December Daily/ Journal Your Christmas Album Part 1

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I know we certainly did. Lots of good food and time spent with family always make our holidays great. This week brings a new month and preparations for the next holiday. I have been working on a few projects and have lots to share over the next few weeks. I also finished my December Daily/ Journal Your Christmas album and really like how it turned out. Since I took so many pictures I have decided to break it up into 3 posts this week. Today I am going to start off with the album cover and the first seven pages. I started with 2- 6x9 inch chipboard pieces for the front and back covers and used Silver Bells Large Dot patterned paper from Echo Park and Wool Crinkle paper from Wausau to cover the chipboard pieces. I kept the album cover pretty simple. I decorated the spine of the album with mini snowflake and tree ornaments I found at my local Wal-Mart.

For the front of the cover I started with the half and half die from Papertrey Ink and layered 2 snowflakes (also Papertrey Ink dies), a red scallop circle (punch from Oriental Trading), a 2 inch circle (Fiskars punch), and the number 25 (using my Slice Elite and Noteworthy cartridge). The red and gray papers are the Pimiento and Wool Crinkle papers from Wausau. I really love the look of these textured papers.

A view from the top of the album.

After seeing Kathy Orta's Build- a- Page tutorial I decided I wanted to do something similar and create pages with lots of interaction. I had lots of fun adding flaps and pockets to my album pages. This first picture shows the inside of the album cover and page 1 of the album.

For Day 1 I created this flap using my Tim Holtz Bracket On the Edge die, Wool Crinkle Wausau paper, a scallop circle (Oriental Trading punch), and the number 1 (using my Slice Elite and Noteworthy cartridge). It is hard to see in the picture, but I used my Fiskars tool to create a corrugated look on the scalloped circle. The gray dot paper is from the American Crafts Merrymint collection. The heart is made of two candy canes and cut on the Slice with the Mistletoe cartridge. The word 'together' is also cut on the slice using the Basic Elements cartridge.

The flap opens up to reveal accordain folded papers for photos and journaling. I used the Silver Bells Large Dot paper from Echo Park to added photo mats to a few of the squares and left others blank for journaling.

Behind the flap I created a small pocket to hold photos and journaling tags for Day 2. It is lined with more of the Wausau Pimiento Crinkle paper. The white tag was cut using the Slice and the Basics 1 cartridge. I punched the '2nd' using older punches from Family Treasures and added it to the bottom of the tag.

Behind the smaller pocket is a taller one for Day 3. I made a photo mat using the Silver Bells Large Dot paper from Echo Park and rounded the corners with my WRMK Corner Chomper. I punched a hole in the corner and added a tag  (made with the Slice and the Mistletoe cartridge) and an ornament punched from more of the Silver Bells paper (Martha Stewart Vintage Ornament punch). I added the '3rd' to the white tag using the Family treasures punches.

Day 4 is a simple photo mat covered in snowflake punches and die cuts. (Punches are from Martha Stewart, EK Success, and McGill. Die cut snowflakes are from the Mistletoe cartidge and cut on the Slice.) The '4th' is punched (Family Treasures punches) from Royal Metallics Chalice Silver paper from Wausau. I plan to add Tim Holtz mini paperclips to the top of the page to hold my journaling tags.

Day 5 is another pocket to hold tags and photos lined with paper from the AC Merrymint Collection. The tree tag is cut with the Mistletoe cartridge and the gray tag (Wausau Wool Crinkle paper) is cut using the Basics 1 cartridge and the Slice. I used the Martha Stewart Gifts Deep Edge punch to create the pocket at the bottom of the page. I layered more of the Wausau paper, punched snowflakes, and a stamped sentiment from the Hero Arts Holiday Sayings stamp set and Versa Magic Aspen Mist ink.

The Day 5 pocket is also a flap that lifts up to reveal another pocket for Day 6. I made a photo mat using paper from the Bo Bunny Adlib collection and added a journaling tag with punched pieces from the Family Treasures punches. The inside of the pocket is lined with the Wool Crinkle Wausau paper and the outside is lined with paper from the AC Merrymint collection. I decorated the front of the pocket with the Papertrey Ink Mat Stack 4 die and the Martha Stewart all over the page Nordic Snowflake punch.

Is everyone still with me, lol? We have our final page for today. Day 7 is another taller pocket created behind the Day 5 flap. The photomat was made with the Wool Wausau paper and the candle was diecut from the Slice Mistletoe cartridge. I also added two more tags to the corner using the Slice Mistletoe cartridge, Silver Bells paper, and Family Treasures punches.

You can also see Parts 2 & 3 by clicking on the links below:

December Daily/ Journal Your Christmas Part 2

December Daily/ Journal Your Christmas Part 3

If you made it to the end of today's post- Thank You! I hope you enjoyed part 1 of my album. I will be back tomorrow with a few more pages. Thanks for stopping by!