2015 Goal Setting & Thoughts On Last Year (Plus a FREE Printable!)

POSTED ON January 22, 2015 IN Free Stuff, Goal Setting

January may be two-thirds of the way over but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for my favorite part of the new year: creative goal setting!

Last year I decided to try something new: a list of 14 goals to complete in 2014.

I loved it.

For me, it was similar to setting a list of birthday goals but as my husband Adam likes to remind me, now that I’m in my 30s, birthday goal lists tied to my age aren’t terribly practical. So this seemed like the best of both worlds: a finite number of goals to strive for AND a number that seemed more doable.

14 in 2014: The Completed List

2014 was the first year I tried this goal setting system. Was it a success? Well, here’s what I completed in 2014 (and yes I used a blue highlighter to mark them off as I went. I’m nothing is not high-tech.):

~~FINISH ADVENT CALENDAR~~: Done with time to sew a Christmas stocking for Ryan.
~~LAUNCH KICKASS SCRAPBOOKING:~~ DONE as of last March although I’ll likely be making some changes to do this – more details to come in a future post.
~~HANG ADVENTURE WALL~~: Done and our apartment entryway looks all the better for it.
~~MAKE A BABY QUILT~~: Done although we primarily use it for photo shoots since Ryan is only just now growing out of the “spit up on everything” phase.
~~GO ON A BABY MOON~~ : Our babymoon to Dallas for the Rangers Opening Day was so fun!
ORGANIZE DIGITAL PHOTOS: Not done by choice. After Apple announced the end of Aperture, I decided to hold off to see what they have in store first.
~~TURN MASTER BEDROOM INTO A COZY SPACE:~~ 50% done. We painted an accent wall and I’ve chosen all the art – just need to get around to finally hanging it up.
~~MAKE ART FOR OVER THE TV~~: Done although I’m not 100% in love with it.
~~DECORATE OFFICE/NURSERY FOR THE LIL’ DUDE’S ARRIVAL~~: Done and the camping themed nursery turned out adorable.
~~HAVE A BABY.~~ : ) Not only done but somehow he’s 7 months already!
CREATE PROJECT LIFE 6/6: Not done but with being pregnant the first six months of the year and a newborn the last half, I’m not sure this was a terribly practical goal to begin with.
SCRAP 100 LAYOUTS: 38/100. Not even close. But considering pregnancy killed my creativity and I didn’t even open my computer the first three months after Ryan was born, I figure I’m lucky I finished that many. Hopefully 2015 will be better.
~~READ 10 BOOKS~~: 10/10. So done, but only just barely. This one ended up being surprisingly more difficult than I expected. I’m hoping I can make it to 25 this year.
LEARN TO USE MY SILHOUETTE: Not done. I’d planned to do this as part of my Holiday Faves mini album but when I pulled off the cover I realized I had no clue where the cords for it were. Hoping to find them and revisit it later this year.

So in total: 10/14 which I’m thrilled about! That’s more than I thought I’d accomplish when I made the list at the start of 2014.

My list was heavily baby-weighted and the tasks I completed are as well but honestly, I’m cool with that because 2014 was pretty much the year of the baby. Hopefully this year will see the return of more creative adventures.

MY 15 IN 2015 LIST

So what do I have planned in 2015? Well here’s a look at my 15 in 2015 list:

Go hiking as a family
Find my photo style
Do something creative for 30 days
Make one Friday a month FUN day
Take Ryan on his first camping trip
Lose baby weight for wedding
Stay positive during move : )
Print more photos
Reorganize my scrapbook albums
Send birthday gifts & cards early
Try knitting
Scrap a travel album
Print & cut with my Silhouette (assuming I can find the cords!)
Plan an at home date night
Read 25 books

As you see my list is a mix of personal and creative goals. The breakdown of it looks something like this:

Family (5)
Personal (3)
Creative (3)
Scrapbooking (4)

To me, that’s a pretty good mix. You may notice that I don’t have any business-related goals in my list and that’s because I decided to keep my 15 in 2015 for personal/creative goal-setting instead – you know, the fun stuff. I have a separate system I use for business-related goals.

