Project Life... for South Africans

I actually have two Project Life posts in my head so this is part 1 because if you're going to do this, you really need to get organised first and you can wait for my thoughts on the whole thing and why I'm doing Project Life Lite :)

So...

Project Life is not expensive (in my view) for those who live in America. Free Amazon shipping over $25 and the kits cost $29,99.

And it is all beautiful. I love love love the card designs - I now have Turquoise and Seafoam, and I want Honey when it comes out. I love the rounded edges, I love that both sides are pretty. Just LOVE. Especially if you have stationery issues like I do.

I will do a "different ways to use the Project Life stuff soon" but probably only post to the organising blog. It can get very boring if you're not into this stuff.





BUT if you ship it to anywhere, it is super expensive. And mine was done as cost-effective as possible. If you buy through the South African suppliers, depending on what you get, it is at least 2 - 3 times more expensive.

Before I saw (and bought) the mini binders, this was what I was going to do with my project life. I really don't like the feeling of overwhelm that comes with filling all those bits of the normal 12 X 12 albums so I knew I wouldn't be doing the big one.



So no album buying and no plastic protectors ($19.99 + $29.99).

Bottom line - my suggestion is to buy one of these lovely albums at my favourite stationery store, CNA. I have tons of them because they're only R90 each ($10). Once you take the pic of the baby out and put a beach pic, it's perfect for holiday pics :)

These albums take 200 pics each so you can do a spread like this (4 slots) for 50 weeks and then have your holiday/ vacation pics in a separate album. This is exactly what I was going to do.

You can use a normal jumbo photo (10 X 15) and all the 4 X 6 PL cards as is. You can also use two of the smaller 3 X 4 cards together (with a strip of tape at the back - washi or regular) or just one. My example in the pic above is not supposed to make any sense. I just put cards in to show you how well they'll work.

That's your album.

Of course if you want to go even simpler like my yearly mini books, just buy a smaller album.

For the cards, I have three suggestions:

1. If you want the genuine Becky Higgins stuff, buy a digital project life kit. I'm also not sure why I didn't twig and do this earlier and just print the cards. I would also not get the full one, only the filler and journalling cards (2 X $3.99). They send the stuff in normal PDF too so you don't need photoshop. This is for low-maintenance people like me who are not really scrapbookers :)
2. Otherwise buy plain grid cards from the SA supplier (about R80) last time I checked and washi them up or use other pretty paper to decorate them (if you like doing that kind of thing)
3. Use your scrapbook stash or buy a pack of 6 X 6 paper from Westpack/ 12 X 12 from CNA and make your own in between fillers. 2 and 3 are for the more scrapbooky people :)

And there you go - Project Life, the cheap version for South Africans :)

Do you have any good ideas about doing PL on the cheap?
Has this helped/ inspired/ convinced anyone to do a yearly review project?

 

PS this is me playing with all my photo albums.
PPS all pics with iphone