I'm having fun with December Daily, but wishing I had a little more time to play and experiment. I am feeling behind already. We went on a little overnight trip on the 1st, so I didn't get to begin the storytelling/documenting/ until returning home on the 2nd, and really, because of a busy day yesterday, last night (the 3rd). So here it is the 4th and I'm just now posting day 1. I'm trying to figure out how I want to approach this as I go along. I know so many that participate in December Daily also do Project Life, so they don't document all that happens, just capture moments of the season daily. I'm not sure what approach I'm going to take yet, it's an experiment for me for sure, having never "scrapbooked" (for lack of a better term), before.
Last night I lined the inside of my book with washi tape. So fun to do and I love the result. Need to take a little sandpaper to the edges, but other than that, it's good to go.
I also worked on a working title page of sorts. I'll probably add another page on top of this eventually, but for now, I've got something in there to get me started. I just used one of Ali Edward's stamps with hot pink zing powder onto a handmade paper. It didn't work out that well, I think because of the porous, uneven paper, but no big deal.
I practiced writing a sort of title, using ink (I do love that vert olive color!) and a dip pen, before writing directly on the page...
But as you can see, I had trouble with the paper (too porous) and didn't really get such a lovely result. This is a good example of how each stage of my creating informs the next, because I then went searching for something to obscure the writing, deciding on a velum paper included in Kelly Purkey's kit, and taped it on.
I like the result of it. Although, looking at this photo, I really think I am going to re do that "hello december" arrow so that it's easier to read. :)
Onto December 1...
December 1st happens to be my daughter's birthday, so my husband, son and I headed up to love on her. It's a long, mostly beautiful drive, and I took lots of photos along the way, as well as once we got to her, her room mates, with us, etc. but in the end, the iphone photo I took of her making a wish on her birthday gelato summed up the day the best I felt. I added the Bokeh hearts using the Picfx app.
Next I did a rough cut and paste of some of the hearts in PhotoShop to obscure the people in the background and printed it to fit in a full sized pocket protector that came with my book. I put some glitter alphabet stickers on top of the pocket protector vs. on top of the photo. I went back and forth on whether to print the photo on card stock and not use a page protector at all...may still change my mind on that. Here's the spread of December 1, the notes written about the day done on the backside of the title page. There is more "flair" than I would typically want to use, but I made a writing mistake that was too distracting, so added a second, and then for balance added the third at the bottom.
And there you have my day one of December Daily! Like I said, I'm figuring this out as I go along, but the point is it's fun, and the most important part is that for once, I will have created something for my family that tells the story of our family at this moment in time. I've been good at making treasures for them throughout the years, such as quilts or stockings etc. etc. but NOT good at pictures and words, and it's something that I do feel a lot of guilt, (or regret) about, so it feels good to be doing something now.
You can see Ali's page one here and links to a whole bunch more on the bottom of her post.
