Apparently I need tea to blog.

I meant to blog all weekend but never found the time to write. I thought this was just because I'd been trying to get some (secret) holiday projects done (they make poor blogging material) but now I wonder if it was just that I never got around to sitting down with a nice hot cup of tea.

I wanted to share my December Daily foundation with you. I heard about this project a while ago (September? October?) reading Ali Edwards's project blog. I've been finding myself more drawn to scrapbooking recently and Ali's blog is full of very approachable inspiration. I loved the idea of having a special album to capture moments of our Christmas celebrations and especially the idea of having most of the work done beforehand.

There isn't really any set structure for the project (other than the story a day idea) but a big project is always easier when someone else has done some of the work for you so my foundation album is very similar to Ali's and follows her suggestions for page sizes and the transparencies. I used her 6x8 overlays to print my daily pages.

I couldn't find pre-made covers I liked and kind of wanted them to be more personal anyway. They ended up being little quilts with cardboard instead of batting and a raw edge on the binding (the fabric is held in place with fusible webbing). When I walked into the sewing room with my pieces of cardboard I had some different fabrics in mind and plans to include a chipboard frame on the front but supply levels directed me elsewhere on the fabrics and I like what I ended up with. I'm not sure if I'll include the frame around the embroidery; I kind of like the way it looks right now.

The inside of the album is organized just like Ali's: printed transparencies separate pages and each day of the month gets a two page spread.

Some of the transparencies are more Christmasy than others (this is the day I plan to put up the tree) but that works for me because I know not everything we do will be "Christmasy".

I have a few flocked transparencies. They're really awesome.

Something I really liked in Ali's album were the baseball card pages. She has them standing in for printed transparencies on some days and tucks things into the pockets before sewing them shut. I didn't want to go out and buy special pages just to cut them up so I made my own from some page protectors I already had (generally used for storing knitting patterns). I drew guidelines with a wash away marker; cut slits by sliding a mini-healing mat inside the pocket and cutting with a craft knife and ruler; and sewed along my guidelines to create the pockets and binding strip. As I put things into the pockets I'll sew them shut.

You'll notice that there are no numbers or other embellishments attached to my transparencies yet. Our advent calendar is full of little numbered cards with activities on them (turn on lights, put up tree etc.; if I'd thought of it I'd have taken a picture of them before the light went away to give you a better idea) that I intend to sew onto the transparencies as the days go by.

My album will go right up to the thirty-first since lots of our family Christmas activities will be happening in the week after Christmas. I'll have to do something different to number those days but I haven't decided what yet (in fact, it only just occurred to me that the advent calendar will run out on the 24th).

You can see what other people are doing by visiting the Flickr group. It is so full of wonderful inspiration. I love to see so many different variations on one idea.

P.S. Amy and I saw this guy when we walked downtown for coffee last Thursday. It's a little hard to tell from the picture but he's only about 3 metres (10 feet) away from me. He wasn't too concerned about us, especially once we'd stopped walking, but decided it would be better to climb over the mound of snow than get too close to us on the path.