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I have a tendency to leave things unfinished just before the end. I'm breaking that cycle now, first I finished my Me: The Abridged Version a few weeks ago and now, yes ladies and gentlemen, I finished my December Daily 2010!

I'm leaving to spend Christmas and New Year's at my parent's tomorrow so yesterday was my last chance to finish the album before the end of this year. And I did it!

I did five pages before dinner, and finished the final five by midnight. Well... technically, "The End" rolled out of my Silhouette exactly at midnight. Kind of fitting, huh?

It only took me about a year.... Ahem, let's just try to do better for this year's DD.

I've also been using my Silhouette more. I usually search my dies for what is in my head for what I want for a page but I've often not been able to find what I want, and then I'd think, hey, wait a minute, I can make anything I want using the Silhouette! It started with the "2011" on my December Daily 2011

For the DD2010 I've done three elements with the Silhouette, and I've also made a birthday card with pennants cut using the Silhouette.

You'll see another trend in the photos above. For this year's December Daily I started taking pics using Vignette (A sort of Instragram/Hipstamatic for Android) and decided that it would be fun to use those types of pics for my December Daily. Something about the grainy and grungy quality of the shots and edges fits really well with the album I have in mind for this year.

Here's a few shots I made for this year's DD

Well, I have to go now and pack, so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So I did a December Daily last year. You wouldn't have been able to tell from my blog because, well, uhm, I didn't finish! I wasn't going to scrap each day as it was, so I was planning on sharing the album when it was done. Which didn't quite happen.

Now it's December 2011 and I knew when I saw The "25 days of Christmas" line by Simple Stories that I wanted to make another one this year.

Another motivator for me to get going is that apart from the Smash books I blogged about earlier I also am now thinking very hard about doing Project Life next year. I have more or less settled on doing that digitally, after finishing my "Me: The Abridged Version" (MeTAV) digital book which is now in production at Blurb. And then there's One Little Word which I started early this year but never got beyond the first month, thanks mostly to my year not going quite as planned, which I'm now thinking of trying again next year, and I'm also seriously considering joining Cathy's Move More, Eat Well class.

So I had to make a pact with myself, to at least finish last year's December Daily and get well on the way with this year's as well, before the end of the year. It felt really good to finish MeTAV, although that's another project I know there will be a sequel to, I even started a group on Flickr for everyone doing or having done a MeTAV album. Anyway, finishing = good and I want to do a lot more of it.

So, today, I'm sharing my December Daily 2010 as it is now, and my new December Daily 2011 cover. And check back with me by the end of the year, I will be showing you the last page of that 2010 album!

I'll only show you a few pages here, but I can tell you that I got up to day 21 so far.

And now, here's my just finished cover for 2011

The cover size is 9" x 7", I used the chipboard that came as packaging in the QuicKutz magnetic books for storing Cookie Cutter dies. Papers and stickers from 25 Days of Christmas by Simple Stories and Basic Grey Basics line. "daily" letters are velvet thickers, and 2011 was cut using my Silhouette. I've used Fiskars and EK success border punches for the top and bottom borders.

I've made this cover using this video tutorial by Following the Paper Trail for making a 3-ring mini album.

The rings go through holes punched in the spine, and are embellished with ribbons on the outside.

This was a really fun cover to make. I love how it looks now and can't wait to start adding pages. Like last year, I've chosen not to make foundation pages up front, because I like to adapt my page to the photo(s) I add, so I won't be done quite as fast as others.

Oh yes, who would've thunk it. I've actually gotten into this Smash Book idea.

I'm a clean & simple scrapbooker. Give me some paper and I can make something with just a few pieces. And pretty much all of it will be straight, and pretty flat on the page.

So the idea of a smash book where you just, well, smash stuff in should be a bit frightening to me. It's not. I think the idea is pretty genius. I have a box full of boarding pass stubs, theater tickets, passport pics, and all of it I know will never make it into a scrapbook album. But now I will have a place to put them!

I'm actually not sold on the actual smash books, I'd rather make one myself.

Or three. Because what I would like to do is one that contains random bits like the stubs and tickets and other fun things that you might gather up in everyday life, one containing inspiration ideas like cutouts from IKEA catalogs (shudder, gasp! Cut into IKEA catalogs?? Yes, that's why I get a second copy :) Which are all still intact right now so finally time to get out the scissors!) and so on, and the third will be for quotes, which I'll mostly be printing off Pinterest

Because I'm making my own I'll have to figure out what to use. I have a stack of scrapbook paper that I'm fairly sure I won't be using for albums or layouts anymore (although I did give a bunch of paper away a couple of years ago, I finally do some "use it or lose it" and now I regret it. I'll never be able to throw anything away now!) and some other novelty paper that's sitting in the basement in a moving box. I'll be throwing those through the paper cutter and the Cinch.

But I have found a book, or album that I couldn't resist for this purpose, at one of my favorite places. IKEA.

I'll give you one guess which color I bought it in.

The pages are white. Not so much fun then, but the coil binding is Cinch/BIA compatible so I figured I could dismantle it and put some of my own paper in. But then I saw this pin. Now, this is actually a page from the blue smash book by K&Co, but it looks stamped and either someone thought it was, or figured that you could make that yourself using stamps. That's pretty genius. I would still have to take the coil apart to be able to stamp all the way to the edge of the paper, but this would be a fun way to play with stamping.

I haven't decided yet which of the three smash books this one's going to be though. I have other projects to finish first anyway, but my box of smash book things is filling up pretty well in the mean time.

First I'm off to finish my "Me: The Abridged Version" album, finally. Started over a year ago but now I'm really motivated to get it finished before the end of November. And after that, finish last years December Daily album, start this year's December Daily album, and then I'll restart One Little Word. Oh, and I'm thinking of doing Project Life next year too. Argh. I might be taking on too much here.

Edit: Ok, so I'm supposed to be finishing my MeTAV but I couldn't resist. I have a gazillion stamps that are just great for this idea that I've practically never used. So here's my first attempts at stamping the IKEA album pages.