Ali Edwards's Blog, page 15
November 22, 2024
In Case You Missed It | November 22
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
DECEMBER IS ALMOST HERE | JOIN US LIVE
Starting next week, we will be hosting two live December Daily®-themed conversations right here on our Instagram account. Our first chat will focus on preparation and planning and our second chat will focus on documenting. We'll chat about workflow, photos, stories, inspiration, and more. Join us at @decemberdaily live Tuesday, November 26th at 6pm ET. If you can't join us live, don't worry! All of our conversations will be recorded and available in our videos. Stay tuned for our full schedule of live conversations and head to the link in our bio to learn more about this project. Do you have some questions related to documenting you'd like the ladies to discuss? Share them in the comments and we'll cover as many as we can.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS | STORY PLAY READ
Mark your calendars for our next Story Play documenting week: READ! We'll be sharing daily content beginning Monday, December 9th. Shop the mini kit here.
EARLY BLACK FRIDAY PROMOTION
Black Friday has come early! Now is the time to tackle your wish list with our buy more save more promotion. From now until 11/21 save 25% off of orders up to $75 and 30% off of orders of $75+ using code EARLYBLACKFRIDAY. Some exclusions apply, please see below. Shop now via the link in our bio. Terms: Offer valid through 11:59pm ET on 11/21/24. Promo code must be entered at checkout. Some exclusions may apply, including gift cards. Not valid on any 2024 December Daily® products, digitals, and classes. Also not valid on Mix and Match Story Sparks Class and Mix and Match Kit. Excludes Alphas are Awesome Stamp Set #20 and the December 2024 3x4 Stamp Set. Cannot be combined with other codes. Not valid on previous purchase. Not responsible for forgotten or misused promo codes. Offer subject to change.
NEW CLASS | MIX + MATCH STORY SPARKS
We are excited to offer this new self-paced class that celebrates fun, creativity and playfulness in our memory keeping projects. The Mix + Match Story Sparks Class will feature a combination of story ideas and creative techniques in a variety of formats with the goal of providing you with product inspiration using the Mix + Match Kit as "story sparks" or jumping off points for their personal storytelling. Join contributors Ali Edwards, Sabrina Poole, Laura Wonsik, Jill White, Pam Baldwin and Jamie Leija as they share how they were inspired or prompted by the products (i.e., story spark) and then how they implemented those products in their final designs. Learn more and register here.
2024 DECEMBER DAILY® DIGITALS ARE HERE
The 2024 December Daily® Digitals are here! Kits, Stamps, Paper, and Embellishments...the same fun & festive designs as the physical @decemberdaily products, only in digital format. We love to see how this incredibly creative community plays with digitals! Resizing elements and cards, adding journaling to papers, creating cut files, transforming files into transparencies, the sky is the limit with digital files.
Want to learn more about creating with digital files? Our newest class December Daily® 2024 Hybrid Product Play is live.
Shop digitals here.
NEW DECEMBER DAILY® COMMUNITY SPACE
We invite you to join us in this free December Daily® community classroom. We know that many in the community don't care to share their December Daily® projects on social media. And for those that do, constant algorithm updates and unreliable hashtag searches make it challenging to connect with others or to find inspiration and encouragement. So with this in mind, we are excited to offer this space as a place to share your work with other memory keepers and storytellers who are participating in this special project. Register for free here.
2024 DECEMBER DAILY CLASSES
December Daily® Product Play | This + This + This workshop registration is open. More details on this year's workshop can be found at the bottom of this post (workshop begins November 5th).
December Daily® Hybrid Product Play workshop registration is available now.
December Daily® Prep Day is available for those who missed it. All content is recorded and available.
NOVEMBER REVEAL
This month we are revealing a new Story Kit™ theme: FAN! This month we are focusing on stories related to the theme of Fan. Every single one of us is a fan of something. We might be fans of a sports team or a movie franchise or a way of cooking. This month we are coming together to tell stories about what it's like to be a fan in this season (or any season) of life. In addition to our new Story Kit™ theme, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series.
Head to Ali’s blog post for all the details about this month’s release.
NOVEMBER DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
2024 PROJECTS + PRODUCTS SCHEDULE
As we continuing easing into 2024 we put together an overview of our schedule of projects + product releases for the upcoming year. We are sharing this as a way for you to plan, think about what you might want to participate in this year, and simply share some of the things we have coming up to help support + inspire storytelling. For the last few years we've followed a fairly similar cadence for our releases and our major projects will follow that release schedule again this year. Please note that, as you might imagine, this schedule is subject to change throughout the year based on a variety of variables. Find the post here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
November 21, 2024
Project Life® 2024 | Week 35
Happy to be jumping back into my Project Life project for 2024! My hope is to at least have all my photos printed out and added to pockets before December begins!
