Our Life...

{365} Project Life 2013 | Sam's Art Show (Week 17 - Bonus)

April 23, 2013 | Week 17

Jumping a little ahead here, but I wanted to share how I documented Sam's big Art Show at his preschool. The students' work hard creating, crafting, and of course learning all year long to bring this to life. The preschool puts on an annual Art Show in which the entire family is invited to see all that hard work displayed throughout their hallways and classrooms!

As you can see, there was a lot of art! This isn't even all of it. I made sure I took pictures of each one in their spot. To make most of the art work fit in the vertical 3x4 sized pockets, I had to convert soem fo the pictures into squares. I created my own file in PSE to create some of the polariods to make them work for these page protectors.

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If you want to see more, I have a blog post up at the My Mind's Eye Blog today!

Product Used: Becky Higgins Design F page protectors,  My Mind's Eye Find Your Wings and Fly Collection, My Mind's Eye Collectable Collection, We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, Bohemian Typewriter Font.

 

{School Days} Project Life | Elsie's Preschool 3s - Completed

Back today with all my finished pages for Elsie's first year of preschool! Like I said yesterday, I started with the Art pages and worked my way out. It just happened that this chapter of her album started on a single side. I do hope to add in her year that she spent in daycare to the beginning of this same album. So here goes a whole lotta pages...

{Design D} This is my introduction page which included the day she met her teachers and flowing into her first day of school. They actually ask that someone be there with the child on this first day to help ease the child into school, so Chris and I got to attend. It was so fun to be able to see her there. I can say that she is a school lovin' kid, even now as a first grader that school is her element.

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{Design D} Some pictures with her teachers and some of the activities they did on the first day.

{Design A} Sorry for the blur. I didn't feel comfortable having some of the kids' faces here. This is where the Memory Books that the teachers put together came in handy.

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{Design A} More school fun and activities. I also included her first homework too.

{Design F} All of her Holiday activities throughout the school year.

{12x12 Design for insert} Between this same spread, I included her Valentine for us...

And then her Christmas card too.

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{Design F} Showcasing some of her art work displayed at the big Art Show.

{Design B} A few more pieces of art and some pictures of us at the Art Show.

{Design F & D} I included a few more extra in between this spread too. These weren't at the Art Show, but I wanted to include a few pieces of the real stuff too. I chose the handprint flowers, because they had her hand print. I cut the lizard down to 6x6 to showcase her painting. I loved that the pig showed how she cut and pasted things together. This is just a 6x6 picture of it.

{Design E & 8.5x11 Landscape} I chose to include a 6x6 picture of the turtle because I loved that little smile she put on him. The painted mittens showcased her cutting again. I included an example of her coloring at the beginning of the year and at the end. I loved that by the end of the year, she could follow directions on what to color. She really learned how to control her coloring. Not to say she still didn't go wild at times, but it was nice to see she did learn to control it if need be.

This one just makes me smile. This is the perfect example of her very first portraits. She would always draw the person in their favorite color. Cute stuff, if you ask me.

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I also had to include one of her free style drawings. She was always drawing "fireworks."

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{Design B} Celebrating her birthday at school. It even fell on a day when they had a special magic show. How fun was that!

And then we have the last day of school. I included her signature.

I actually scanned the paper in, and printed it on a 4x6 photo. Funny thing is, I cannot figure out where that sheet went! Oye.

This is where I wanted to include some of her paperwork. This is her progress report.

{8.5x11 Vertical & 6x12} Some testing at the end of the year for coloring, cutting, and number order. Guess this was an off day for her. She did know how to count ;)

{6x12 & 8.5x11 Vertical} More testing and some homework that included her progression of how she would write her name. I think I will slide another journal card to point out the fact that she loved to include many lines on her "E" when she first started writing her name out, and how light of a touch she had too.

More name and coloring.

I love that this was actually done in class, and she must have felt the need to write her own name on it. LOVE.

I just wanted to show you how little space documenting an entire school year's worth of memories was for this. I am so happy to have Elsie's precious first year of preschool documented for her. Like I said yesterday, I just documented her schooling this way because I have already covered the rest of her life at this time through traditional scrapbooking. I was very intimidated by all the school "stuff" until now. Becky Higgins has totally saved the day for me. One mini kit and various page protectors later, I have one year completed. Not to mention, I will be able to use the same kit for year 2 of preschool with the same box of goodies. I am sure I will still have lots of cards left after that too. The Childhood mini kits are design to document one year's worth of memories for a child, not just school memories!

