December Daily 2015: Days 9 & 10

Hello! I have a new spread from my December Daily album to share today, and this one is all about Christmas trees.

I combined days 9 and 10 in this spread.

On the last card I used a silkscreen and acrylic paint (all from Studio Calico). I love the look of silkscreens!
Today’s story is of my mom’s Christmas decorations.

Today’s story is of our Christmas tree. It is so pretty! I added one of the thick transparency inserts from the December Daily kit in front of it.

Photos of my tree are always in a weird format, so I used a wide masking tape (from the Park. Ave Studio Calico Project Life kit from Dec. 2014) to bring the thickness up to 6″.
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Catch up on all my 2015 December Daily posts:
Title page
Dec. 1st
Dec. 2 and 3
Dec. 4th
Dec. 5th
Dec. 6th
Dec. 7th
Dec. 8th
Dec. 9 and 10
Dec. 11th
Dec. 12 and 13
Dec. 14th
Dec. 15th
Dec. 16th
Dec. 17th
Dec. 18th
Dec. 19th
Dec. 20th
Dec. 21st
Dec. 22nd
Dec. 23rd
Dec. 24th
Dec. 25th

December Daily 2015: Day 8

Hello and happy Monday! How is your December Daily album coming along? I am in love with how mine is turning out. I’m at the half way mark, working on Day 12. Here’s Day 8.

This day has a 2-page spread and an insert.

Today’s story is all about our Elf and our Reindeer. They bring so much joy to our December. ๐Ÿ™‚

The insert is a back to back copy of the certificates of when we got them.

I used some digital brushes by Ali Edwards on my photos.
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Catch up on all my 2015 December Daily posts:
Title page
Dec. 1st
Dec. 2 and 3
Dec. 4th
Dec. 5th
Dec. 6th
Dec. 7th
Dec. 8th
Dec. 9 and 10
Dec. 11th
Dec. 12 and 13
Dec. 14th
Dec. 15th
Dec. 16th
Dec. 17th
Dec. 18th
Dec. 19th
Dec. 20th
Dec. 21st
Dec. 22nd
Dec. 23rd
Dec. 24th
Dec. 25th

December Daily 2015: Day 7

I need to apologize for the poor quality of photos of the next few days of my December Daily album – we’ve had a very gray and dark weekend and these are the best shots I could get.

I used the 2″ slots in the page protector to feature some photos of my Christmas tree.

I bought some green metallic and red metallic embossing powders, which I used here along with gold. I love them – the green especially!

Today’s story is about my favorite ornaments. On that top journaling card I stamped a tree using a set from Studio Calico.

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Catch up on all my 2015 December Daily posts:
Title page
Dec. 1st
Dec. 2 and 3
Dec. 4th
Dec. 5th
Dec. 6th
Dec. 7th
Dec. 8th
Dec. 9 and 10
Dec. 11th
Dec. 12 and 13
Dec. 14th
Dec. 15th
Dec. 16th
Dec. 17th
Dec. 18th
Dec. 19th
Dec. 20th
Dec. 21st
Dec. 22nd
Dec. 23rd
Dec. 24th
Dec. 25th

December Daily 2015: Day 6

For Dec. 6, I did another 2-page spread with some pastel colors.

Today’s story: my husband sang in a Christmas concert. It was lovely!

On the photo, I used some digital brushes by Ali Edwards.

On the right hand side Iย brush lettered some of the words from my favorite piece in Handel’s Messiah.
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Catch up on all my 2015 December Daily posts:
Title page
Dec. 1st
Dec. 2 and 3
Dec. 4th
Dec. 5th
Dec. 6th
Dec. 7th
Dec. 8th
Dec. 9 and 10
Dec. 11th
Dec. 12 and 13
Dec. 14th
Dec. 15th
Dec. 16th
Dec. 17th
Dec. 18th
Dec. 19th
Dec. 20th
Dec. 21st
Dec. 22nd
Dec. 23rd
Dec. 24th
Dec. 25th

December Daily 2015: Day 5

I have a 2-page spread for December 5, with an additional tag added in. I had so much fun making this spread!

I love how the red and gold pop off against the dark background! Oh and you can get a peek at how I decorated the inside cover of my album – I attached a paper from the Jasmine Jones mini kit with washi tape. I love having the calendar for the month right there.

I’ve had that cute little tag for years (I bought it in a shop and then couldn’t get myself to use it!), but finally this year it ended up in my album. ๐Ÿ™‚

I added my journaling on the back of the tag. Then I put some of my numerous alpha stamps to good use on a 4″x6″ piece of card stock (stamps mostly by Studio Calico, but the all caps one is from Kelly Purkey) and I love how this card turned out! ๐Ÿ™‚

My story for Dec. 5: The photo and story for today is actually from November, but I put it here because 1) I wanted to include it in my Christmas album and 2) the actual story for today is that we went to a memorial service (I even gave a speech.. so hard!) and while I will certainly document that in my Project Life album, I didn’t want it in this album. I’m so glad I gave myself the freedom to include photos in this album that don’t fall in December!

December Daily 2015: Day 4

I made a double-page spread for December 4th. That night we went out with two friends for dinner, and while it wasn’t necessarily Christmas related, it’s something that makes me happy and I wanted to include it in this album.

The paper and card are from the December Daily kit and from Jasmine Jones’s kit, respectively.

