Let's December Daily 2017 Design Team's Albums Completed and Afterthoughts

PLEASE NOTE :
We wont be continuing with 2018 December Dailys.
We are having a break, we might be up and running next year :)  ??
In the meantime there is a MASSIVE amount of wonderful December Dailys to look through here
and below is the wind up of our 2017 albums.
Look over to the sidebar and you can click on any albums that appeal!
I (Mandy) will be doing a Dec Daily (slowly lol) on my blog so you might join me there,
for now, enjoy the fabulous December Albums here, its a great resource!

 

We've managed to finish our December Dailys and hope you've enjoyed the journey along with us.

We have shown three very different album styles and have learnt quite a bit along the way:  what we loved, what we didn't love, what we would do again and what we would avoid altogether! 

 Lol, yes it does happen!    Ah... the hindsight! 

What we do know is keeping a record of our Decembers for 

years to come is so worth it (very big smile!) 

So with our 2017 December Dailys all done and dusted....

here are a few words (and photos)  from each of us about our creative journey   ...

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 This is my 11th December Daily and is so very different to my 2016 one!

This year I had the urge to play with mixed media in a Ranger Dylusion 8x8 Art Journal in black

     

 And because of the use of mixed media, made the decision just to create the inside cover in the beginning because I was concerned I'd get paint etc on the outside cover while working on it...

 And now the album is finished, here is the outside cover...

 And it didn't turn out too chunky either 

(helped by taking out quite a few pages before starting it)

 

What was great about this album is that it made me get out the many mixed media products I had and either hardly used or never used! (thats right!)  Now was the time!

Products like...Dylusion paints, Clearsnaps Smooch Accent Inks, Inka Gold waxes, Texture paints, Izinks etc and trying out various techniques. 

Here are a couple of my favourites: 

Peep through pages were fun:

 And I love pie graphs!

Now, having said all that.... 

I would love to say - I loved the Art Journal... but ......  I kind of and mostly did because of playing in mixed media and am really happy with the end result, though found ......

I really missed making my own pages! 

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I've really enjoyed creating my First December Daily! I had fun making the album from scratch...cutting all the pages, using lots of die cuts to embellish etc. I think the challenge for me was keeping it simple and not adding dimension to each page!

I really love this little gingerbread man on the front cover.

And

 and the large gold glittery letters, which I kept consistent through out the album

This is my favorite page

At times I found the Christmas rush took over and I was forgetting to take photos.  In saying that, I did have fun choosing photos from each day to feature in the album. Hmmmm...I have thought about my next December Daily - it would be much more basic....maybe project life style, more photos not so much technique or embellishing, just a little journaling.  Who knows.....I could change my mind!

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I am beyond thrilled to have finished my first December Daily! I attempted it back in 2011 and got as far as adding photos and a little bit of journaling up to day 8 and that was it. No embellishing, no title page just a few photos and sentences about that day - and when I found that poor attempt at a December Daily - I still loved it and regretted that I didn't keep up with it! It brought back memories that had been forgotten. So, again, I am thrilled to have this year's completed!

I really enjoyed doing a project life style album. I liked documenting our everyday life along with a few Christmas stories, too.

It's hard for me to pick a favorite page as they all have special meaning, but I loved adding in the larger photos and coming up with different ways to add my journaling when it just wouldn't fit into a pocket.

This glassine bag was a perfect spot for some personal journaling about the struggles of this particular day.

I think this close-up photo of our tree may be my favorite of the season!

I absolutely loved this whole process! The busyness of the holiday season made it hard sometimes to keep up with it, but it also allowed me to view the holiday season in a whole new light. I found myself really thinking about the true meaning of Christmas instead of what needed to be done, and that filled my heart with so much Christmas spirit this year.

I have been thinking about my next December Daily, because I have every intention of continuing it, and I am torn on what I want to do. I loved documenting our everyday life, but I feel like there are so many more Christmas stories/memories that I want to share. So, should I continue on like I did this year, or just concentrate on the stories I want to tell...thank goodness I have a few months to get that figured out!

Thank you so much for letting me share my December Daily with you!

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We hope that you have enjoyed your visits here

And that your December Daily mojo becomes busy too!

Lori's Day 24 and 25

Day 24

We have finally made it to Christmas Eve! This year was a little different for us since we actually got to stay home! 

These last few pages have been interesting to make. I only have a few page protectors left and the majority of those are the 4 - 3x4's. Not only that but I haven't really had a chance to resize my photos, so I am working with all 4x6 photos and trying to fit them into a 3x4 pocket! It wasn't really that difficult since I was able to cut down the photos without losing anything important.

I realize the bottom photo on the right-hand side is not the best quality, but it is the only one that I took of one of our traditions of playing Wii games on Christmas Eve. In person, it is not nearly as dark as what it appears here.

Since I am working with only 4x6 photos, a few of those could not be cut down and I really wanted to include them, so I created an insert to fit those onto. I made a 5x7 card base, covered that different patterned papers and then added my photos to that. 

On the inside is where I have journaled about all of the photos.