Now on to the next!

Product Used: Becky Higgins Mayfield Childhood Edition mini kit; Page Protector Design A, B, C, E, F, 12x12, 8.5x11 vertical & horizontal, and 6x12 (as indicated by each picture); American Crafts Memory Markers (various colors) and Precision Pen (black); Becky Higgins Date Stamp.

{School Days} Project Life | Elsie's Preschool 3s - The Process

Confession time. Even through my little girl just turned 7 years old last month, I have yet to do anything with all of her memories from all her days of school. I know, it could be worse. I could be even further behind. She could be 17, right? You see, I have been documenting her everyday home life, holidays, and birthdays. I just had an issue inside my head that couldn't get past all of the school "stuff" that comes home. I really wanted to work on her school memories, but it just was so very overwhelming. 

In comes Becky Higgins Childhood mini kits. Lightbulb! With a mini kit and all the different page protector designs Becky has already on the market, I knew that was the route I wanted to take for both of the kids' school memories and all that "stuff" that comes along with it.

I decided to jump start this project of documenting school memories with Elsie's first year of preschool. Now remember, these mini kits can easily cover an entire years worth of memories for a child, not just school. I already have the "other" memories pretty much covered, so I am just rolling with school stuff for now.

So where did I start?

I have kept all the school stuff from each year for each child in an Iris plastic storage box. Mind you, not all of it fit in there... but it was somewhat contained by this. I pulled it all out and began sorting. Art pile. Homework/Written pile. Calendar/Paperwork pile (Yes, I even had each of the calendars saved that showed what they did each day. It actually came in very handy!). I even had a trash pile. Gasp! I like to save it all, but I knew stuff had to go. I took pictures of it all on a white board, just in case I feel even more adventurous some day and toss more of it.

Next step: Pictures.

I have all my digital pictures in folders sorted by year and then inside each year, months. I rename all my pictures with the date first... 2013.05.13-IMG_001.jpg ... so that I can easily see what the date is and they will be sorted correctly with all the various cameras that I use. What can I say, I am crazy. BUT it made it super easy to go back to pull all the random pictures I had taken pertaining to Elsie's first year of preschool.

{Clearly, I wasn't much of a deleter of duplicate pictures back in 2009. I am happy to report, I am much better at that now.}

Once I had all those pictures in one place, I went to town sorting the pictures I wanted to be printed and documented in her book. After whittling down the pictures to a manageable number, it was much easier to see "categories" I wanted to document.

The biggest category was her Art Show. I knew it wasn't going to be the start of her album, but it was going to be the easiest spot to start for me. I had already taken a lot of pictures that evening at her school of each piece during the Art Show. I decided to just start sizing those pictures down to 3x4.

I knew a Design F page protector would be able to fit the most on one spread, so I went with one of those for the art. On the facing page, I included a few extra shots from that evening. Design B fit the bill for that. Once I had a base to start with, I knew which design page protectors I was using and where I could add a new design. I simply worked outward from there.

I pulled out my envelopes containing all the various design page protectors, and working with my chosen pictures, I started editing and sizing pictures. I added the page protector I chose to work with for each spread, making sure to sketch out what the plan was for each page. There is nothing worse than getting a fresh stack of pictures back only to be clueless as to what to do with them. My memory is short. Sketches save me from doing the work all over again.

One thing that did save me...

The lovely ladies at my daughter's preschool, put together Memory Books for each child. LOVE that! AND I was able to scan in some of these pictures to include in her book. I am still keeping this book (of course!); I just wanted some of the pictures. I know that is doubling them up, but I didn't care. I plan on packing this back up in the original Iris plastic container along with a few other things. It will be safe from sticky hands, but the pictures will still be able to be enjoyed.

This is how I got started; one mini kit, stack of various design page protectors, pictures, lots of sticky notes, and a pen. Actually, I used a few different colored pens to add in some "funness" factor. Please come back tomorrow when I will share the finished pages!