My December Daily (Part 2) - ideas for what to include in your album

Hi everyone! I am really excited to share with you some details about my December Daily album and process today :) I have a lot to share, so I have written three separate posts. Part 1 (CLICK HERE) details how to put together your own December Daily kit, while Part 3 (CLICK HERE) shows pics of all of the foundation pages that I have completed in my album to date and gives and a little info about my process regarding how I put my December Daily pages together. In today's post (Part 2 of my series) I will share with you some ideas for photos and stories that you may like to document in your own December Daily album. Enjoy :)

You may feel like your December is not “interesting enough” to devote a whole album to. Please, don’t think that! You don’t have to go to special Christmas parties, do something different every day in December, or have a fancy Christmas Day to make a December Daily album :) You don’t have to take a photo each day to include in your album, either. I am not. As I said in my last post, don't be afraid to make your album completely your own.

I have chosen to document 20 December/Christmas traditions that are very precious to me and my family. I wrote them all down in list form and pinned the list to the wall in my studio so I can easily see what topic to document next in my album. Later I plan to put the list into my December Daily album too (more on that in the future). I've included my list below for you to give you some ideas for things you may like to include in your album. Please excuse it being a little rough around the edges...keeping it real :)

I have found some other layout/photo prompt lists that you might find helpful in deciding what to include in your own December Daily too. Here’s the links to them for you…

*Ali Edwards – 25 awesome prompts, direct from the lady who first developed December Daily.

*Scrapbooks Etc. – downloadable holiday photo checklist. For those of us who enjoy a Summer Christmas, instead of the snow-themed elements in this list, you could take a photo of footprints in the sand, building a sandcastle, a Summer thunderstorm, your kids’ favourite Christmas t-shirts/new swimmers/Christmas day outfits, etc. Fun ideas to try! 

*Katie Scott – Katie’s list of stories to include in her December Daily. I love her ideas!

*Kasia – as part of her “Inspire Me Christmas 2012” series, Kasia (of Worqshop blog) designed a downloadable December Daily prompt list. It’s fantastic! Scroll down to the bottom of her blog post and click the link to download it. 

Thank you so much for reading along today! I can't wait to share some pics from inside my December Daily album with you in my next post, along with some details about the how I put together my album and embellish my filler & journaling cards. See you soon :)

My December Daily (Part 1) - how to create your own album kit

Hi everyone! I am really excited to share with you some details about my December Daily album and process today :) I absolutely love all things Christmas, so this is a project that is really close to my heart. I have a lot to share, so I have written three separate posts. Part 2 (CLICK HERE) gives you some ideas for photos and stories that you may like to document in your own December Daily album, while Part 3 (CLICK HERE) shows pics of all of the foundation pages that I have completed in my album to date and gives and a little info about my process regarding how I put my December Daily pages together. In today's post (Part 1 of my series), I will share with you some details on how I organize my December Daily album supplies and how you can put together your own December Daily kit. Enjoy :)

As some of you may already know, December Daily is an album concept that was developed by scrapbooker Ali Edwards in order to document and celebrate the month of December in the lead-up to Christmas Day. If you aren't familiar with December Daily, you can find out more about it on Ali’s blog HERE. Ali’s idea has become very popular among scrapbookers the world over, particularly with the introduction of Project Life to the scrapbooking world. The Project Life method of memory-keeping is an awesome way to construct your December Daily album, and as a devoted Project Lifer, it is the format that I am using to construct my first ever December Daily album. 

For me, December is a very hectic time full of Christmas goings-on (plus my birthday is on Boxing Day), so I have already started gathering my supplies and constructing my December Daily album. It's only October, I know, but knowing how my life can get busy at a moment's notice, if I don’t get my album put together early, I won’t ever finish it. My plan is to have my album constructed so that, come December, all I have to do is add in the journaling and photos as the month progresses and it’s done. This will really let me enjoy the holiday season all the more and add to the magic and excitement of counting down to Christmas and my birthday...December is certainly my favourite time of year! Here’s some details on the process I have used in constructing my own December Daily kit. Enjoy :)

