December Daily Advanced Prep: My 2015 Album
I've been working on my December Daily album over the past few weeks. It's my favorite project of the year. The first thing that I do is gather up all my supplies, both the supplies I've bought specifically for this year, and anything from my stash that I've been holding on to for this album.
The more I can get done in advance, the better off I am.
This year the plan is to make my entire base of the album in advance and make a list of the number and types of photos I need for each day. My thought process behind this is that if I wake up and know that I need to take one 3x4 (vertical) or two square photos, I can much easier work that into my daily routine than to 'wait for the perfect story' and start taking photos then.
I do better when I know what I want to accomplish.
The biggest thing that throws me off on this project is getting down on myself for not 'being where I want to be'. So I schedule time to work on my album on the weekend so I can 'catch-up' and at least get some stories/photos done so I don't forget the adventures I want to talk about. I keep all my project supplies in one place (and use storage containers in case I have to clean up quickly).
Organization is key for me. The box below is a box of all the various numbers that I may/may not use throughout my album. One of my favorite parts of this project is picking out different ways to document each of the numbers throughout the month, and it's so much easier to keep track of things if you keep them all together.
This year I'm using a ton of official December Daily products in my album. Ali Edwards makes such versatile products that they're hard to pass up, especially when I know that I'll eventually use all of it. In addition to the Ali Edwards Main Kit, I split 5 out of 6 of the December Daily mini-kits (from various artists) with some friends so that we could each add a bit more variety to our albums without having to break the bank. As far as albums go, I'm using the official all-white 6x8 December Daily album. The albums shipped a lot later than I was hoping for, so I didn't get a chance to complete all of my foundation pages before leaving on my trip to Miami/NYC.
I finished a little more than a third of the album (the first ten days and a few days around xmas) and I'll finish it up when I get home next Monday. I'll have plenty of time to finish up my base before December, and I'll definitely have another post (maybe a video?) of the entirety of my foundation pages.
Here's what I have so far:
Lots of photos -- excuse the glare and less than stellar lighting, I wanted to get shots of these before I left and I didn't have time to take everything out of the page protectors beforehand. I'll have optimal photos of the whole book later this month. If you have any questions about any of the pages specifically, leave them in the comments and I'll answer them here and add the info to the final foundation pages blog post.
The first page is a transparent overlay with snow and branches (AE Main Kit). It already came pre hole-punched, so I just stuck it right in the album. I like how it gives the sense of a winter theme without being way too in your face about it. I also wanted to make sure that the title page below was clearly visible.
For the title page I took a 6x8 sheet of paper from the Ashley G kit and used my oversized 2015 stamp to get the year right in the middle and added the December Daily rubber embellishment to the corner.
My first page is set up as an 'intentions' sort of page, or a place for me to document the things that I'm looking forward to documenting throughout the month. I may move this page before Day 1, but for now I'm happy with where it is.
Page Three is a double page spread with room for a 3x4 photo and a blessings journaling card. Along with photos and stories, I'll be using the December email version of 30 Days of Lists to help fill out my book on days where storytelling might be thin.
Page Four is a half page (so far) with room for two 3x4 photos up at the top. I might slide in another journaling card when I get back home and leave myself with only a single photo for the day. We'll see. I skipped page five? But you can also see page six in this picture -- It's a page protector with 12 2x2 squares and I'll be using it to document the scores of the NFL games that day. J's parents are visiting that weekend, so I might shift this page to the 13th when it's more likely that we'll have a full football couch Sunday.
Page seven is another half page. I've been hoarding those round coaster numbers for years, I now have two left. The top two cards are from the Kelly Purkey mini-kit. Her kit has a bunch of bright colors, and I'm really digging the pink and how it fits into my color palette for this year.
Page Eight has a stamped title card and lots of room for journaling. If I leave myself more room to journal, I can add in #30lists stuff, what I watched on TV that night, or maybe a cool recipe. I have a lot of trouble with photographing December. The lighting sucks, and I feel like I would rather skip bad photos and tell the story with words. Although one thing that has been working out well for me in other projects is changing my photos to black and white. With B&W photos, I don't really have to worry about matching the colors or the tone of the pages.
We're having our holiday dinner party on the Tenth, so I set up this page in advance, knowing which story I'm going to want to tell. I left myself some room for photos, but made the big focal feature the page on the left with the champagne glasses and gold alphas.
Day 11 has a Let's Stay Home card, which is always what I want to do after we have a dinner party, so this was a perfect spot for it. I left room for extra photos and I might add some more to the right side of this spread, but I'll figure that out later on.
I skipped over to Page 21 -- the first day of winter. I'm planning on journaling some thoughts about Michigan winter and the things that I'm going to do to prepare for the long season.
I also set up my Christmas Day page. I knew I wanted to use the I love Christmas paper on the left with the number 25, but that didn't leave me with that much room to document the actual day itself, so I cut down one of the 12 - 2x2 page protectors to 8 - 2x2 page protectors and put it in there as an insert. The right side of the page has two 4x6 journaling cards, so I can write as much as I need to about our Christmas Day antics.
The back of my album has a special stamped chipboard calendar page (another thing I've been hoarding forever). I used the number stamps in the #30Lists stamp set (they're the perfect size) and stamped 25 with pink ink to make it stand out a bit more.
The final page I worked on so far is the back side of the chipboard calendar. I covered it with a sheet of 6x8 paper and then added an envelope for random Christmas memorabilia, or stuff that I want to keep in the album and not lose
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Let's get real for a second. This is the ninth year that I've started this project and each year I love my album more than the last year. For many of the first years, I didn't even finish my album.
This project isn't about creating the perfect album to document your perfect December life (because WTF is that anyway?) For me this album is
For me this album is part scrapbook, part art-journal, part putting pretty paper in a pretty album. This is the shit that makes me happy. If I don't finish my album in December (which I never have) -- cool, who cares. I'll come back to it sometime next year when I start to get excited about the holidays again.
Yes, the project is called December Daily. But, if your lifestyle means that you don't have time to work on this book everyday, or you don't feel like you want to share a story everyday -- THAT'S TOTALLY COOL.
YOU DO YOU.
DOCUMENT YOUR LIFE THE WAY YOU SEE IT.
There are no scrapbook police, or memory-keeping Gestapo walking around waiting for you to break the December Daily laws.
Can't wait to see what you make this December!
More rukristin December Daily Inspiration:
2011 December Daily 2011 Part One | Part Two (partial)