My December Daily album - favourite Christmas movies and stories

I'm continuing on with sharing more pages from my December Daily album with you today. As mentioned previously, I am not documenting my December in the traditional way taught by December Daily pioneer, Ali Edwards. I have instead decided to scrapbook 20 Christmas Traditions that are important to my family and I.

Two essential parts of the festive season for my partner, my children, and myself are watching Christmas movies and reading/telling Christmas stories so of course I had to devote a couple of pages to these traditions in my December Daily album. Here's what the foundation pages for these traditions looks like in my album...

And here is a photo of the finished layout in the album...

There are so many Christmas movies that we love that it's hard to list them all! I've always had a bit of a soft spot for them myself and they never fail to put me in a Christmassy mood. The most favourite film in our little family is The Polar Express, so I had to include a picture of the DVD cover in this December Daily spread. No words can describe how much we love that movie! It embodies the spirit of Christmas perfectly!

Elf and The Santa Clause have also become favourites with all of us, especially in recent years as my kids have outgrown the teeny-tiny-kid stage. When my kids were little they loved this Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer cartoon movie (first released in 1998). They'd watch it over and over. You know what my favourite is, along with The Polar Express? The Muppets version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol...I adored The Muppets when I was a kid so I can't resist that movie!

Now that my kids are older, we no longer read the stories together that they loved so much when they were little, but I still wanted to include them in my album for prosperity (and maybe also because they and I do still sneak a read of them when no-one's looking ;D). Twas the Night Before Christmas was always my absolute favourite as a child. The book I had was dog-eared and torn and even though I kept it, I bought a new one when my oldest child was a baby so that my kids would have their own copy to pass onto their children. I am yet to find a new copy of The Elves and the Shoemaker which was also a childhood favourite of mine. I may have to go searching for that one and put it away with our other Christmas books. My hope is that my kids will read these same books to their own children one day. I'm sure I will enjoy reading them with my grandchildren too.

Disclaimer: you may have noticed by now that I am one who likes to layer and embellish when I scrapbook. I don't know why...it's just what I do. I try to do simpler pages and I just cannot for the life of me help but load them with little bits and pieces. Colour is one thing I am obsessed with too so as many colours that I can get on the one page or card, the better. I almost always embellish my stock Project Life cards in the same way that I have with my December Daily ones, be it with a few stickers, some enamel dots, alphas, labels, ephemera, etc. I love how this pocket-page method of scrapbooking especially can be whatever you want it to be. You can do whatever you are drawn to, whatever suits your own style. You do you!

Now after talking about Christmas movies and stories I am feeling all nostalgic and very excited for Christmas! Memories...aren't they wonderful things? I hope you have a lovely day and I'll see you again very soon.

On being creative

I have always been creative. When I was a little girl I especially loved to paint, draw, take photos, and colour in my colouring books. My mum also had many crafty hobbies as I was growing up and I would sit and watch her making things, fascinated, for hours on end. In those moments, I remember wishing away my childhood, longing to become an adult so I could do all of the creative things that she did too.

Now I am well and truly an adult (I turn 40 in December actually - scary!), I rarely go a day without doing something creative, no matter how big or small it is, whether it's scrapbooking, painting, drawing, working in my art journal, taking photos, or sewing. It doesn't matter if I spend only 10 minutes making...as long as I do SOMETHING. It makes me feel alive, fulfilled, at peace with myself. Without it, I feel very uneasy and incomplete.

I thought I would start a new series of posts here on my blog where I will periodically share my art adventures and sewing projects with you, in addition to my scrapbooking/Project Life/December Daily. Maybe it will inspire you in your own creative endeavours, help you to solve a problem you are having with your own work, or help you to feel more connected to your creative energies. I do hope that you will follow along with me on my blog as I share more with you.

(Artwork by Jessica Bruggink, available here)

My December Daily album - title page

Hi everyone :) 

Gee, it has been a long time since I blogged. To be completely honest, I had still been wrestling with my thoughts about sharing things online (as I had previously mentioned here) and was unsure whether to continue to blog or not. With December approaching once again though, people have been finding photos of my December Daily album posts on Pinterest and I have received many messages and emails about my work. It has made me remember why I share my creativity online in the first place...to inspire others and to connect with fellow creatives. I have realized over the last couple of days just how much I did miss it so I have decided to get back into blogging and to share some more photos of my December Daily album with you. 

I thought I'd start by going right back to the beginning of my album to share my title page with you. This was one of the very last pages that I made. I just prefer to work that way as I feel that it provides a more cohesive look to my album. Each to their own :)

I used items from the kit which I put together from my stash. I showed you how I go about putting together my own kit in this post. For these pages in this post here though, I have used mostly pieces from the Simple Stories December Documented and October Afternoon Silent Night collections. I also added some old pieces of striped ribbon from one of my beloved Love Elsie collections that was designed by Elsie Larson of A Beautiful Mess many years ago now. The large gold glitter stars are Studio Calico while the gold glitter cardstock and tiny gold and silver sequin stars are from a local craft store for a couple of dollars. I just sprinkled them into the plastic page protector then stitched it shut at the top after I was done taking my photos. I love them so much! I think that they add a little something extra special to the title page to make it stand out more from the rest of the album.

As an extra insert, when you turn over the title page in my December Daily album, I decided to add in a page explaining what the album is all about. Here I also documented the traditions that are special to my family and I (as I mentioned in this post, I did not follow the traditional method Ali Edwards uses in her December Daily and went my own way with the album instead). Again, I used elements from the Simple Stories December Documented and October Afternoon Silent Night collections, a piece of striped Love Elsie ribbon, a large gold star by Studio Calico and sprinkled some more of the little gold and silver sequin stars in the page protector. For the adjoining page, I simply cut a piece of gold glitter cardstock to 6x8" size and adhered a Simple Stories Snap

 4x6" card to it with a random washi tape sticker. It kept it simple to delineate it from the rest of the album's pocket-page style.

That's all I have to share for today. I do hope you enjoyed looking and reading about my pages. If you would like to see more of my album, I will post some more pictures of it here on my blog in the coming days and weeks in the lead-up to Christmas. Thank you so much to everyone who has contacted me and encouraged me to share more of my work here on my blog. It's so lovely of you. Thank to all of you for visiting and I will see you again very soon.