are working on, what the outside of your house looks like this time of year) or of your workspace. You may not find your office or cubicle interesting, but your family or other people who look at your album might thinks it’s cool to see where you spend your day.

·Try a spread using just 'stuff' – food packaging, mail, a newspaper or magazine you read, receipts, business cards, a grocery list or to-do list, emails, your children's artwork - anything that passes through your hands during the day.

·Document your favorites (and the favorites of your family) - your fave outfit or pair of shoes, favorite meal, food or drink you can’t get enough of (and include the recipe!), favorite book or magazine, blogs you read, etc.

·Don’t forget to include you! Get out your tripod (if you have one) and practice using the self timer on your camera and/or phone. I love the TimerCam app on my iphone and use it often.

Here is one more look at my completed spread: