December Daily® 2023 | Special Guest Kristin Ladstrom

Hello friends! 

I’m Kristin and I’m here to share how I batch made last year’s December Daily album! I hope it can give you some ideas if you feel like this is an approach that would work for you.

December 2022 didn't quite turn out how I had expected. Nothing serious, but I spent the first two weeks of December working a lot after an already stressful autumn, and then I came down with the flu. I was well enough by the 24th (Swedish Christmas!) to spend Christmas with my partner and parents, but then needed to spend the last week of December mostly resting. I was still taking photos (although not every day) and journaling, but I missed out on most of the fun December activities I had hoped to do. 

I had decided to do a 10x8 album, as I loved that format in 2021, but I only made two spreads during December. After that I just wasn't feeling it ... My December had been so meh! But NOT making an album wasn't an option for me - I love this project too much. And I truly believe that stress and illness are worth documenting, too; not to mention the lovely bits that were also still there, in between the hard or boring parts.  So I let the project rest - this is what I do when inspiration isn’t flowing. And then, in April, I unexpectedly had a free weekend, when something I was going to do got cancelled. With all that free time, I decided to, for the first time, batch make a December Daily album! I switched to a 6x8 album as I didn't have enough photos I loved to want a 10x8 album, and designed the whole base of the album in one go on my computer.

For me that meant: 

1. I started by deciding what story I would tell for each day (referring back to my journal), roughly how much space that story would need, and whether I wanted page protectors or not. I also decided what photos I wanted to use for each day and in which sizes. 

2. Then, I laid out the designs of each spread in Photoshop. I added the photos where they should go, and used white squares to stand in for the blank spaces (pocket pages) where journaling or patterned paper would go later. Here’s what a spread could look like in Photoshop at this stage:

3. After that I realised that I wanted to simplify the decision-making and use a cohesive design for the journal cards - more on that in my next blog post!

4. Then I wrote all the journaling. Usually I strive for a mix of handwritten and printed journaling in my albums, but for this batch making process, writing it all out on the computer was faster and simpler. I based the journaling on my personal journal from December (which I write in every day anyway). 

5. Then I printed everything out in one big printing bonanza.  

A few weeks later I had a crafty day booked with a local friend, and then I spent a few hours cutting out all the photos and cards I had printed (I tend to assemble everything on A4 photo paper sheets and print many things at the same time), putting them into pocket pages in the correct places (referring to the layouts I did in Photoshop - those decisions were already made), and gluing full page photos back to back.

Over the next few months, I spent a couple of hours here and there embellishing and adding details like this flipout above, until I felt done. This part was the least "batch making" type part. Embellishing takes the longest for me, and I need to let it take a while, otherwise I don't enjoy it. At this point, do whatever brings you the most joy! 

So there's my process! In my next blog post, I will go into some design concepts that I chose to make this process simple and enjoyable for me. Hopefully they can give you an idea or two too!