Christmas Art Journal :: Days 1-9

Days 1-9 of my Christmas Art Journal (December Daily). I'm really liking how it's coming together, loving the new approach, but still have some frustrations here and there (which I think can be a good thing... part of growing creatively!).

So this year I decided to take a different approach to how the journal as a whole would be. Last year, I had the entire album completed and blank, and just needed to write in it each day, print some photos and stick those in along with mementos gathered. While I really enjoy that kind of keeping a journal, I wanted this year's to be more fluid, more intentional, to include digital elements, and to basically just be different.

For me, this meant not necessarily having the whole album put together and ready to go, but more of putting each day together.... each day. I like being able to create a new layout each day. It also allows for my layouts to be flexible- some days take up 3 pages, some only 1. But it's also frustrating when I'm super tired and would rather just plunk something in the journal and call it a day. I think it's good though for myself personally - it makes me think about the day, makes my creative muscles flex. Although I do sometimes leave the day until the next morning or afternoon when I am more functional :). And I jot down ideas here and there for upcoming days.

So will I do it this way again next year? Probably. I will probably take more time to put together a base album like Ali Edwards and go from there.

Intro Page: I have a ton of paper hole punches from punching journals this year. I saved them to somehow incorporate them into the journal. Two pieces of transparency and some red thread later, I'm super excited about the confetti intro page. The punches move freely inside the transparencies, so the page is always changing.

I laid it over top of a cream sheet of cardstock to be able to see all of the punches.

I love Ali Edwards' idea of leaving a blank page at the front. At the end of the month I will go back and add photos in (all on the computer) and print out a nice photo page capturing different details of the month (So basically this page is a place holder). The back will likely have our family Christmas picture blown up to take up the entire page.

Day 1: I enjoyed using the computer for the journaling and then adding in different papers and the #1 paper round. I had a vintage dictionary page with the word "jolly" on it, so punched that - I thought it was fitting for the season :)

Days 1 and 2 didn't really have much going on, so I recapped us decorating a gingerbread house after Thanksgiving - the beginning of decorating. I also included a page about my shop sales and custom order sales since this season has been a big milestone for my shop.

Day 2: I did manage to capture this fun picture of us playing with Jimmy's train sets (one of our fave activities).
Day 3: This is the day we got our Christmas tree and I wanted to create 3 pages for it - 2 with pictures and 1 with journaling. I'm super happy with how these all worked together and worked well going next to Day 2's picture.


Day 4: All digital this day- with a few embellishments added for the day number. Love how this spread turned out.

Day 5: I journaled digitally about the day's happenings and then included some handwritten journaling talking about our friends from church and how much they mean to us. Just realized I need to add a number "5" for the day ;)

Day 6: Also love how this spread turned out.

Day 7: I tried to print the "Date Night" page on transparency and then on vellum. Fail. I would have liked to have had it overlay the other pictures and journaling, but I'm content with how it ended up turning out!


Day 8: I found an ad in one of my magazines (for a resort, lol) that I knew would go perfectly with making cookies.

I reused some packaging for one of pages (the green and white polka dot under the vellum).

Day 9: No pictures this day. I journaled instead about where we are right now in the month - it will be neat to look back about what was going on these first several days of December. I definitely plan to add more full sheet journaling spaces like this about happenings throughout the rest of the month. I printed the journaling out and adhered it to vintage school paper - which matched some of the text on the journaled page. I had been struggling with not using any found paper really yet, and since that is one of my big passions, knew it needed to make it's way into the journal.

So there you have it. Days 1-9. Any thoughts? Ideas? How yours is going? I can't wait to see how the rest of the album shapes up and will definitely be sharing more here and there of the progress.

Have a fabulous weekend! :)