This year, I ‘participated’ in Ali Edwards’ A Week In The Life project. The gist of it is that you document a week in your life, complete with words, pictures, and scraps of paper – a mini scrapbook, a snapshot of your current life. I’ve always enjoyed documenting things, mainly through journalling, because I find myself so surprised when I look back over old entries and read about the details of my life back then. That’s probably why this project appealed to me last week. That, and I knew that it was ‘hell week’ for exams, and I would be needing some creative coping. As I’ve mentioned before, I have my own favourite ways of expressing my creativity, and I realize they might not appeal to everyone reading. I wanted to share my week anyhow! This was the week of April 23-29.
My first page has a few self-portraits, plus a photo of my zippered bag which was a total highlight of that week. The yellow graph paper holds some journalling about the week. The grey card just lists some of the things I liked during those 7 days. And the little tag has a few mottoes that kept popping up: capture magic, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, and the whole is greater that the sum of its parts. The photo at the bottom left is of me right after I got my sewing machine – I was so happy!
The back side of the title page has a bunch more self-portraits from throughout the week. I kept some sewing machine instructions, and wrote a little about the week. The right hand page is the day of the 23rd! I kept a to-do list, slotted in some photos, and wrote a bit about what I did that day.
More of the same – photos and journalling cards. The page for the 25th is one of my favourites, because I custom-made the layout using my sewing machine.
And I am obsessed with that photo of eggs! I also printed my stats from the Nike+ GPS app for my run on the 26th. The 27th was a quiet, study-filled day, and I like how the page and photos reflect that.
For the final 2 days, I didn’t have very much to add – only a handful of photos and very little else! I barely left my house those last few days before exams. So I packaged them into one page, and I like how it turned out.
I love this album. It was really fun to make, because I got to play around with paper and photos. And it is fun to look back at, because it keeps track of all the little details of everyday life. My album certainly doesn’t look like some of the other Week In The Life albums, mostly because I’m a bit amateurish, especially with this new plastic photo-sleeve type of scrapbooking. But that’s okay – I did my own thing! And I had lots of fun with it. It was a welcome distraction after a long night of studying.
I hope sincerely that today (and all days) your life is great, your life is grand, and that you smile to yourself when you walk down the street today for no reason except for that life is amazing. I hope you laugh a lot and get 20 hugs. I hope you get everything checked off your to-do list and see a friend and start or finish a book and enjoy some nice weather. Count your blessings and keep on smiling! Happy Monday.
