Project Life: Week 8

Woohoo...Week 8 done!
My grandkids were here visiting last week and, as a result, I took a ton of pictures...so the most difficult or time consuming part for me was figuring out which pictures to use.  I am bound by no rules, I tell myself....I do not have to do a 2 page spread for each week....I can do more if it so behooves me (how many chances do you get to say "behoove"?!).  But it did take me a while to go through my photos and then get them printed in the sizes I want.  More about that later...
Anyway, here we go with pages for (drum roll, please....) WEEK 8 starting with the left side:

I used Thickers and a Memory Box die for my "Week" card.  The papers are from My Mind's Eye On the Boardwalk and Anthologie.  Simple and fast and I loved the beachy colors!

Here is the right side:

Same papers....I did use a little Studio Calico wood word bubble which is just oh so cute and how I felt about that great German restaurant we went to!  JAWOHL!

I also used a little stamp set from KI Memories for the little glasses.  I just made a shadow with the reverse side of the stamp and then stamped the words and cut it out.  I added a bit of Glossy Accents to the lenses.  To make them look real.  Yeah, right! LOL!

Isn't my little puppy cute?  She was all happy because we had just pulled into the park....all kinds of great smells at the park! LOL!

Since I am using Design A from Becky Higgins for my main layouts I have 4 4x6 and 4 3/4 inch slots to fill on each page.  Sometimes I get the photos printed out in wallet sizes.  So, what I've done is I created a template in Photoshop Elements for a 2 photo 4x6 print.  That way I get my two photos at a one photo price....instead of printing each separately and paying for a full photo.  Get it?
My template looks like this (nothing special here):

And I also created a template for a 3 photo 4x6 print like this:

I reuse these again and again!
I even did a 5x7 3 photo template which looks like the one above except it is sized for a 5x7 print.
I just open Photoshop Elements and plop my photos in to the slots and mask out the parts I don't want.  Make sense?  No?  Basically by having the templates which I can reuse I save a good bit of time and maybe a few cents here and there!
I had so many photos from last week that I am also doing an insert page.  My page protectors will be here on Wednesday so will post that page(s) later in the week.
And my planning sheet which you can see HERE has come in very handily!  It's available for download (there is a link there) if you need it.
I'm all about shortcuts!

Happy Crafting!