December Daily....eeh how about weekly?

Until last year I had never heard of December Daily (or DD...like there aren't about a dozen things that could mean ?). But when I did find out I was very intrigued. Was this something I could and wanted to do?

I loved seeing the christmas themed albums and all those great pictures of typical (American) Christmas scenes: trees, pj's, hot cocao and Starbucks red cup:-) But it also seemed like a lot of work and I didn't really like the idea of making a separate booklet for that one month of the year. I kind of like my months to stick together if you know what I mean:-)

But then there is the great sense of community you get from joining hundreds (if not thousands) of scrapbookers who do do DD. What to do? I thought I would just watch what others did and not do anything myself. Well that didn't really work for more than a day or so:-)

I soon got it into my head that I could do one picture a day and maybe all those 31 individual pictures could just go into one huge double spread. So I asked for some tips on the Holiday Storyteller FB page. And they had loads of templates to use. This got me thinking that I may have something in my digi-stash already that I could use. And that's when my month-across-two-pages plan turned into my one-week-a-page plan and that's what I'm going with:-)

Week one is done. It is all in Dutch, sorry...but it is all about a very Dutch tradition of St Nicolas. Like Santa he brings presents for the children, only he arrives halfway through November by steam boat from Spain and his main drop-off is December 5th. After that it's full speed for Christmas: getting a tree and decorating!
I used a template by Penny Springman, background papers by LLIELLA Designs and Basic Studio (kraft).The row of houses and arrow are by MO&Mo Studio, a Dutch design studio that does special St. Nicolas papers and embellishments.

Are you doing December Daily or some Sinterklaas or Christmas themed layouts? Let me know, I'd love to see them.

LOAD Day 25-29

I do my best but I cannot seem to do a layout a day, look after my son and house and still keep this blog up to date so I am doing another batch post:-)

Happy as I am with my stack of produced layouts I am really reaching the point of where I am getting a bit fed up with doing a layout each day and not having much time for anything else. But I am finishing this month because there are some really important realizations. I am starting to get a feel for what is really important and what is doable in the scrapbooking departement of my life. I love scrapbooking but I love spending time with family and friends more. And even when I am scrapping a layout everyday I do not feel like I am making much headway with all the years of pictures I still want to scrap. And these two realizations mean that I have to rethink my scrapping strategy. I do still want to have photo-albums to leave through and I'd love them to be 'pretty'. But I do not have time to scrap every nice picture so I have to be more selective. Next to that I really enjoy getting my artsty side out for the occasional 'WOW' layout with cool techniques and lots of embelishments. So I think I will have to come up with a simpler plan for documenting my and my family's life. More on that later. If you have ideas feel free to share.

For now let's show the layouts of the last 5 days:

Day 25: The prompt was about self-defense and for me to protect myself from going too crazy I need to spend time outside in nature. And I believe we need to be protecting nature, I do my best to pass this on to Thomas as well. My last digi layout so far. It was the day of my birthday party and there was family around pretty much all day plus cleaning and cake baking so a quicky spread in between guests  but I love the colours.

Day 26: Prompt was about the movie Psycho about a scary hotel (as I've been told because I never saw it) so I scrapped about our stay in a deserted hotel in Sweden. I thought I had booked a room in the lovely mansion in the top picture but instead we were the only people staying in the 'baracks' at the back. By 9PM all the staff had gone as well and it was a bit freaky reminding me of 'The Shining'.

Day 27:  Oh no, no prompt today! The link didn't work and nor did the link on the Master Page. I wasn't too fussed actually as I had already decided to go off-prompt today to create a quick layout for my Mother in Law. Each Christmas I give her, my parents and ourselves an empty calendar and I send them a layout for the calendar each month. So this was one much like the one I did in week one, about Queensday. The crown is embossed with gold embossing powder which looks really good in real life but very dull on the picture:-)

Day 28: Today's prompt was just WHERE? I went with last year's holiday destination: I had requested a beach vacation, thinking mediteranean beaches....I got Northumberland beaches: rainy, windy, freezing water and nobody there. Which my husband thought was the greatest thing about the place:-)

Day 29: Today we are with Professor Plum and I scrapped pictures of the appartment I had bought myself right before I met my husband. I got to decorate it just as I liked and that meant many shades of purple everywhere. Love the really dark bedroom wall!

Well people, two more days to go, so proud of myself for still going strong and thankful for a very patient husband:-)

LOAD 19-23 Still going strong!

So it's been a bit manic trying to do a layout, upload it to Flickr, give some LOVE (i.e. positive comments on fellow loadster's pictures), keep this blog updated and sleep (and raise a 3 yo, cook, clean, etc...) so I had to here are the layouts for the last week or so.

Day 19: A is for Alibi became a layout voor mijn lieve vriendin Anouk. In the journalling I described her using the remaining 25 letters of alphabet.

