December Daily | Days 1-7

I literally can't believe December is half over already. It feels like yesterday I was so excited for the month to begin and couldn't wait to start documenting the month. Today I'm sharing the first 7 days of my album. While editing the photos last night, I was thinking maybe I should split this into less than 7 day sections, so I might still do that. For the first half of the month I have over 60 photos to share, so I'm sorry if this is a long post and you get bored. I won't do much writing in the middle section, and at the bottom I'll link some supplies that are available if you want to purchase them.

First, the spine of my album. I'm using a Becky Higgins 6x8 album. It doesn't have a place on the spine for a label, so I used this alphabet set and some white embossing powder to emboss December along the spine. It's definitely not perfect, but I can easily identify this album on my shelf. I added a gold label to the top and stamped "the story of" and added some number stickers to the bottom.

On the front of my album, I added gold alphabet stickers from my stash, and a wood veneer ampersand that I painted gold.

 Here's my title page. I used some files from Wilna Furstenburg for the clear front page and the die cut page behind it.

I created this die cut page based on one I saw on Pinterest but used some cutfiles from Wilna to create it. I love that it's all white and adds another layer to the front portion.

I cut this "divider" file from Wilna's new Christmas set and adhered it to the top to add a bit of texture to the die cut page. I love the white on white.

 For my reason why page, I created a flip up. On the front of the flip up I used molding paste and a dot stencil to add some texture. Jon painted the acrylic magic word from a past Ali Edwards Story Kit, and I just hot glued it to the front. I added a label to the bottom and stamped magic happens on it.

 On the inside I wrote out my intention for this month, and used a few supplies left over from my Week in the Life kit (like the gold washitape and the little label at the bottom).

 Day 1; a 3x8 photo of my in-laws tree that we set up, and a bunch of 2x2 pockets with embellishments and some patterned paper.

 Day 2; The back of the 2x2 pockets and two photos on the right. The photo of the deer ornament isn't even from December, but I included it anyways because it's possibly the only "shopping" photo I have since a lot of our shopping was done online, or before December.

Day 3; I bought the 2015 Digital Main Kit from Ali Edwards and so I printed out the paper on the right and added a gold number 3 and a little gold glitter star from the 2014 kit.

Day 4; My favourite pages by far. Bokeh photo of the tree, gold polkadot vellum and a stamp from Ali Edwards.

Day 4; I set up the tree and decorated it while Jon was helping his mom out at the farm.

 Day 5; I started wrapping the gifts. That meant I had to dig out our expansive amount of wrapping paper and print some new tags. I have a bad habit of buying Christmas wrapping paper even when I don't need it. We started the year with 18 rolls of paper. We're down to 8 or 9 now, and only 1 or 2 gifts left to wrap. By the end of next Christmas I should have way less paper.

 Day 6; Made half of our Christmas baking to take to some friends in a few days, and my nieces birthday (that I missed, but my sister sent me photos).

 Day 6; some 2x2 pockets, and 5x5 photo outside the pocket, and a 3x4 double flip pocket.

 I needed somewhere for my journaling, and an extra photo, so I made this double flip pocket to hold all of it. I love how it turned out!

 Day 7; More 2x2 pockets and 3x4s. I snapped a photo of my workspace, and of the tags I made for Jon's mom's Christmas cakes that she gives out every year. This year there was more alcohol in them, so she wanted to remind people not to eat it and drive.

I printed this hand lettered quote from Ali Edwards on vellum, but for some reason the ink smudges off (despite letting it sit for a few days) so I put it into a pocket page. This is the end of part one. On Friday I'm sharing part two which covers the next week of my album. I love how it's coming together. I've used way more embellishments than I thought I would, but I have so many, so I should use them.

Thanks for coming by to see the first part of my December Daily. I'm having so much fun doing this project, and I'm so excited to show you what else I have in my album. None of the links below are affiliates, just giving credit to the amazing creatives out there who created some of the products I used.

Have a great day!

