Project 365

This post has been a long time in the making. I mentioned a long time ago that my New Year's resolution is to be an active participant in Project 365. I want to take lots of pictures throughout the whole year and select my favorite shot from each day, so that by the end of the year, I'll have a stack of 365 photos. I was also interested in documenting my everyday life through writing and I wanted to incorporate this with Project 365. So, I decided to come up with my own variation of this brilliant concept.

Not only did I want to have a collection of 365 pictures, but I also wanted to have a permanent way to hold these photos and document my days through writing as well, kind of like the One Line a Day journal.

So, I decided to use some Project Life accessories and other scrapbooking supplies to help me accomplish this. I purchased photo pages (6- 4x6 horizontal photos) and 3 albums from Amazon. I also bought StazOn ink in black and silver (no longer available) from Amazon as well. I picked up some black Sharpies and a date stamp at Office Depot.

Going into my project, I knew I wanted to do this over the span of several years. I thought it would be cool to compare the same date over multiple years. I decided to use one side of a photo page per date; so I needed 183 (365/2 = 182.5 --> 183). Since there are 6 picture slots per photo page, my Project 365 will span 6 years!

Starting January 1 I also started writing a brief caption about my day, not necessarily having anything to do with the picture. I hoped to incorporate this message into the pictures somehow. Because some of my pictures have dark backgrounds, I needed a pen that would stand out on dark colors, and have a fine tip as to not distract from the picture itself. This mission was impossible. I searched online and at an art store before realizing I needed to change my plan. I settled on simply using a fine tip black Sharpie to comment on the back of each photo. I can easily pull out the photos to read the backside whenever I want to do so.

For extra fun and to help me label the date and years, I chose to stamp the date on each photo. Time consuming, yes, but also relatively simple and timeless. After some online research, I bought StazOn ink in black and silver (for those darker photos). Stamping was pretty easy and I assumed the ink would dry pretty fast. So without really thinking about what I was doing, I stamped all my photos, stacking them on top of each other when I finished. Bad idea. A lot of the dates smeared and I ended up having to redo about half of them. Luckily though, the dried ink wipes off pretty easily using a damp paper towel. However, wiping the pictures clean take off the finish of the picture. Although it's unnoticeable, you can definitely touch the difference, and you're unable to restamp the photo in the exact spot. Since I mainly plan on leaving the photos in the page protectors this doesn't bother me so much. The messy, smeared dates did though. When I was erasing some of the dates, the color of the photos changed to a pinkish color. This does bother me because it is a little noticeable. I'm keeping those pictures for now, but I may end up reprinting in the future.

I try to use my big camera frequently, but unfortunately a lot of pictures have been taken with my phone. I print out my photos via Shutterfly about every three months, which is working out well for me. It gives me plenty of time to sort through and select the photos I want to use.

Since the beginning of the year, my plan has been to take all of the pictures by myself, whether they be selfies, taken by a timer, etc. So far, I've missed three days, I think. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to use to fill those pockets or if I'll simply leave them blank.

My initial purpose for this long-term project was to get into the habit of taking my pictures, especially with my big camera. I know I'll also enjoy comparing what my birthday, holidays, etc. looked like over several years in the future. Also, I wanted to make more of an effort to enjoy and appreciate the normal daily things I would've taken for granted.