December Daily® 2022 | Crafting With Krystal 01

Hi friends! Krystal here! With the launch of the December Daily® season, I’m excited to bring you a five week mini-series where I will be story planning using different components of the 2022 December Daily® collection each week. 

This mini-series is composed of a weekly Live video on the December Daily Facebook Group. This live event takes place each Thursday at 12PM ET throughout the month of September. As a special bonus for this series, I’m also creating a blog post to wrap up what we discuss that will include a recording of the video to watch if you are not a Facebook user.

This week, our product topic was December Daily® Stamps.If you missed the video this week, you can check that out below.

LET’S RECAP

In today’s video, I take you through eight different categories to think about when it comes to stamping. Spending some time looking at your stamp sets and contemplating the different ways you may want to use them can help to get your creativity going AND help ensure you remember to USE your products come December.

To go along with the eight different categories, I created stamping specific planning worksheets that you can download for your own personal use here. Let’s review each of the categories.

1. STAMP STORY TITLES/PROMPTS

Study your stamp sets and look for sentiments you can use to create titles for your layouts OR stamps that give you specific story prompts. These can help to spark stories throughout the month of December or create some intentionality going into the season. 

Here are some of my favorites from this year’s stamp collection:

I really love the MANY prompts you can find on the Holiday Messy Circles Stamp Set - including “Hot Cocoa Time”, “Most Loved Snacks”, and “How We Do Christmas”. These stamped circles would look so awesome as “bullet points” for journaling or as stand-alone prompts.

I am especially excited about the “Hot Cocoa Time”, “Most Loved Snacks” and “How we do Christmas” circles especially. I think these are all fantastic prompts for filler stories (or maybe setting the intention for a Hot Cocoa Day)?

The script titles at the top of the Blocked Holiday Phrases would fit perfectly at the top of a 3x4 or 3x8 page of journaling - making them an amazing story title! My favorite is “Traditions we hold near and dear”.

I love the “MERRY” title and the script “Joy” from the Merry Paislee Press Stamp. I think the “Joy” prompt would be so fun to stamp on a series of tags and to use those to tell different parts of the day that brought you joy.

To give you some additional ideas for how to use stamps as titles/prompts for your stories, here are some examples from my previous albums:

2. STAMP FILLER PAGES/QUOTES

Full stamped pages are a great way to use alpha and number stamps. You can create a graphic look by mixing colors and directions of your stamps, or create a large stamped quote with alphas. These are pages you can totally prepare ahead of time to put in when you don’t have a photo or you need a bridge between stories/albums.

In this year’s stamp collection, the Double Alpha Stamp Set is perfect for making quotes. Mixing the sizing and fonts of your stamps in a single quote can really help elevate it and add additional visual interest to your page. The fact that this stamp set comes with two fonts is genius!

When thinking about quotes, I like to jot down a few of my favorites prior to the start of December. This gets my creative juices flowing on how I might be able to use stamps with the quote… and oftentimes, I’ll just go ahead and make it ahead of time. That way the hard work is done before December hits.

Here an example of a filler page I created in one of my older albums:

3. STAMP PATTERN PLAY

A few of the stamp sets this year include patterns on them. While the patterns were created to layer over specific filler stamps (i.e. presents  or stars), you can also use these in unexpected ways. Try stamping them on embellishments like wood veneer or chipboard numbers, piece them together to create your own DIY pattern paper, or stamp them in clusters to make your own filler icon cards. Here are some of the patterns I may try:

While you might not think of using the Blocked Holiday Phrases as anything but a subtitle, looking at the way these are arranged on the page reminds me of a brick wall. I love the idea of using the blocked phrases to create a stamped chimney and then turning that into an interactive pocket.

The Presents set includes a ton of different patterns - stripes, stars, and hearts! These would be perfect for stamping on cards/paper to create your own patterned paper OR adding the stamped patterns on top of embellishments to spruce them up.

The Tag & Star Stamp stamp set is perfect for creating a beautiful background paper with the stars. Use all of the different sizes to create variety + visual interest on your page. I especially love the star outline shapes for patterns like this!

The Holiday Messy Circles set also includes a couple of adorable trees. I think it would be so fun to create a stamped pattern using both of them - perhaps using two different green inks and alternating them for a nordic kind of feel.

Here is an example of how I played with pattern stamps an older albums:

4. INTERACTIVE STAMP IDEAS

When looking at the stamps and thinking about how they could become interactive, my eye was immediately drawn to the Tags & Stars Stamp Set.

I love the idea of stamping the tags on a transparent element, layering two together with some fun sequins in the middle, and making my own shaker tags. How CUTE would that be?

The same stamp set could also be used to create a bunch of confetti stars. By stamping the stars onto a texture like vellum, they would have a see-through element and would be so fun shaking around in a 3x4 pocket!

A last idea I have is using this Presents stamp set. I think it would be super fun to stamp out the presents, add a ton of them to a full page (fill the page with presents), BUT to make the presents interactive flip-ups. Then, you could add a photo of what you purchased to give as gifts underneath. Using interactivity to hide photos or journaling is a great way to still document a story you’re not ready to share with everyone just yet.