Day 20:  The prompt was suspense which I took more in the anticipation direction and made a digital layout about the anticipation I felt that day because it was my birthday the next day. I love all these 'nights before...Christmas, birthday, New Years etc' I'm really still a little kid:-)

Day 21: The prompt was just 'WHAT?' so I went with this picture of my brother and me back in the seventies playing with.....a casette deck! 'A what?'

Day 22: Miss Scarlet! Well I took it in the direction of the colour red but really I am not that fond of the colour red. So I started thinking about what red things I do like. One red think I really like are poppies! But I hardly had any good shots of red poppies, I had plenty good shots of fuchsia and soft powdery pink poppies.... So I had to work with this Drive-by shot made on vacation in Northunberland last year. These poppies were huge, bigger than my hand. I made the embellishments from some white die cuts I had received in a swap a while ago. I had a lot of fun personalizing them with inks. 

Day 23: Another digi-layout from our trip to Maastricht this month. The prompt was 'Candlestick' and I went with these shots of all the candles in the basilica of Our Dear Lady in Maastricht. I had so much fun putting the background paper together with all the digistamps and borders. Loved being able to adjust the title to match the colours on my layout. I can do an art journal style without all the mess:-) 

LOAD Day 12: Gangnam Style!

Well, this layout almost didn't get done on time. On top of our busy day (leaving our holiday home, including cleaning it and doing a Thomas the Tank Engine day at the Dutch Railway Museum) I got ill yesterday. Part exhaustion, part food poisoning I think. I had started on my layout in the car on the way to the museum and that meant that by the time we got home and I was feeling pretty bad I only had the background and title to do.

The prompt was the movie 'The Usual Suspects'. I had to do a bit of searching before I came up with this. Had I been home where I have all my photos on an external harddrive then it would have been easy but I had to make do with what was on my laptop: 6 months of pictures only:-) So I was browsing through my pictures as we were zooming over the A2 from Maastricht to Utrecht. Finally (I only had limited battery power) I came across these pictures of my son Thomas (l) and his friend Rayan dancing and singing along to the Gangnam Style video on YouTube. With their sun glasses on they look a bit like little gangsters so I thought that would fit the prompt well enough.

I really wanted to add some neon to the pictures as there is also a lot of it in the video. But getting the neon on the different elements wasn't as straightforward as I thought. I am only just getting to know Photoshop Elements so there was a lot of trial and error involved and I am still not sure I did it right but it works for now. This is also the first time I used a black background. I tried many different patterned backgrounds before I came up with the black last night. I think it works really well.

LOAD Day 11: Lust for Life!

Wooohooo, I've made it one third into the month: 11 layouts in 11 days. I am very pleased with this result. No guarantees for the future though, tomorrow will be a challenge. We are leaving our vacation address early (some cleaning required) and then we are off to the Thomas the Tank Engine weekend in Utrecht. This should be great fun for Thomas but a bit tiring for mummy and daddy.  We'll be home around dinner time and will have to do some unpacking etc. I am going to attampt to do my layout in the car on the way to Utrecht. I love getting this job out of the way as early in my day as possible. It means I get some proper nights sleep and that is really important if you're trying to raise a young boy;-)

As you can see on the layout our little man (the one in the blue top) loves to rough and tumble! Pictures were taken yesterday while we were visiting friends with their kids on a campsite close to our vacation address. Because I am digiscrapping for this vacation I can just use the pics I take immediately. At any size I like, that's pretty cool. I get so much inspiration from the digi kits as well. I would really like to recreate in 'paper'  that star embellishment with all the bits of ribbon behind it. But for now I went with customizing the original digital embellishment with some alphas (letters) from three different kits by Happy to Create: Awesome Life, Awesome Kid and Action Hero. I really enjoyed trying some more embellishments but all in all it's still a very simple layout, just the way I like it.

Before I forget: Today's prompt was 'Lust' and I went with Lust for Life as these three boys are just having a blast making the most of life. 

Load day 10: We're in the Library

With hubby sleeping in and Thomas happily playing with all the toys in our holiday swap home i had time in the morning to do today's layout. So I am free for the rest of the day and evening:-)

Today we are in the Library and I did a layout about a bookshop in a church in Maastricht. We came upon it yesterday and I just had to take a picture and have a browse. It even had a coffee bar in the back, how cool is that?

This is another digital layout. I use bits and pieces from two Happy to Create kits: Awesome Kid and Awesome Life.

The Awesome Life Kit can be downloaded for free at Happy to Create!

Load Day 9: Water guns and big noises!

Using the really cool Action Hero Digikit by happytocreate.com I created another page about Queensday. With the prompt being about Shooting I thought they would go well with the pictures I took of us with the water guns and making lots of banging noises at the Magic Wand making workshop. I think I will be using this kit again, it suits little boys really well:-)

Day 7 of LOAD: Why don't I just go to bed?

Just a quicky post of today's layout. I am really tired and when today's prompt was just 'WHY?' I knew decided to scrap something very current my lack of sleep because of this challenge:-) The journalling says it all:

The journalling card is from Jenn Wright Design, everything else is from a free kit by Suzy Q Scraps. I am really enjoying my digi scrapping.