Let's December Daily 2016 Design Team's Albums Completed and Afterthoughts

Here we are at the end of all four December Daily albums

for 2016

 

 We hope you've enjoyed the ride along with our journey from beginning to end :)

We've learnt a lot - we always do!

Sometimes we set out with solid plans - sometimes they work, and sometimes they dont!

It happened and no matter how experienced we may or may not be, we still learn!

Famous last words they say!   LOL.

So with our 2016 December Daily's all done and dusted....

here are a few words from our wonderful Design Team about their creative 2016 journey ...

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Phew!  This was a really different album to what I've done in the past. The wooden covers were experimental as I had NO idea if they'd turn out.  I enlisted my wood-machinist husband to help me with advice which was fabulous. It worked!!!

 

  I did stick to my original plans of basing the album around 'Basic Grey' collection 'Jovial' and other older papers as a tribute to Basic Grey.  This was fun along with the occasional transparency.  

Also stuck to the pop of colour too and edging pages in 'jovial' fabric and pompoms

It stayed relatively flat!  (surprised!)

Large eyelets and bendy large screw bands to hold it together (metal jump rings just didnt work well)

But what I could not stick with was.......

......black and white photos. 

 Yep that was the big plan and it went south real quick!

First I forgot (merrily printed out coloured photos and placed on the page)..... realised..... and then went back to the drawing board to rehash and I just couldnt do it - it felt like I was taking the colour out of Christmas!  So tossed the black and white idea to the side and carried on! 

Colour it was!

I think my original thought was perhaps black and white photos would have been too much with all the colour that was going to be used everywhere else.

 Anyway....turns out - it didnt matter! LOL

My favourite page would be Day 1...... 

All 'Jovial' including the fabric trim ...oh except the transparency (old Hambley)

I love that its of my loved kitty and being able to see through to the next page too.

 What to do for my 2017 December Daily?  

I 'think'  maybe fabric??... or along those lines. 

(unless some amazing product turns up in the meantime?? It's happened before!)

I've absolutely loved creating my 2016 album  to the finish and have leaned quite a lot!

 Time to rest!

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Well my treasured Little Golden book is now my 2016 December Daily and I love it.
  So glad I finally made the decision to give it a "new life".


It has stayed reasonably flat although probably a little bulkier than I thought it would be considering I tried to make the pictures in the book the focus and not add too many other embellishments.



After putting all my pages into the covers, I decided to add a strip of white ric rac alongside the red braid that I had used when I originally decorated my cover.   I also changed the rings.  Still the same type only in their original state.  Previously I had rubbed over them with black permanent ink and wiped them back to give them a blackish/red tone but found when I went to add them to the album, the black was still coming off on my hands.  So red they are and they look fine.  With some added bits [twine, ric rac (coloured with blue mist)  and gauze (coloured with red mist)].  Also a couple of little red plastic flowers fitted well onto the rings so on they went.



I was happy with how I was able to incorporate the gorgeous pictures in the book which was the plan.  This page would have to be one of my favourites.



As much as I enjoyed creating in my Little Golden Book and am so happy with the was it has turned out,  I felt almost like the pages were pre-planned for me and I'm not a fan of creating in pre-planned albums.  For some it makes things so much easier but for me, I find I get a little "stuck".   If the book didn't have any sentimental value to me, I would probably have created all new blank pages, cut out the pictures from the book and used them and the pages in the book as embellishments on new pages if that makes sense.  BUT because the book is special to me I wanted to keep it as is as much as I could.


NOW thinking, thinking, thinking......what to do for my 2017 December Daily.  Well my very first December Daily was small ( 6" x 4" ) and I said I would NEVER go smaller again.  BUT never say never, because I'm thinking mini for this year's December Daily.  I have a couple of ideas floating around in my head so we'll see how I'm feeling as the year goes on.  For now my 2016 December Daily will be packed away with previous years, to be bought out again in December.

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Here's my finished, and bulging ever so slightly, album

And of course I stuck to my origninal plans of a mixture of paper, stamping, journalling and digi elements - that's just the way I am! This Christmas was supposed to be really quiet with all the sons either at their in-laws or hosting their own Christmas - didn't exactly work out that way and for that I'm both extremely grateful and thoroughly relieved that I prepared so many pages well in advance.

I've one last page to share - I'm calling it the final round up - and it fits in the back of the page protector that has day 31 on the flip side.

And I did say I'd let you all know how I protected my front cover with the moving parts - so this is what I came up with. I simply cut down a 12 x 12 page protector and sewed it round the cover before adhering to the album. Couldn't resist adding a few beads on the sewing thread ends and a ribbon tied round to keep it all tidy.

So what's in store for my 2017 album? Well I've so enjoyed creating the digi photos this year I'm leaning towards mainly digi pages, perhaps matted onto paper - need that fix - and possibly A4 sized. Watch this space!

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I am happy with how my 'stash busting' album turned out. Towards the end it got a little fat, but not overly so.  The one problem I had was the back page fell away from the spiral rings. OOPS!
To keep the book all together, I simply added some trim to the spine, feeding it through the middle of the metal rings and tied it off:

The use of black and white photos was fine, but I did end up cheating, using colour ones in the plastic sleeves tucked in the back of the album for Christmas Day. The idea of using a 'thankful' list when nothing much was happening worked really well for me. This is my fave page because I enjoyed using the ephemera in a 'different' way by creating a flip up to reveal the photo:

Weirdly [or not] even though I had no colour scheme in mind, I've noticed it's mostly green and reds.
I guess that's because they are common Christmas colours! So it ended up matching more than I anticipated!
Totally happy with my 2016 December Daily!

As for 2017. Well, I really enjoyed seeing Jane's plastic binder folder idea. I've got an 8' x 6" one sitting in my stash.  Maybe I'll try pocket scrapping with my stash that I have left over from this year in that next year? And definitely going back to colour photos! I missed that a little this year;)

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So there you are!

We four, all had a very different outlook, purpose and end result.

Its been both a pleasure and a joy.

The blog is now going to 'sleep' until the beginning of November this year when it will 'wake up' again for our 2017 December Daily journeys!

 

In the meantime:

 Dont forget to become a follower and put us in your bloglists so you know when we will be back up and running .....November will return sooner than we think! Look how quicky this one came around!
It seems to be in a 'blink of an eye' these days!

 

We are sure this site will be used as a wonderful resource all year..... especially towards the end of the year along with your contributions in Mr Linky ( still open for your submissions till the end of January 2017) for everyone who visits to see, and visit your blog too....

Kits & Pre-Planning
Covers
2015 or Previous Dec Dailys
Completed Pages

Have an amazing 2017!!!!