Project Safari | A "Project Life" Approach

This project, I call it “Project Safari” in my mind, is by far one of my favorite memory keeping projects that I have ever completed– and it’s not even with my memories! Be sure to check out the  Blurb photo book I made as well as the following scrapbook with 5 00+ photos!

A bit of the backstory: I have to start this off by telling you how much of an amazing woman my grandmother is.  When she retired from teaching several years ago, she didn’t just sit around the house– no, she became (and continues to be) one of the most active, involved, and well traveled people that I know of any age.  In the past 5 years, she’s been all around the USA, taken a cruise along the Panama Canal, and, best of all, took a three week long African safari vacation last spring. The minute she got back, she and I started discussing ways that should could document her trip.  I promised her I would help, but with everything going on throughout the year (we bought a house, I had a crazy busy internship, I started a new job…) it kept getting put off… like many other memory projects. I decided I was going to complete the entire project for her as her Christmas present.

I split up Project Safari into two parts– a Blurb photo book and a different kind of photo album, using the Project Life approach with pocketed page protectors and every. single. photo. 

If you’re not familiar with the Becky Higgins’s Project Life approach to scrapbooking, it’s very simple– using pocketed (divided) page protectors, you combine photos + journaling + bit s of “life” and you can have a “complete” scrapbook very quickly. Since my grandmother took over 500 photos, recorded excellent notes, and kept a lot of ephemera  I knew that the pocketed pages would be an excellent approach to creating a “complete” album for her.

To do this, first I gathered my supplies.  

• Page Protectors: Although I love the smaller 3×4 pockets personally, I wanted my grandmother to be able to move things around as she saw fit– and I knew that the 3×4 pockets would limit her flexibility– so I went with the “Design C” pocket pages from Becky Higgins, which has all 4×6 photo spots. Since there were more pictures that I originally calculated, and I was in a time crunch (Christmas.. need I say more?) I also filled in with some American Crafts Photo Protectors.
• The album: I used a We R Memory Keepers Faux Leather 12×12 Album in black to “house” all of the photos and page protectors.
• Embellishments: I knew I wanted to keep the “embellishments” super simple– not much more than patterned paper and some solid colored cardstock for her journaling.  I knew that I wanted some bits of travel and wildlife themes– but not too overwhelming since the focus was on the photos of the trip.  I love “using what I have”
   so this was also an opportunity to “shop my stash.”  I used older papers from the Love, Elsie line (Roxie, Betty and Toby) because there’s a lot of “travel” theme in those papers (and let’s be honest, I’ve been hoarding them long enough!) so I cut down my 12×12 paper into 4×6 sections. I also mixed in some stamps from the Amy Tangerine “Ready Set Go” collection, some Studio Calico Hero Arts) stamps, and used kraft cardstock and some other neutral colored cardstock as my “base.”  Like I said, I wanted to leave the embellishing to a minimum and make the book all about the photos and journaling, so my “embellishing” was mostly making some really cute journaling cards for my grandmother to fill in her words later.

• The photos:  Because I wanted to be able to start this project as soon as possible, and because there were 500+ photos to develop and I had a coupon  I sent off all of the photos to my local Walgreens.  The only negative part about this was the fact that I had them all in exact, chronological order when I sent them out… and I didn’t NOT get them back that way.  Thankfully, my husband figured out that they had put a “serial” number of sorts on the back of all of the pictures, and that helped us get them back into (somewhat) chronological order. Again, the beauty of the pocketed page protectors is that the photos could be moved around– so if I got the order wrong for some photos, that was ok!  (Just an FYI, I usually prefer to print my photos through Persnickety Prints-– they have SUCH amazing quality!) 

After I’d cut and stamped the papers, and re organized the photos, I started filling in the photo pockets!  This was such a fun  project– so easy to do in fromt of the TV, watching a Christmas movie. I tried to make sure that there was at least one journaling card per “page” of photo pockets. I knew that my grandmother would probably rearrange these when she started to fill in the journaling, but I wanted to make sure she had enough room to fill in her thoughts and memories.  Photos + journaling = awesome.

The book: After I gave my grandmother the finished album for Christmas (she loved it!) she started spending some time filling in her journaling (she took detailed notes on her trip, and saved all of her maps and brochures, so it was easy to “fill it all in”). She was nice enough to  let me take pictures of her finished album to share.

I love that my grandma added her own touches throughout the album. It truly a trip that she treasures the memories of, and I’m so glad I could help her share them! It’s so neat to walk in her house and see the album laying out because she just finished showing it to someone. That’s the best part of scrapbooking, right? Sharing your memories. 

Have you created a vacation album in the “Project Life” style? If so, share in the comments!  If not, how do you usually create travel albums? Have you ever created an album for another person?