December Daily® 2022 | Special Guest Kelly Ishmael

Hello everyone. I am delighted to be here with you today to share my completed December Daily® 2022 album.

It was love at first sight for me with the gorgeous floral 6x8 album and therefore a no-brainer for what size album I would use this year.

As for the other products, I also used the main kit and a few other items from the collection.

My intention this year was to document the simple joys of the season. And for me, joy and gratitude go hand in hand so I used the numbers strips from the main kit to document a daily gratitude.

I didn't do much in the way foundation pages this year, but I picked out some of my favorite products and jotted down some notes with ideas. Some years I'm a little more prepared and some years I just go with the flow.

I was a little slow to get started, but once I finally cut into that first sheet of patterned paper (what is that so hard???!!! lol) I was able to gain some momentum. Many of my pages were inspired by the awesome ideas that were shared in this year's Product Play class.

I also love translating ideas from Ali and this creative community to work with my stories and my design aesthetic.

The beautiful patterned papers were one of my favorite things from this year's collection and I took the opportunity to use them throughout my album.

I had completed days 1-10 before Christmas, so after the holidays I took a look at my photos and stories and mapped out my remaining days with some really rough sketches. I fleshed out those ideas in smaller batches as a worked through my layouts.

During this process, I also set out my favorite products in plain sight. Limiting my choices always helps me during this part of the process so I don't get bogged down in overthinking design ideas. Because overthinking things and making them harder than they need to be is one of my talents in life. lol

Towards the end, another consideration for me was the thickness of my album (already). So as I moved forward, I tried to limit the interactive elements and/or bulky embellishments.

Dear Ali and Katie, I used up all those little glitter stars in my stash so I'm going to need about million more of those for next year. <<wink>>

December Daily® is truly a labor of love and the payoff is having a tangible connection to my December memories. That said, I am also very happy and relieved to have this project behind me.

If you would like to see more, I have a video walkthrough on YouTube as well as a gallery of images on my website.

Let me know if you have any questions. And as always, thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to share my stories and my projects with you.