December Daily- Days 1-4 Revisited

So just five measly days in to December Daily and I already decided to scrap my entire album and start over!! I originally decided to do this album digitally because I knew it would be faster than the hybrid album, and it would have a better chance of getting done. However, once I got into it, I kept looking at Ali's album, and I was so jealous. I really wanted to go hybrid. So, I took what I had, changed it up a bit, and am moving forward hybrid style!

Here's the basic design of my album: each day is a two page spread, with one large photo on the left, and journaling and a smaller photo on the right. This will vary from day to day, but that is the basic idea. I decided on the 8.5 x 5.5 album size, and chose this album from We R Memory Keepers in Real Red.

 

I will put each spread into these page protectors that I got on Amazon.com. 

So before I share with you the re-made pages, I must first share a little caveat to what I'm about to show you. The pages shown here have been printed onto thick cardstock using my color laser jet printer. While I love the way my printer prints, I do not love photos printed by a laser jet. So I will be reprinting all of the photos by a photo lab, and then I will come back and replace the photos that are printed onto cardstock with the real thing. So basically I am printing these out onto cardstock just to show on my blog each day. But wait you say- Isn't that a huge waste of expensive color toner? Um- yes. Yes it is. But I really can't wait to share my pages with you, so oh well. ;-) 

And now for my pages:

Day One:

On the right page, you will find a close up of my daughter and her Tootsie Roll (to be re-printed), some paper strips stapled to the layout, a popped up date stamp that I printed and punched out with my 1-inch circle punch, and the title "Advent" gussied up with Stickles Glitter. The papers and the date stamp are from my Very Vintage Christmas kit.

On the left side will be a picture of our advent calendar, with the title "The Countdown" printed directly onto the photo. See that dull I've-been-printed-on-cardstock look? Yeah- that will be going away. ;-)

Day Two:

 

Close up of the left side: I used the music sheet paper from my Very Vintage Christmas kit, and created the title with the font Carnivale Freakshow. I applied a red glitter style to the font in photoshop, and added a stroke to help the letters stand out from the page. After I printed the page, I used red Stickles glitter to add some real live sparkle to the page. 

On the right side, I used a picture of my new favorite Christmas album, accented by some paper strips from my Very Vintage Christmas kit. 

 

On the bottom, I created a little flag with the number two, and stapled it to the layout. Of course I enhanced the 2 with Stickles glitter (as a forewarning- you will probably see glitter on every single page I do for this album. I love glitter). 

Day Three: 

On the right side of the page, I kept it simple with just some journaling a paper strip, and a printed tag from my Very Vintage Christmas kit. I added some red bakers twine to the tag, and used dimensional stickers to pop it up off my page. 

On the left side, I am focusing on a photo of my girls sitting with Santa. This entire page is actually going to be replaced by the professional photo that was taken that day, but I am still waiting for the full resolution photo from the photographer. Instead, in the meantime I am using a not-so-great iPhone shot from my husband's phone, but you get the idea. I created the photo overlay and added it to my page. 

Day Four:

I'll be honest- this is not my favorite layout. I may change it up before I finish the album for the year. But, in the meantime, this page consists of more papers from my Very Vintage Christmas kit, a red glitter star from the same kit that I added the number 4 to in photoshop, applied a glitter style to the 4, and then added some real live glitter after I printed and cut out the star. I popped the star of the page with dimensional adhesive.

On the left side we have another full page photo of my and my girls in front of the tree after it was all done. I designed the photo overlay and added it to my page.

I also must apologize for the crappiness of these photos. I'm having a love/hate relationship with my DSLR right now. I feel like all my photos are grainy and flat. I keep switching the lens, switching between auto and manual, changing up the lighting- but I just can't seem to get it right. I'm frustrated with that thing.