December Daily 2013 with the Heidi Swapp Believe Memory File Album

I'm SO excited about Christmas this year!  And a big part of that excitement is about my December Daily album.  The December Daily album process was conceived by the talented scrapbook designer, Ali Edwards.  I'm a huge fan of Ali's memory keeping and love the idea of documenting each day during December leading up to Christmas.  Last year, I gave this process a try and quickly got off track.  I am horrible at the journaling part of my scrapbooks and December Daily 2012 was no different...in fact, I'm confessing to you now that I just finished the journaling for my 2012 DD this week (yes, in December of 2013...).  OH, well, I guess it's just good that I finally finished that project.  I'll share it in the next week or so, as I am very happy with that album and its design.  In 2012, I kept my DD very very minimalistic and this year, I've gone crazy with fun holiday embellishments.

This year, I chose the beautiful Believe Memory File Album from Heidi Swapp.  This album is perfect for my love of mixing patterns and page types in my mini albums!  The album comes bound and filled with all sorts of shapes and materials for it's pages.  Pages include patterned paper and acrylic in several shapes including banners, tags, brackets, pages with die cut frames and so much more!  At first, I thought I would take the album apart and reorder the pages.  But, in an effort to stay simple, I left the album "as is" and I am SO happy I did.  The album is perfect, so why waste time rearranging that I could spend embellishing!  My only purchases for this DD were the Memory File Album and a pack of Believe ephemera.  I gathered all my green, red, black & white, "holiday-ish" embellishments...ribbon, twine, die cuts, stickers, tags, washi, my stapler and my Story Card Dies & stamps from Technique Tuesday.  I am adhering my photos in a few ways this year, washi, staples and of course, adhesive.  All my adhesives are from Plus Corp.  I love how easy their dispensers are to use and that they have economical refills.  I use permanent adhesive.  I find that you can lift and rearrange your items, even with the permanent adhesive, if you move quickly.  I have the permanent tape and dots from Plus in two widths, this makes it simple to adhere both large and small pieces, quickly.  I put everything in a couple small containers and leave them on the kitchen counter, so I can pull together a page quickly and move on to the next day.

Just a note about my photos.  I shoot all my photos for this project with either my Android phone or my iPad.  At the end of the day, when I find the photos I want to include, I edit them in the Rhonna Designs App.  (I use the app on my iPad, so I email my phone photos, so I can access them on my iPad for editing.) I love square photos, so almost all my photos are square.  I sometimes add some of Rhonna's clip art to my photos, usually 2 or 3 for each day.  For one photo, I have been adding a white square and some type to show the date in this format 12.three.2013.  I just like how that looked and I like having the writing on my photos.  I have kept the square and white type to have some consistency to each day in my album.  I also share all my photos on Instagram.  It's a super fun way to meet other scrapbookers and photo lovers.  My Instagram name is @juliechatsblog in case you want to check out my photos.  I also found a fun contest that Heidi Swapp is having during December this year.  The contest is called #heidiholidayfotofind  She is giving out a "clue" for each day's photos.  You shoot a photo with the clue/theme for the day and use that to hashtag your photo when you put it on Instagram (a hashtag is just the number sign (#) in front of the word, no spaces, so people can search to see other photos with the same hashtag).  It's fun to join in this game (Heidi is also giving away cool prizes!) and meet other's participating each day.  I am printing my photos at home, so I can stay as caught up as possible.  I lay my photos out in Microsoft Publisher.  Publisher makes it easy to put guidelines in and line up my photos, so they are the same size from day to day.  I print my photos on my HP7650, using matte 8 1/2 x 11 photo paper from Staples.  Usually two or three days worth of photos fit on one sheet.  I've been using regular scissors to cut my photos before putting them in my album.

I should get to sharing all the photos of my album so far, through Day 5.  I'll share the next five days soon!

Day 1:  I positioned one of my photos to show through the die cut tag and added the numbered star for my date and a small acrylic holly piece adhered with a staple.  I added an arrow created with a Story Card Die from Technique Tuesday. (These dies are versatile and can be used for Project Life, cards, traditional scrapbooking and many other projects.  I use mine with the Epic 6 machine from Lifestyle Crafts)

 On the back side of the tag, I added a second photo, both are adhered with red washi.  On each page, I am stamping the date with the Christmas Date Stamp Roller from Smash.  I'm also adding the "clue" from Heidi's 

#heidiholidayfotofind with a stamp I've had forever from Provo Craft.  It's a huge roller stamp that you can use to spell out words.  I have one with a large font and one with a smaller font where you can spell out longer words.

 I was excited that Heidi designed these cool Christmas Countdown cards and offered them as freebies on her blog this year.  I printed them on vellum and I'm using them as overlays for my journal cards this year.  My journaling is done on the Remember This Story Cards by Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday.  I jot down my day's journaling on the front and then onto the back and then put the overlay on top of the card and staple both into my album.  Here's the LINK to the first set of overlay Countdown Cards from Heidi!  I'll give you the link to the next set when I get to Day 7 in my album (they're being released 6 at a time).

Day 2:

 I'm using the overlay on my journal card for each day of the month.  They are adhered with a staple!  Super Simple!

 I had three photos to include today and a pretty small tag on which to include them.  So, I started at the bottom, and adhered each of them with washi, one on top of the next, so you can flip each one up to view the next photo.

Day 3: 

I love the acrylic page for Day 3!  Under the acrylic page, I added two photos, a nice little graphic tag from Chic Tags and some fun embellishments.

Day 4:

 The Heidi die cut vellum banner from the ephemera pack looks amazing on this page!  I also added the Merry Christmas piece and my date star to this one.

 Even my washi had a 4 today! This page layout offered a lot of space for me to add a little tag from Chic Tags and washi tape.

Day 5:

I used a little ribbon, some sequins and a puffy silver star trimmed from a yard of metallic trim I found at the fabric store.  I adhered everything with Glue Dots.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my take on the December Daily album for 2013 using Heidi Swapp's Believe Memory File Album!  Such a fun way to document this festive month!

Join me back here soon for the next "five days of Christmas"!