Documenting December with Carta Bella

Hey Magpies, I hope you are all having a wonderful December so far. For my posts this month I thought I would share with you how I am documenting December this year.

I have chosen to create a 6×8 album using mainly the Carta Bella Christmas Market collection. Along with some elements of Echo Park’s Warm & Cosy. I thought the two collections worked very well together. Providing a good mix of Christmas and Winter papers and embellishments.

Pre December Preparation

I have been aware of the December Daily/Journal your Christmas way of documenting for many years now, however in that time I have only completed two albums. The last one of which was in 2014. I don’t prepare any of my pages in advance, it’s just not the way I work. However, I really want to make sure I finish this year’s, so I have done a small amount of preparation for my album. Hopefully it will help me to complete it.

I think one of the places I have gone wrong in the past is not knowing what to document in my album. Feeling like we’ve not done anything worthy of being recorded that day. Therefore, I decided to write myself a list of prompts or topics that I wanted to include. I then took that one step further and allocated each of these topics to a specific day. Filling in any days I know a specific event is happening first, then spreading the remaining topics out through December. Doing this means that I will always have something to document each day. These prompts are just a guideline, they are not set in stone, I can always change things around if I wish.

I have decided to keep my album simple, starting each day with a white 6×8 piece of card. So, the next thing I did was cut up all my 6×8 backgrounds. Which, I then placed in the page protectors in the Red Snowflake 6×8 Album. Adding a little note to each protector with the date and topic. This meant I could plan out which days I wanted to have double page spreads, before I started. Other than gathering my supplies that was the extent of my pre December preparation.

Days 1- 9

I haven’t made my title page yet, as I like to get a feel for the style of the album first before I do. So I jumped straight in with Day 1, using red and green for a traditional Christmassy page. I have the 6×6 paper pad for both the Christmas Market and Warm & Cosy collections and have found they are the first thing I reach for when starting a page. I love the smaller patterns, as they are perfect for these smaller albums.

As I am currently creating a page each day, I am trying to keep them quite simple. Hopefully, that way each one won’t take too long to make. I have a number of elements that I will be repeating on each page, for example I am including at least three Nuvo drops on each page and I am using the same journaling stamp. This will give the album a consistent feel and also should cut down on some of the decision making.

Throughout the album I will be including a number of lists as alternatives to blocks of journaling. For example the weather forecast on Day 2 and the numbered list on Day 3.

I have chosen to print my photos using my Canon Selphy printer onto the Card size paper which is approximately 2×3”. I have then matted each photo onto white card to give it a thin border. On some of the pages, like on Day 4, I have matted them again onto patterned paper. Just to add that extra splash of colour against the white background.

I decided to stamp my page numbers, choosing to use sets from Ink Road Stamps and Elle’s Studio. First die-cutting a circle, then using a different circle stamp and colour of ink on each one to match the page.

For Day 5, I wanted to pick up on the gold snowflakes on the calendar. I did this by using the Falling Snowflakes 6×6” Stencil and some gold ink. To finish the page, I added a couple of strips of paper and some stickers from the 12×12” Elements Stickers.

I loved the Gift Tags Paper in the collection and bought an extra sheet so that I could straight away cut it up into the tags. They worked perfectly as an embellishment in the corner of my page for Day 6.

I knew I would have lots of photos to include for Day 7, therefore I chose to do a double page spread. I liked the effect I had achieved with the snowflake stencil. So chose to repeat it across the two pages using a stencil from Vicki Boutin’s Colour Kaleidoscope and some red and gold paint. I wanted it to look like twinkling Christmas lights, so used a metallic paint through the stencil. I didn’t want to cover up the background too much, so just finished this page with some older Simple Stories stickers.

For Day 8, I used another one of those fab gift tags along with papers from the 6×6” pad. For my titles throughout I have been mixing and matching different sets of Thickers and Alphabet stickers. Along with the same Elle’s Studio stamp set I have used for the page numbers. I love the Cedar Foam Thickers from the Pink Paislee Together for Christmas collection. They worked perfectly with the Warm & Cosy collection on my page for Day 9.

Thank you for joining me today, I hope you have enjoyed seeing my December album so far. I will be back later in the month with more from this project. So until then Happy Scrapping!