December 2011 is the first time I took on Ali Edwards' December Daily project. At first I was reluctant. Although I have been scrapbooking for 20+ years, the past eight years or so I haven't been keeping up with my albums as much as I wanted to. Not sure if life just got too busy or if I've been in a perpetual state of creative block, but I was concerned that if I started this project, I wouldn't finish it. And I wanted to complete this album. After thinking about it, I decided that I could use this project as a spring board to get back into "memory keeping mode." I made the personal commitment that I was going to see this project to the end no matter how busy the holiday season got. I have to say that I am pretty proud of myself that I completed my December Daily album. Sure things got crazy busy just a few day before Christmas and I didn't make my daily posts, but even the best laid out plans can have a kink or two in it. And if you think about it, they really weren't "kinks" that got in the way of me completing the last few pages of my album. We were too busy making the memories I was going to document in the album in the first place!
I can't even explain how much I enjoyed my December Daily journey and I plan to do it again for Christmas 2012. If you are thinking about doing your own December Daily, I thought I would share a few things I learned through this whole process:
1. Use supplies you have on hand. It would have been nice to have the DD Kit that was available through Cocoa Daisy, but because I decided to do this somewhat late in the season, the kit that was already sold out. I saw this as a GREAT opportunity to use all of those supplies that I have been collecting over the years. I'm sure many of you have the same. Use December Daily or another similar project to use those supplies!
2. Create your pages BEFORE December 1. This was a life saver for me. I had all of my pages, confetti pages and plastic dividers all done before December even started. It was then just a matter of printing photos and journaling. I found it to be very manageable.
3. Keep your layouts fairly consistent. I found that by keeping my layouts the same, it helped to speed the process along. You can add variety to your pages by placing a tag here or a digital stamp there. You will notice that I used Ali's December Daily overlays for the right hand side of the double page spreads and a black card stock for the left. Variety comes into play when I place journaling blocks in different positions, create my own digital templates to fit my photos, etc. Consistency doesn't have to mean boring!
4. Work on your book at the same time each day. It kind of becomes a habit. My work flow went something like this: During the day I would take photos. In the evening I would upload the photos to my computer and choose the ones I was to include in the book. I would also do a draft of my blog post in the evening as well. Around 8am the following morning I would print the photos, mount them in the book, add the journaling and then photograph the pages for my blog post. Finally I upload those photos to my computer and add the pictures to the blog entry I drafted the night before and then publish the post. It was a process that really worked well for me!
Even though what I mentioned above seemed to help me completing my album, there are two things that I would do differently for the 2012 album:
1. Pay attention to when the December Daily Kit becomes available on Cocoa Daisy. Don't get me wrong, this project was a GREAT opportunity for me to use some old supplies. It really was. BUT...because I wanted use the overlays and templates that Ali created for 2011 December Daily, they were not the correct size for the album I was using (mine was 8x8 and hers was 6x8). So I had some adjusting to do in Photoshop, which was a little time consuming. I also digitally recreated some of the product that was used (i.e. the letterpress numbered coasters), which again, took some time. So the the 2012 December Daily, I am planning on purchasing the kit and may even subscribe to kit club that Cocoa Daisy offers. With me being overseas, it is hard to keep up with all of the new product trends that are out there. I'm thinking a kit club may be the way for me to go for the next few years.
2. Use a different sized album. I found that by using the 8x8 album I ended up with A LOT of scraps of card stock. It wasn't very economical to cut 31 sheets of black card stock and 31 sheets of either green or red card stock into 8x8 squares for this album. The 6x8 album that Ali used makes more sense.
I think that's it. Again, I am glad I did this album. I really think it helped me break through my creative block or whatever was holding me back from working on my family albums!
Bring on 2012. Here I come Project Life!
