30 Days of Thankful Mini Album: In Progress

So I told you about my love for 30 day projects.  I recently read about 30 Days of Thankful on Cathy Zielske's blog.  I was going to use her cool printable templates, but I realized I wanted to start using some of the gorgeous paper I've been hoarding, so I created my own album from plain cardstock and pretty shiny fall patterned paper.

The album measures 6x6".  It's a nice size, because I can get 4 pages out of a 12x12 piece of paper (of which I have many!). I'll bind it with my Zutter Bind-It-All tool (love that thing!).

The idea is to capture one thing I'm thankful for on each of the days this month.  I'm horrible at photo-a-day type projects because it's so easy to get behind.  So for this one I tried to prep most of it ahead of time.  These tips are also helpful for anyone planning to do a December Daily album.

• I made all the album's pages and the covers before November, including the space for me to write down my "thing".
• Each page has the same format to keep it simple.  I may do some embellishing later (or not). All journaling is handwritten, to make it fast and easy.
• I found a very cute set of numbers from 1-30 in the Silhouette Online Store and cut those out of glittery paper all at once, and backed them with cardstock.
• I have a little IKEA bin that holds everything for this project - the markers I'm using, the labels, the empty pages, and the numbers so I can quickly work on a few pages at a time.
• I downloaded the handy planner from Cathy's blog so I can make notes on the photos I need to print and the topic for each day.
• I'm using either Instagrams or old photos for each page - no rules about taking a new photo each day.
• I print all photos at home, and do them in batches for efficiency.
• Once I've got the photos printed, I add them to the page along with the number, and punch the binding holes.

Here are some photos of the title page, and a few of the first pages.  I won't bore you with sharing every page!  Click for a larger version.

Title page: Basic Grey sticker, Project Life paper, Lawn Fawn & Kelly Purkey stamps

Journaling page: EK Success border punch, Martha Stewart labels, Me and My Big Ideas Fall paper

Photo page: I may add more text or stamping later

Another 2 page spread: I love my puppies!

I'm mostly "caught up" - it doesn't really make sense for me to work on the album itself each day, since it's more efficient me to print photos in batches.  But I do try to write up each thankful thing daily and think about what photo I'd like to use.

Since I've been punching the binding holes as I go along, the only thing I'll have to do at the end is actually bind the pages together.  I've still got to come up with a title design for the front cover, which is on deck for this week.  Once I see all the pages together, I may need to add some little embellishments here and there to make it interesting.

Doing this has made me realize that I don't want to do a daily project for my December "Daily" album.  Too much pressure and stress, and some days we'll have more holiday stuff to record and others nothing. So I'll be doing more of a "December When-I-Feel-Like-It" project.

I'll post more about 30 Days of Thankful next week, with more finished pages, and (hopefully) the covers.

Do you do a "thankful" project?  Tell me about it, or link to it!