Tips For Creating Your Own 15 in 2015 List

If you’re interested in doing your own 15 in 2015 goal-setting this year, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Tip #1 | Your list should match your priorities: Take some time to really think about what you want to focus on in 2015 and how those goals will fit into your everyday life. Keep in mind that not right now doesn’t have to mean not ever. Save it for a year when it’s a better fit.

Last year I weighted my list heavily toward home & baby-related items because with our first baby arriving mid-year, it was simply where my mind and momentum was at at the time.

Tip #2 | Short term projects work better than year-long ones: Unless you’re really fantastic at maintaining momentum on year-long projects, I’d shy away from adding too many to your list.

15 goals is plenty and in my experience those ongoing goals are the momentum killers – they hang over your head reminding you all year long of your failure, which is most definitely what we don’t want!

I have one on my list this year (Make one Friday a month FUN day) but it’s both fun AND doable so I’m ok with giving it a go.

Tip #3 | Wants work better than shoulds: We all have those things are our mental to-do lists that we feel like we should do. You’ll recognize them because during your brainstorm because your thought process will go something like “Well, I really should do {insert uninspiring and unexciting goal here}.” For example, “Well, I really should learn to use my Silhouette because I’ve had it two years and it’s currently collecting dust on my desk.”

I can tell you from experience the four goals I didn’t complete last year all fell into the “well I sort of want to do it but more I really should do it” category…which is exactly why they didn’t get done.

While I won’t tell you to avoid these goals completely because sometimes the key to a should getting done is to add it to your list, I would be careful adding too many to your list. You want to be excited and inspired by your list, not reminded of all the things you should do.

Tip #4 | Making your list visible is the key to success: The best thing I did last year, and no doubt the reason for my success, was I printed out a small 4×6-inch card of my 14 in 2014 goals list and tucked it into the pocket of my wall calendar. Every time I walked into my office there it would be, sometimes inspiring me, sometimes mocking me, but always reminding me that “oh yeah, THAT’s what I planned to do this year.”

Free 15 in 2015 Goal Setting Printable

If you’re a creative like me, odds are out of sight=out of mind for you too. So to make making your list easy for you, I’ve put together a free printable 4×6-inch card you can use to keep your list visible all year long.

The download includes 5 files in a single zip file: a layered Photoshop (.PSD) file with an editable text box for adding your list (title is not editable) and two printable PDFs (one with numbers and one without) that you can use to handwrite your list.

Since the PDFs are 8.5×11 but the card is intended to be 4×6-inches, both PDFs include crop marks so you know where to trim. But I also included two crop mark free versions in case crop marks scare you and you’d rather guess where to trim or leave your list floating on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper. That works too.

Download 15 in 2015 Printable Here

Download includes 5 files in a single zip file:

15 in 2015 4×6 Photoshop (.PSD) template
15 in 2015 Numbered PDF (2 files, one with crop marks, one without)
15 in 2015 Blank PDF (2 files, one with crop marks, one without)

Once you’ve downloaded the file, simply unzip the folder and you’ll have access to all the files.

And hey, if you find this post and/or printable helpful, do your friends a favor and pin it on Pinterest or share it on Facebook to let them know where they can find it.

Now let’s talk creative goal-setting: do you have a system for setting goals for the new year? What do you have on the agenda for 2015?

Scrapbook Saturday 01 | Welcoming In the New Year

POSTED ON January 17, 2015 IN Memory Keeping, Scrapbook Saturday

As part of my word OPEN this year, I’m focusing on being more of an open book about why I do what I do when it comes to my creative adventures. So to kick that off, I’ve decided to start a new semi-regular feature called Scrapbook Saturday where each week I’ll share my most recent scrapbooking layouts as well as a little bit of my thought process behind those pages.

