December Daily foundation

This is my third year embarking into the December Daily journey, and the first year I am sharing it on line. As for most of my scrapbooking projects these days, the idea is to keep it manageable and simple. I want it to be a pleasure for me to complete and not another load on my to-do list. More than ever, I am following Ali’s concept of preparing the foundation in advance and simply add words (on the same day) and pictures (as soon as I can since I cannot print them at home). You will also notice that supplies are very limited: I used one small paper pad from Toga (Les amis du Père Noel – p’tit bloc , pages are 15cm x 20cm) and some die cuts from the same collection (Les amis du Père Noel – Die Cuts Mots) . I started building my album back in early October and there were very limited choices on holiday-ish papers. The album is from American Craft (they are my favorites): Album Dring chestnut (29cm x 22cm). The rest is plain paper and I will hopefully have time to play around with stamps but do not plan to buy any for this purpose. Now, let’s go on a guided tour!

The cover page of my album is the result of an “unhappy” result of me experimenting embossing a big surface. I was looking for a nice regular plastic surface… Well… how to say… Maybe it was not meant to be…

Anyway, after half a box of UTEE and an hour of trying, this is the best I could get before calling it a day! I was ready for a fifth layer but my sweet baby girl decided it was time to wake up from her nap. I take that as a sign that I should stop experimenting and be happy with what I have. And actually, I am pretty happy. It took me a few days to accept it, but it is true. Ok, the look is more grunge than clean&simple. BUT, I actually like the fact that in the process the white paper which is the first layer got altered in some unique way.

The overall format of the pages is 20cmx20cm (about 8x8”). What can I say, I love squares! The first page is meant to be completely covered by a photo collage with the best pictures of the month.

Then the pattern for each day is: one big picture on the left page + journaling and four small blocks on the right page. One block could be a picture, some additional journaling or some pattern paper. I have also prepared 12 small inserts for additional journaling if some days get really inspiring! You never know, do you?

For now, it looks quite dull but what I like about this structure is that it leaves me with tons of possibilities: on days when I have no inspiration or little pictures, I can simply stick to the most simple version of the page, but on days with more to remember, I can add 1,2, 3 (you name it!) inserts or photo collage.

Last but not least, I cannot wait to have my sweet Cécile celebrating her very first Christmas…She is so precious to us, and last Christmas, we were so worried for her health during my pregnancy. Time flies by and all is well. I am looking forward seeing Christmas through Cécile’s and Nathan’s eyes. I am rediscovering this time of year thanks to my kids.

And so I wait...

I discovered the Project Life concept early this year thanks to Ali Edwards’ blog (http://www.aliedwards.com/). At first I did not grasp the concept. I thought: “if all the design part is done for me, what’s the point?” I like the scrap part of scrapbooking: cutting, pasting, painting… But over the last spring, while in maternity leave, I realized that although I was short of time to sit and scrap in a crafty way, I still wanted some way to record all the little details of our life. Being back at work full time, with one kid in kindergarten and the second at the day care, I have even less time at hands. That is why I finally realized how much I could benefit from the Project Life. Looking at what some people do with it, I realized that it would allow me to have best of both worlds: have my stories told AND when time is available do the crafty layouts without worrying all the time about how I could possibly tell such and such story. So all is good… Well kind of… There is one problem: I live in Belgium and we are still waiting for the products to be available for Europe. I have been waiting for months now. I see the products available in the States and I am drooling all over Amazon.com, checking every bit of news that I could get on when they will finally be on Amazon.co.uk. There is no doubt in my mind about which kit I want: I am in love with the Turquoise kit.

The tricky part will be to decide on the page protectors. I like the idea of doing all with the design A, to simplify the process.

But on the other hand, I would also like to have some options… so, I am currently thinking of adding these two other designs to my order: I have already set a budget for that, so it might depend on the final price tag for Europe. But for now, let’s dream about the possibilities!

If you have never heard about Project Life, start here at the source (http://www.beckyhiggins.com/products/ ), from there, you can discover a huge community for inspiration. I hope to add my contribution in French soon!