Making a December Daily comeback!

Good morning Polly peeps, it is Ruth here with a confession! Until recently I felt like a December Daily failure! After doing my album for 3 years on time and loving it, this last december it just didnt happen.

• I had a fabulous kit to use
• I had prepared some pages beforehand
• December was very busy and I took photos almost every day and of all our adventures

It seems like the recipe for success right? Somehow, though, it just didnt happen for me.

I think I had a few reasons for this, they might sound familiar to you:

• I was busier than usual for various reasons at both work and home
• I found it hard to work with half created pages this time, perhaps because I was using a new-to-me album size (6x12 pocket pages)
• My printer had technical issues and so I was not printing from home
• I was tired at the end of each day and that is generally unmotivating.

I know DD is not compulsory, I could just leave it undone but I do love my DD albums. I feel they are an annual snapshot of our family, looking back at each year is a capsule of the change over time, from babies to toddlers to little kids. It is a bit magical to look at them all together.

I took heaps of photos through the month, but as the days slipped away from me I felt disappointed with myself for "failing" at December Daily. January is here and some things are slightly quieter, so I paused to think how I could take the ingredients I had and make it into something manageable? I thought about it and finally decided on a course of action.

Step 1: Decide my minimum parameters: I want to see the month of December captured in a mini album with photos and words included, I would like to use some of my Polly kit. Anything else is bonus.

Knowing what I really want from this helps me to challenge myself to reconsider anything I considered essential that isnt in my minimum parameters.

• Does it need to be in the album I have started? NO
• Does it need to be pocket pages? NO
• Does it need to show every day for 31 days? NO
• Does it need to use every christmas product I have bought in 2013 with this album in mind? NO
• Does it need to be a work of art? NO
• Can I just skip the events with poor photos? Absolutely.

Step 2: Choose a size and format to make it as simple as possible:
Album: I decided to use on of Amy Tangerine's daybooks so that I had a predetermined size and could quickly and simply build on top of it. The one I had handy was her recent Cut and Paste daybook, which is quite small and was a good match for the Polly kit goodies.
Embellishments: I used the Polly December Memories Kit for everything else
Photos: I decided to go with 3x4 size. I reduced my expectations to only December 1st - December 25th and tried to choose only one photo per day, but as you see, some I had more (twinkling lights) and some days I skipped.
Step 3: Identify biggest obstacles and try to solve them: One of the things that was making it hard for me was keeping it as a strictly daily format, so for this year I decided that I would not stress about the "daily" part of december daily. I had chosen approximately the right number of photos and they were all ones I really liked, so I just sorted them into approximate order and that decided the page count.
Step 4: Make it in batches to speed it up. I didnt have time to carefully and lovingly craft each page, so I did this album in three batches.
Batch Crafting One: After I had printed the 3x4 photos and knew how many pages I would need, I decontructed my previous album which was made from the kit to reuse the supplies. From those I chose and hole punched 4x6 journalling cards or 4x6 sheets of patterned paper as additonal pages. Some had been embellished in my previous attempt preparing pages ahead of time, but most were not.

Batch Crafting Two: I glued in all the photos in the order I planned to use them.

Batch Crafting Three: Leaving room for words I added any of the embellishments from the kit that I really wanted to include and filled any weird gaps on the pages. I tried not to spend too long on this as it is typically the slowest part for me. I really loved many of the things in this kit and wanted to include them in the album, so glued them in where-ever they seemed to fit. I tried to embellish it as a whole album rather than as each individual page. This helps the album have a sense of continuity. Some pages are very simple, just a journalling card or just a photo, perhaps with one tab. That is OK, this project is all the pages combined, so some can be simpler and some more complex. The photo and the words are what will matter in the long run.

Batch Crafting Four: I added the words, they are simple and hand-written as I did all of this album in front of the TV one night on the coffee table. This was what I could really get done, expecting too much can sometimes just mean that it never happens. I used the pens in reach and just wrote a few words about each photo. Keeping it manageable means getting it done now and not later.


Step 5 Stop and enjoy what you made: At this point I could have continued to work on the project, adding interest and detail, improving the spots where my handwriting is messy by printing a neatly typed version or all sorts of other options. Instead I stopped! It was enough.

I will add this small and simple december daily album to my growing pile. Some years are more experimental or ornamental than others, it is nice to have variety and it is great to have it completed.

There are still December Memories Kits in store as well as our bargain priced $10 Christmas grab bags which each include some exclusives that were in the DM kit, so if you want to try to make a december daily comeback too, then head over and grab some goodies to help the process.