Well! The photos I ordered to put in my December Daily minibook arrived on Monday, and last night, I incorporated them into the already completed pages and finished the pages for the last few days of the year. It actually is probably weird to keep calling this December Daily, since it ended up going from the day before Thanksgiving through January 2. But that’s okay, because that’s how I define the holiday season, anyway. I had a bit of an almost-disaster last night when my tape runner ran out just as I was about to put a ton of photos back to back.. but the trusty ol’ glue stick filled in perfectly. I forgot how much more messy glue sticks are. (Even worse? I was at the craft store earlier in the evening and deliberately didn’t buy a refill because I figured I must have done that already.) Anyway! As I’ve said before, putting this together in this way meant that my dining room table was covered in paperscraps for the entire month+, but that’s what made it easy to keep updating it every few days. I’m not sure that I really prefer the whole adding photos at the end, but it did feel good to work on it more steadily over a longer period of time. Then again, the built-in holiday color scheme and limited supplies made that easier, too. I updated a few of the previous photos with updated shots now that I have added photos – you can see all of the pages over here. And here are the last few pages.

Yes, I’m still going, and still loving this project. Updates in smaller chunks seem so much more manageable, if you can get past having a giant mess on one’s dining room table all month. (Oh, to have a craft table…) It’s hard to see this (for me at least) without photos; I’m planning one final post to update the pages that will have photos in the end. It has been a big help to me to focus on the happy, festive, holiday things, especially this week in spite of the disaster!blizzard!pocalypse of 2010. It has been a crappy week, but looking at these photos, it is a lot easier to remember that a hell of a lot of fun stuff has happened, too. (Last week’s update.)

I have hinted a few times about my secret December craft, and while that was probably obnoxious, I really wanted this to be a surprise. This seems surprising even to me, but for all of my crafting, I have never made my own Christmas cards, and this year I wanted to change that.

And then I saw a post on Apartment Therapy all about linoleum printing and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

See, back in 7th grade, one of our art class projects was linoleum printing, and I had so much fun with it that I kept my carved linoleum block and still have it sixteen years later. For real. Why I kept it for all these years, I’m still not really sure, especially since I was ruthless when it came to childhood mementos when I moved last summer.

Anyway, the AT post told me what tools to buy, and I found most of them at a local art store, and bought the rest online. The cards and envelopes came from Paper Source, and the stamp on the inside was from AC Moore, after I had bought a more expensive one at PS; I couldn’t resist a snow theme.

I stamped about 30 cards in an hour or two one weeknight, and the only issue was that I came veeeery close to running out of space to lay each card out to dry overnight.

I stamped the insides of the cards and the envelopes another night, and was really disappointed in the white stamp pad, as well as the cheap white gel pens that I bought and didn’t end up using. Oh well.

And of course I had to washi tape the envelopes closed.

All in all, I am so, so happy with how these turned out, and I would do it again. (And I will definitely be linoleum printing again; perhaps here is where my future internet fortune lies!)

This project continues, although I have to admit two things: 1. While working on it in short bursts is surprisingly easy (as long as you leave your craft crap out so you don’t have to set up/clean up every time, making these books without having photos printed is tough. It’s hard to imagine what I want the finished book to look like, or figure out leaving space or blank pages for photos without having them in my hands. 2. I totally messed up because I was rushing, and now Tuesday and Wednesday of this week are totally out of order, and it’s bumming me out. Oh well; there’s nothing to do to fix it so I might as well just live with it. (Last week’s update)

Here’s your patented weekly update on my December minibook’s progress. Don’t mind that blurred out page; that’s part of my super sekrit December craft, which I’ll be posting once it has made its way toward the recipients! (I really love stashing secret bits inside the envelopes, and making stripes out of washi tape. Seriously). (Last week’s update.)

I’ve been steadily working on my December book (here are the first week’s pages), and I am enjoying the idea of posting updates on Wednesdays. Since I don’t have a photo printer, I’m going to wait until the end of the month to order the photos for this book, so some of these pages are not complete, but I’m loving how it’s coming together so far.

I bought a holiday minibook kit last year from Elise Blaha’s shop and never used it. I’ve seen a lot across the crafting interwebosphere about December Daily albums, and frankly at first I thought the idea of trying to work on any sort of minibook every day would be way too much. But then I finished my summer minibook, and it felt like doing a daily book for a short period of time would be an interesting challenge. It’s more journaling and less photos (although maybe I’ll add a few photos at the end, it wouldn’t seem right without them somehow), and here’s what I have so far. (Keep in mind that for me, the holiday season pretty much starts with Thanksgiving Eve, I mean, why wait until December?)