Today's spread doesn't have a video because it was one I worked on awhile back and I can't locate the inital parts of the video.
Here's a look at the spread for Week 35 (end of August/beginning of September):
As I've done all year when a new month begins, I've added an insert in order to add in the monthly card from the Stories By The Month kit.
In this spread I'm using pieces from the August and September Stories By The Month kits. I also pulled a card from my Stories By The Month stash (I organize past cards from those kits by month so I can easily find ones that relate to the particular month).
As I was looking at this spread on my table I knew that it needed something else (after I'd added some of those paper embellishments to photos). I decided to grab a white POSCA Paint Pen and write directly on three of my photos.
November 20, 2024
December Daily® 2024 | Foundation Page Idea From Ali
One of the ideas I've had on a sticky note for December Daily® 2024 is to do a "page full of words." I had specifically set aside this collection of chipboard words from the Main Kit and stacked them on top of one of the 10x8 transparencies a few weeks back and I've looked at it multiple times since then as I decided if I wanted to commit to this idea.
I'm so glad I did!
I ended up adhering them to the "tis the season" transparency and creating a shaker pocket with vellum on the back. I'll be using this page towards the end of the month, most likely alongside content (words + photos) for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
Use the concept of a "page of words" as a jumping off point for a page in your project. Your words might be stamped or you might use letter stickers or plastic words or a combination of things. Part of what's fun about using all these words together is that they are all the same width and their heights are varied depending on the number of letters in the word. Consider stitching chipboard words to the transparency. In the video I also talk a bit about how using a bunch of the same item (repetition) can be a fun way to approach the design of a project. You can use any of these chipboard words on their own or play around with a more "maximalist" approach. If you don't want the bulk of the chipboard you could also create something similar by using a die cut machine to cut out the words.
Let's take a look at the simple process video:
Here's a few images:
Here's a look at what the back looks like right now:
I'll be adding content here during December.
December Daily® Red Star Album December Daily® Main Kit (chipboard words) December Daily® 10x8 Transparency Pack White Dot Vellum Rolling Adhesive Basics via Amazon Storefront
November 19, 2024
December Daily® 2024 | Foundation Page Flip Through
Today I'm sharing a look at where I'm at with my Foundation Pages for December Daily® 2024!
I'm super excited for the storytelling to get underway!
Looking for more inspiration?
Check out the December Daily® archives here.
Access our $5 Prep Day content (all recorded + available now) for fun downloads and page ideas.
Participate in our Product Play: This + This + This workshop (all content recorded + available to view at your convenience) for page ideas.
If this is your first year or you want a general project refresher to get your mind + heart in the storytelling mood check out Storytelling With December Daily®.
Hybrid or digital documenter? Check out our 2024 December Daily® Hybrid workshop for tutorials + page ideas using this year's digital collection.
November 18, 2024
December Daily® 2024 | Foundation Page Idea From Ali
Welcome back to another foundation page idea for December Daily® 2024!
Story Three for me will start on the back of one of the pages I put together for our December Daily® Product Play 2024 workshop. You can still join that class for 12 unique ideas using product formulas from this year's collection. Get the details here (everything is recorded + available at your own convenience).
A couple things to note:
I knew I wanted to include the "magic is something we make" 10x8 paper in my 6x8 album. I love having a stash of numbers to pull from! This particular number is from a previous year. When it comes time to tell a story it will likely be something about how I'm making my own magic this season. Journaling will go on top of the vellum card with the gold foil 1-3. I may end up adding a photo or photos behind the vellum journal card or I might add a full page photo and add that behind the wrapped elements. Sometimes I love having really colorful pages and other times it's fun to limit myself. This one includes red, white, gold, and the light pink.
Let's dive in to the process video:
Here are additional images of this project:
This foundation page has multiple elements including the home for the number 3, a frame (from the Main Kit) + a vellum journal cards, the "magic is something we make" pattern paper, and a ribbon that ties those last sections together.
This page includes a combination of one of the 3x8 cards + a 3x8 transparency + vellum number + chipboard phrase. Loved getting that dove pattern paper in here too.
The second section of this foundation page opens up to reveal a Main Kit frame, the number journal card, and the pattern paper with ribbon adhered behind.
The scallop frame is added to the album using a page attacher (a 6x8 cut down in order to place it in the middle of the rings).
The red/cream ribbon is adhered behind the pattern paper and covered with white cardstock. I used the white cardstock as the base to hold the red scallop ribbon (it's one the front and the back).
