You would even say it glows: 2012 December Daily-ish album COMPLETED!

Back in the fall, I enthusiastically ordered the crazy expensive December Daily album kit from Studio Calico.  I was all set to Document Our Christmas and Participate in the Online Festivities.  But I quickly realized that making a page a day was NOT going to happen with a 2 month old baby and a 3 year old in the mix. So I focused on having a GREAT holiday season, aided by our Holiday Fun List, and decided to work on the album once the season was over.

That was so much easier.  I started in late December with a bang and made a bunch of pages for the Hello Forever journaling cards I had carefully written up during the holidays.

And then I got stuck.  Once I put all those 31 cards into the album, it was almost full.  And that was without ANY photos. And boy did I have photos.  So I stuffed the project into a clear Iris box and put it with my other unfinished projects.  It mocked me with every passing month.

I wondered whether I should rip it all apart and start over with a bigger album. I talked it over with two crafty friends, who gave me a bunch of helpful suggestions, so I didn't let that expensive kit go to waste.

I've been given the gift of time in this new life as a stay at home mama, so I am trying not to squander it.  I forced myself to tackle this project even though I felt really uninspired.  So a few weeks ago, I pulled out the box, and took stock of what I had.

My biggest job was to EDIT. Since I was creating this album about our holiday season, from the end of Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, not every day was magical and awesome. Many were downright mundane. I had journaling cards written where it was clear I was trying to find SOMETHING holiday-related to write about.  So I got rid of those and just kept the interesting ones.  I was pretty ruthless about it. I added a separate card to track all the books we read during our Book Advent so I didn't lose the information.

Printed on Studio Calico awesome grid card

Once I accepted that it didn't have to be a comprehensive listing of EVERY last thing we did in December, it was a lot easier to make progress and choose to highlight the best parts of the season. I cranked through it in just a few days and finished it easily.

My favorite part is this confetti pocket I made with a Flip Pocket and vellum that I printed on.  I knew I wanted to use this photo for the last page, and love how the vellum lets it peek through.

Last page - confetti Flip Pocket, Thickers, vellum

My favorite holiday photo

Here's a slide show of my entire album.  If you can't view it, here's the gallery.

I'm really glad I tackled this project.  This year, I'll incorporate it into my Project Life album, using the Design E (4 6x6) page protectors.  I love the 6x6 size, and that'll be more compact than a separate mini album.  Since I'm only doing Project Life every two weeks, I'll have plenty of room in the album for extra projects like this.  I'm really looking forward to it!

Did you do December Daily?  Did you finish?

And if you ever saw it: December Daily-ish 2012

So there's this *thing* among scrapbookers called December Daily, which originated with Ali Edwards.  Typically, you take a photo-a-day and make a mini scrapbook album to document the days leading up to Christmas.

As I mentioned before, photo-a-day projects stress me out, because inevitably, it's 11pm, I haven't taken any photos, and I end up with one of a napping dog or maybe my shoe.  So I knew my December "Daily" was not going to be traditional.

My holiday season starts on Thanksgiving weekend and goes through New Year's Day, so I'd want my album to include those things too. Since I am weak-willed, I bought Studio Calico's VERY expensive December Daily Kit which included everything: album, page protectors, tons of embellishments, paper, etc. Of course, this didn't stop me from buying MORE stuff because "it would be perfect for my December Daily".

I quickly decided on a color scheme - aqua and red (how trendy!) and downloaded some super-cute printable daily journaling cards from Hello Forever. I've been faithfully recording something for each day, including our Book Advent selections.

But I just COULD NOT get started on the album itself. First, I wanted to finish my 30 Days of Thankful album. Also, I had so much stuff for the album that it became overwhelming and I started to feel guilty about my craft supply overload. And part of it was just that we are so darn busy with two little kids and MAKING the memories that I didn't have much time or energy to sit down and figure out how to document them.

But now that Christmas is over, I am feeling a little more relaxed and able to focus on what I want for the album. Last week I took a couple of hours to visit my friend J for a "crafternoon". It gave me the time and space to go through all my supplies and decide what I was really going to use for this project. I also sat down with my trusty notebook and planned out some of the pages and pictures. My title is going to be "Home 4 the Holidays" because we're now a family of 4 (people) and this holiday season was all about staying close to home and starting our family traditions.

Home 4 the Holidays - the spine.

Last night I finally got crafty. I faced my fear of "messing up" the beautiful cream cloth-covered album, and decorated the spine of the book with gorgeous red seam binding, a fabulous Martha Stewart Office bookplate, and some of those awesome Studio Calico wood veneer shapes.  I still need to print a small label for the bookplate, but otherwise, the spine is done.  (Gotta start somewhere, right?)   And please forgive the less-than-perfect photos. I'm trying to use my new DSLR for these, and the depth of field + page protectors is giving me a real challenge.

I had all my journaling cards complete through Dec 26th, so I mounted those on patterned paper with a stripe of washi tape on top, to provide some uniformity across the album. Each page still has a lot of empty space, so they need more embellishment.  I completed the first seven pages and called it a night at 1am.

Here's a little slide show of the pages I've done so far. Click on any photo to view a larger version.



