Scrappy Sunday: Everett's 1st Project

When B was a baby, I did a fair bit of journaling about our early months.  The entries were long, time consuming, and probably too detailed.  It took quite a bit of time and thus didn't get done all that regularly.  When M was a baby I did a month in photos with one photo a day for the first month.  I then, never assembled it into anything.. (ooops).  This time, I'm trying something in between that I'll explain below.

I started with a 4x8 inch Studio Calico mini book.  I decorated the exterior and interior covers with a combination of inks, paint, etc... and bound it with some bits of fabrips I had in my stash.  

Ultimately, there will be a title on the front, but due to some uncertainty about the duration about the project and lack of time to work on the front just now, I've left it plain for the moment. 

Then,for each day I stamped the date using a date stamp from American Crafts (this is actually an SC Exclusive from March, but the Dear Lizzy collection has a very similar one). 

For each day, there is room for about 2x4 inches of journaling. I tend to do the journaling every other day so far, but its working.  

The space to the edge will be one 4x6 photo a day.  Each time I upload my photos to my computer I star one per day that I can, theoretically just print in a batch at the end of the month.  (Note, my original theory was to print them daily and just stick them in as I went, but I haven't had time to master my new printer so I'm letting that go).

(back inside cover)

 There are WAY more than 31 pages and I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest.  I'll likely either continue this project past a month or just add periodic entries and photos after that. 

(back cover) 

Crafting Notes: I still am learning about how inks work and work together.  For example, I much prefer the splotches on the back versus those I attempted on the front and subsequently added layers to try and hide.  The difference was that on the front, I added the splashes of green before spraying it with Mister Huey Shine.  When I added the shine, the splotches bled and got sort of weird looking.  On the back, I added the green spots after the shine and it worked much better.  A similar layering issue happened with the interior covers too.  For the front inside cover, I started with a layer of teal damask Prima Chalk Ink, that I then covered with Heirloom Blue Mister Huey.  The chalk ink kept the mist lighter and gave it a different look that I rather liked.  On the back inside, I tried it without the chalk ink layer and it is much darker and more solid/uniform in color and texture.  I prefer the inside front cover so another lesson learned.  I have a lot to learn when it comes to these sorts of things and am trying to relax, play and keep adding layers until I'm happy (and hope I don't ruin things in the process).  All of this covering/paint/assembly happened after Everett was born even though I've had the idea for some time.  So, in good news, some crafting can/is getting done, but it probably would have worked better and more easily if I was in a place where I can focus.  For now, my hope is just to keep the project going through the end of the month and actually get the photos printed and added in.