December Daily 2013 Thoughts and Cover

I am doing December Daily this year.  So what is it?  It is a mini-album dedicated to everything that happens in December.  Ali Edwards was the originator of December Daily (henceforth known as DD2013) and she has a ton of resources on DD on her website.  Many people do a picture a day, some just collect 25 holiday memories.  I am using it as a way to force myself to do more celebrating/enjoying this holiday season. 

Connor is five this year and he is so into holidays.  With him being my only child, I really want to take the time to focus on the holiday and his joy of it.  I only get to experience a 5 year old at Christmas ripping into presents and being so excited once.  I feel too often that I don't take the time to enjoy those moments but also to capture them.  I hardly remember any of my childhood but what I do remember is tied to photos we have.  They help to refresh the memory and I want a ton of that for Connor.

The basis of my DD2013 supplies is the Studio Calico kit.   I really love all the bits and pieces that come with the kit and the stamps are awesome.  I am also taking the 25 Days class (no longer available) from Studio Calico so I received the bonus kit from them as well.

I have a scrapbooking shopping habit and it is bad.  Of course I had to supplement what was already a ton of supplies.  I am good like that.  I picked up Lawn Fawn's Peace Love Joy collection and other bits and trinkets from other Christmas lines including Studio Calico wood veneers and Magical journaling tags, Elle's Studio Bits and Pieces, Simple Stories die cut cards, and Hambly transparencies.

The first thing I did was to make the cover.  I started by taping off the linen portions of the album and painted the raw chipboard white.  I then proceeded to obsess about what to put on the cover.  I loved the look of the gold embossed wood veneer Ali Edwards has used on her blog.  I used an aged gold embossing powder that I picked up at my local Ben Franklins on some wood veneer that I had laying around.  I like the vintage/aged look of the embossing powder.  I always have a hard time with aligning my alphas so I used the ribbon to line it up perfectly before sticking everything down.

For the rest of the album, I used the Silver glitter ribbon to hide the rough transition from the linen to painted portion of the cover.  I used the gold embossed paper from the kit as my base and layered paper from the Peace Love Joy collection on top.  The rest of the cover used embellishments from several companies including Tim Holtz, American Crafts and Close to My Heart (rhinestone brad).

Overall, I am very pleased with my album.  I could have done a better job with the painting the album but it is perfectly imperfect.  I am going to eventually add a tag on the spine.

Are you doing December Daily?  If so, link it up in the comments!!!