P365 Day 4 - my tools for recording 2011 (4/1/2011)

I spend a lot of time raving about Project Life. I got my first kit last year and found it such an easy way to display my photos and record my memories. I love traditional scrapbooking, but I take so many photos that I want to 'albumise', and setting out beautiful scrapbooking layouts takes a lot of time, and I just can't keep up.

Enter Project Life. A three ring binder-style album, with divided page protectors that have space for both photos and accompanying journal cards. Title cards, filler cards, journal cards and stickers are all coordinated and so all you have to do is take the photo, write on the journal card and slip it into the album.

It can be used for a P365 type project, where you take one photo a day, seven photos per week for each double spread. I don't use it like that. I do different things - I print different sized photos, make one double spread for one event, slot in a whole series of random photos - whatever fits the photos I have. And the three ring binder means I can slip traditional layouts into the album as well.

I've been hanging out for my 2011 kit to come ever since Xmas, and it finally arrived yesterday. I had a wonderful time (with juniordwarf) unpacking it and setting it up.

And here it is:

It's going to be my major hard copy photo/scrapbook album for 2011.

But I also need a real notebook. Somewhere to write down my observations on the run. Somewhere to put those nagging to-dos that I always forget, somewhere to (possibly) embark on yet another attempt to draw stuff. I've seen other people's notebook/journal books and they always seem so arty and creative - some people have the knack of making even a shopping list look like a beautiful work of art. My notes are in my scrappy handwriting, with loopy doodling and embarrassing attempts at drawing my hand. My books always seem so dull.

I wondered (not really seriously mind you) if getting a beautiful notebook or art journal or a Moleskine book would make me more creative, just by virtue of the fact that it was an arty book.

I spent an afternoon looking at books, journals, diaries; you name it I looked at it online, and nothing seemed to be what I wanted. I felt like it was all a waste of time. The search for the perfect notebook was turning out to be as futile as the search for the perfect bag.

In the end, I decided to use the beautiful book that Lil Sis and bro-in-law gave me for my birthday. (Shades of "There's no place like home" from the Wizard of Oz.)  It has nice thick paper, so I can write on it with a felt tip pen, and has enough pages to last all year. It has a cool stripy cover!  In it I hope to write, to doodle, to design scrapbook layouts, and maybe even to draw.

So here are my memory recording tools for 2011: my notebook, my pen and my Project Life album.

I really should have included my macbook, my camera and my phone as well, but I didn't think of it at the time . . .  so this is just a taste.