Update on 2010 December Daily album

Hi there,

Just wanted to check in and let you know how my Dec Daily approach is working this year.

It's good.

Okay, that's it, see you tomorrow!

Sorry, just kidding.

Okay, no, really, how's it going? Well, actually. Pretty well. It's not perfect, it's a little messy, but it's good. And what I love about it the most is that it's under my belt all the time and I don't have a big project that I'm coming back to at a later time.

And what I'm also loving is that I didn't have to prepare anything first to get to that under-the-belt point. I've done this project three times now, and each time I've taken a different approach. Each of them has depended on the time and motivation available to me and each of them has turned out to be very different. And each of them have done different things for me.

This project is about meeting your needs as a scrapper at the time of the project...right now I need less thinking, less planning and ease of use. It's achieving that for me, so no wonder it's working. Who knows, next year I might do it completely differently, but for this year, this is it.

And on that, I've just conceptualised something in my head (I'm a big conceptualiser, if that's a word).

Craft is there to meet our needs, not for us to meet its needs.

What are my needs right now?

• Less thinking
• Less planning
• Ease of use
• Sense of achievement
• Quick results
• Accessibility

What needs would crafts have? Do crafts have needs? Well, no, but hear me out on this...

• You must use me because you bought me.
• You must be uber-creative at all times, particularly if you have a blog and you're going to show your work.
• The amount of effort you put into something equals how much it means to you.
• You must keep me in the one place in the house and not spread out from your craft room at all!
• You must spend money on buying the most fab stuff so you can be up to par with everyone else.
• You must follow the rules.
• You must do this project the exact same way that Ali does.

Ali is a very progressive scrapbooker, she always has been. She's the one who started Dec Daily and it's become a really big yearly event around the place. It's amazing. Companies are starting to put out product for Dec Daily projects now too, which proves just how big it is.

The last thing I think she would want though, is for someone to do the project exactly the same way as her, and then not be satisfied with their project because essentially it was them trying to fit their memories, and their crafting needs, into her mould. I don't know her to say that, but I really think she'd agree.

Ali has her family, and her crafting needs, and she outworks it how it works for her.

I have us, and my crafting needs, and I outwork it how it works for me.

You have your family, and your crafting needs, and you outwork it how it works for you.

And of course you follow a framework, of course you follow an idea - but the real satisfaction with crafting comes when you've met your needs. That's when your heart warms and the smile comes. It takes time to work all this out, but it'll happen if you look at your needs first and go from there.

Happiness in the journey for you, hey? I know it sounds pretty deep for this time of day, and this time of year, but still, it's worth sharing because it's all heart related, right?

And I know how difficult it is to balance it all sometimes. I know I need to do this (crafting thing for my own sanity), so why don't I for months on end? Why am I not satisfied with the time spent? You know, all that. All these things I'm sharing have been a part of my own crafting journey.

And all I was going to do was share my Dec Daily update photos today with a bit of an explanation at the top :o)

Onto the photos...

Inside front cover. Something's not working totally here. Too much red all in the middle there. It's staying the way it is though, because fixing it just isn't a priority.

This page meets my less planning and less thinking needs. I did little planning/thinking and this is what I got.

Not 100% happy, but who cares?

Next page. You can see a bit of pencil up at the top left - more on that in minute.

Just stuck strips of bits in here. The other night I realised I didn't have enough patterned paper accessible to me when putting the book together. It was in bags on a table on the other side of the room. How dumb, so I moved the bits I wanted into a lid and now they're near me. Realised I wasn't meeting one of my accessibility needs...now I am. Good.

Also, I wrote the journalling on Day 2 and Day 1 is after this.

Once again, who cares?

Bit of bunting up the top there. This was fun. Circle punch and scraps. And you can see the tops of the trees I cut out too. Just hand cut triangles.

My approach for each day is to just write about a little thing that happened during the day. Or a thought. Or a funny thing. Or a special thing. Any-thing.

Okay, here's where we talk about the pencil. I have four photo templates cut out. You will see them below. I use them to write around, so I leave enough space for the photo. I mark in pencil what the actual photo is, so when it gets printed I know where to put it.

Above I left a space for our 2009 in-front-of-the-tree-photo. This year I left space for those photos from 2009, 2008 and 2006 because I just wanted to include a few we've taken over the years.

2007 was on our film camera, plus it's not a favourite, plus I'm not going to get one negative developed. No way.

Here's a page about me loving red. On this day (Friday) I wrote about other things too, but I just took a photo of the red page.

Story: I sat down on the couch and noticed at least five red things around the place in front of me. Realised I loved them,  so I took a photo and then wrote about it. Didn't plan on dedicating a whole page to it, but that's what happened at the time when I stood at my cabinet.

Some days I leave space for the photo and write stuff. Sometimes I decorate. Sometimes I don't. Some days I do one page. Some days I do four. It all depends. And some days I go back and add some more colour to previous pages if I want.

It's all about what I want to do, want to say, how much time I have and what my crafting needs are at the time. You know how sometimes you just want to spend the time? Well, if I have the time, I do. If I don't, I trade the time for sleep! I know someone who knows all about that too...Hey, Vania!

This is Dec 5 (Sunday). Two pages and here I talked about the photos we took of Cody with reindeer antlers on. And that we finished decorating the tree properly.

Here are the pics - thought you might like to see.

Lol, so funny.

I didn't even know I had them (don't think I bought them), but I found them in the cupboard and wanted to take a pic with them on. We took a few. Andrew was in and out of the photos. I tried to be real quick while Cody was still. He was really good, although he was completely unsure of what was going on.

And then while I was checking the photos, he sat right in front of me and I took a quick shot.

It turned out to be our favourite.

Isn't that always the way?

(I was going to make some larger versions of the craft tree ornaments to put on our big tree, but it's looking pretty full right now. Still want to make some though. Can you believe most of these ornaments were on our old tree, which was half the size? Andrew couldn't either, but I knew I packed 'em on that old tree. It was always full to the brim).

And here's the entry from Dec 6 (Monday).

It's more put together because I had a bit more time that night.

There are spots for four photos:

•  Two of the bunting in our living room. We put one in a different place to last year. I like that we shake things up and don't do the same things the same way every year. Andrew decided on tinsel free this year. He's in charge of the tinsel because he is tall and can put it above the curtains. On Sunday he declared we're going tinsel free this year. I'm like, what? Alright then, and put it away. Kinda like it.
• One of the Scrabble game we played over dinner. I won, but we're fairly evenly matched with it. He's the triple word king.
• One of the three packages I received in the mail. The post guy told me that that day (Monday, Dec 6) was the biggest day of the year for mail. Was for me, I got three.

PS. Thoughout the album I'm using a lot of different papers and bits. Some new, some old - just whatever I want at the time.

And lastly, here are the photo templates. They're just card cut to size.

I take the camera with me to the book if I can't remember what I took that day and work out how many photos I need to leave space for. They sit in the design to keep the space free and I work around them. I'm only using 4 x 6s in this album at this stage, so I've just got templates for those.

Okay, so I hope all that helps someone with their Dec Daily process. If not, I hope you liked looking at mine because honestly, we're all sticky beaks and like to see what others do, don't we? :o)

Have a great day!