Okay, after two days of emotional posts I need to focus on some lighthearted things for awhile. Let’s start with this, our finished holiday minibook! I know it’s almost Valentine’s Day but since nothing was getting done but the bare minimum until this baby was born, I’m pretty happy that I finished it while it’s still winter anyway.
For the base I purchased a mixed paper book from Petaline Prints (currently none are available but maybe she’ll have more next holiday season) which I loved and was perfect for what I intended. During the holidays I saved anything I thought I might want to add to the book, took lots of photos, and then after Christmas I printed them all and gathered together any extra paper, stickers, or supplies I thought I might want to use.
That pile sat around until last week when I spent just a few days putting it all together. I have never done a minibook before so this is kind of a trial run to figure out my style. I changed a lot of things around during the process as I decided what I did and didn’t like, and then tried to keep things somewhat consistent like the placement of photos and the way I did labels and journaling. I really enjoyed it and I am looking forward to doing this every year, although right now I don’t plan to make any additional minibooks other than for the holidays.
Below you’ll see the finished project, and a few notes on particular pages. If you have any questions about any of it let me know!
The “making a list” printable was found at A Pair of Pears.
That drawing was made by an artist at the church we went to for Christmas Eve service. It’s supposed to be our family although it took me a long time before I realized he hadn’t given me someone else’s. :)
Inside the envelope are about 5-6 more Instax photos of Christmas Day. I didn’t want to overload the album with them, so I just pulled out the ones of our family to display.
Pretty simple overall, and very satisfying! Right now I’m in the middle of updating Liam’s baby book, then my next big maternity leave project will be catching up on Project Life. Yay crafting time.
From Melanie:
Looks great!
From Sarah:
Oh my goodness, I LOVE THIS! I kept reading about people doing “December daily” journals which just seems overwhelming to me, but I love how you made this book a mixture of the highlights (events, etc.) and little daily things, like gift lists. What an awesome souvenir of the holiday season. I just finished up January for my 2014 PL album and I’m loving my new Jade core kit. Also, I decided on a whim to just do one month blocks instead of weekly or bi-weekly spreads, and it’s making it so much easier for me.
From kapachino:
Thank you! Last year I did December Daily and although I liked it, I knew that a different approach would work better for me since I’m doing Project Life also. I wanted this book to be pretty much just holiday stuff, and I didn’t want to have to update daily. I love how it worked out!
I’m about two and a half months behind on Project Life, gotta get moving on that! I still have to decide how I’m going to format 2014.
From Nora:
This looks awesome! I’m the WORST memory keeper/scrap-booker these days. I used to be good at it and mom I did a lot of it together… she has tons of supplies (which dad said are mine if I want them) so maybe this is the year I get better at it? I still want to do a book of what we did with the girls last summer. I failed at that miserably, eh?
I really like the artistic rendering of your family; I can tell that it’s you and M in the picture for sure. I don’t know David too well otherwise I’m sure I would recognize him, too :)
From katelin:
this is such a sweet thing to do! love the holiday book, so cute and just a great thing to have. love it so much.