December Daily 2011: Foundation

It is time again for the joy and madness that is December Daily.  For those of you new to the adventure, this is basically an album that covers each day of the month of December (give or take-- I usually only go through 25/26).  It was originated by Ali Edwards and you can read more about the concept and see her plans for this year (as well as all the material from prior years) here. 

I am embarking on my third year.  Samples of my 2009 and 2010 work are here on the blog.  If you move forward from those posts you can see more of each year, but the final images from 2010 have yet to make their appearance (and thus will likely not).  In 2009, I used a pre-made art-album by evalicious.  It was full of all differently sized pages and lots of interesting bits she adds in.  For 2010, I followed Ali's model fairly closely.  Each page had a 5x7 photo collage on the left, a transparency and then journaling in matching boxes on the right.  Some days had a bit more, but roughly the same pattern.  

This year, I'd thought I'd follow Ali's lead, but kept hesitating to start, and began to wonder what was holding me back from embracing this project. I love Ali's design and thing the planning and the end result are simply gorgeous, but as it wasn't feeling right for my book, I reexamined what I like and don't like about the experience. I truly enjoy the resulting album, the planning, collecting, photos, and actually enjoy much of the process, but it is a big project and lengthy.  As I can't print photos at home it often stretches on for some time while I await prints.  My printer in general is pretty cranky and a lot of the hold up for me in the building phase was going to be printing the journaling pages and then printing the journaling onto them later. I did that last year, but did not enjoy it.  I also found that I didn't really enjoy the formulaic approach as much as my Type A personality might suggest.  Once, I accepted all that.  Making my own foundation from the parts I did like was easy. 

My base is an 8x8 Prima Canvas Album.  I think it has been discontinued so somewhat hard to find.  It is pretty neat in that it also has several interior canvas pages and sewn page protectors.  Better still, it is bound with canvas ribbon so plenty of room to expand as this project grows.

Some of these pieces came from leftovers from the evalicious book I bought a year or two ago.  Most of it though is just from my own stash of bits I've picked up and liked this year.  I probably need a couple more sheets of double-sided patterned paper to fully stock my base, but I will also use the canvas pieces in the album for some pages.  It turns out that random sizes and a lot of flexibility about which days I use them feels right to me this year.

10 6x8 pages that are patterned with ledgers, music, dictionary text, or other text/stamps on neutral bases
6 smaller pattern paper or cardstock pages
16 3x8.5 inch pieces of various hambly transparencies (mostly leftover from last year)

6 - 8x8 double sided pattern papers (and a couple slightly smaller patterned paper ones)

Packet of Lily Bee Designs Jingle Index Journaling Cards
Making Memories - Noell Spiral Journaling Book

Elle's Studio Large Christmas Journaling Tags
A couple red and white envelopes
5 - 6 pocket baseball card sleeves (cut down from larger pages)
10 extra 8x8 page protectors - I have not used page protectors for this project previously so we'll see if I use them this year.  I'm going to go with what feels right as I progress.

A base is a good start, but to be ready to pull this off without too much stress later I also need a pretty good embellishment trove.  By the end of last year's project my trove of things I actually liked using was pretty depleted.  I've begun building this up again, but probably have one more purchase of some buttons, flowers, word stickers and Christmas tidbits to fill this out. 

So far, in addition to the random bags at the top from last year there is Crate Paper Peppermint Collection, October Afternoon Mini Market letters, Elle's Studio - Journaling Circle Tags, Christmas Note Tags, Christmas Pennants, and their Lil Snippets Greetings, Dear Santa, Labeled - Christmas, Wish List,  in the upper right is My Minds Eye Lost & Found Christmas Accessory Sheet..  I also have a 6x6 numbers collage template to use with chalk inks, as a stencil or maybe with mists, perhaps on some of the canvas pages.

You will notice a lot more journaling bits than last year.  This is because I plan to hand write my journaling each day and many of the base pages are not conducive to me writing directly on the page (patterned, print, or color issues).  Also, this collection lacks a set of numbers.  I sort of agree with Shimelle that having a unified set when the rest of the album is a bit inconsistent would be good so a set of numbers to use throughout is up next on my purchase plan-- although I may just cut some out with my Silhouette.

Next up is designing a cover.  One of the great things about the album is that the canvas allows a lot of flexibility in design while also providing some interesting textures.  I started with this little cluster in the lower right (as I often do).

I rather like it, but think we probably need to add "2011" right in the center of the cover eventually.  For now though, it feels like big progress and I'm ready to dive in.

One last note,  I am also participating in Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas.  I think having more than one source of inspiration will be great and probably help keep my album varied and interesting each year as I do tend to fall back to similar topics even in just two years of this project and would like to include some new things each time. Another great thing about Shimelle's class--- you pay once and have access to all future (and prior) offerings of the course.  Very neat!

How goes your preparations for December? More on the other things I'm preparing from an Advent perspective coming soon. (If you're in a rush you can read last year's plan here).