Using recurring elements to simplify my Project Life album

I'm slowly but surely working my way through Owen's baby album, and this last week I got through December. I'm a couple months behind, but it's been easy to catch up because I'm using recurring elements throughout the album. Making some of those decisions early on and then sticking with them really speeds up the decision process for me. Here are the first couple of December pages in the album.

I do a similar title page for each month. For some of the months, I've done a large photo, but this one's just a 5x7. I printed the text on a piece of white card stock and then adhered the photo to it. I'm liking all the white space (surprise, surprise!). I save the text as a template in Photoshop, so I can just open it, edit the text and I'm done.

Here's the flip side of the "title page" insert. There's a lot of journaling in this album. I wanted monthly updates on what Owen's doing, weight stats if we have them, and milestones he's hitting. All of that goes on these two pages, and then I'm free to document whatever I want for the rest of the month. I'm not documenting week-by-week in this album, just a few layouts per month. The number depends on how many pictures I took and what all I want to include. I like the looser format, but I also like having these more structured pages. The "these days" text is from pictures + words no. 9 by Paislee Press.

Here's a close-up of the right side. I include a page like this for each month, which has photos of Owen throughout the month, journaling about what we did, and maybe a little note about what Owen's doing.

All of the word art is from Paislee Press. The "loving" text is from pictures + words no. 16. The "December" text is from month at a glance.

Having some recurring elements each month always helps me jump-start documenting, even if I've fallen behind. It's been so helpful to know which digital elements, fonts, colors, etc. I'm using throughout this album. I also love having a spot where I can easily see what Owen's doing at each particular monthly milestone. And this format is giving me the freedom to then document whatever I want in a few "monthly" layouts. December has a few more layouts to come, which I'll share here or over on Instagram.

Do you have any design elements you use week after week in your Project Life albums?

Project Life is a memory-keeping system created by Becky Higgins. You can find out more about the digital elements I use throughout my albums on the Paislee Press  blog or shop.