Using Everday Life to Document Your Life

As I promised in my last blog, this month I am showing you how to use the Life Simple pages to make scrapbook pages that document your life.  Some of the Life Simple pages provide a design.  For example, Everyday Life has a blank calendar with some trimming drawn on the page.  I thought this would be the perfect way to document the 6 weeks I spent in French school earlier this year.  Of course, the simple way would have been to just, fill in the details on the calendar and be done.  I, of course, wanted to do a little more.

I really loved the design of the Everyday Life paper and decided I wanted to make my page as much like this as possible.  As you can see, it is almost identical except instead of just filling in the information, I actually cut the paper to produce the same effect except that it is dimensional.   And I made it into a 2-page layout.

Here’s what I did for the right page.  I used Newsprint for the background.  I cut a piece of Life Live to go behind the calendar.  I  scalloped the bottom to match the model.  I also added a file tab cut based upon the Everyday Life page.  Rather than tan as on the model I used the line’s red paper.   I cut my calendar (6 weeks rather than 5 as on the page) from  Orange/Grid .  I put accents in the same places they did, changing them only slightly.   For example, I adjusted the colors of a few items to better match the left page and I added actual stitching in a few places.  I added some scallops and circles for accents, using more stickers to share thoughts.

For the left page, I decided to emphasize the calendar theme by using a picture from each of the three months that I was in France.   For consistency, I matted each picture with the line’s red paper.  I then used the 4 x 6 journaling cards to add a little more emphasis to the pictures.   The Expressions stickers provided the months and the main page title.  I cut the tabs from tan scraps.  I also used Flash Cards.  I sewed in a few places to match the design on the pages or cards.  I

This would be a great way to document your family’s life this year.  Just write your calendar for a month on the grid paper or the calendar on Everyday Life.  Scrap the page, add a few pictures on the left page and use the journaling cards, stickers, etc  and you are done.