My December Daily Album...to date

Back in December, I talked about my December Daily Album and wanting to get some things accomplished.  Well, I got as far as prepping my pages and creating my cover, but never got to actually putting pictures in the album.  The good news about being at home with your kid when she's sick is that you can get caught up on personal projects.  I took the first step today by organizing all of the photos in iPhoto from the last half of 2010.  I have my pictures tagged to print and that feels good. I also have some mental notes on things I want to journal about, but I really enjoy writing as I am working with the pages vs. having a lot of ideas pre-planned.  So here's what I've got so far:

First, here's a peek at the inside pages:

 

My goal for the pages was simple and easy.  I purchased  My Mind's Eye Sweet Dreams Holiday Avenue Paper pack to use as my base.  Each page is 6" x 8" and I used the same paper on the front and the back to create a really sturdy page.  I used Quickutz Aquarius dies for the numbers.  

I used a hole punch on a scrap piece of paper to keep the positioning of the numbers the same on each page.

Next I worked on the cover.  I really liked the shape of Ali's book this year and decided to mimic it with a twist of my own.  In addition to the paper pack, I also purchased some holiday themed chipboard pieces.  

Let me pause here to explain something.  I love the idea of chipboard.  I love the depth it creates on the page and I love the versatility of chipboard - you can glue, paint, stamp, glitter, emboss and do all sorts of fun things on it and with it.  I also love so many of the cute chipboard accents that are out there.  But the truth is - I RARELY wind up using chipboard.  When I do use it, it's usually as a template or it inspires other ideas.   I have a whole drawer of chipboard pieces that I rarely use, but I can't part with, because well - if I parted with them, then what would I do with the card catalog drawer labeled "chipboard?"  

Anyway - I bought some Holiday chipboard with the original intention of using it on each page.  As soon as I opened the package, I realized that the pieces weren't exactly the kind of thing that I wanted on my pages.  So I was stuck.  I am not good at returning things, and I didn't want these to sit around the paint room forever, so I decided to incorporate them into the book.  I did this by using them on the inside cover.  First, I took my cover and laid the pieces out until I was happy with the placement.

 

Next I took them off of the cover pages, added just a bit of removable adhesive and placed them on my cover template in the same placement, so I wouldn't loose the arrangement.

 

From there, I glued each piece back onto the cover and covered the whole thing with a layer of gesso.

After the gesso, I was a bit unsure of where to go from there.  I added a bit of white paint in some areas, and then decided to use some embossing powder to sort of fill in the areas between the chipboard.  I did about 3 layers of embossing and on the final layer I sprinkled in some glitter as well as some white flocking for some texture.  It's a bit hard to see the difference between the gessoed piece and the final, but here it is:

 

Here's the cover and pages together.  I'll likely add a cover page of some sort as I start to fill in the book.  With any luck, this will be done by next Christmas.