Before deciding to use the scallop adhesive ribbon along the top and bottom of the "magic is something we make" I considered using a scallop edge punch. That's another thing you could try too!
Here's a look at the set up in the album:
Red Star 6x8 Album December Daily® Main Kit (digital available) December Daily® Die Cut Pages (digital available - includes Studio file) December Daily® Chipboard Set (digital available) December Daily® 10x8 Paper Pack (digital available) December Daily® 3x8 Transapency + Journal Card Set 6x8 Page Attacher Red Line Tape Red/Cream Ribbon May Arts Red Scallop Adhesive Ribbon (May Arts has some that's not red here) Fiskars Scallop Edge Punch Additional basics via my Amazon Storefront
November 15, 2024
In Case You Missed It | November 15
Happy Friday, friends! Welcome to the latest
In Case You Missed It. Just a reminder that this is a quick post that will happen every Friday afternoon with all the updates and links that have happened throughout the week. So, let's get to it:
MARK YOUR CALENDARS | STORY PLAY READ
Mark your calendars for our next Story Play documenting week: READ! We'll be sharing daily content beginning Monday, December 9th. Shop the mini kit here.
SAVE 20% SITE WIDE WITH CODE GRATEFUL20
Here's to finding those perfect pieces for your next story. Get 20% off sitewide throughout November with code GRATEFUL20 and enjoy. Check back weekly for new deals and promotions.Some exclusions apply.
NEW CLASS | MIX + MATCH STORY SPARKS
We are excited to offer this new self-paced class that celebrates fun, creativity and playfulness in our memory keeping projects. The Mix + Match Story Sparks Class will feature a combination of story ideas and creative techniques in a variety of formats with the goal of providing you with product inspiration using the Mix + Match Kit as "story sparks" or jumping off points for their personal storytelling. Join contributors Ali Edwards, Sabrina Poole, Laura Wonsik, Jill White, Pam Baldwin and Jamie Leija as they share how they were inspired or prompted by the products (i.e., story spark) and then how they implemented those products in their final designs. Learn more and register here.
2024 DECEMBER DAILY® DIGITALS ARE HERE
The 2024 December Daily® Digitals are here! Kits, Stamps, Paper, and Embellishments...the same fun & festive designs as the physical @decemberdaily products, only in digital format. We love to see how this incredibly creative community plays with digitals! Resizing elements and cards, adding journaling to papers, creating cut files, transforming files into transparencies, the sky is the limit with digital files.
Want to learn more about creating with digital files? Our newest class December Daily® 2024 Hybrid Product Play is live. Shop digitals here.
NEW DECEMBER DAILY® COMMUNITY SPACE
We invite you to join us in this free December Daily® community classroom. We know that many in the community don't care to share their December Daily® projects on social media. And for those that do, constant algorithm updates and unreliable hashtag searches make it challenging to connect with others or to find inspiration and encouragement. So with this in mind, we are excited to offer this space as a place to share your work with other memory keepers and storytellers who are participating in this special project. Register for free here.
2024 DECEMBER DAILY CLASSES
December Daily® Product Play | This + This + This workshop registration is open. More details on this year's workshop can be found at the bottom of this post (workshop begins November 5th).
December Daily® Hybrid Product Play workshop registration is available now.
December Daily® Prep Day is available for those who missed it. All content is recorded and available.
NOVEMBER REVEAL
This month we are revealing a new Story Kit™ theme: FAN! This month we are focusing on stories related to the theme of Fan. Every single one of us is a fan of something. We might be fans of a sports team or a movie franchise or a way of cooking. This month we are coming together to tell stories about what it's like to be a fan in this season (or any season) of life. In addition to our new Story Kit™ theme, we also have a brand new Stories By The Month™ kit and the next edition in our Alphas Are Awesome series. Head to Ali’s blog post for all the details about this month’s release.
NOVEMBER DIGITALS
The first Friday of every month we have a new digital release available in the shop. Play with scale, recolor objects, add journaling, print multiples…the sky is the limit when playing with digitals. Shop digitals here.
2024 PROJECTS + PRODUCTS SCHEDULE
As we continuing easing into 2024 we put together an overview of our schedule of projects + product releases for the upcoming year. We are sharing this as a way for you to plan, think about what you might want to participate in this year, and simply share some of the things we have coming up to help support + inspire storytelling. For the last few years we've followed a fairly similar cadence for our releases and our major projects will follow that release schedule again this year. Please note that, as you might imagine, this schedule is subject to change throughout the year based on a variety of variables. Find the post here.
As always, we’re so grateful to have you all as members of this community! Thanks for joining me today and have a great weekend!
