Project Life & the Collect App

My Project Life albums are very photo heavy this year.  Since I decided to use the 4x6 slots as full sized photos, I feel like my photos are taking the front stage this year and I love that!  Not to mention that it makes printing my photos and putting my spreads together so much easier.  One thing I have noticed, though, is that I'm not always present in my album.  My voice is there because I'm telling these stories though my eyes, but I don't have very many photos of me in our everyday life.  With May being National Photography Month, I decided to challenge myself to capture one photo of my daily life each day.  It was quite a project to undertake (although it totally doesn't sound like it should have been, but it was...).  But like most projects, it was so super rewarding and I am so thankful I have these memories documented!  The photos are so fun to look back on and I love that I have one photo for each day of May!

To keep myself accountable and also to have a daily reminder to capture a photo, I used the Collect App on my iPhone.  I love that I got a little message every afternoon asking me if I had "collected" my photo for the day.  It was easy to remember to snap a photo at the beginning of the month because the project was fun and new, but after a few weeks, it slipped my mind almost every day.  The Collect App is great because it gives you a thumbnail calendar photo throughout the month, so you can track your progress and see your library of photos grow.

I knew I wanted to keep all of these photos together in my Project Life album, so I decided to print them out in the Collect App style with the photo caption and date included on each picture.  It's super easy to export the photos to your camera roll once you figure out the settings.  Here are my steps for exporting to my camera roll.

When you are ready to export your photos, click the little box with the arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the calendar screen.

A window will open up on your screen and you will have several options.  Click the "export photos" option.

Select the starting and ending date for the photos you would like to export. 

(The photo calendar will open up and you can select your dates).

The Collect App offers several different styles and photos sizes with various fonts.  They are all pretty cool, but Annette is my favorite.  :)  

Since I had so many photos, I decided to stick with the 3x4 Polaroid style, but the other options are just as awesome!

Click "Export style" to see options and choose which one you like best!

The last thing to do is click "Export" at the bottom of your screen.  Your start/end dates and the export style should be all set and ready to go!

Once the images are on my camera roll, I just export them to my home computer and then print two 3x4 photos per 4x6 piece of photo paper!  It seems like a lot of steps, but it really is an easy process!!

I used two Project Life Design F page protectors for my photos.  I trimmed the far right column off of each one to give me three rows and three columns.  That left with me a few extra pockets, so I added in a title, journaling card and some embellishments from the July Gossamer Blue kits. 

I kept the embellishments rather simple since the pages themselves are so photo and text heavy.  Simple stickers around my page added a little detail, but didn't make my pages too busy.

Since all of the photos have a caption and date, I slipped a Gossamer Blue journaling card into a pocket and added a quick little note about the process and photos.

I love that I have these photos.  Taking a photo a day is kind of draining, but looking back, I'm so thankful I did this project!!