Project Life: Journaling Cards

I'm finally ready to share a few months of my 2021 Project Life album. But before I do, I thought I would do a few short blog posts sharing a bit about the three main things that go into my albums - filler cards, photos, and journaling cards.  

Anyways. Let's talk about digital journaling cards. 

As much as I love color, I'm drawn to all black and white journaling cards. It's just simple and easy, and they look good paired up with the monthly title cards (which are also black and white). I don't even have to worry about a journaling card matching my photos, so that saves me a ton of time. Once I get all of my photos added in for the month, I move on to the next step. I tackle the journaling cards next, and then once those are in, I work on adding any filler cards.

I simply flip thru the pages in my PL album and start typing up journaling cards. I don't necessarily do them in order, or one spread at a time. I might type up and print just a few for one month, and a few for another month. I slip them into the pockets, even if they might need something added to them later. From there, it's easy to see where else I'll need journaling cards, and where I want to put my 2-3 filler cards for the spread. 

I use Photoshop to open up the journaling cards and type in my journaling. I create a huge majority of my journaling cards simply using digital brushes, stamps, or even PNG images of cut files. But I also use lots of digital journaling cards from In A Creative Bubble (I love her Recorded series of black and white cards), Ali Edwards, etc. 

I do a LOT of copying and pasting when it comes to my journaling. So many of my photos are ones that I've shared on Instagram, so I can pull my journaling from there. I simply open up Instagram on my laptop, and copy the text from there, paste it onto my digital card, and edit/format it as needed to fit the space. 

Once I finish a journaling card, I save it as a PSD file. Just in case I need to go back to it. Because belief me, I've had too ;) There's nothing worse than having to start all over, so always save your working files as you go. All of these digital cards are sized to print as 3x4's, so you don't have to worry about sizing them. 

 

The one thing that I do, however, before adding them to my page to print, is I go in and add a small grey border around the edge of the card. Because if you put several white journaling cards on a full sheet and print them out, you'll have a hard time knowing where to cut to make them all 3x4", and have everything where it's supposed to be. I can fit 5 journaling cards on a sheet of 8.5x11" paper. I started using the Epson Premium Presentation Matte Paper to print journaling cards or anything digital on several years ago and have just stuck with it. 

So, I think that's about it. For me, this works great. I'm knowledge when it comes to Photoshop and working with digital products, so it comes easily to me. If you're new to Photoshop or working with digital products, there's a small learning curve - but it really is easy once you get the hang of it. Maybe I'll try and put together some sort of tutorial, walking you through doing a few of these cards. No promises, but I'll try if there's any interest.

If I missed anything, or if you have any other questions, feel free to ask in the comments :)

Comments

[Katrina]

A tutorial would be awesome!

[BlestChick]

I would really love a tutorial - I've been following you and your simple process for awhile and that's the one area that overwhelms me. Thanks for sharing!