Since I’m not the most prolific scrapbooker in the world (slow would be a better description, haha), I can’t promise there will be a post every Saturday but I am hoping that sharing more layouts like this will encourage me to scrapbook more. And since a large chunk of the layouts I do are for Sweet Shoppe Designs New Releases, if you check out the post on Saturday, there’s a good chance at least some of the products I use will still be on sale in case there’s something you just have to have.

Ok, let’s get to this first installment of Scrapbook Saturday!

This week I have two layouts for you, both themed around the start of the new year. I admit, I’ve been feeling a little rusty with my scrapbooking so far this year, partly I think because I’m still shaking off the holiday scrapbooking dust and partly because, since having my son Ryan last year, I still haven’t figured out exactly the direction I want to go with my scrapbooking.

What I do find interesting about these two layouts is that they ended up being much more similar than I’d intended. Both feature stock photos (from Death to Stock Photo) and both feature white backgrounds that give them a brighter/fresher more modern look then my usual style. That’s a style I’ve been drawn to a lot lately (thanks to Pinterest) so I’m excited to play around with it more this year.

Layout No. 1 | Thoughts On the New Year

For my first layout of 2015, I decided to scrapbook about my love for the start of the new year. Even though it’s true it’s technically just another day, I love that feeling of starting fresh each year.

When I pictured this layout in my head, I knew I wanted to use the sparkly gold alpha from Lauren Grier but I was feeling a little stuck when it came to the rest of the design until I saw Brook’s ABC’s of Me template and realized I could use the paper blocks from the template as my background.

In general, I’m not a huge template user (outside of my own) but pulling out individual pieces of templates is one of my favorite ways to use digital scrapbooking templates because it saves me time and gives me a jumping off point for the rest of the layout without tying me down to a specific design.

Credits: Happiness Is: New Beginnings by Tickled Pink Studio and Meghan Mullens; All A Glitter Alpha by Lauren Grier; Doubles 01 – ABCs of Me by Brook Magee (paper squares only). Photo from Death to Stock Photo. Font is Proxima Nova.

Layout No. 2 | One Little Word: OPEN

For my second layout I chose to tell the story behind my One Little Word for the year, OPEN.

I initially thought about pulling the text directly from this post, but since it was long and I scrapbook 8×8 it felt like to much to include on one layout. So instead I decided to give a brief overview of why I chose my word and then used the design to reinforce the feeling of “open” by using white space, a white background and a more open font (Lulo Clean Outline) as my title.

The layout itself was feeling a little sparse to me at first so I added some paper triangles (my current geometric love) down one side of the design, because you know, my paper lovin’ self must have patterned papers on the layout. I also added some really subtle white paint underneath the design to add some dimension.

The paint was something I toyed with for quite awhile, trying it on a darker blue background first, then with a gradient to make it less in your face, before finally settling on plain white paint on the white background. This for me is when the History panel in Photoshop always comes into play because I’ll take snapshots of different ideas then cycle through them until I have one that feels right. It’s one of the benefits of digital scrapbooking for sure!

Credits: Free Spirit by Shawna Clingerman. Photo from Death to Stock Photo. Fonts are Lulo Clean Outline and Proxima Nova.

And that’s it from me this week! What about you: what have you been working on lately? Have a question? Ask it in the comments below.

Disclaimer: All Sweet Shoppe Designs products were given to me free of charge as part of my Sweet Shoppe Creative Team responsibilities. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

In need of more scrapbooking inspiration? Find all my Scrapbook Saturday posts here.

My Word for 2015: OPEN

POSTED ON January 14, 2015 IN One Little Word

You know what I find fascinating about the whole One Little Word® concept? Some years a word will come to me loud and clear and other years my word will show up as quiet whisper. And I’m never quite sure in any year which one will happen.

