December Daily® 2018 │ Days Twenty One thru The End

Hello everyone, today I wanted to share a look at the last few entries of my album. It's always bittersweet to finish but like I mentioned in my last post, finishing later than I would have liked made me want to finish it even more. I really was ready to put this all away for the season and get started on other things.

As I completed my album and looked back through a few themes seemed to be on repeat this year; tags, pockets, and transparency pages. I added more things to tags that I have ever done and I love how they look. I also used a fair amount of pockets to hold extra photos on busier days. Again, I love a good pocket so no surprise there. I also ended up with a fair number of single page days and when that happens I love to divide them with clear transparent pages, so there are plenty of those this year too.

One really significant and major change for this years album was that I didn't use any page protectors. Not one. I wouldn't say that I planned on it or set a goal not to use any but its definitely something I thought about from the very beginning. I wanted to get back to the way the project was done when Ali Edwards started it years ago by making pages using various sizes and shapes of paper and making each day different. Its my favorite style of mini album to make so I knew it would be fun to work on. I did love it a lot but the downside to this style is I used no traditionally sized journaling cards, no 3x4 and no 4x6. That meant a few things I loved from the kits I bought didn't get used. Yes I was sad about a few but I was pretty okay with it in the end. I can always use the ones I loved next year, they will happily get added to my stash of Christmas supplies.

I have no idea if I will do this next year since I wait until the last minute to figure out a game plan so we shall see next November what I decided to do. I will say that if you are feeling like you are repeating yourself too much with this project, you may want to shake up your format and give this a try.

Okay enough of that, lets share some pages. Day twenty one was a cookie making day with our friends and I used this project I had made using Kelly Purkey stamps as my inspo for the entry by recreating similar tags to dress up the pocket.

I used one of the larger 6x8 sheets of paper Kelly designed for her holiday kits and just shrunk it down and altered it to become a 4x6 journaling card. I added a digital stamp from Kerry Bradford in the top box, it fit perfectly.

 
Day twenty two was a movie day for my family. We just loved this movie, I mean, wow!! I kept the page simple with another movie image hanging off the page with tickets attached on the side with a clip. I kind of love repeating similar layouts for like entries. It gives the project some nice cohesion.

For Day twenty three I created two photo strips of some silly Santa selfies we took in Snap Chat. I wish I had taken more than one image for each of us because three just didn't seem enough so I created two strips but varied the position of our photos. I like how it looks layered and it gives the page a bit more impact.

This transparency piece was from Studio Calico last year and I just punched two holes and it fit into the rings perfectly. I like that it was smaller than a full size transparency would have been. I added in a little fabric piece from Crate Paper Merry Days and also stapled on a little clear flag to grab and turn but its hard to see in this photo.

The red heart patch came in a set of ugly sweater patches I bought from the Target Dollar Spot this year. The little chipboard Holiday Selfie piece was from this years Paislee Press mini kit. I love all this red!!

Day twenty four, Christmas Eve. Our family arrived for the holidays and we were so happy to have them here. I'm blurring out these photos because I'm just trying to be more conscious of what I share and being considerate of others privacy, so thank you for understanding. The templates I used on these two pages are from Paislee Press this year and I love her word art and the sentiments worked perfectly. I did modify the word art on the right to add in the word Eve also from Paislee Press.

In the center I added in a 3.5 x 8 piece to hold the story and a few more photos on the back.

Day twenty five Christmas Day always has so many photos so I printed the ones I couldn't leave out and slipped them into a vellum bag. The vellum bag is really old from Cosmo Cricket, I only have one left now and I'm very sad about it. The paper clip is Merry Days, the red transparent 25 is old from my stash and the Merry Christmas piece is Merry Days as is the backing paper I used for the right side. The chipboard Christmas Morning piece on the left is from the Paislee Press mini kit this year.

I used an old digital journaling card form In A Creative Bubble to hold my story. I enlarged it and recolored it to match my photos better, the base of the card was originally bright yellow which was pretty that way, I just wanted a light pink instead.

I always end my album with collection of photos showing what our Elf Twinkle did while she visited and this year I made a little Travelers Notebook to hold them all. I slipped the notebook in a vellum bag that I just adhered right to the inside back cover of the album.

The left page was made using a digital paper from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. I recolored the base to a more vibrant red and added in a few glitter stars.

To make the notebook I used a digital paper from Paislee Press, the word Twinkle is an old brush I had in my digital supplies by the designer Gina Cabrera. The Elf Shenanigans word art is from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. I printed the background and the elf word art first on my color printer and then ran the page thru my laser printer to print the word Twinkle. Then I used my Minc machine to add red foil to just that word. Super easy.

The interior pages are four sheets of vellum that I cut to size and folded in half and then stapled using a long arm stapler in the middle. I created this front cover page using more word art and paper from the Kelly Purkey Shop 2018 Holiday Oh What Fun kit. It was the perfect place to write down what the Elf did each day. I don't always do this but I had the space this year so why not.

I printed out all 24 images and sized them so I could get six on a page and laid them out in date order. I just used vellum adhesive to attach them only on the right side of the pages and it was done.

This year I made sure to snap pics of the Elf in both vertical and horizontal format every day. I've forgotten to snap pics before and I hate missing days so I'm pretty disciplined now to take them each day. I never know what I'm going to do until the end so having both horizontal and vertical pics is nice to have on hand so I'm covered with both formats. This year I also posted the images to my IG Story and added the date to each before posting. I ended up using those images here so I wouldn't also have to numbers each photo. Its super small and hard to read but its there in case I ever want to refer back. Next year I think I'll so the same but just put the date.

And that's it, the end!! I plan to film a walk through and I'll do that in two videos so its not super long. My plan is to film it hopefully today and I'll post here when the videos are live.

Thanks so much for all the encouragement online as I completed this project, it is always so much fun to do so I appreciate it if you took the time to comment, like or engage when I posted my photos to Instagram.

I'll be back soon to share more projects soon.

Take care,