OBSERVATIONS: Hello Week Thirteen! This week, I have the pleasure of once again including Aidan’s voice in the Project Life mix. Using a slightly tweaked 6 x 12 journaler, Aidan recounted her experience in El Salvador. I really love other voices in this project. I wonder what it would take to get Cole or Can involved? Hmmm. I’ll have to think on that one. Cole would simply require bribes involving copious amounts of sugar. Dan? Well… I’d rather not go there.
Moving right along, Aidan’s return from abroad and her 16th birthday were the big fence posts of the week. I found myself hand-journaling on cards this week rather than use digital card templates. You know how it is, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
Here are the pages. First, the overview that includes the 6 x 12 insert.
Now the individual pages:
These insert page protectors are so cool.
Aidan said I could post a close up of her journaling for your reading pleasure. Thanks, kid!
Aidan is seen above with Lilliana, who is her sponsored child in the village of Nahualapa where they spent most of their time.
I wanted to share with you a tip for printing a 6 x 12 photo collage at home on 8.5 x 11 photo paper. I never buy oversized photo paper. It’s really expensive and I don’t really have a place in my office to keep it. So, I create work-arounds. I have a quick video tutorial showing you how I did it.
A Trick for Printing 6×12 Collage Templates from Cathy Zielske on Vimeo.
Here’s what the printed pieces look like before assembly. Note: before I printed the 6 x 12 journaler file onto 12 x 12 cardstock, I added an outline to the background of the digital file, then enlarged the template’s canvas size to 7 inches wide. Just to ensure the outline would show up. In this way, it provided me with a guide for trimming.
Then it was just trim and adhere the two photo pieces to the back of the journaling card.
Here’s a close up of my weekly wrap up:
And that, Project Life fans, is all she wrote.
p.s. No, I’m not exactly sure what a Glitter Dragon is, but trust me, apparently they are very, very cool.
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Kendra B says
Thanks for sharing Aidan’s story! Had to chuckle at the last couple lines 🙂
dawn says
I love this weeks photos and the story of Aidan. How awesome for her and the experience she got to have doing this. My daughter was the same way when she went to Africa, she felt like it was home and was comfortable there right from the start. Thanks Aidan for sharing your jouraling with us. Happy 16th already, can remember last year when you said she was 15, time flies. Hooray for a new iphone, she does deserve that and will love it just like her mama.
Love the post/story of Dan in his short shorts. My hubby thank goodness still has some short shorts but my girls tell him how funny he looks and want him to wear long ones like the boys at school do. I tell him he’s got great legs and a cute behind and to show it off while you can. My hubby plays hard bball with our son and ends up sore or hurt or ready for a nap by the time he’s done. It’s so funny watching him play with Sam, he acts likes he’s a kid again instead of almost 49. Gotta love these boys though don’t we!!!
Heather Crawford says
Ok got the photo part, now is there a way to print the journaler onto a 8 1/2 by 12 piece of paper in a regular size printer cause I don’t have an oversized printer unfortunately? Ahhhhhh…please reveal if so 🙂
cathy says
That is one that I havent thought of yet. But you could probably do the same thing. Flatten the file, drag it into a 6 x 6, print the top, then drag the image up and print the bottom. Then youd have to hope the journaling split on the horizontal edge where they joined!
Laurie says
Wow! Aidan is an incredible writer!
Prachi says
Hi Cathy… ok question for you.. slightly different but related to your post….
Anyway my question I am an avid Project Lifer and recently started incorporating more hybrid aspects to my project life. I have discovered that means that I can’t send these “hybrid” picts to shutterfly for printing. (which is what I’ve been doing up until now). I have a lot of 4×6 sized photo paper which I’d like to use but I am having a hard time sizing the pictures to print properly. I should mention I have a 7 year old HP Photosmart (I think it’s a 7850) and it has the capacity to print borderless but then it stretches the picture and if I’ve sized digital elements too close to the edge it gets cut off. I can print with a white border and it shrinks everything to fit in the smaller space but I’d love to just be able to print exact 4×6 without the white border.
I’ve experimented with printing from PSE (v10) and converting to a jpg and just the generic printing function from windows I haven’t been able to get either to work without stretching or shrinking my exact 4×6 sized layouts.
I assume you print your Project Life pieces at home do you have any suggestions?
Jo says
i think her glitter dragon is so beautiful. not sure what it is but she has beauty that girl. please tell aiden thanx for wonderful writing, she has a talent for expression there. i love her descriptions and i can tell her that when i climber a mountain, probs alot smaller, in New Mexico, it literally took my breath away too. I mean I couldn’t breath!!