Last year I skipped OLW because I was pregnant, just barely out of that exhausting first trimester and I just didn’t feel like I needed something else added to my plate. And really, there wasn’t any word that felt like it could capture all that 2014 had in store.

This year it’s the complete opposite. Back in November my OLW for 2015 came to me in a burst of inspiration and it was like YES, THAT IS MY WORD. Love when that happens.

Some of the words I’ve had in the past have been: focus, connect, adventure and determination, with adventure hands down being my favorite of the bunch so far.

So what’s my word for 2015?

OPEN

Why open?

Well I loved that it could be a noun, adjective or verb. I loved that it had a large variety of definitions that could be applied to my life in multiple ways.

But what I love most of all is that it’s a word outside my comfort zone.

Despite being an extroverted-leaning ambivert and running an online scrapbooking design business, I’m actually a pretty private person by nature. I’ve always been that way. I’m not an oversharer. I’m cautious about what I share to the point where I definitely over think it. I talk myself out of sharing things I’m excited about for way too many reason to share here, most of which I’m sure are totally lame.

Being open means being vulnerable and being vulnerable isn’t something I naturally do very well. But I think it’s time to change that.

Back in 2009 when Adam deployed to Afghanistan, I chose the word adventure. At the time I didn’t feel adventurous. I didn’t feel like an adventurer. But I knew it was what I needed to be to make it through that year.

And I loved it.

It pushed me outside my comfort zone in ways I hadn’t expected. I tried new things (like flying an airplane), got out and met new people and it was ultimately that year that gave me the courage to launch NettioDesigns.

It was a word that stuck with me ever since. The quote you find at the bottom of this website is there because of that word. It changed me, became a part of me, and I’m feeling hopeful that this year OPEN will do the same.

As part of that I decided this year instead of taking Ali’s One Little Word class, I would choose three goals/intentions to focus on with my word this year.

Here is my list:

1) OPEN book

At the top of my list for my word this year is to share more. I want to push myself to be an open book, not necessarily to the point of over sharing but I would love to be more open about why I do what I do and what lessons I’ve learned especially when it comes to running a creative business.

I know I’ve learned so much from people who’ve been open with me that it’s high time I return that favor.

2) OPEN to new ideas

This past year felt like a bit of a lost year for me both creatively and with my business. Part of that had to do with having a baby midway through the year and adjusting to motherhood and part of it had to do with me simply ready for something new.

What that new thing is, I don’t know yet, but this year I want to find out. I want to be open to new ideas, move outside my existing bubble and play, experiment, and try new things to see what shakes out.

3) OPEN to new adventures

Our family of three is making a pretty major change mid-year – as of May 2015, we will no longer be a military family. This is something we’ve be thinking about and working towards for several years and with Ryan being so young now feels like the time to go for it. We’re ready to make this leap but it’s still a little nerve wracking to leave behind the only lifestyle you’ve known for the past nine years.

So my goal this year is simply to keep an open mind and be open to whatever comes next. Really that could be the theme for this entire year which is why this word feels so perfect. I’m excited to see how it plays out!

What about you? Have you chosen a word for 2015? I feel like good things happen in years that end in multiples of five so I’m feeling pretty optimistic about 2015.

One Little Word® is a year-long project created by Ali Edwards. You can learn more about it on her site here.

Holiday Faves 2014 | Faves No. 6-10

POSTED ON January 12, 2015 IN Holiday Faves 2014

The last two days leading up to my trip to California saw me furiously trying to finish my Holiday Faves mini album. At the time I’d wished I hadn’t set myself a deadline of Dec 29th to get it done because I sure could have used a little more time, but now that I’m on the other end of things, I’m super happy I finished this project before the start of the new year.

Since I shared the first half of my album before I left, I figured today would be a good day to share the second half of the album with you.

Back of Fave No. 5 | We left off at Holiday Fave No. 5 so the accent page on the left is on the back of the last page of Fave No. 5. On the right I added a foundation page that included a photo from December 15th when Ryan turned six months old. I didn’t worry about it being truly chronological in terms of the order of my Faves – I just added it in where I felt the album needed some more pizazz.