December Daily® 2024 | Foundation Page Idea From Ali
Here's another quick set up foundation page for December Daily®!
One of my favorite parts of the collection this year were the Prompt Papers (digital available here). This page comes together quickly by pairing the "December Details" prompt paper with the green + white star pattern from the add on paper pack. Along the inside edge I added some green pom trim and on the folded piece I added the fun puffy color wheel from the Advent Calendar + a main kit paper circle tag + the letter pressed word "grateful" from the Specialty Journal Card Pack.
I'll be using this page in the later portion of the month and it will likely hold a mixture of words + photos in the white spaces. I'm anticipating it will be mostly photos of little things from the month.
I'm also noticing that I'm having fun folding up the 10x8 papers to fit into my 6x8 album (I've done it for a few of my foundation pages already).
Let's dive in to the video:
Here's a look via images:
I added the row of pom trim in between the two papers using red line tape. I also ran it through the sewing machine to add the red stitching (and I just like the look and texture of the thread). And layered circles for the win!
I can't wait to fill this with photos and a few words in December!
SUPPLIESStars 6x8 Album December Daily® Prompt Paper Pack (digital available) December Daily® Main Kit (digital available) December Daily® 10x8 Paper Pack (digital available) December Daily® Advent Calendar (puffy color wheel) December Daily® Specialty Journal Card Pack (digital available) Green Pom Trim 2 Inch Circle Punch Additional Basics from my Amazon Storefront
December Daily® 2024 | Special Guest Jen Wong
Hi friends! I’m happy to be here sharing about my plans to finish my 2023 album this year. I almost never finish my December Daily album within the month of December (or let’s be honest, January of the following year) and I know I’m not alone. December is a whirlwind for most of us, and by the end of the day, I’m often too tired and lacking brain power to work on my album. But that’s perfectly okay!
I don’t feel any guilt about it because I know that eventually it will get done. I enjoy working on the previous year’s album prior to December of the current year. In the months prior to December, the anticipation is in the air, there are new products to play with, and the holiday spirit is building up again!
When I first dusted off my 2023 album and supplies, I’ll admit that I felt that familiar twinge of overwhelm. But, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that big projects just need to be broken down into small steps, and got to work.
Accessing the Starting Point
I opened my 2023 December Daily album in August and found I had barely completed anything except a handful of pages. Here’s a look at a couple of them.
Since then, I’ve been plugging away ever so slowly, and have been making progress, bringing up my total to around twelve pages.
I usually take my albums until Day 25, but because in 2023, my family and I traveled to meet our extended family in Europe, I will go all the way until January 4, one day after we returned home, which feels like a good place to wrap up the album. That leaves over 20 pages left, which if I’m being honest, feels challenging.
The good news is that even though I didn’t finish many pages last year, I did complete the recording portion of the project. If you’ve heard me talk about my documenting process in general elsewhere, I have an established habit of journaling in an online note-taking app, and I found plenty of content for last December. This makes it easier to remember what happened last year and what stories I want to tell.
The other thing I did was to curate and edit my photos. I take a lot of photos during December (and even more while traveling), so there were a lot of photos to go through. But during December and January of last year, I took some time to upload all the photos from my camera and phone, and gather the photos from other people I might want to use (my partner, other family members, friends, etc). I have already done some basic editing on the photos and they are all tagged in Lightroom so I can easily see how many and which photos I plan to use each day.
When I picked the project back up recently, it wasn’t too difficult to go through my journaling and smaller set of photos to loosely plan which stories I would feature on each day. I jotted down any notes I wanted to remember if I had them. This is what my planning sheet looked like earlier last month.
With photos and a game plan, I am ready to create pages. As someone who likes working with Photoshop, I am the most efficient when I mock up pages in the software. I already print at home and have to resize photos to print, so it makes sense for me to bring the photos onto canvases so I can easily plan out the spread.
I don’t always plan everything down to the minute detail, but once I feel it’s good enough to create, I will go ahead and print the photos and put it together.
Though I love interactive elements and won’t say I am completely ruling them out, I probably will lean heavily on simple spreads and photo templates to get the project done. My focus is to create a home for photos and stories, and not so much on the products.
I also know that because I am trying to fit in 35 double page spreads, I can’t add too much bulk to my album. I try very hard to only have one album per year because I do not have the shelf space!
Here’s a look at a few of the new pages I’ve completed recently.
This one was mostly done actually, and I just needed to add the number to the page. I am not sure if I will add any more to it.
Using photo templates is an easy way to fit in lots more photos from an event.
I love little pockets for journaling cards and this one pulls out from behind a photo.
Using the same style of font and colors, I hope to make the album look consistent.
