December Daily 2011- prep work

This will be my second year creating a December Daily album and I have to say, I couldn't be more excited. (Cue music- "Its The Most... Wonderful Time... Of The Year"). If you're unfamilar with the concept, definatly check out www.AliEdwards.com. Ali is the pioneer of the December Daily and does amazing things every year.
So anyway... After thinking about my 2010 album and what kind of album I wanted to make this year, I really knew 2 things: 1. That I wanted to use more fun colors (last year's album was mostly black, grey and red) and 2. I wanted to try a square format. I also remembered that my absolute favorite page from last year was when I used an entire 5x7 photo as the page itself. So I figured I'd work with that 7" dimension and create a 7" square album. Here's the cover I created for the album. I started with a 7.5"x7.5" (slightly larger than the 7" square) piece of thick cardstock (7 Gypsies), added holes for the binding, rounded the corners, covered 1 side with self-adhesive felt (to give it some cusion) and then I wrapped that same side with fabric I sprayed with a spray adhesive. I cut the fabric about 1/2" larger than the chipbaord and tucked the edges around. I coverd the inside face of the covers with another sheet of self-adhesive felt and added oversized grommets to the holes.

Here is the album as it stands now. I'm using 4 binder rings as the binding. I'll add the date and some kind of embellishment at some point:


Here is the inside of the front cover, where the felt is:


I spent a good amount of time looking at different manufacturer's 2011 Christmas releases and finally decied that the "Holly Jolly" collection by Echo Park would be perfect. I love the color combinations and all the adorable patterns. It'll be a nice change of pace from my album last year. I pre-cut all my papers down to 7"x7"" and rounded the corners:


To make the most of the Echo Park Holly Jolly collection's bright & cheerey patterns, and to accomodate that 5"x7" spot I wanted, I used my patterned paper scraps to cut 2"x7" strips. I plan to attach them to each pair of facing pages either on the outside edges, inside edges, or along the bottom. I'm going to alternate a solid cardstcok or glitter cardstcok page with a patterened page, so each pair of facing pages has 1 of each. The 2"x7" strips will match though, kind of like book-ends. Here's a loose-laid example:


I decided that I liked interjecting some surprise "transparency" pages last year, so I grabbed some scrap acetate packaging, trimmed them to 7"x7" with rounded corners and used spray-adhesive to adhere some Ki Memories die-cut paper to them:


I also wanted a few smaller "pages" here and there, to allow me to add more small pics on busy days, or for more journalling. After giving it some thought I created these large tags:


I'm not sure if I'll add them in pairs or just 1 here and 1 there, top or bottom, but with the rings positioned where they are, I'm open to both options. Here's what they look like inserted into the album:


I also pre-cut some mini tags for journalling (I added some old Cosmo Cricut paper that coordinated and had some good journalling lines), and a stack of 4.25"x4.25" white cardstcok for matting 4" square photos. I won't use that photo format on ALL the pages, but it at least gives me the supplies to create some fast pages during a hectic month. So here's where I'm at. It's been a lot of fun doing all the prep, now I'm just waitng until December!: