Catching Up with Project Life

A while back I wrote a series of posts about my Project Life process (you can see them here and here), and I'm surprised to say that my process hasn't changed all that much. I still use the PicTapGo app and iPhoto, although I now print mostly from home instead of sending my photos off to a printer. I still prefer to work with kits, although most of my kits these days are ones that I've purchased rather than ones I made myself. And I still go through the same general steps when putting my spreads together, although it definitely doesn't take me as much time as it used to.

But today I wanted to talk to you specifically about catching up when you're behind on Project Life. I wish that I had some magic answer that made this process easy and painless, but I don't. Really it comes down to setting aside time and doing the work. But since I am habitually behind on my Project Life spreads, I have found a few things that help me get this done.

The first is batch processing. When I'm trying to get caught up, I always do the steps in batches. That means I'll edit photos for multiple weeks at a time before moving on to the next step with any of them. I do the same with printing, dating, and trimming. Once all of this is done, I store each week's photos together in a plastic bag. That way when I have a bit of time to be creative, I can pull out a bag, choose a kit, and get busy.

In the video below I walk you through the process I use to prepare multiple weeks at a time.

The second tip I have is to work with a kit. Having a limited number of supplies in front of you helps narrow your choices and allows you to work faster. If I spent time digging through all of my supplies for each week's spread, I would never get caught up. So I choose one kit to work with for each week and only pull other items from my stash when I need something to fill a particular need (like an alpha that still has E's).

I hope you found this helpful. Here's to all of us getting caught up on our Project Life albums!

Happy Crafting!