I love working with interactive bits in my albums and can’t wait to give this a go again. In the example below from my 2021 album, I created tiny flip ups that I think would translate super well to the present stamp idea!

5. MIXED MEDIA

Now, I’m not an expert when it comes to mixed media… but I have dabbled in it a bit. I can tell you from that experience, that there is SO much you can do with stamps + mixed media to create a custom look for your album. All of the stamp sets have sentiments, icons, and more that would be super fun to play with using mixed media. 

Here are the different types that I have + showcased:

Acrylic Paint Texture Paste Nuvo Embellishment Mousse Glitter Embossing Powder Nuvo Drops And much, much more.

To see how some of these look in action, here are some past examples from my December Daily albums:

6. DIGITAL STAMPS

Digital stamps have a whole host of additional ways you can customize, alter, and make your stamps your own. Perhaps there is a stamp set you want to add on a photo but you’re worried about messing it up… printing the digital stamp directly on the photo is a great alternative. 

Using digital stamps also allows you to alter sentiments to work for you (i.e. changing a messy circle stamp from “still merry & bright” to “merry & bright”). Or, maybe you wish a certain stamp was a lot bigger (or smaller), you can make those adjustments with the digital versions too!

Image of Holiday Messy Circles - Shop Image

I think it would be super fun to blow one of the messy circles from the Holiday Messy Circles WAY up - making it fill up a full page - and then have it overlaid on top of a full page photo related to the prompt. Maybe the “Hot Cocoa Time” is sized to fit perfectly inside a top down view of a hot chocolate cup!

Here a past example of how I used digitals in this way from my 2020 album:

7. CUT FILES

Along the same lines as using digitals, one additional way you can use the digital version of these holiday stamps is to create your own cut files. If you have a die cutting machine like a cricut or silhouette, you can throw one of the PNG stamp files into the software, size it as big as you like, trace the file, and make it into a custom cut file.

I think the “MERRY” title from the Merry Paisley Press Stamp would make a super neat jumbo title if it was sized up and cut out. With a sentiment like this one, creating the cut file takes away the pain of having to fussy cut out a printed digital stamp. Also, you can then create multiple cuts to make the title feel like chipboard OR you could use a different textured paper for added interest.

Using the stars from the Tag & Star Stamp, you could make your very own stencil! Add a ton of those black stars onto a canvas in your design software, trace the whole thing and cut it out, then use the negative portion of the cut file (where the stars are holes the paper) and use that with mixed media to create a textured page.

The Holiday Messy Circles stamp set has SO many opportunities for cut files. Create one with any of the messy circles and add transparency behind it for a cool transparent element. Or, blow up those adorable woodland creatures, cut them out and add to a photo, journaling card, or transparency. I also love the idea of cutting the tree shapes with colored vellum!

Here’s an example of where I’ve used digital stamps to create cut files for in my 2021 album:

8. PAPER TYPES/INK COLORS

I love having a spot to jot down the colors I want to use for the season. My favorite colors from the AE Crafter's Ink collection for December Daily documenting are Redwoods, McKenzie, Willamette, and Honeyman. I’ll pull inks from other manufacturers as well so I have a more comprehensive list - including both pigment inks (like the AE inks) and dye inks.

And finally, that leaves me with listing out the different potential textures I can use my stamps on. There are SO many different possibilities for what you can stamp on - and this is REALLY where you can get super creative! Here’s a list of my favorites:

Matte Photo Paper (stamps will look practically computer printed) Canvas Paper (has a grainier look/feel) Fabric Paper (still textured, but not as grainy as canvas) Cork Paper Printable Transparency (make sure to stamp on the rough side) Vellum Colored Vellum Shrink Film (make your own charms) Clear Matte Sticker Paper White Matte Sticker Paper Patterned Paper (whatever you have on hand) Mixed Media Paper (things you’ve made - i.e. watercolor)

CONCLUSION

Seriously… stamps offer SO much room for creativity in your projects. They can provide you with story titles, fun ways of making your own embellishment, full page feature elements, opportunity for texture + dimension, and so much more.

I hope today’s video helps to get you thinking about the stamp sets you’ve added to your box this year AND the stamps you may already have in your stash.

I want to leave you with two challenges today to help get you going and set you up for stamping success this year:

Print off the Story Planning Worksheets (Stamp Edition, linked above) and fill out the different sections with ideas you have for your own projects. Then, keep this on hand when prepping your album or completing stories throughout December. Challenge yourself to pick one of the stamp sets you hope to use this year, and design an entire layout based on that one stamp. I think you will surprise yourself just how far the one stamp set will go and what a creative layout you will end with.

I’m going to be back again next week working with a different handful of products from the December Daily collection. I hope you’ll join me live on the December Daily Facebook Group this coming Thursday 9/08/2022 at 12PM! (The video will be recorded and I will include a blog post next week as well recapping our live session.)

Until then friends, have a great day!