New Year's Resolutions | Project 365

Project 365: by Karen Maggie
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Digital scrapbookers everywhere rang in the year 2009 with cameras clicking, as hundreds embarked on a photography-related resolution, called ‘Project 365’. The concept of Project 365 is very simple: Take one photo per day for the entire year. To read more about the idea, visit the Photojojo website that helped popularize the idea.

The rewards of doing a Project 365 are many. And notice that I said ‘doing’, not ‘completing’. This is one of those efforts where the journey is much more important than the destination. The rewards from Project 365 will be received even if one does not do it perfectly. Even if you give up along the way or miss a few days, you will still enjoy some of these benefits:

• You will become a better photographer and improve your creativity.

• You will have an amazing array of photos to scrap your life in more detail than ever before

• If you join a challenge or group, you will have the support of a group and sharing of photos and ideas with other participants

• If you scrap your photos, you will have a collection of pages at the end of the year that can be printed and made into a photo book.

• After a while, you will start to look at your own life through the eye of a photographer. You will find beauty in the ordinary and mundane... sometimes you’ll even find beauty in things you used to think were ugly. This is a precious gift.


As a digital scrapbooker, there are many ways to do a Project 365. Here are some decisions that need to be made:

Project 365 or Project 52?
You can take on the original ‘Project 365’ challenge and commit to taking one photo per day, or if that seems too ambitious, consider a ‘Project 52’ project and just commit to one photo per week. Choose the option that’s best for you!

A Themed or General Project?
Another decision is whether you want your photos to be general, or whether you want to have a more narrowed focus, and give your project a theme. For example, many photographers focus their project on taking daily self-portraits. Lots of moms keep the focus on taking daily photos of their children. But, the most popular option seems to be keeping it general and taking photos that best represent daily life.

Do you want to share your photos online?
Many people choose to share their photos online and there are different avenues to do so. There are multiple photo sharing websites that are a simple to set-up, such as Flickr.com. If you are already involved in a social networking site such as Facebook, that offers another easy option for publishing photos. Many Project 365 groups already exist on these popular websites. A third option is to post your photos on a personal blog. In fact, many digital scrapbookers created their first blogs in response to a Project 365 challenge. If you want to publish photos online, but think that daily is too ambitious, then another option is to publish photos in a weekly or monthly summary format instead.

Monthly, Weekly or Daily pages?
Digital scrapbookers bring new options in ways to participate in Project 365. Most scrapbookers choose to ‘scrap’ their photos together in some way, whether it be daily, weekly or monthly. Some choose to ‘scrap’ them in a traditional style, while others choose a more graphical look with lots of white space. Digital Designers are responding to the recent popularity of Project 365 by offering many templates, kits and elements geared toward Project 365. Below are some examples of ways to ‘scrap’ your Project 365 photos.

Melinda Staley created these ‘layouts’ with a clean and simple look with lots of white space. This graphical look works well for Project 365 because the white space doesn’t ‘fight’ with the many colors in the photos. Melinda embellished the pages digital papers and elements.