So, remem­ber that Project life album I told you all I bought a few weeks ago? I had the.most.fun putting it all together over the past few days…

For the title page, I wanted to include a large map which showed the whole coun­try. Even­tu­ally, some day in life, I want my girls to point to places in that map and say “oh, we have been there!”

I printed this map from this site. Its a good high res­o­lu­tion qual­ity. The aqua thick­ers are by Amy Tan­ger­ine. The aqua chevron behind is a free card by Miss Tina.

This click cam­era card here is a free one by Jen­nifer Hig­nite. You can pin it here.

This “You and me” card is a free one by Erica Her­nan­dez. You can pin it here.

The doily card here, I think I put together by stitch­ing two or three files. I dont remem­ber which/how right now

And lastly, some new free print­a­bles for today…

I made these to fit per­fectly with my pho­tos. I couldn’t find any online that I liked. I will prob­a­bly add some jour­nal­ing beneath the Grandma one here…

I also used a lot of things from my PL stash. This card is by Alli­son Kreft. SO adorable!

We took so many pho­tographs dur­ing this trip– I think we had 2 DSLRs, one point and shoot and two cam­era phones. I just kept hit­ting a block when I thought about putting these onto scrap­book pages. A mini album was the best idea! (you can see a cou­ple more pho­tos in this older blog post of mine)

Things that I reached for to make this album: Thick­ers, free print­a­bles and my favorite 4by6 inch photo paper.

Things I did dif­fer­ently this week: I left the 4by6 pho­tos as is. I didn’t layer them on pat­terned paper or add a lit­tle some­thing to each photo. This album is very photo heavy. I wanted the pho­tos to be the focal point, with just enough words to tell the story. I also added some “quote cards” because I needed to fill up some gaps and I loved that they emote the pho­tos. I made sure I used no thick embell­ish­ments. I wanted this album to close neatly. The name of the game here was “keep it sim­ple. get it done. smile. cherish”

Things I loved in this album: The album reads like a sto­ry­book. It cap­tures the whole trip and every­one we meet and min­gled with beau­ti­fully. Phys­i­cally, the album is sturdy and very well made, so I feel com­fort­able let­ting my girls (who are 1 and 3 yrs old) hold it. The album isn’t huge and bulky like my PL album, its small and com­pact instead. Most impor­tantly, it doesn’t go in over­whelm­ing detail like my PL album does. You can sit and read it in 7 min­utes

Things that worked for me on this album: I planned. I printed pho­tos which was half of the work. I then worked on the album in spurts of time. One day I put all the pho­tos into the page pro­tec­tors. One day I chose and printed my filler cards. One day I added the titles. It was fun at every step and I never got bored along the way

I already know that this wont be last PL mini album I will be mak­ing… These are so easy to put together!

And here is where you down­load the free print­able cards…

Click here to down­load “Grand­par­ents” cards

Finally, I just wanted to share this photo– because I cant stop star­ing at them and won­der­ing how time has gone by so fast??!

Thanks for stop­ping by today!

Want even more Free­bies? Read all pre­vi­ous Free Print­able posts by click­ing here

If you are new to Project life head here to learn more. If you want to read more about my 2013 approach to Project life head here. Sup­plies: I am print­ my pho­tos (and the PL cards) at home using my Canon 9000 pro series.
I use this paper by Canon- which is sim­ply amaz­ing!!! It is a matte paper and has the look and feel of card­stock. This printer/paper combo is the main rea­son Project Life is work­ing for me this year. I am also using this new cor­ner rounder by Fiskars.
My album and page pro­tec­tors, I got at Tar­get and are the We R mem­ory keep­ers brand. I am try­ing to main­tain a con­sis­tant jour­nal­ing font this time, and am using Hel­vetica Neue. I do all my dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing in Adobe Pho­to­shop Cs5.