HARMONY DIY: July 2014

28 July 2014

My Favourite Apps For Project Life

Project Life is my creative love. It has transformed the way I do my memory keeping. While I still love the traditional Scrapbooking fun of getting messy with paper and embellishments, I simply don't have the time or space at the moment, so digital project life is my saviour.

If you'd told me a couple of years ago I would be a digital convert, I would have been adamant that wouldn't be the case, but these days, I couldn't imagine it any other way. Digital project life still gives me every opportunity to be creative, but with that clean look I have come to love.

It has also lead to the discovery of many other technological tools to make my memory keeping easier and more about those every day moments. My iPhone and iPad are used often as part of my digital project life, even though most of my project life layouts are still done on the PC.

Below are some of my favourite project life apps that compliment the project life process (click the app name to take you to the App Store for a closer look):

PROJECT LIFE APP

This one is a bit of a no brainer - an app to do project life. Pretty awesome. Although I only use it sometimes, it makes memory keeping so darn easy. There are templates and kits included, plus plenty of others for in app purchase, with so many new updates. It's great if you mostly use your iPhone for photos. I still use my DSLR a lot, but you can grab your photos from drop box for use in the app too.

RHONNA DESIGNS

This is a photo editing and design app that allows you to add text, images and words to your photos. You can even use it to add extra embellishing to your project life app layouts if you want that little something extra.

A Beautiful Mess

Very similar to Rhonna Designs with photo editing capacity of adding text, images and patterns to your photos. I use to two interchangeably.

Little Moments by Fat Mum Slim

Fat Mum Slim has a photo a day challenge which is great for challenging yourself to take photos and experiment based on the daily prompts. I often okay along and the app includes prompts, reminders and some cool editing tools, like filters and word art.

INSTAWEATHER

This is a fun app for adding location, date and weather to your photos as a way of remembering those little details. I like including instaweather images to my project life pages. There is a free version and a paid version, plus also instaplace, and instafood so all occasions covered.

INSTAGRAM

My favourite social sharing app for photos. I love the editing tools and filters for improving pics. And it means I can share my latest project life layouts with my followers too. Check out #hcprojectlife for all my layouts.

DROPBOX

Great for sharing files and photos between your devices and PC. This is a cloud service that automatically updates between your devices. You get a good amount of storage free and can pay for more.

INSTASTICH

Great app for making collages of photos. It's free.

Day One (Journal / Notes / Diary)

This app is essentially a journal for you to keep track of your memories. I use it to write a quick note on my days and you can also add photos to your entries. Great for when you fall behind so you can remember what you did.

HEYDAY and THOSE DAYS

Another couple to help with the memory keeping, they both track all the photos you take each day and have room for notes. Those Days even syncs with your calendar.

IPHONE WEATHER

This is the standard weather app on the iPhone. I like to take a screen shot of my weekly weather for my weekly layouts as a little bit of a here and now inclusion.

TimeHop

This is a great flash back app, showing you your social media history on that day previous years, including facebook, Instagram, and foursquare. It would be a great way of going back and helping you catch up with previous project life years if you are active on social media. Only thing is you can only see the current date.

That's a lot of apps and sure to help you out if you are wanting some extra tools to help you with your own project life process. Many are useful even if you do traditional project life too. The majority of those apps are free and if you click the link, it will take you to the iTunes store so you can check them out for yourself.

Do you have any favourites we should know about? Please share as I love finding new apps.

27 July 2014

Digital Project Life Catch Up

With my uni studies set to kick off in less than 2 weeks now, I have found myself full of motivation to get organised beforehand, which includes some digital project life catch up.

This time round, it will be nothing like studying as a fresh out of high school teen, with no responsibilities. Back then I was living with my folks, not working, or at least not frequently, with no bills or kids to worry about.

Whole different world this time around. I get to throw study into the mix of motherhood, part time work, running a small business, blogging and scrapbooking. Yep, I'm going to be busy.

This means making the most of my pre-study period. I have a to do list... of course! And have spent the past few days decluttering like mad. I have several massive boxes of stuff to get rid of which is very cleansing for my hoarding ways.

My home office/craft room has a floor. And some desk space. Still a long way to go but it's better than it has been in years. My dining room has almost become a dining room again instead of a sewing room.

I'm also trying to tick off some of my creative projects now while there's time too. I'm playing serious digital project life catch up as I'm still a month behind. And hopefully I can have a mega scrap session in the next week to create some projects for my scrapbooking design team commitments for the next month or two. Every little bit helps!

But enough about all that. I thought I would share my latest 3 weeks worth of project life catch up covering from the end of April until mid May. The rest of my 2014 digital project life album is here.