Supplies Used:

• Digital December Daily Main Kit by Ali Edwards (here)
• Kellie Stamps - MAGIC & December Circles (here)
• Color Cast Designs (here) & (here)
• Circle Wood Veneer Numbers (here)
• Wilna Furstenburg's Christmas products (here), (here), (here), (here), (here), & (here)
• The quote from the vellum page (here & currently for free)
• The 3x4 Journaling cards by Wilna (only available with the purchase of her Christmas workshop (here) )
• Scrapbook and More flair by Jodie York (here)

Project Life | Week 41

Last week was a little crazy for us, so I moved around my plan for my posts, and managed to fit everything in. On Wednesday and Friday of this week, I'm sharing the first half of my December Daily album. I've been working really hard to keep up, but I keep changing things around and I'm trying to document the month, but trying to do so in a way that will fit in the album I'm currently using, but the rings aren't as big as I expected and its a little bit of a struggle to fit everything, so we'll see how that goes. Today I'm sharing my spreads for Week 41.

Here's the left side. Not one of my best spreads, but I'm at the point in the year where I just want to get it done and documented. It's around this point that I wonder why I didn't just do month spreads, or why it's so hard to make little notes about my weeks so I can use more words.

Here's the right side. That photo of my nephew with my mom and the cat is my favourite. I love that it captures his personality right now, almost perfectly. I also love that photo of my boots. They're so pretty, and I wear them almost literally all the time!

Thanks for coming by to see this quick post about week 41. Hopefully in the new year I'll get those mini albums I document in this spread, finished.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Kellie Stamps | December

 Good morning! I can't believe the first week of December is getting close to being over. The newest sets of Kellie Stamps are now available in her shop (here). The Christmas sets are perfect for adding to December Daily. Here I made some little 2" x 0.5" labels to add to my photos, or 2x2 pockets, or just onto the top of a journaling card. I love the versatility of the Digital stamps.

I also used them to create some journal cards. The one on the far left says Merry & Bright, and I haven't had a chance to do much on my December Daily, but you'll see it make an appearance in my album when I share those pages.

 I used a wreath file from Wilna Furstenburg (here) to make these december numbers a little more colourful. I left space along the bottom for journaling.

Instead of starting at the beginning of my album, I added my photos to day 4 and snapped this photo to show you a project example of how I've used the stamps so far. The tree card, wood veneer number and the gold star are from the 2014 Ali Edwards December Daily kit (no longer available). I added the "do you believe in magic" digital stamp to my top right photo, and one of the little labels to the bottom of the tree card. I'll add my journaling to the number 4 card in the bottom right.

Thank you  for coming by to check out my projects. It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I'm hoping to get myself caught up and have more projects to share with you throughout the month.

Have a wonderful weekend!
-Alexandria

Love You Forever

This year, I've been working on documenting stories that I might not have thought were "important" enough to be documented. I signed up for Ali Edwards' 31 Things and 31 More Things classes. I never thought that I could look at a word or phrase and write pages of stories and memories. It's not that I don't like writing, I do, but I feel so vulnerable when I write things from my heart that I know other people will read one day. My writing is something I'm really insecure about, but I do it anyways. Somehow sharing it here is fine, but sitting there and watching someone read the words I wrote is hard. At least here I can just assume that you're not reading what I wrote, and instead your judging my terrible embellishing skills. Just kidding. But the minimal traffic my blog gets allows me the freedom to assume that no one is reading my words, and I'm okay with that.

A few things about this spread:
1. I was 19 when this photo was taken. It feels like another lifetime.
2. That baby is not mine, she's my wonderful niece that I've documented and shared layouts of
3. My title is from this digital set from Kellie Stamps 
I love that she went digital so I can make large titles like this with her stamps!
4. This layout was included in the projects I submitted with my application for Kellie's creative team.

I love this layered chipboard piece. It's from the Shimmelle collection. I've been waiting to use it for a while now, and I'm so glad I used it here. At first I was a little peeved that the lines on the chipboard went the opposite way of the background paper, but I love it. I also love the touches of gold.

The gold photo corners are also from the Shimelle collection. I used a physical Kellie Stamp to stap "This life is great" on the portion of the tag I cut off the top. It was the perfect size for this space. The other stickers are from an old My Mind's Eye collection.

Here's the full spread. I thought about changing the title colour, but decided that it stood out more being black. The layout had a lot of pink going on, and I love the contrast of the black title and the black journaling.

Thank you so much for coming to look at this spread. I've been on a roll creating beautiful pages lately, and I can't wait to get my 31 Things words onto layouts to share with all of you. I'm still debating how I want to go about it, but I'm thinking maybe 8.5x11 because I love having this slightly smaller space to work with.
Have a wonderful day!
-Alexandria