Out of the stalls and cantering along ...

Hello there and welcome! I am delighted to see you this sunless and dreich day :). The much-loved Littlies and Biggies have come and gone (sigh!), and I'm just catching up with myself, with some inspirational posts to gee me along. Education since 1800, bought in a charity shop, has had a transformation. And a slimming down. Plus a blanking out. Julie's excellent instructions (in her series Fortune and Geese favour the Bold) have been avidly pored over and followed ...

Next up, a few splashes of colour and texture, and some serendipitous layers when accidentally-stuck-together pages were eased gingerly apart ...

There were a couple of minutes humming and hawing about the navy-blue cover, but a few coats of white gesso with a rather pitted roller and it looked good enough to go, at least for now ... (Boldness requires quick decision-making!).

All that remains is to actually record the days of December in it, of course.  Sian's pastel approach chimed with me, so if you are hoping for a traditional red and green, look away now! A dollop of a Photoshop action called Antique Color pulls these mismatched photos together, and a tissue-thin polvorón wrapper saved from last Christmas, still scented with cinnamony biscuit, serves as an impromptu envelope for Day One ...

And feeling quite giddily carefree at Julie's remonstration to 'Kill your darlings' and 'Treat those papers less like hoarded treasures locked in a vault and more like seasonal vegetables', I delved into my folder of scraps, hoicked out the first yellow which vaguely matched, and chopped it up recklessly, working without a plan ...

Envelopes and flaps, fold-ins and -outs holding screen shots of text messages and emails, and blocks of photos serving as no-fuss pockets - it's all in here somewhere. Simple, fast and improvised is the order of the day up here, as there are pages to catch up on ... Please tell me I am not alone? We may not be quite on the home straight yet or in sight of the finishing post, but I'm cheering us all on. ¡Hasta pronto, amigos!

Comments

[Jacky S]

You obviously do simple,fast and improvised very well indeed....because this looks wonderful....and I love the 'pastelness' of it....glad you've had a lovely family get-together.

[Julie Kirk]

It's looking *so* beautiful Alexa! I'm thrilled to have had a walk-on role in its production! The colours may not be traditional 'Christmas' ones ... but they are certainly the colours you find in winter sunsets!

Wonderfu, wonderful memory keeping. xx

[Paul]

Looking wonderful so far. Beautiful colourful pages to work with and I love the texture on them. It's going to be fun filling them in especially with the flaps and pockets :) Px

[Fiona@staring at the sea]

Oh, it's beautiful Alexa. What a wonderful "Book of Days" you'll have to look back on. Fortune and Geese have certainly favoured you.

[Melissa Gross]

This is absolutely fantastic Alexa! It seems out of your usual clean & simple look at first, but as you bring the pages together they are definitely you! I'm not doing a December Daily type project this year, but have been taking lots of photos & recording many of the goings on on the blog to pull later for layouts.

[Karen Walker]

It's wonderful. I can't quite imagine putting that amount of time into a project right now. This is the first year in eight that I haven't done a Christmas journal of some kind. Can't wait to see more!

[Honoré]

What a fun way to document the season! Love the tiny clothespins holding the pages separate.looking fwd to see in the contents .
Cheers~

[Missus Wookie]

Lovely colours and textures here. I decided as part of my simplification this year not to worry about doing a daily - the family and I will do our duos and capture stories while home relaxing and that will be enough :)

[Sian]

A cinnamon scented album? How lovely does that sound! It looks beautiful and I'm hoping you'll show us a few more pages before Christmas is over

[Michele]

What a wonderful idea! Hope you have a lovely Christmas x

[Cheri]

I haven't been too tempted to do any kind of December album this year... until now that is... what a beautiful project you have going! Just makes me want to dig in and start playing!

[Prairie Jill]

Ooh, I love the way your book is coming along! I really love the beautiful painted pages. (I bet they would make wonderful textures to layer over photographs, too!)
Hope you have a very merry Christmas!

[Abi]

It looks gorgeous Alexa. There is something very freeing about creating art out of an old book. What life you are putting in those pages!

[Susanne]

Well, I'm taking a few moments here in the home stretch and am delighted to come across this post. It looks wonderful - it looks like such fun!

[sandie]

Wonderful Alexa! I've had such a busy month I've not had time to read Julie's posts yet so I have some catching up to do. Yours is certainly a good example though and it will be a lovely memory book.

[Nathalie]

Oh the textures, the colors and the look of it all are just very inspiring to me, even if the Holidays are long gone by now! I really want to try making a book like this one of these days :)