I'm not completely unhappy with this week's layout, but there are some things about it that just aren't working for me. As a side note, I loved Monica McNeill's post a couple of weeks ago about how you're never going to love every week's layout in a big project like this- bless her for saying it!
So, what's not working for me? The biggest issue is that it's just too busy. I tried to cram a lot of photos and a lot of paper patterns and different sizes of journaling cards in, and now that I look at it I'm pretty sure I could have done just one or the other and been okay, but the combination of both is just too much. Part of that stems from the fact that I was using just Pretty Little Studio items since this was one of my projects for them this month, and Pretty Little Studio doesn't have many papers with smaller or more toned-down patterns. This is a big reason I really love multi-manufacturer pages more than single manufacturer DT work- I do love Pretty Little Studio designs, but I'm really a mix it up girl and would have put some more subtle patterns from another company with these, given the option.
The second issue? Too many journaling cards! I really am liking the cleaner look lately of just one or a few blocks completely filled with text, and photos in the rest of the spots (like my Project Life layout for Lawn Fawn or the one I did for my Two Peas Project Life class last week). One of the reasons that I had so many journaling cards was the number of photos I tried to put on the page, which meant lots of small photos combined with tiny bits of journaling. Really, I should have just put a small insert with this layout to let everything else have some breathing room.
Oh, well, live and learn! I'm not stressing about it and will simply file this away with the other 51 layouts (or layouts in waiting) in my 2012 Project Life albums. One or two blips in the context of the entire year-long project won't hurt anything at all!