The other day I mentioned that I am taking part in December Daily and how I prepared for it. Since then, I have made a few pages for the album and I wanted to share three of them with you. These are all really easy to replicate for any album, which is why I chose them. So without further ado, let’s just jump right in.
So what have I included in my December Daily Album?
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Countdown to Christmas
I spent a little bit of time before the month to ‘set up’ a few pages in my album so the first one is from that. This was just to make sure that I was prepared and ready to journal from the start. You can easily do this afterwards, if you prefer. I have seen some videos from other crafters who actually finished their own December Daily months later, as they simply did not have time during the month to create it.
This page is entirely optional but I thought it would be a fun thing to include. I wanted a page that essentially was a countdown to Christmas, like an advent calendar. Taking a piece of paper, I cut it down to size and added some holiday elements to it. I opted for twenty five icons, for the first twenty five days of the month. This also lines up with my ‘Blogmas’ challenge.
You can use any paper for this. I opted for a piece of card that works with my colouring pens as well as watercolour paints. (Well, it works with watercolours as long as you use a very tiny bit of water that is!). You can use watercolour paper if you are planning to exclusively paint – or any other paper to suit your medium of choice. I will probably use colour them in with watercolour paints, pencils or colouring pens. Taking all of the Christmas ‘stamp’ sets that I could find in my cupboards, I created this layout. I personally use clear acrylic stamps the most as I find them easier to store and easier to see where you are stamping.
Tools I used to create this page:
- Stamps from Lawn Fawn, Love Cynthia and Sweet Stamp Shop.
- Versafine Black Ink
- White card
Everyday, my plan was to colour one of the icons in as a countdown with any colouring medium that I can fancy on the day. I might also add a “2019” in the white space next to the penguin on the last row (you can see his Santa hat in the picture!). For now, I decided to leave it blank as I quite liked the look of it at the end. I might go back and add in the colouring, depending on how many days I complete for blogmas.
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Christmas Movies List
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I found this really cute quote from the Christmas Bundle from Design Bundles that says “I just want to bake stuff and watch Christmas movies all day”. I knew I wanted to use it as soon as I saw it! This page is really easy to make. I just printed the quote out onto regular paper and trimmed it down to size. Then I folded a piece of A5 red paper in half and stuck the quote onto one. The reason I folded the page in half was so it became like a card. This way, I can now open it up and write a list of Christmas Movies – or things that I actually bake – on the inside.
I taped the red card down to a piece of green card, that I holepunched so it would fit into the album. I do not envision that I will watch more movies than I can list on the inside of the card. However, if I do, I can easily add carry on the list at the back, which is currently unused.
You can just add the movies you watch into the journalling but I thought I would keep an extra place exclusively for a list of them, so I could see which ones I watch every year. For example, I know that Love Actually is one that I watch most – if not all – Decembers. But it might be nice to see if there are other regular occurrences – perhaps the Home Alones?
This year, it turns out that I have tried a lot of Netflix movies. Some of them… I would not watch again. So this list might be a good reference point for next year. You could easily add a rating system on it too,
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The Reasons Why
This is perhaps one of the most important pages in my album. It’s just a letter – mostly to myself, to be honest. I have purposefully cut off most of the letter from the photo, as it mentions some information about my family or work. However, the letter talks about why I am doing this album, as well as some goals and hopes for the season. For example, I am leaving my current job and in a way, it’s very much like the end of an era for me. So I have written a letter that I can look back on later. It’s a good way to see how you were feeling at the time, and set the mood for the album.
I really recommend adding one of these pages somewhere in your album, if you’re doing it. Hell, even if you’re not, writing letters to yourself can be a good thing.
Disclaimer: December Daily was created by Ali Edwards, as mentioned in my last post. The whole concept and the term itself belong to her. You can read my previous post here or visit her website for more information.