Thanx for the fab tutorial as ever Cathy and happy Easter,
Jo xxx
cathy says
Oh, thank you. I will have to tell her that!
cathy says
Heres a thought: when you send your photo to print, what is the Paper Size set to in the PSE elements print window? It needs to be set to 4 x 6, and then your printer setting will also need to be set to 4 x 6. Sometimes it takes some futzing around to get it right. I do print my stuff at home. And I have noticed a little bit of stuff too close to the edges getting cut off too. But never having stuff get stretched. Not sure if this helps you. Sometimes these printers are a bit off. : (
Heather Crawford says
Found this on Ali’s blog (and you could use 12×12 paper cut down to 8 1/2 by 12?:
Another great tip if you don’t have an over-sized printer – you can run larger sizes through your regular-sized photo printer. You could get 11×14 photo paper and cut it down to 8.5×14 and run it through your printer (select Legal Size paper). I used to do that when printing larger sizes of journaling to put on 12×12 layouts before I got an over-sized printer.
Michelle Price says
Aidan is a beautiful writer. I look forward to reading her books in a few years. 🙂
eek! says
Your daughter could give you a run for the money in her writing abilities. I can’t believe she is only 16 – so eloquent!
Laura says
Thanks to Aidan for sharing her journaling with her Mama’s groupies. 🙂 It sounds like she had a “mountain top experience” in more ways than one. Happy for her. Happy for you that she’s home where you can hug her. 🙂
kelli says
please tell Aiden, thankyou. it takes bravery what she did, and to journal about it to….she’s mature, Cathy…you raised her well. That was beautiful.
Sherry G says
The mangoes are back! I remembered that you posted about them last year but could not remember when and was on the verge of doing a search of your blog so I could start looking for them around here. Only one store carried them.
cathy says
They are back and we went through 10 of them in just a few days. Back to the store today for more!
Claire E says
The kid can write 🙂
Prachi says
Thanks so much Cathy… I did set it to 4x 6… ok… so yours gets cut off a little twoo ok that makes me feel better b/c I was going crazy with this… I think I’ve found the setting where it doesn’t stretch and gets cut off the least. Thanks
Emma says
Thanks Aidan for letting us read your journalling about your trip, it sounds like it was an amazing life experience filled with lots of great memories, and you wrote about it so well, that’s a blossoming gift you have there.. 🙂
Joy says
Awesomeness! Love the 6×12 format. Thanks Ms. Cathy 🙂
Helen Rosen says
I have a Photosmart 7360 and I have the exact same problem. I have Googled it to try to find a solution. I have tried everything and it’s driving me crazy!! Please tell me what setting you use. Thanks!
christina rayevich says
Yup Aidan’s journaling about made me cry lol.
xo
claire says
Wow! It seems that Aidan is a great writer!
cathy says
I just set it to 4 x 6 borderless for most things, or…. i print my 4 x 6 cards on an 8.5 x 11 sheet and then add crop marks to the file, and print on US Letter (no bleeds). Yes, its a waste of paper, but…. it gives me the exact size.
Same thing if I drag my cards into a letter size doc, add a stroke to the background of each card, then send to print with the same settings. : )
Heather H. says
Love Aidan’s journaling. My husband spent 13 months as a volunteer at an orphanage in Honduras after college and it was one of the most defining times of his life. Our son is attending a Spanish immersion school and we are hoping he gets to have some of these same meaningful experiences.
Jane Simmons says
I dunno. I set photo size to Actual Size in PSE 10 and paper size to 4×6 and it still seems to cut off some. I’ve tried checking “crop to size” and then atleast it doesn’t cut off anything within the gray border but it’s still not 4X6! Sometimes I just move any digital elements in and print full bleed and crop to 4×6. Thanks for the video. I’d looked at oversized photo paper and also decided it was just too expensive. I’ve done some where I kept my journaling to a halfpage (6×6), printed a block of 6×6 photos on 8.5×11, like you suggested, then pasted the photos to the bottom of the journaling page. But your solution seems a lot more versatile, especially if you have alot of journaling.
Catherine says
Such good ideas!
Naomi Armenta says
This is great! Would love to win!
blueskygirl says
Love how you used the 6×12 for documenting. I have 6×12’s but haven’t used them yet.
Debi Griffin says
Wow! Thanks for the inspiration! I can’t wait to get back to scrapping!
Madeleine says
Great story