The “six months” title I added using some small letter stickers from Basic Grey.

On the back of the six months page, I added another accent page. Then to separate Holiday Fave No. 6 a bit, I added a star transparency with a gold star sticker on it.

Behind the transparency is the first photo for Fave No. 6, which I used as a pseudo title page for the section. (This photo was taken before I added in the accent page so ignore that it doesn’t quite match what’s seen above.)

Holiday Fave No. 6 | Holiday Fave No. 6 was our trip to the Houston Zoo Lights event. It was our first time going and it was so neat!

Holiday Faves journal card with digital accents.

I had a lot of photos from this event so I used an eight photo collage template as well as multiple 6×8 photos. Photo collages definitely take a lot more time to put together but man do I love them once they’re done.

On the back of the 6×8 photo, I added another accent/foundation page spread so I could include a photo of Ryan’s stocking. I’ve been working on it all fall but I finished it the night of Christmas Eve, just in time for Santa to arrive.

The label tag I added in Photoshop (an old product of mine no longer available) and the Joy wood chip is from Studio Calico.

Holiday Fave No. 7 | Holiday Fave No. 7 was my Grandma’s Cinnamon Rolls. This is something my Grandma Beryl used to make every time we came to visit but this was my first attempt at making them.

To hold more photos I added a pocket page protector on the right and used one of the 4×6 Holiday Faves Themed cards to hold a copy of the recipe.

On the back are more photos of the process and an accent page.

Holiday Fave No. 8 | Holiday Fave No. 8 was our trip to Moody Gardens for the Festival of Lights holiday display. Moody Gardens is right along the water in Galveston so they had a bunch of ocean-themed light displays right on the beach. It was neat!

On the large 6×8 photo I added a Kelly Purkey sticker. I have to say, I love the ease of adding pre-done stickers, but the digital scrapbooker in me still often wishes I could resize/recolor things.

Since I had a bunch of photos from this event, but didn’t want it to end up looking to similar to Fave No. 6, I decided to try something different and take one of the photos and increase the size of it to 12×5 inches so it spanned across the page. Then I added a few smaller square photos along the bottom. I really like how it turned out!

Gift List | On the left I added a few more photos from Moody Gardens and then on the right I made a little pocket to hold a list of gifts I purchased for family.

The paper for the list actually came from a Gap shopped bag but I loved the stripes so I trimmed it out to use in my album. To make the pocket, I trimmed down a 6×8 page protector and closed up the edge with some washi tape.

On the back is a scaled down version of the Making A List page, with a simple list of what I bought for everyone (and what Adam bought me). I love looking back at these sorts of lists since I rarely can remember what everyone got.

Holiday Traditions | On the back of the Merry & Bright accent page, I added another accent page and a page protector to hold a few more photos and the Holiday Traditions card.

The traditions card talks about the Baby’s 1st Christmas ornament I bought for Ryan and I admit – I kind of wish I’d made this a full Fave instead. But I was running out of Faves at this point so I decided to add it into the album this way instead.

On the back is another new ornament we got this year.

On the right is the start of Holiday Fave No. 9. I thought it needed a bit more division so I added a woodgrain transparency in front of it.

Holiday Fave No. 9 | Holiday Fave No. 9 was our Christmas Eve walk around the neighborhood. As sort of an intro page, I added a 6×8 photo I took on the walk.

On the photo I added some gold stars in Photoshop before printing (from Kristin Cronin-Barrow’s A Fairytale Christmas kit).

My Fave No. 9 journal card spread.

On the back is a two-photo collage followed by an foundation page with a photo from our Christmas Eve dinner (tamales!). This too could have been a Fave on it’s own but I was running out of room for Faves by this point!

I added the label in Photoshop before printing and then added the gold star after.

On the back of the tamale page is an accent card followed by another transparency and the start of Holiday Fave. No 10.

