New Year!

Welcome to 2015.

Have a few things to share with you!

December album was a success! I took off on the idea to put all our Christmas cards in a ring album and built some story telling of the month around it. Got it completed yesterday! I'm thrilled with how it turned out and most importantly it helped rekindle my enjoyment of taking pictures and gave me my functional Photoshop refresher I needed to hit the ground running with our annual album in the style of Project Life.

Towards the middle of the month Ali Edwards launched monthly Story Kits in Digital format. This is a monthly themed class with guidance on the theme and several elements to help you put together pages or an album, whatever you wish, to get more variety and focus in our story telling. I love writing, her approach, and the prompts to help flesh out the thoughts I have based on the themes. These kits are also available in physical products, and they are beautiful as well! Digital just seems easier for me.

I plan to not just document the everyday as I've become accustomed, but also keep the monthly themes going throughout the rest of the year now that they are somewhat top of mind. Each month I'll do an introduction page or two+ with words and photos, then revisit the theme as the year goes on. For example, 'Firsts' was the theme for December 15-January 14. Going forward, as a relevant 'first' comes to mind or occurs, I'll use the digital elements, photos, words tell the story and relate it back to the original theme. I'm hoping this, and keeping my word of the year, 'balance', more present through words and photos will break up the monotony I was finding in recent years with this album.

Here's a little glimpse into the first couple pages of the annual album. I'm not much for sharing too many of our personal family moments and photos on a public blog but if a neutral page comes up or I can block out personal info as the year goes on, I'll certainly do so. I think it's helpful for people new to this whole thing to see how it comes together.

I've chosen some kits from both Becky Higgins and templates and elements from Cathy Zielske which are more earthtone in color. I'm also employing the lots of whitespace philosophy. It saves time and looks more clean. I tend to be all colorful in the beginning of the year and more plain as it goes on. I'm not too worried about matchy match this year....just whatever strikes me at the time.
Questions?
Post to comments.
C.

December Daily 2014

     I toy around with the December Daily every so many years. I love the concept of it. I am the family storyteller, so I get a little geeked out over this kind of stuff. With gearing up to do the annual album in 2015 Project Life style I'm trying to get back in the habit of writing and memory keeping.

     I've completed the project two or three times and I always enjoy going back and seeing what I might otherwise have forgotten in the whirlwind of activity, travel, etc that takes up December. December is also my reflect and plan for the new year month so I tend to get nostalgic. It's something one of the blog authors I follow, Ali Edwards, has done for several years and the scrapbooking community follows along in huge numbers.  Here's a link to her foundation pages for this year. The idea is to document the first 25 days of December and hopefully give some insight into your family traditions, fun experiences of the month, etc.

     I'd nearly given up the idea of doing this album this year. We aren't traveling or having guests until after Christmas. While we have decorations up, the big blowout gift opening really isn't happening as we are taking vacation. We have one side of the family Christmas already done and we've really cut back our gift giving to family over the years. It just seemed rather mundane to go to the trouble of recording the "same thing, different year". Our month is rather, normal, so why bother?

     Then I saw this post on Kerri Bradford's blog. What a great way to store, preserve, save, and keep organized all the happy mail we get during this month! Annnnndddd.....wherever binder rings are, an album will sprout. I realized then that I didn't have to do December DAILY, just December Whatever and add Christmas Cards.
     As I processed through the how of what method, sizing, etc I was going to use, I already had a lot of the stuff I needed. I decided to use some 6x8 digital templates and digital elements from Cathy Zielske  and some patterned paper that just so happened to coordinate. I decided to print the template pages I create at home, then add them to pattern paper backgrounds, and embellish as I wanted. (aka, hybrid scrapbooking) This way I can keep the album out for people to look at throughout the month. I like the immediate gratification of finishing a page, printing it, and having it in my hands right away on these smaller albums, whereas my annual album is exclusively digital and batch printed throughout the year either at Costco or www.persnicketyprints.com. Plus who the heck wants to deal with Costco anymore than necessary in December.
     As far as my focus and approach, I'm just kind of winging it and the Around Here theme Ali Edwards does sometimes kept coming to mind. In my annual album, especially if I get behind,  I use the concept of just jotting things down that are going on 'around here' to give a snapshot of life in a small space.  In this case I'm fleshing out the things going on around here a little more.
    Even though I have restarted the blog to kind of get back into the paper crafting, memory keeping circles, I don't plan to publicly share the album's pages beyond what I have in this post.

I found with my annual album it's so freeing of the mind and pen if you are just preserving life events for those who walk this life hand in hand with you, in person. 

     If you are inspired to do this type of project, click the links I provided, Google is your friend, and the #decemberdaily on Instagram will yield inspiration far more beautiful than I could ever create. ;-)