Today on our blog, we welcome Marcy Penner, who is sharing her scrapbooking process with Project Life.

Hi everyone. I’m honoured to be sharing one of my Project Life spreads with you all today. This is my fourth year using pocket pages in my scrapbooking, and I’m still loving it. It’s a little bit of a visual diary and encompasses all kinds of little details and memorabilia that don’t make it onto my regular layouts.

This year I tackled a 9×12” size and snuck a 6×8” Handbook size in during the summer months. I’m excited to carry on with this project next year as well. I’ll be detailing my approach for 2015 on my blog in the near future so I’d love it if you’d stop by!

Note: I created a 9×12” album by trimming down an American Crafts 12×12 album and by trimming off the last three inches of the Becky Higgins Design A page protectors and sewing them closed. It sounds like a lot of work, but I do a bunch at a time and am used to it so it’s not that bad. I’ve talked about this before but thought I would mention it here as well. I’m looking forward to 9×12 albums being introduced this next year.

But back to my spread.

This year was crazy busy for us. We started building a house which involved moving our current house and building on our basement. We’re still working at it, and it’s QUITE a process. This has meant that my crafting time has been a little limited this year. Needless to say, I fell behind on my pages.

But that’s okay.  I’ve slowly caught up by keeping it simple. Simple is key.

The photos are there. The stories are there. Embellishing is there but restrained. Dailed down.

This spread started with the photos as all of them do. I then went through my planner and recorded any stories I wanted to tell and assigned them spaces as well.

Keeping it simple meant leaving my photos mostly as is. As you can see I couldn’t resist putting a little “Tue” square from a Studio Calico printable in the open space on one of my photos. The rest of the 4×6” photos remain fairly empty though. This meant that I had the rest of the 3×4” pockets to either journal or embellish in.

I used to feel compelled to write about every photo. Before I had one two-page spread to fill with a week’s worth of stuff… and inevitably this resulted on journaling and embellishing on my photos because that’s all the space I had.

I still do tell stories about 90% of my photos, but now that I’m not working weekly I can leave 3×4” spaces for that and keep my photos clean.

Non-photo pockets were filled with simple embellishments. A chipboard number stapled to white cardstock. A “soccer” flashcard tucked in a pocket along with some patterned paper, washi tape and a star.

To keep a clean overall feel I tucked a tag that included a lot of journaling into a pocket. The story is still there but the vibe is still clean and fresh.

The ampersand card from American Crafts started the color scheme. I very rarely gravitate towards pink… but the design and the addition of yellow grabbed me.

I don’t set out looking for a color scheme… but once one starts to develop I run with it.  Once my color scheme is established I grab a bunch of things that have those same colors or colors that coordinate.

That ampersand card came in one of my Studio Calico kits, so I started there and then also gathered some things from my own stash.

Simple pockets = a completed project.  And that’s totally what I’m after right now.

Thanks for letting me share a little bit about one of my latest Project Life spreads.

……… Thank you Marcy, for breaking down your page and process, showing us how you make PL part of your scrapbooking life! Your page is WONDERFUL!

You can visit Marcy’s blog www.marcypenner.com

BIO:

I’m a simple girl living in the country with her high school sweetheart and three kids (Molly, Jack and Max). This Spring we started building our dream home and planning for our little farm. During the school year I homeschool two of our three children. I always knew that teaching degree would come in handy one day. I also spend a large chunk of my day illustrating and designing product for Studio Calico. I’m so happy to have a job I love!

Documenting our life is important to me, and I’m grateful to have discovered scrapbooking (in all it’ forms) and photography early on. It’s rare to not find me with a camera or glue in hand.

I’m a planner addict. A photographer. A graphic designer. A product designer. A teacher. A scrapbooker. A Project Lifer. A TV junkie. And so much more…. just like you.