Ali Edwards's Blog

December Daily® 2015 | Day Three Give Sunday | 48

December Daily® 2015 | Day Four + Documented Life Project

Welcome to
December Daily® 2015 | Day 04.

Today I'm sharing my
December Daily® story/album pages in conjunction with a fun collaboration called the Documented Life Project. If you are new to the Documented Life Project go over and check it out (here's a link to what they are focusing on over there for 2016 - "The unPlanner"). If you are looking to spread your wings artistically you should definitely check out this fantastic community of mixed media creatives who are documenting their lives via techniques rooted in color, texture, words, images, etc. If you are new to December Daily® I encourage you to check out my Project Page and watch a short video and check out my archives for this project.

Here's the theme, challenge, and prompt I was given for the
Documented Life Project:

December Theme: Storytelling with the Written Word
Challenge: Words front and center
Prompt: Life is a book. We fill the pages.

As many of you know, I like creative constraints and guidelines so it was fun to approach my story today with those ideas in mind. As many of you also know, words "front and center" are a big part of my personal memory keeping process.

I took this prompt into account as I decided what story to tell
and how to tell it. I love the "we fill the pages" portion of the prompt and it actually spurred me to go get the rest of the garland I needed to wrap around my front porch with the idea that magic is something we make. We don't always get to choose what story we step into, but we get to choose how we respond to it and how we move forward from there.

How are you figuratively filling the pages of your life's book? Are you living a "good" story and what in the world does that even mean for you?

I know many of you out there face challenges this month - personal, emotional, attitude, etc.
I get it. It can be hard to document or look for the good when you are feeling not good. One of the things I've learned over the years, and I regularly remind myself, is we really do get to choose what our own attitude is towards any given situation and towards our life in general. It's not always easy to choose the positive, but it's possible. One moment at a time, one day at a time.

This season I'm choosing to the fill the pages of my life by seeking out and creating magic for myself. I'm not waiting for someone else to make it happen. I'm writing my own story and filling my own pages by the choices I make.

A step-by-step video tutorial that includes more thoughts and a closer look at the process of building this story is included below or you can watch it on my
YouTube channel.

Here's my
foundation page for Day 04:

And here's what it ended up after adding my photos and words:

Ah, yeah is right.

I love how this turned out.

First thing I want to talk about today is self-portraits.
DO THEM. Make them happen for yourself.

I took this shot after I was done putting up the garland around the porch. I held
my big camera out in front of my face and took about eight shots. I wanted to see myself in this story and I wanted to capture how I was feeling in the moment. Which was happy and good and proud of myself for taking action on creating magic for myself.

For editing this photo (and the enlargement) I used the
RadLab filter Bullet Tooth (I use RadLab as an add-on within Photoshop) and it was printed here at home using the Epson PictureMate PM400.

On top of the photo I added a "finding my way" stamp from the Roots Story Kit™ and a
Silhouette cut of "joy" from the Storytelling with December Daily® workshop package. The little star was included with the Jasmine Jones December Daily® Mini Kit.

Just a short bit of handwritten journaling included on the 3x4 card today that gives a few more details of the story about making my own magic. I used a date stamp + the
gold tinsel embossing powder (again) for the date.

For this page I used
Educational Insights See & Stamp stamps + black Staz On to stamp my words onto vellum. Going big is fun. This can also simply be done using fonts on your computer and printing onto the vellum.

Think of a message you could include - something that you are working on, a message to yourself, a favorite quote or song, etc.

In addition to self-portraits that show your face, get some of you in action. It's all a part of the story of you who are right now. I set my camera up on a small table I took outside with me and played around with different shots using the timer on my camera.

On top of the printed photo (sized again to the same size as the outside of the page protector) I adhered another Silhouette cut from the workshop. I dotted three of the "i's" using the small gold stars in Jasmine's kit.

Remember, this is your story.
BE IN IT. Via your words and via your images and via the choices you make.

Here's a look at all three parts outside the album: