Yay, it’s December! Seriously, I’m not sure why an album is making December more fun, but it is. Just something a little different from Project Life to finish up the year. I’ll still likely have one spread covering all of December’s every day moments + stories, but most of the month I’ll be focusing on this album. I shared my cover page back in November, along with my plan, and so far it’s working out well. Right behind my cover page I included a “reason why” page, which you can download free from Ali Edwards’ site.
PAGE 1 | The next spread tells a brief story about our Christmas card photo shoot and shows some of the outtakes that didn’t make our card. I love having a family shot to start out the album.
I added the “born to be JOLLY” typographic stamp (from this One Little Bird set), along with a label, on the top to embellish it a bit.
My two boys weren’t all that cooperative, and there might have been a bit of pouting along the way, so the Santa, “You Better” card from the One Little Bird Merry Making Journaling Card set worked so perfectly. I printed this onto another journaling card I had on hand and added a check mark stamp to “all of the above” and sewed on a few circles to add more color.
PAGE 2 | On the second page I featured the story of my youngest son discovering the christmas lights and tree at Costco.
Since many of the cards I pulled for this album weren’t specifically for Christmas, I’m finding myself adding digital and physical stamps to spruce them up a bit. This green card is a prime example. I printed the Christmas lights (using the PNG in this set) onto the card, then colored them in with a white gel pen.
For the right side image, I added another element from The Two Five cutting elements over the photo in Photoshop before I had it printed.
On many of the full 6×8 pages I added a small strip of paper. This is because the page protectors I am using (Simple Stories brand) are slightly larger than 6×8, and as a result my photos were swimming around a little in the pockets.
PAGE 3 | This next page is about buying and decorating our tree. It was a bit hectic setting it up and decorating with two little boys, but I’m glad I caught a few photos of the action. I added a small journaling spot on the large photo using a stamp, and placed the receipt from our tree purchase in a pocket I’ve been hanging onto from an old Studio Calico kit.
PAGE 4 | I’m one of those people who never tire of Christmas music. I could listened to it throughout the year. Beau on the other hand, isn’t a huge fan. He likes the classics. Luckily, he lets me get my fill of it throughout December. Obviously it only made sense to dedicate a full page to my favorite songs.
And it was a great excuse to use up a lot of the gold I’ve been saving in my stash. At the bottom, I sewed in some gold star sequins after deciding the photo on the following page would look better as a 6×6 rather than 6×8.
& that wraps up part one! Are you completing an album this year for December?
My biggest concern with completing a December album was that I wouldn’t be able to keep up because I don’t print at home, but I’m quickly realizing that the same method I use for Project Life can be applied here. Here’s a short run down of my process:
– take tons of photos
– import photos to my computer and edit the ones I like
– plan out what cards/papers/etc I want to use with the corresponding photos I edited for my album
– make notes on post-its and place them where the photos will go in the album, along with any journaling ideas/cards/papers/etc
– prepare the photos for printing by sizing them to 4×6/6×8/etc
– then save them to a folder so they’re ready to upload and order when I get to it
By doing it this way, I have the page “done” and just waiting for photos. Once I have the photos in hand, I slip them in, finish up the journaling, and embellish!
Here’s an example of what the next page in my album looks like, ready and waiting for the photo to finish it off.