I wasn’t thinking when I trimmed out this transparency – I should have trimmed it larger than 6×8 so I could add it directly into the album. But I decided to add it directly in a page protector instead and I think it worked out fine.

Holiday Fave No. 10 | Holiday Fave No. 10 is Christmas Day so the first page is a 6×8 photo of our tree with all the presents.

For Christmas Day I used the Holiday Faves No. 10 journal card, followed by several pocket page protectors.

The photos kind of loosely follow the flow of our day: opening presents in our pajamas, putting together Ryan’s new toys, him playing. If you’re wondering about the sock, that’s a Baby’s First Christmas sock from Adam’s first Christmas which my mother-in-law sent to Ryan.

I decided to leave one pocket open so you could see through to the next page. The clear transparency card is from Kelly Purkey and the wood stars are from Studio Calico. I thought I might have to seal the pocket closed to keep the stars from falling out but so far they’re staying put.

More photos and a piece of the wrapping paper from Santa. On the right I included a post-opening aftermath photo (taken holding the camera high above my head, haha) and photo showing the majority of Ryan’s gifts.

I added the text in Photoshop before printing.

On the back are a few more photos from our Christmas breakfast and cookie gorging, followed by a family photo in front of our tree.

I added a hashtag brush from Ali Edwards followed by a little text about the photo.

And a final accent page to close out the album!

The very last thing I did to finish up the mini album was go back to the beginning and fill in a few sections I had skipped before, like the Holiday Decorations section. I’d originally planned to make this section a bit more extensive but our weather didn’t cooperate with photo taking so I just snapped a few and called it good.

This page has the only handwritten journaling card in the album, which I don’t love but I’m went with it to get it done.

On the back of the page protector I added a few more photos and some accent details.

A picture to see where it fits in the album – the page on the right is the start of Holiday Fave No. 3.

The second set of photos I went back to add to was Holiday Fave No. 3: Ryan’s 1st Christmas. The 2×2 photo pocket page protector on the left was largely empty before so I printed out about six more photos and added some details and patterned paper to it.

I’m a fan of squares so I really love how this page turned out! It may be one of my favorites in the album.

A look at the back of the page protector. The through the years card is a 3×4 letterpressed card from Kelly Purkey that I trimmed down to fit into the pocket.

This is how the full spread looks now.

And that’s pretty much it for my Holiday Faves 2014 Mini Album! If you’d like to see the full album all together, here’s a slideshow that shows how all the pages flow together.

Holiday Faves 2014 Mini Album Slideshow

Overall, I’m feeling really good about how this album came together. It was a sprint to the finish to get it done at the end of December but I’m so glad I was able to move into 2015 with this project in the done pile. Until next year, Holiday Faves.

Missed Holiday Faves No. 1-5? You can check out the first half of my album here.

Happy 2015 & Our Holiday Photo Card

POSTED ON January 9, 2015 IN Behind-the-Scenes, Design

Happy 2015!

The day after I wrapped up the Holiday Faves Mini Class, Ryan and I hopped on a plane for his first ever trip to California. Not going to lie, I was a bit nervous about flying with him by myself for his first flight but he handled it like a champ, much to the delight of his fellow passengers. I’d say his cute smiling at everyone definitely earned him some points, as well as paying for him to have his own seat and carseat so both mom and baby were comfy.

Right before I left for California, I finally got around to designing our holiday/baby announcement card. Adam was kind enough to address and mail all of them while I was away and since we’re hearing from family and friends that they’re arriving in their mailboxes, I thought I’d share what I came up with here as well.

I’d originally planned for them to be Christmas cards but when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, I decided to opt for New Years cards instead – and I actually like them much better! I may just decide to be a New Years card family from now on because I’m a procrastinating rebel like that.

