Documenting December: My 2013 December Daily Setup
December Daily Setup & Early Thoughts
December Daily is a daily album project created by Ali Edwards, documenting the twenty-five days before Christmas. This is is my preferred method of documenting December.
Over the years I’ve tried out several different ways of documenting my December. I encourage everyone to try out different ways until you figure out what is right for you. For me, I've fallen in love with the tradition of creating a December Daily album. There is no right or wrong way to make a holiday album. But I've found that I am about a million times more likely to document my holiday if I prepare an album beforehand.
There are two reasons I prep my album early. First, it helps me to get into ‘holiday mode’. By playing with holiday supplies, I get excited about the prospects of documenting the season. Second, it makes actually documenting the holiday so much less stressful. All the hard thinking is work done, so the only thing left is living and taking pictures.
Here are some thoughts I had when I was deciding on how to put my album together:
1. What do you want out of this project?
I love documenting December. I want a book that tells some of the stories of my December. Not every single story, or every single detail of a story, but an overview of the season.
2. What do you want your project to look like?
I love pocket page protectors and so this year I’ve decided to go with a Basic Grey Capture album and use lot of divided page protectors. For my color palette I’ve chosen a lot of white space with bright colors and pops of glitter.
3. How much time do you have to devote to the album?
This is the first December in a long time that I'm not bogged down with the end of classes and cramming for finals. I've made my book a little bit more complicated because I think I'll have some extra time to work on it this year.
4. What do you want to have set up beforehand?
I love setting up the book before the start of the month, that way I know even if I only have a couple of minutes each day (or at the end of the week) I can just add a picture and jot down a sentence or two of journaling. This year I'm using a Basic Grey I keep some post-it notes on hand so that I can just write stuff down and add the note to my album until I can go back and finish it up. This way my thoughts and ideas are still 'daily' but I don't have to worry about actually scrapbooking every single day.
5. What do you want to document?
I like picking one thing each day to while documenting December. Whether it's holiday baking, watching a movie, or the weather -- I pick one story, or one photo and go with that. I don't worry about them all being related to Christmas, that wouldn't be an accurate representation of my December.
6. How are you printing your pictures?
I'll be using my Canon Selphy printer. I LOVE THIS THING. I love that I can pick up my phone and print out all my photos — in whatever size I need — and start documenting right away.
My Day-to-Day Setup
Here's what I have on hand for documenting December. I snapped these pictures before setting up most of the foundation pages so that you could get an idea of all the supplies.
I imagine that I'll actually only wind up using about half of this stuff in my album, the rest will go back into my stash and used for other holiday projects (I love using my leftover paper-crafting supplies to decorate Christmas Presents).
Questions about my supplies? -- leave a comment below.
The Foundation Pages
I finished putting together all of the foundation pages this weekend. I made it a documenting December priority to get a little bit put down on each page before December 1st.
Below are a few of my favorite pages. I've tried to show a few of the different styles I'm using throughout the book.
I started off the Basic Grey Capture album with a full page spread (one of the page protector sizes in the Basic Grey set I'm using). I've had this fabric heart in my stash for more than a year now -- just waiting for the perfect project.
About half the pages are made with Studio Calico Handbook page protectors. I had to punch new holes to make these page protectors fit into this album, but it only took about two minutes and these are the perfect page protectors for 4 3x4" journaling cards.
The other half of the pages are Basic Grey Page Protectors. These come in a couple different sizes including the full page pocket, 6 3x3" pockets, and the cool pockets with the 1" strip in the middle.
The back of the album has this big envelope that I can use to hold all the extras. Especially the memorabilia that doesn't fit into the pockets and I don't want to make an insert for.
Notable Parts:
Transparencies. I used a lot of transparencies throughout the album -- some from the KP kit, and a lot from my precious stash of Hambly screen prints. I also left a few pockets empty to create the feeling of a lighter, more delicate album. I’ve found that an entire month's worth of pictures, memorabilia and journaling can make for a very bulky album and I’m hoping this will counteract that.
The Basic Grey Attach-Me stickers are pretty amazing. Just add them to any paper, memorabilia, etc and stick them in any ring-binder. This is how I'll be attaching a lot of memorabilia -- holiday cards included.
White & Bright. I'm a white space kinda girl. White space with lots of color -- My colors are hot pink, teal and green. These colors and pops of glitter make the album super fun already.
30 Days of Lists I’ll be incorporating my #30lists into my December Daily album. Each day I’ll be writing my list on these black/white numbered journaling cards I designed specifically for 30 Days of Lists. These cards are available in both physical and digital form.
Materials Used:
Basic Grey Capture Album
Basic Grey Page Protectors
Studio Calico Handbook Page Protectors
#30Lists Kit
Basic Grey Attach Me Stickers
Basic Grey Days of the Week notepad insert
Kelly Purkey December Kit
rukristin Days Flair & Months Flair
Stuff from my stash that I’ve been collecting over the last couple of months
Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out how I'm documenting December and my December Daily album. I'll be updating the progress of this project throughout the month both here and on instagram!