I added another pocket behind this photo template to hold a 4” x 6” journaling card.
Moving Forward: Getting it Done, One Page at a Time
From here, I’ll keep loosely mocking up pages on my computer, printing photos and digital elements in batches, and pulling out any physical supplies I’ll need. I create mini “kits” (also known as “piles on my desk”), so when I have a few minutes here and there, I can jump right in.
I don’t know if I will realistically get my album done by December but I’m not stressing it either. Any progress is one step forward in the right direction. This is supposed to be fun, and I already have enough deadlines in my regular job and life that I don’t need to put pressure on myself.
I’ll continue to share my progress on Instagram, so you can follow along if you’d like to see my December Daily spreads unfold! You can find me at IG: @circleplusarrow. Here’s to celebrating each step forward, small win, and creating homes for our stories!
November 14, 2024
December Daily® 2024 | Foundation Page Idea From Ali
Here's a fun idea to document this December: What's your coffee/drink order during the holiday season?
I'll be using this as Story 09 in my 2024 December Daily® album.
Let's dive in to the video:
Here's a closer look at this foundation page:
One of the things I love to do is look through pieces from this year's collection and identify ones that can act as a jumping off point for a story. This large vellum coffee cup die cut said, "Use me to tell the story of what drink people like to order in December." Ah yeah! Let's do it!
Along the top of the cup I used the gold puffy alpha to add the word "drinks" and the number nine sticker is from the 2024 Advent Calendar.
If you missed out on the physical version of the vellum die cuts you can get the digital here.
I started by using the vellum coffee cup as a template to cut seven additional coffee cups (one for each of my family) from plain vellum. It doesn't have to be perfect! On top of each piece of plain vellum I added a gold-rimmed white circle with our initial stamped on top using a typewriter stamp set.
You could document friends or extended family members drink preferences here too!
I went ahead and added my own order on the first page (using a Staedtler Lumocolor Pen) and then will add the rest when it's time to tell story nine.
Just waiting for their drinks to be added!
I might add a photo to go along with this page (to make it a spread) or I might just leave this as a no-photo story.
After I had all the pages ready to go I ran the entire pack through my sewing machine to connect it all together. You could use brads, staples, etc if you don't have a sewing machine.
December Daily® Stars 6x8 Album
December Memories 6x8 Transparencies
Large Vellum Pieces (digital available)
Gold Foil Puffy Alpha
2024 Advent Calendar (Red Number)
Plain Vellum
StazOn Ink
Typewriter Alpha Stamp Set
White Circles With Gold Rims
Staedtler Lumocolor Pen
Basics via my Amazon Storefront
November 10, 2024
Fan Story Kit + December 2024 Stories By The Month + Watercolor Scrapbook Kit
Today's the 10th of the month and that means a new
Story Kit, Story Stamp, and Stories By The Month kit.
This month we are focusing on stories related to the theme of
Fan.
Every single one of us is a fan of something. We might be fans of a sports team or a movie franchise or a way of cooking. This month we are coming together to tell stories about what it's like to be a fan in this season (or any season) of life.
Story ideas for this theme include:
What are you a fan of in this season of life? How about a super fan?
Being a fan isn't just about sports - there are all kinds of different fandoms out there. Tell a story of a time you participated in a fandom and what that looked like and felt like.
Do you have a story about being a fan through thick + thin? Is there a team that you have supported through highs + lows? What has that been like for you? STORY KIT™
The
Story Kit™ includes:
Here's a video overview of the
Story Kit™ and Add-On options this month:
STORY STAMP™
The
Stamp Set:
Here's a video overview:
Here's a look at what's included in the Digital Story Kit™:
Your digital kit and the classroom and any Add-Ons purchased will be available to you on the 12th once your card has been charged for the month.
This kit is also available to physical kit subscribers as an Add On each month.
Here are a few project samples from Ali:
Again, thanks so much for subscribing and/or considering our
Story Subscription program! If you have any questions about this program please let us know below in the comments.
Here is a full look at the kit this month:
And a video overview:
This subscription is a great option for those who are looking to tell more calendar/everyday life sorts of stories.
Our Digital Stories By The Month™ kit is now called Inspiration By The Month™. With this subscription you receive access to the Inspiration By The Month™ classroom and the digital kit.
This kit is also available to physical Stories By The Month™ kit subscribers as an Add On each month.
This 6x8 stamp set is available to subscribers to add to their box during the Add On period and
also offered in the shop for anyone else.
This will be our last quarterly Scrapbook Kit! The theme this time is watercolor. Here's a look at the kit:
Here's an overview of the kit:
Don't forget that the Quarterly Scrapbook Kit includes the digital kit as well.
