Happy Friday everyone! It's the second week of the December Daily Blog Hop!
This past week has been really busy and I haven't had any time to create any pages, so I thought I would share my album with you. I started out with a plain 8 1/2 x 11 kraft 3 ring binder album that I found at Michaels.
I started by masking it off and "painting" it with Heidi Swapp Black Colorshine. Then I misted it with Mister Huey's "Blizzard" which I thought would give it a snowy kind of look but ended up looking more like a chalkboard. Not what I planned, but I liked the look. I then lined the edges of the painted section with MME washi tape and used modge podge to glue down some Heidi Swapp die cuts. I also used some Heidi Swapp die cuts to decorate the frame on the cover, but I'm not sure how I like that yet, it seems to be missing something. Once I finished all that, I still really wanted that "snowy" look I was trying to go for, so I watered down some white acrylic paint and used a small paintbrush to splatter it around.
Here are a couple close-ups:
The last couple years I've done 6x8 albums and just found that the "project life" type style and the small size was just too much work for me. I like to print my photos directly to 4x6 instead of fussing with them to crop them down, and by doing 8 1/2 x 11 layouts it's much easier to not have to plan so much as long as I use 1-2 photos per story/page.
Each day I plan what my story for that day is going to be and make sure I get some sort of picture to document it. Then when I upload my pics to my computer, I do a quick edit in photoshop and print them with my home printer. Then they can go into the album in the page protector for that layout to wait until I scrap it. This means I don't have to scrap every story in order but they will all be in order when I am done, and I'll know if I'll be able to turn a story or two into a two-page layout (most likely for Christmas morning). Not all days are going to be Christmas-themed, some will be just whatever happened to go on that day. Other days if I don't manage to document anything I do have a couple stories that I could document on any date... like the fact that my boys like to listen to music when they go to sleep and this month, instead of listening to CD's I changed the radio station to one that plays Christmas music all month.
I'm hoping that by organizing everything this way, I can maximize my time when I am motivated to scrap to be able to do as much as possible. Right now the most important thing is to make memories and get them photographed. Oh, and I have to remember to get in a few of those pictures myself!
Now, if you want to hop along on the blog hop, here are the stops along the way...
Jennifer Reilly (you are here)
And if you have any December Daily projects you'd like to share, please link it up here!
LOVE your album cover!
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