December Daily - Take 5

This post was originally posted on the write.click.scrapbook blog.

The most wonderful time of the year is starting soon.. and I am starting to make plans on how I want to document December this year.

I have completed a December Daily album in each of the past four years, and I am at it again this year for the fifth album. This really is my favorite project. I love Christmas, and I love documenting it.

In these past four years, I have taken different approaches to putting my album together, and I want to share my impressions with you. Each of these four albums was put together using my stash.

My 2010-2013 albums

In 2010, I used a 2-ring album. The pages were all hybrid, and I used my Silhouette extensively. In 2011, which was once again all hybrid, I assembled the album using my Cinch. In 2012 and 2013 I used pocket scrapbooking. Here's a look at the inside of the albums.

I love combining different shapes and textures in the album - you can see how I used bubble wrap at the front of my 2010 album and vellum at the front of the 2011 and 2013 albums.

What I liked & what I want to change

 And here is a peek at some random pages in my albums.

As you can see, in my 2010 album I combined a lot of different shapes of pages. I love this and want to do it again in 2014!

In 2011, I added lots of journaling to tell my Christmas stories. I used each 2-page spread per day, one story per day. I want to do this again in 2014!

In all my albums, the number of the day is featured prominently. I want to do this again in 2014!

The pocket-album approach I used in 2012 and 2013 made it very quick and easy to put together my album and I was able to use up a lot of journal cards from my stash, but I found myself writing less. I also dislike that the different textures get lost behind a plastic protector.  I will not do a pocket album in 2014.

My process

In 2010, my first December Daily, I pre-made all the pages because I was traveling for most of December. I ended up not being able to keep up with the album during my trip, and finished it a few months later. The other three years I worked on my album as we went. In 2013 I actually fell behind and I finished my album after the summer. I definitely lose inspiration if I don't work on my album in December, so I will try to stay current as much as I can. But I know now not to worry if that fails, because I can catch up when things slow down. In any case, I find that waiting to have my pictures in front of me works best, rather than having all the foundation pages made first. I will make a list of Christmas topics to use for the days in which I don't have any Christmas-related story to tell.

And now.. I'd love to hear from you! Are you looking forward to December? What are your plans for documenting this month? Leave me a comment and let me know!