I learned of Maya Angelou’s passing on Facebook yesterday morning when my friends began posting some of her wise, memorable words. One of my favorite quotes of hers is one I just discovered during the past year, and I’ve been wanting to frame these words to hang in our home.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This morning I scrolled through my quotes board on Pinterest and found some more of Maya Angelou’s wise words that I’ve collected over time.

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

I’ve made these three quotes by Maya Angelou available as printable 3×4″ cards that you can add to a Project Life album or hang on your refrigerator. The PDF with all three cards can be downloaded here.

I never intended to take a three-month break from blogging, but somehow that’s what happened. There’s no particular reason that I haven’t been posting. Life has been full and rich and wonderful, just as it was before the blog silence, and I’m doing fine. There’s also no special reason that I’m starting to blog again today, except that I finally really want to.

I have a Pinterest board where I collect quotes that inspire me, and several of them have been on my mind a lot as I considered my return to blogging and what I want this online space to become. I’m so quick to doubt my skills and value as a creative blogger. It’s easy for me to compare myself to other bloggers and develop a lengthy list of ways my blog and I don’t measure up. I can think of lots of reasons you should read other blogs instead of mine.

But none of that really matters, does it? Because I enjoy blogging! This is one of my hobbies, and rachelswartley.com is something I enjoy creating. I love spending time on a hobby that challenges me and gives me opportunities to stretch myself, develop new skills, and interact with others who share some of the same interests. In addition to all of the projects and activities I share on my blog, the act of blogging itself — the writing, photography, design, promotion — is one of my hobbies, and I’ve missed it.

So today I’m choosing a fresh start. On the screen, it may look like a mere continuation of more than 7 years of blog posts, but for me, it’s a turning point. I’m intrigued by this quote from Mary Pickford, an actress who wrote these words in 1936. “You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.”

If you need a visual reminder to stop doubting, stop comparing, get back up, and choose a fresh start, I’ve made these little quote cards available as a free printable. The cards are 3×4 inches, so they will fit nicely into a Project Life pocket page, but you could also hang them on your fridge or bulletin board.

Download the printable PDF with all three quote cards.

(NOTE: The crop marks at the corners indicate the cutting lines. The rectangular outlines are part of the design. Cutting along the solid lines will result in cards that are smaller than 3×4″.)

While Ethan took a two-hour nap on Saturday afternoon, I created the title page for my 2014 Project Life album… and I love how it turned out! The color scheme and design is similar to my Project Life title page for 2013, and yet every element of the design is new and different.

For the Hello card, I used a card from the Midnight Core Kit as the background. I covered up the little camera in the middle of the card with a flag I made. The font is Wendy LP, which is the same script font I use on my blog.

The blue and white polka dot paper I used for the background on this card is actually tissue paper I picked up at Target last year. It’s from their Spritz brand of party supplies. The font is Open Sans Condensed — the main font you see throughout my blog.

I bought a Silhouette Cameo with some gift money last year, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t sat down and learned to use it yet. That’s one of my goals for 2014, but meanwhile I just used my hands-on method to trace and then cut these numbers with an X-Acto knife. The textured silver cardstock is by Bazzill Basics — and it’s actually left over from our wedding!

I love these little arrows I made with washi tape. It was so simple! Just fold the end of a piece of washi tape in half gently and cut on the diagonal to get a symmetrical point.

Project Life is the original pocket-based scrapbooking system, and I started using it a year ago to document some of our memories. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually do much with it last year for a variety of reasons, but I’m still planning to go back and create an album for 2013. One of my goals for 2014 is to create a Project Life album, and I’m happy to say that I’ve already made progress beyond the title page.

If you don’t feel very crafty/creative, or simply don’t have the time, you can definitely do Project Life without making anything yourself! There are kits you can buy with cards that just slip into the pockets. For the rest of my album, I’m planning to use lots of pre-made cards from a couple core kits and mini kits I have, but I wanted the title page to be completely my own design. And for me, the time I spent on it was absolutely worth it.

Life is full of moments I want to remember.

So I take pictures of some of those moments, I eventually download them to my computer, and then I ignore them. Unless I post my pictures on Facebook or Instagram, my friends and family can’t enjoy them, and unless I print them, my kids can’t see them. I’m not a scrapbooker, and filling a traditional photo album with a bunch of prints seems boring and old-fashioned, so most of my pictures are stuck in my computer.

When I was a kid, I enjoyed looking through our box of photos that my parents and grandparents had taken, but since all of my photography is digital, my family doesn’t have easy access to the pictures I take. Last year it started to bother me that my husband and kids couldn’t see most of the photos I took of our family activities, so I framed a few more photos, I printed a Blurb book full of pictures from our week of vacation in Chincoteague, and I discovered Project Life.

Project Life is described as a “back-to-basics approach to memory-keeping” that “takes the scrapbooking out of scrapbooking.” The album is a 12×12-inch binder that uses plastic sleeves (similar to baseball card collections), and to me it feels like a hybrid between a regular photo album and a traditional scrapbook. The photo at the top of this post is my Project Life title page for 2013.

I bought an album and plastic sleeves, but opted not to buy the core kit, even though it’s considered to be an essential component. I want my album to reflect my own personal aesthetic, so I’m planning to create and design everything myself. There are various styles of page protectors that have different layouts, but I’m just using Design A. The large pockets are 4×6″ and the small ones are 3×4″.

A lot of people who do Project Life create a two-page spread for each week, but I want to fill up my album at whatever pace seems right to me. At this point, I’m planning to divide my album into monthly sections, and some months will probably have more pages than others. My album, my rules.

Here are a few close-up shots of my title page:

These little flags are made of washi tape.

I love the textured papers — it gives the simple design a bit more depth.

So that’s the beginning of a project that I’m looking forward to working on throughout the year.

Are you familiar with Project Life? Is this the first time you’ve heard of it, or are you already an avid Project Lifer? If you have experience with Project Life and have any advice to share, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you!