What I Did At The Crop - Part 3 of 3

And last, but certainly not least...
Falling into the "better late than never" category...

I finished my JYC/December Daily album!

When I went to the crop, I had only the Manifesto and Days 1 through 3 finished and printed:

These pages are digital except for the cardstock backing and the "celebrate" sticker on Jay's birthday page.  I had created the template myself, trying to imitate Ali's 2010 December Daily templates, but was very frustrated because my outlines just wouldn't do what I wanted them to! And at some point Ali's templates went on sale, so I went ahead and bought them.


That was as far as I had gotten by mid-January.  I had lots of photos and ideas, but no more pages! I wasn't even sure I was going to finish the album at all. 

At the crop, I did all the digital work for December 4th through the 24th, but had to wait until I got home to print and assemble the pages:

These pages became true hybrid.  At the crop I resized each of Ali's templates (they are 6x8) to 5.5x8.5 to fit my album, then edited, cropped, and fit my photos and journaling into the templates.

My pages included a mix of the JYC prompts, Picture the Holidays prompts, and some of the stories I had written for Sian's Christmas Club.

In most cases I used Ali's daily dated templates.  And finished it off at home after the crop by adding a scrap of patterned paper, a title with sticker letters, rub-ons, or handwritten, and coloring in the date with markers.

 But in a few instances I used the photo templates, like this full page one of the Amaryllis bloom.

And this page with photos from our Christmas in Hawaii.



My favorite pages ended up being these two - where I highlighted the new Christmas song by Train, and showcased the beautiful card I got from Jacky!

I did manage to add a little bit of emphemera - but certainly not what I had in mind when I first thought of trying on Ali's style!

Love the Thickers letters and the Fancy Pants papers and rub-ons!



I found I ended up with a lot of pages with no journaling at all.  I really feel like I had fully answered the JYC prompts in my two prior albums and just didn't have anything new to say!

I had to create my page for the 25th at home because I hadn't even downloaded those photos to my computer yet!  And having finished this, I decided to end my album with the 25th and call it good!

To finish it off, I borrowed an idea from Karen and created a disclaimer page that covers the fact that I've skipped days and used so many different formats to create these pages.  But hey, I found a way to use one of the transparency overlays I had set aside for this project!

And a title page with some photos I had not used in the album.  These last two, created on January 31st. 

And with that, I'm calling it done!  Thus making good on my goal of finishing this album by the end of January!

I have plenty of room in this album still, so I plan to include next year's JYC in this album in the same size. 

But I've learned that Ali's style of hybrid doesn't work for me for a month long daily project.  I don't have the time or the patience to pull it all together the way she does!  I adore her style, but it just is not for me!

Next year's album will probably be all digital, without templates, just creating a 5.5 x 8.5 digital page a day.  And I'm going to have to figure out what pages I want to create before the month starts.  I may concentrate more on Shimelle's photo prompts, most of which I didn't even get to last year!