Here is what the insert looks like sandwiched between the two pages: 

Day 25

Christmas Day has arrived - and I woke up not feeling well at all. I didn't take a lot of the pictures that I try to be sure and take each year - like a photo of each one of the kids with all of their presents wrapped and then again when they are all opened. I just went with what I had and tried to pick out a variety of everyone opening their gifts. 

I wanted to stay consistent with the journaling cards, so I made them all the same with each person's name at the top. I will go back and make a list of everything they received and a few fun little stories that go along with a couple of them.

We always go to my in-laws for Christmas dinner and a gift exchange, but since I wasn't feeling well I decided to stay home, so I have no pictures of that...there's always next year!

I had planned to make one more page showing the aftermath of opening presents, and I can not, for the life of me, find where I put the photo! I thought that would have been a good way to finish off the album.

There you have it - my very first December Daily complete!

How about you? Are you all finished? We would love to hear from you - just leave us a comment below!

Lori's Day 23 Continued

Day 23 continued

Day 23 was a busy day for us. We have always had an ornament exchange with my side of the family on Christmas eve, but this year we changed that to the Saturday before Christmas eve - which just happened to be the day before Christmas eve! I had quite a bit to say about this new tradition and that warranted another insert.

Here are the pages without the insert:

I wanted to be sure and document which ornament each of us got this year, so I just added that to the photos. Since my husband and youngest son had to leave before the exchange started, I wanted to be sure and tell the story of why and get a photo of their ornaments, as well. That is what is included in the insert.

Once again, I had a lot to say, so I made another flip up journaling card.

 Here is the back side of the insert:

The layout with the insert added: 

Journaling card opened:

I just have Christmas eve and Christmas day and then I will be all finished! I will be back in a couple of days with those layouts.

How are you coming along? We would love to see your December Daily, so share in the comments below.

Mandy's Days 26-28

DAY 26-28

These are the last days for my December Daily.  Maybe its weird to stop midway between Christmas Day and the 31st of December... but there are no rules (very big grin) 

Its just that our time away for Christmas happened to finish on the 28th plus we had our eldest daughter home until then and so the rest can go into my annual 12x12 Project Life Album. 

(lol, afterall, the latter has been cast aside completely while doing my Dec Daily!)

And our Summer really began in earnest now...

Used some lovely Heidi Swapp glitter wide washi tape and the decorative one is Basic Grey (Oliver?) with some star banners.

Finishing up on some pretty straight forward pages.

More washi tape here too... bricks in red and brown... cute!

Thats the last pages,

Will be back to show you my outside cover (since I left that till last due to the spillage of mixed media fear faced in the beginning which could have ruined it.... all good though!)

We would love to hear how you are doing on your December Daily! Please feel free to share with us in the comments below.

Lori's Day 20-23

Day 20

Not a lot happened on the 20th, so I decided to document a couple of our decorations that have special meaning to us.

Day 21

 Again, another day that not a lot was going on. I took a photo of our wrapping paper and talked about how it was just a few days before Christmas and I hadn't even started wrapping presents!

Here are both pages together in my album. I'm really hoping to only use one album for this project, but it is getting really full!

Day 22

 Day 22 was a pretty busy day for us. We had to finish up our shopping and I didn't even take any pictures of us while we were out and about. I did want to write down a few thoughts about our shopping experience - because it was such a good day, and to let our family (and anyone who looks at this album) know what we were feeling this holiday season. 

Day 23 - Part 1

 We finally woke up to a little bit of snow! I kept this page very simple to keep the focus on those pretty snow pictures. 

Day 22 and 23 side by side:

I have a couple more layouts for Day 23 and will share those with you in my next post.

We would love to hear how you are doing on your December Daily! Please feel free to share with us in the comments below.

Tracey's Day 25 continued and 30

I'm so Happy to say my December Daily is done!  Today I am continuing with pages for day 25. I also have a page for Day 30. 

Day 25 continued

 I created a double page using pattern paper as a border. Christmas day was very warm we decided to move the table tennis game into the family room and enjoy  playing, keeping cool with our recently installed air conditioning. These page show the games we played. I printed the journalling out on the computer....I don't like my handwritting , so if I didn't print it out I would use my type writer.

I printed the photos small so I could fit a few to a page. Another double page, fun pattern paper and washi tape.

On the first page my journalling reads - Family photos....the best we could do! Oh it was so hard getting a good photo! Blurry, someones eyes were shut or no one was looking at the camera!

For the  first page I printed out a collage of all the not so good photos. On the second page my husband eyes are shut.....but it was the best one of everyone. More washi tape , heart shape die cuts, Merry Christmas and the stars are puffy stickers, lots of gold colour shine. Every page edge is inked in gold too.

Not a lot happened between the 25th and 30th....
....actually I was busy trying to keep on track with this album!

My parents live 3 hours away, so we had our Christmas day with them on the 30th....I documented that with a single family photo.

I really liked the verse on this page.......We received a Christmas card from a real estate agent , the verse was on it. I kept it because I didn't want to forget it , so I cut it up and added it to the final page! Nothing like a little recycling!  I've added an envelope ....I thinking I'm going to use it for recipes I made for Christmas this year.

For the final page, I die cut a Christmas tree using my cricut.

Done!

I'm Happy with how my First December Daily turned out.


 How are you doing with your December Daily? We would love to see it - just add a link to it in the comments below