I know it is only a couple of days after Thanksgiving, but if you could see my house right now, it is completely decorated with Christmas music playing 24/7. I absolutely love this time of year!
Since we’re only a few days away from December 1st, I thought I would get started on and share some of my December Documented album. Before we dive into the pages, here are personal guidelines for building these foundation pages
- Keep it simple. Creating something in advance keeps the project from feeling overwhelming, but keeping it basic allows me to make changes and get creative in the moment.
- Be flexible. Removable adhesive is my best friend for these pages. In the past, I’ve ruined many good products by creating something too far in advance that didn’t fit my story come that particular day.
- Don’t get too far ahead. I’ve only created the first week of foundation pages by design. For me personally, creating the whole month in advance leaves me too boxed in and takes some of the creative fun out of the project.
Now, with that being said, here are my first week of December Documented pages:
One of my flaws is that I have a fear of creating title pages for albums. Something about it seems too permanent, so I almost always leave that to last. Instead, I took one of the documentor cards that I thought would make an excellent inside cover, scanned it, then blew it up in Photoshop to be 6×8. I love the result!
My right side contains a 3×4 grid. I used two documentor cards, leaving the one in the upper corner as is, then added a die cut to the lower one. I plan on using this card to journal about our Christmas tree.
On the back, I added the a vellum star to pull in some pink to the “Creating a List” card. Because I liked the back of the stripped card so much, I left that as is and embellished it by using a flair badge and a puffy sticker to balance out the pink and black.
The left hand side using a different page configuration with two 6×4 slots. I left the bottom for a picture and cut up some of the exclusive 12×12 paper. On top, I used a horizontal card with a bit of washi tape to hold it in place. Again, I’m very aware of how both sides of my pages look next to each other so I try and keep my color scheme cohesive.
Again, I really liked the backside of the paper, so I left it as is (not only does this save product, it saves space too!) and added some additional die cuts. My plan is to put an instax photo or a smaller photo between the tree and the title.
The right hand side uses a stripped card with a fawn die cut and a phrase die that says “happy smiling faces”. The bottom left card is so colorful that I left it as is and love how it pulls all the other colors from both sides of the layout.
Finally, I kept the backing of the same card and decided to play off the red’s for this side of the spread. I really went crazy with the embellishments here by pulling out the ornaments and holly. If these look a bit haphazard, it’s because they are stuck down using my removable glue so they tend to move a bit. When the time comes, I’ll stick these down permanently in a more intentional fashion. To keep it balanced, I used the Falalalala card which has a white background and popped on another cut word strip.
Here’s a process video showing how I put together these pages:
That’s it for my first week! The colors in this November kit make my heart swoon every time I look at them. I had so much fun matching these up for my album. Your turn! Do you have your own guidelines for your foundation pages or do you prefer to wing it?
