Project Life finished album 2014

It's here. The best happy mail there is. A year in book form.
Holding so many photos and stories and memories in my hands is magical and really doesn't get old.

When my book arrived I took an hour out and sat on my bed and just read it cover to cover. There are some pages that make me laugh, there are pages that are sweet and there are stories that make me cry.

The book starts with a simple sentiment.

I then wrote a brief blurb about my year of memory keeping before launching into the weekly pages.

I love that on each page there is a lot to see. This is partly because the pages are so big. It really does feel like a coffee table book.

I pondered for a while about what to do with the covers this year. There were plenty of photos I wanted to include so the most sensible option was to do a grid. It is totally over the top but wonderful at the same time!

Just like last year I ordered my book through blurb. I think they are a great company, the delivery was speedy for such a large book and they offer a book making program that you download to your computer. This made creating my PL book so quick and easy as I could plug in my pages when I had five minutes to spare.

I used a page template that blurb offer. It is essentially one big photo with a white border. I then just uploaded my pages as jpegs and popped in one per page.
From experience, blurb books don't lie flat, hence why I like the white boarder. It means that nothing gets lost down the 'gutter' of the spine.

This book is big. I went for a 12x12 hardcover. I think any smaller would make the text inside very hard to read.
As some weeks I only did a single page, the book is slightly smaller than last years by about twenty pages. It still feels substantial though!

Last year I had a slight qualm about the colours of some of the photos in my book but either my computer is more accurate or blurb have upped their game because the colours are just gorgeous this year. Very true to life/sceen and the picture quality is fab.

Project life as a craft is very cheap for me as I rarely buy new supplies and I don't print anything throughout the year. When buying my book I tend to therefore pay a bit more to have nicer quality. I chose the matt lustre pages this year and they feel lovely and thick.

I can't begin to describe what it feels like to have two years documented in this form. When project life feels heavy, I come back to the books to remind myself why I do it.

Memory keeping. It's just the best.