A Day in the Life

Earlier this month I played along with Ali Edwards‘ A Day in the Life concept.  Basically you make a conscious effort to document and photograph a typical day in your life.  I’m all about the random and everyday stuff so this is great for me.  In previous years I’d done this on July 4th (here in Canada it’s just a regular day).

So, I took a ton of pictures with my iphone.  I decided on my iphone because it’s practical, I don’t have to remember to haul my big SLR everywhere and I wanted all my photos to be the same … square.

Once the day had come and gone I thought a bit about what I wanted to do with the photos.  I had just completed a few mini books so I think I was all minied (is that a word?) out.  I figured the most realistic and time saving thing for me to do was to just include them in my project life album.

In my mind I divided a 12×12 page protector into 2″ squares.  So I had 36 spaces on the front and 36 on the back to work with.  I decided to fill the spaces, alternating photos and journaling.  So, I printed out my photos 1.5×1.5.  This would allow me to trim them with a border and also have them fit into the 2″ pockets I had planned on creating.  After I’d printed and trimmed the photos I created square 1.5″ labels and cut those out as well.  All laid out it looked like this…

I planned one page protector, both sides for this project.  I left an empty square to be filled with confetti ala Lisa.

The journaling.

After the journaling was done I flipped the photos and labels on the right side over and glued them to the backs of the photos and labels on the left side.  Just like how they would sit when I flipped the page.  I wanted to fight with as few pieces as possible when I was putting this into the little pockets.

For the construction of the page protector I toyed with the idea of getting a washable marker and drawing my sewing lines on the page protector.  But the markers were ALL the way downstairs and that would have been FAR too easy.  ha.

So instead I trimmed a sheet of 12×12″ cardstock a little shy of 6″ and put both those pieces in the page protector…

… and simply sewed down the center of the gap.

Then I trimmed on of the 6×12″ pieces into four pieces and put them back in.  I sewed down those spaces as well, moved them to the other side and repeated.

Now I was left with this.  Tall narrow pockets.

From here I slid in the bottom row of photos and labels…

… and sewed along the top.

I added the next row of photos and labels, sewed, and repeated.  Over and over.

For the empty pocket I typed out the date, trimmed little banners and tucked that in along with some stars and other little things.

Here’s what the front looks like finished.

And when you turn the page over, the back.

It currently resides in the middle of the week spread when it occurred.

What did you end up doing with your A Day in the Life photos?