 If you're on a mobile device or it's not working on your computer, you can also view my gallery.

Obviously, I've just gotten started, but this was a huge step for me.  Now I know what I need to do next, instead of just flailing around trying to get going. Tonight I'll start printing photos, which are the real "meat" of the album.

I know all the serious scrapbooking folks are done with their December Daily albums, but I'm trying to remember that it's not a race. The process of putting it together is so fun for me, and I'll share more over the next few weeks.  My goal is to have it done by the time we take down the Christmas tree in early January.

What projects are you tackling now that Christmas is over?

30 Days of Thankful Mini Album: Cover and More Gratitude

I've been consumed with crafting lately. Every spare moment I have I'm trying to work on one of my many open projects. It's great to be excited about something, though I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to spend on it. Sleep takes higher priority right now.

But I figured out a simple cover design for my 30 Days of Thankful album, using the Martha Stewart labels from Staples.  I printed the text from my computer, thanks to the handy Microsoft Word templates Avery provides online. For some reason, the gold labels wouldn't feed into my printer so I used rub-on letters and stamped some arrows.  (Click for larger images.)

Front cover of album

The inside front cover has a cute phrase from the Silhouette Online Store, "a thankful heart is a happy heart." I cut it using my favorite glittery paper, the American Crafts POW line.  This color is a muted gold called Caramel, the same color I used for the numbers on each page.  

This week I also went back and stamped the days of the week on each page. I have 3 (!) sets of days of the week stamps, so I figured I should actually use them.  I keep buying them with the intention of using them for Project Life, but I never seem to pull them out when I'm working on my pages. Sigh. I am a hoarder, plain and simple.

Yes, those are two different babies in the photos.
This page is about my love for the baby wrap/sling/carrier.

Not sure how many pages I can get away with re: my love for crafting.

I do like the way the stamping looks, and how the pages are still pretty simple, allowing the photos and patterned paper to shine.  So I'll probably leave them as is, and just bind the album once all the pages are complete.

What do you think?

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!

Holiday Card Mini Album - Experiment 9

Every January, I suffer tremendous guilt when throwing away the cute photo cards we received from friends and family in December.  The thing is, I'm not really sentimental, and I'm not a "saver".  So I usually recycle what I can and throw the rest out.

A few years ago, I noticed my friend Jenn add the photos into her scrapbook pages.  Brilliant, but I couldn't figure out what I would do since I'm not (yet) a scrapbooker.

This year, I saw a link to this cute idea to stick them on standard binder rings from an office supply store.  Hooray!  But I wanted to do more.

For Christmas, I bought myself the Zutter Bind-It-All tool (thank you TJ!).  It allows you to create little mini albums or notebooks.  The tool punches the holes for the binding, you thread the pages onto metal wires made for this purpose, and the tool squishes the wires closed, giving you a cute little bound book.  You don't have to make just standard little notebooks or albums with pages all the same size.  You can literally bind *anything*, as long as it's not too thick/heavy for the machine to punch.

THAT is what I wanted to use for saving my Christmas 2011 photo cards.  I wanted to create cute little covers and make an album out of it.  I toyed with the idea of making an actual Christmas mini-album and interspersing the cards with our own pictures and text, but knew I'd never actually finish it, so I decided to stick with binding just the cards.

Here it is (click to see a larger version):

It took me a little while to figure out the binding tool, but thanks to Zutter's instructional videos on YouTube, it was a lot easier than the manual made it seem. 

This was a surprisingly easy project.  It even has an eco-friendly angle, because the cardboard I used for the covers was the backing that USPS sends me for their "Stamps by Mail" shipments.  Every sheet of stamps has its own huge piece of cardboard and is then shrink-wrapped.  Great if you're a collector, I guess, but it just seems really wasteful.  So I'm happy I could reuse some of that cardboard.

My Xyron XRN900 was perfect for covering the cardboard with cute cardstock.  It covers paper with a really strong adhesive all the way to the ends, so for applications where you need some durability and don't want edges lifting, it's really great. I scored mine for $20 on Craigslist and it has been *awesome*.

After making the front and back cover - cute patterned paper on the front and a nice acid green cardstock inside - I punched holes in all of the cards.  Since they were different sizes, it was a more difficult project than I probably should have started with, but I like a challenge.  Well, I mostly like it when it's done and I've kicked its butt, but I digress.

Then I threaded the covers and pages onto the O-wires.  I found that I needed to punch some additional holes in some of the cards to get them to fit well.  Squinching the O-wire (my technical term) was more difficult than I expected.  The first one got mangled and the pages wouldn't turn.  I tried again, after watching some more YouTube, and got a better (though not perfectly round) result the second time.  I need practice, especially for longer projects that are wider than the tool itself.

I tied some little scrap bits of red ribbon to the binding to make it look more festive.  At first I thought it just looked messy, but it's growing on me.  Especially if I line up all the little ribbon bits in a row.  Yeah, I'm weird like that.  I added a quick "2011" title on the front with some stickers and scrap cardstock, and wrote a little note on the inside front cover about what was inside.

Once I get better at using the Zutter tool, I think I could complete this in under an hour.  So easy!