I already had on hand this cute little red and kraft-coloured 6x8 inch Simple Stories Sn@p album/binder so I decided to use that for my December Daily album. I love how these albums come with everything you need to complete an album - cardstock inner pages, pocket page protectors, plus chipboard dividers. I purchased extra pocket page protectors for my album too as I have a LOT I want to add to it. The beauty of December Daily is that you can make your album any size you like, and include as much or as little as you like. There doesn't have to be any hard and fast rules so don't be afraid to make it your own. It's completely up to you :)

Many scrapbooking kit companies have released December Daily kits this year for you to buy. Some include Project Life cards in them (and even an album plus pocket page protectors in some cases too). They are an awesome idea if you want something that is themed, hassle-free, and easy to put together. Scrapbooking companies such as Simple Stories, Echo Park, My Mind’s Eye, Carta Bella, Basic Grey, Studio Calico, etc. have released Christmas scrapbooking lines that are perfect for Project-Life-style December Daily albums too! Have a browse online and see what you can find if you think that is an option you'd like to explore. As I already had an album on hand, and a lot of embellishments in the colour scheme I'd chosen, I decided to put together my own December Daily kit using items I already had in my stash plus some newly purchased items. 

When I make Project Life pages in my 12x12 inch album, I usually put my own kit together from my stash based on a set colour scheme that I may have in mind for my spread. If I need to, I will then buy anything that I don’t already have which I need or particularly want to use to fill in the gaps to put my page together. I find that doing things this way helps me to use what I already have, create spreads faster, and cut down on the amount of money that I spend on supplies. This system works really well for me so I have used it to put together my own kit to create my December Daily album from too. 

As you can see from the picture of my self-made kit above, the main colour scheme that I am using for my album is aqua blue, red, lime green, pink, chalkboard/black, white, and gold. I use this colour scheme when decorating my home for Christmas each year, so it was a natural choice for me. If you are stuck on working out what products you want to use for your December Daily, I suggest choosing a colour scheme first. 

After choosing my colour scheme, I went through my supplies and pulled out all of the papers and embellishments I had that were in keeping with my colour scheme for my December Daily album. The embellishments I pulled out are those which I use a lot in my Project Life scrapbooking - patterned papers, sequins, ribbons, trims, buttons, enamel dots, paper clips, decorative pins, digital printables, tags, stickers, chipboard, alphabets, and little word stickers. I know there is a LOT of stuff in my kit, but I have done this because I find that if I have more options at hand when I am putting my spreads together, the less time I waste rifling through the rest of my supplies and my pages come together a lot more quickly and easily. 

Try this method out for yourself, too. Go through your stash before you purchase anything and see what you have in the colours you want to use for your album. Not everything has to be Christmas-themed, either. You might be surprised at just how much you already have that you can use in your December Daily :) If you want to, you can also throw in some stamps, paint, ink, mist...whatever you want. Of course, you can add as little or as much to your own kit as you like. I do my Project Life pages using an embellished, scrapbooking style, but if you prefer a simpler Project Life style, your kit won't need to be as full as mine.

Next, as I didn't have any Christmas-themed products in my stash apart from some brads and a few tags, I purchased some papers, embellishments, and alphas from the Simple Stories December Documented line and some of the Simple Stories Sn@p Christmas Project-Life-style 6x4 and 3x4 cards. When I had everything I wanted, I corralled all of my bits and pieces in some things I already had - a box, basket, bowl, and some little glassine envelopes and plastic bags (sorted according to type of embellishment). I put everything (including the alphabets and my filler & journaling cards) in a drawer housed in a rolling drawer unit which sits next to my desk in my studio, with my 12x12 papers on top of the unit in a 12x12 resealable plastic bag. This enables me to pull everything out and tidy it up quickly and easily whenever I need or want to. It might sound like a bit of work to set it all up like this, but it really doesn't take long at all, and it's a great way to keep all of your bits and pieces for your album in the one place. 

Try doing this yourself with all of the things you have pulled out for your own kit. Put them all together in the one spot, handy to your work area, so you can grab them and work on your album whenever you like. It doesn't have to be fancy - go with whatever works for you. It's a big help to my creative process when I do this, and it may just help you, too.

