December Daily 2013 // Album Cover, Title + Intro

This past weekend, I dedicated some time to finally work on my December Daily. I initially had a slow start; I think the idea of starting from nothing paralyzed me at first. But once I settled on my title page and worked on a few pages, I got into the flow of it and I'm really enjoying this mini! I love the handbook format; I've used it a few times already for travel minis and the smaller format + divided page protectors are awesome.

ALBUM COVER
Although there's a beautiful embossed star album that comes with the Ali Edwards/SC December Daily kit I'm using, I opted to use a different handbook album I purchased instead. I'll save the star album for a future project :) The hand-drawn trees on this one won me over!

The 'Dec 2013' wood veneer is from Elle's Studio here. I decided to spray it with (retired) Overdue Mister Huey for that saturated red color, and I added a spritz of Shine Mister Huey for a bit of shimmer. I also glued a few gold sequins to make it more festive.

The spine is also very simple. A gold star sequin + Kelly Purkey alpha stickers + date stamp.

TITLE PAGE
Honestly, I was stuck on the title page for the longest time. There is so much inspiration out there with everyone's beautiful DDs that I was a bit overwhelmed and not sure how to start my own. In the end, I decided to go minimalist and use my letterpress supplies. I did a blind impression with the constellation letterpress plate and then used the alpha plates with red ink for the title. A few embellishments from the December Daily kit + various star sequins + washi tape from my stash were all I needed to finish this off and then I called it done :)

The 'twenty thirteen' chipboard didn't photograph very well, but it's a pretty gold foil and is from the December Daily kit.

I used thick letterpress paper (600 gsm) for my title page because I wanted to make sure that the blind impression would be deep and visible. Although it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted for the title page, I'm really happy with how it turned out!

INTRO SPREAD
Ever since my first December Daily (back in 2010), I always include an introduction to my book. Here's what I made for this year:

Love this sentiment I spotted on a Starbucks window, so I borrowed it for my intro spread :) The red thickers were from last year's Ali Edwards/SC DD kit, I think, as were the sentiments that are stamped diagonally.

The right side is colorful and you know how much I love color! I wanted to include a calendar, so I pulled out my Amy Tangerine calendar stamp I got ages ago. The yellow paper is Basic Grey and is leftover from working with the SC Blue Note kits. That 'December' wood veneer is from the SC 25 Days class kit and I inked it up with red pigment ink.  It adds a nice, bold color to this spread. I also used some supplies from the December Daily kit (sequins, pp, enamel dots, chipboard banner), a few of my own printables (Holly Jolly filler cards, Holly Jolly cut-outs), and bits from my stash.

This post is long enough for today! I'll be back soon to share more December Daily pages. Some of what I'm working on is exclusive to the current SC 25 Days class, but I will have some other DD pages to share here on my blog. Thanks for visiting!

PS. You can view all my past December Daily posts here.