I just added some stamping and puffy stickers to embellish.

And as you can infer, I don’t stick to a single color scheme for the whole album. I love trying new things for each spread. ๐Ÿ™‚

December Daily 2015: Days 2 & 3

I had a short story to tell on each of these two days, so I only dedicated them 1 page rather than a full spread.

My approach for this album is to document the Christmas events that happen during the month and, if nothing Christmas-related happens on a particular day, use the occasion to tell a story about my Christmas loves / traditions / hopes.

My story for Dec. 2:ย I love Advent calendars. I go a bit overboard actually (we have nine!), and every night my husband and I spend five minutes opening them all. I documented on a journaling card from the kit all nine of our Advent calendar for this year, tracking which are old and which are new. I accompanied it with a photo of two of my favorite new ones. I chose the deer paper on the right pocket since it goes with my story for the right hand side of the spread.

I used some Pinkfresh Studio embellishments on this page.
My story for Dec. 3:ย we added a new Elf Petย to the family this year. ๐Ÿ™‚ This reindeer is the cutest and it even comes with an app that is just adorable. I highly recommend it!

December Daily 2015: Day 1

Hello! Today I am sharing my December Daily spread for December 1st.

Everything I used is from the December Daily kit, except from the foam glitters star from my stash, and the plastic embellishment and gold phrase sticker from Pinkfresh Studio.

In all my past albums I’ve only included things from that day, but this year I was inspired by Ali to include what else we’ve been doing before December that is Christmas related. So the left page of this spread is dedicated to what we did before December.
I’m so proud of myself – I took an online lettering class by Amanda Arneillย (I love her!!) – and this is my first time putting it to use. I scripted the “Before” with a brush pen directly on the paper and I love how it turned out!

The right page of the spread is for my December 1st story. The first pocket has three 1-inch circles with stamps embossed with gold glitter and red glitter. The photo is of my tree, and I used foam dots to pop up the “twinkle” sticker. I embellished the bottom left card with stamping, and wrote down my story for the day. I love the fourth pocket – I stamped the date directly on the wooden tree from the kit.
Today’s story:ย My husband bought an awesome little tool, fixed our Christmas tree lights and saved the day. Highly recommended! ๐Ÿ™‚

My album is coming along nicely – I am working on my Dec. 7th spread; alas, I will be traveling for the next couple of days so I may fall a bit behind. It’s all good. And I have some posts scheduled for the next few days to share a few more days’ worth.

December Daily 2015: Title Page

This is my sixth year putting together a December Daily album, and for the first time I’ve bought a December Daily kit from Ali Edwards. I also got a mini kit. Not that I needed any Christmas product, since my stash was quite full already, but I just couldn’t resist. ๐Ÿ™‚ I am using a 6″x8″ ring album.

I started working on the album this past week, and today I want to share with you my title page – I love how it turned out!

I ended up layering 2 pages for my “title page”, since I loved them both so much and didn’t want to pick. ๐Ÿ™‚

The first layer is a page protector with 2″ square slots, that I filled with bits and pieces.

I filled the pockets so that there’s something pretty to see on either side of the page. The stitching is a bit messy – I do not own a Fuse tool, but I think it would have made wonders for this page.

The second layer of my title page builds on one of the awesome transparency sheets in the December Daily kit – I love how thick it is! I added some acetate letters that I had saved from my October Wink Wink Studio Calico kit for this reason, some puffy alpha stickers from Studio Calico, and the rubber “December” was cut from one of the banners included in the December Daily kit.

As a backdrop for this page, I have a page protector with two 4″x6″ slots with one of the papers from the kit that I absolutely love.

And here are all the layers stacked together. It makes me so happy to see this when I open my album!

My days 1-4 are done and photographed, so they will be posted on this blog very soon. Have a merry December!

December Daily Update

I want to give you an update on how my December Daily album is progressing. Last month I talked a bit about what my plans were for this year, and it’s time to check in and see how I am doing.
My plan for this year included: handmade album, with pages of different sizes; one story per day.
As fate has it, this December has turned out to be by far the busiest I have ย ever had. I thought it would be hard to top last year’s craziness, but it has indeed happened. In the past two out of three days I have been at the office from 8 AM to 10:30 PM. And I see no end in sight, yet Christmas is less than a week away. Ugh! So while I am not up to date with my December Daily album, given that I have very little time to work on it, I have made a little progress and I have been taking photos regularly and keeping track of what story I want to tell each day. I hope to get a good chunk of it done just before Christmas, because I know my inspiration dips significantly once Christmas Day has passed.ย 
I haven’t bought any new Christmas supplies this year, but I have a sizeable stash to draw from and it is fun to finally use all these pretty bits that I had been hoarding.
Now it’s time to show you some pictures of my album so far. I haven’t worked on the cover yet – I will do it at the end since I need to see what size my album will have. But I plan to include this pretty gold star vellum paper at the front. of the album.
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And here’s what all my pages stacked together look so far. I have days 1-7 done at this point.
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I love having pages peeking out. I think it adds a lot of interest to the album!
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For December 1st, my story was about the tea advent calendar we got this year.
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For this spread, I included a 3×4 pocket as a page to hold some journaling.
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I like to include stamping in my album because I love stamps so much!

And now.. I’d love to hear from you! Have you been documenting your December? Leave me a comment and let me know!