Thank you so much for reading along today. It's been a pleasure to be able to share some of my December Daily album process with you and I hope that you have gathered some ideas that will help you along as you work on your own December Daily. Next post I'll share some ideas for topics you may like to journal about or photograph to include in your album. See you soon :) 

Project Life - my process

Hi again everyone :) In my last post I talked about how I discovered Project Life and why I love it so much. Today I thought I'd follow on from that a little and tell you how I put together my Project Life layouts using my latest layout as an example.

Many people dedicate one Project Life layout/spread to each week of the year. I decided to organize my album into months, and to scrap my layouts based around the major events that took place during that month. More on that in another post ;D The best thing about Project Life, in my opinion, is that you can make your layouts and album suit your own style and time constraints. There are no rules. How awesome is that?!

Anyway, sometimes in a month I'll have a bunch of significant things that happened and I may only have one photo for each event (or no photos), so in that instance I'll combine all of these things into the one Project Life layout. That's exactly what I did with my latest layout (pictured above). With the lack of photos for this layout, I focused instead on getting those stories down and making it all look cohesive. There is a lot of journaling, and that's totally okay - I was still able to document the important things in our life for us to reflect back on in the future, and that (for me) is what Project Life is all about.

I usually start my layouts by gathering my photos. I then look for colours in the photos that I can match to papers, 3x4" and 6x4" journaling and filler cards, and embellishments in my stash (I tend to not use products from the one product line or manufacturer on my layouts - I mix and match from many different ones). I will then go through my stash and pull out bits and pieces in the same colours to form my own kit, of sorts. Finally I start assembling my cards and adding the photos and journaling.

I must confess that this layout had me stumped for a while because I don't typically use pink and pale yellow on my layouts. My partner, David, had a tooth out in March. It was a big thing for us because he was in a lot of pain for the month. I didn't want to put a photo of David with a swollen face and looking miserable in our album, so instead I found a diagram on a medical website online that showed the problem he had. I studied biology and nursing at university, so I am naturally drawn to scientific diagrams. It turned out great because it's an easy way to explain to the kids what was wrong with David (he's all better now). As it turned out, the colours in the diagram actually formed the jumping off point for me to go ahead and choose the colours for the rest of the layout. Here's some close-ups of the details of the rest of the 6x4 and 3x4 cards on the layout...

The gold glitter Thickers from the Maggie Holmes line by Crate Paper were perfect to journal about us having to look after a cat named "Goldie" during March, especially because I didn't have a photo of Goldie. I echoed them on two of the other 6x4 cards so that the layout would flow nicely. Other than that I used the following on this layout - Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm papers and die-cuts, Simple Stories Urban Traveller red alphas, Becky Higgins Project Life grid journaling cards, a My Mind's Eye memo card from the Noteable collection, a journaling card and yellow typeset letter stickers from the Sn@p line by Simple Stories, some Studio Calico printable journaling cards and embellishments, Pebbles Seen & Noted dymo-style word stickers, Studio Calico stickers and chipboard arrows (from the Sundrifter, Here & There, Snippets, and Atlantic lines), Studio Calico Atlantic vellum anchor die-cut, Glitz Designs Unchartered Waters yellow anchor paper, Simple Stories Urban Traveller and 24/7 word stickers, an old Heidi Swap chipboard star that I painted white, an old KI Memories Love Elsie word sticker and label sticker, an old KI Memories chipboard word, and some old sequins and buttons from my stash.

You'll notice in the main picture of this layout that I have a smaller 8x8 layout beside the main 12x12. I had only 2 photos from our Easter weekend so I decided to make a smaller layout to sit beside the larger one. I was really stumped for ideas for it until I came across a beautiful layout by Elizabeth Kartchner that featured some red striped paper and navy paper from her Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm line. I borrowed her paper choices and idea for a collection of embellishments at the top of the page, added a title using the gold glitter Thickers, and sprinkled around some embellishments, stamping and journaling and called it DONE. It turned out to be more like a traditional scrapbooking layout, actually. Remember how I said in my last post that those things really used to stress me out? Well, this one did just the same so I am not in a hurry to do another. I'm quite happy to stick to my little 6x4 and 3x4 Project Life cards in future - they are WAY less stressful!

Well, that's a very basic run-down of how I construct my Project Life layouts. No doubt you can work out how I have layered bits and pieces to get the effect I wanted so I have left that info out. If you have any questions though, please don't hesitate to ask.

Project Life, my way

I first discovered the Project Life method of scrapbooking in December 2012 via Pinterest. A friend of mine shared a pin that mentioned it and I thought, "Huh? What's this Project Life thing? It sure looks like fun. Let's Google it." So I Googled it. And I found this. And then this. Instantly I was hooked!

Before I ordered a Project Life kit though, I decided to do some more research about it online. I quickly discovered a plethora of inspiring scrapbookers that did Project Life but they made theirs a little different - they used normal scrapbooking products on their pages. I really liked that idea so I decided not to order a kit. Instead, I bought some page protectors, some 3x4 and 4x6 grid journalling cards, and some normal scrapbooking supplies, printed some photos, and got to work.

Now, I used to scrapbook many eons ago and honestly, it used to really stress me out sometimes. I'd get so caught up in the process of taking the perfect photo for a page, narrowing it down to using just one or two ideas for the page, making the page, and trying to get it all "perfect" (I am very critical of the things I make) that I would feel seriously deflated by the end of it. Not a good way to feel about something that is meant to be fun, so I stopped scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking on my Project Life layouts is so much more fun! Unlinke with traditional scrapbooking, I am not stressing over making my layouts for my Project Life album because essentially I am creating 6-8 mini scrapbooking layouts on the one 12x12 inch page. I can make each of those little layouts different - one can be a photo, one can be journalling, one can be made up of letter stickers and pretty papers and other bits and pieces. I really love doing Project Life this way because it lets me play with many different scrapbooking products and techniques all on the one page, eliminating some major creative anxiety in the process.

Another big thing for me now is that when I do my Project Life layouts, I am using my normal, everyday photos from my iPhone or DSLR camera, be they perfect or flawed. No longer am I focused on taking that one great photo with the sole vision of using it on a scrapbooking layout. I am also writing the stories behind those normal, everyday things that make up our lives, like the kids going back to school and us all struggling to get back into that familiar daily routine, the flood in January, soccer games, a day trip to the beach, birthdays, sick days, etc. Previously, I never scrapbooked half of that stuff. Now I'm taking more photos and telling the important stories behind those photos much more than I ever did in the past which is a fantastic feeling!

I am planning to buy an official Project Life Core Kit designed by Becky Higgins to organize those many boxes of old photos that I have going on at home here (I'm sure I'm not the only one who has boxes of photos lol!). I think the system that Becky has designed is so wonderful for quick and easy memory-keeping and I can't wait to get a kit when the new ones come out in June. For current photos though, I'll continue do Project Life in my own fun and colourful "scrappy" way because it is a fantastic creative outlet for me. I am absolutely loving Project Life!

Thoughts on Blogging

I first started blogging about 8 years ago now and in that time my personal life has seen many, many changes. Throughout those 8 years I have kept a blog (first with Blogger and most recently with Typepad), but over the last couple of years I have not been blogging so much. Online identity theft, cyber-bullying, and maintaining some online privacy in my personal life have become an increasing concern for me. I don't want my family or myself exposed to any unnessary hurt. I no longer felt comfortable in sharing my personal information written in my old posts in such a public format and, to be completely honest, I was feeling very unsure as to whether or not I should continue to blog at all. As a result, early in 2013 I decided to remove all of my posts from my old Typepad blog.

Just recently, however, I had an epiphany. I remembered why I used to blog and why I used to love it so much. My blog began as a place where I could share my creativity with like-minded souls, like you. I loved that I was able to connect with people the world over who were interested in the same things I was or who were inspired by something I had created, shared, or written here. I want that again now more than I ever have.

From today, I am starting over with my blog in this fresh new space. I will focus on sharing about my art and craft projects, my creative process, my studio, and the inspiration behind it all. I am so inspired and excited to start blogging again! I'm a firm believer in following your dreams and in taking time to enjoy those parts of life that make you most happy. Creating makes me happy, as does sharing it with others, so with that I would like to welcome you all to my blog. I hope you will follow along with me as I cultivate a creative life and maybe, just maybe, you will feel inspired to do the same.

(Art by Amy Tan for Design Editior)