Because I’d been trying to get the cards printed and sent before I left on Dec 30th (which didn’t happen), I had them printed locally at Staples, which I don’t recommend. The quality of the cards themselves is actually nice – they’re slightly glossy on the front and then cardstock on the back.

But the actual printing of the images is hit or miss.

I ordered two sets of 25 cards within maybe 10 minutes of each other because there was no way for me to add more cards to my original order and the one set of cards came out WAY more red than the other even though I uploaded the exact same file. There were also some cards where it seemed pretty clear their printer was running out of ink but they didn’t bother to reprint them or anything.

I should have probably complained but I was in a hurry and there was a long line and only one guy who didn’t seem to really care so I figured we could make them work. But I kind of wish I would have just ordered them through someone online and paid the rush shipping instead.

The design itself was inspired by a couple of different holiday/baby cards I found on Pinterest. I knew I wanted something clean and graphic rather than scrapbook-y but I did end up adding a striped glitter paper from Kristin Cronin-Barrow as the background to add some pizazz to the back.

All of the photos were taken by Amy of Captured Simplicity and I can’t even tell you how fun it is to have photos of us that don’t involve a timer or a long-armed selfie shot. This one of Ryan grabbing at the sock is one of my favorite because the grin and the look on his face is just so him.

I admit, part of me felt a bit lame sending out a birth announcement six months after the fact but I actually think it turned out pretty cute in the end. And I felt rather smart using the wording to tie everything together, almost seems like it was intentional and not just a result of my procrastinating on getting it done.

2014 was definitely an amazing year around here and I’m eager to see what 2015 has in store for our little family of three!

Holiday Faves 2014 | Faves No. 1-5

POSTED ON December 22, 2014 IN Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves 2014

Behind the scenes here at NettioDesigns HQ, I’ve been spending my days hanging out with an awesome group of ladies as part of the first ever Holiday Faves Mini Album Project Class. Those in the class have seen the progress I’ve made on my Holiday Faves album every week, but since Christmas is fast approaching, I wanted to share the first half of my Holiday Faves mini album here with you.

Holiday Faves is one of my favorite yearly scrapbooking projects and this year has been no exception. I skipped it last year with being pregnant so I’ve loved getting back into it again this year.

For my album this year I am using a 6×8-inch Studio Calico Handbook (purchased last year) along with the 6×8 mini album templates I created for the Holiday Faves Project Class.

Inside Cover Page | One new thing I’ve done this year is put all my pages in page protectors, which is nice because it makes it easy to move pages around and protects the pages should Ryan want to look through it one day.

Back of cover page | On the back of the inside cover page, I have an accent page followed by a journaling card template for my holiday manifesto. This is basically a “why I made this album” page but I find it’s a good way to kick off the album and I love looking back at my why’s each year. I also try to include our ages and where we live since as a military family it tends to change often.

Holiday Fave No. 1 | Holiday Fave No. 1 is the Christmas countdown calendar I finally finished earlier this year (after two years!). For the photo page I used one of the photo page templates and added a gold star from Studio Calico for some dimension.

On the back of the Fave No. 1 spread is another accent page, followed by a 4×6 photo attached to a gold glitter scrapbooking paper from Teresa Collins. I love all the digital pages, but I also find adding actual scrapbooking paper and physical elements into the album keeps things interesting.

I’m not a huge embellisher with paper (I’d probably be the most boring paper scrapbooker ever, haha) but I did add a few details to this page. At the bottom I added a label – the star is from Studio Calico and the sticker label is from Kelly Purkey.

At the top I added a little Merry wood chip piece from Studio Calico.

Holiday Fave No. 2 | Holiday Fave No. 2 is our “watch Elf and drink hot chocolate night.” It was late and the light wasn’t great but I decided not to overthink it and just went with the photos I had. Holiday Faves is much more about the story than it is perfectly staged photos.

On the photo, I added a digital stamp from Ali Edwards to fill up some of the white space from the TV screen.

And at the bottom of the journal card I added some digital elements. I love digital elements because you can layer them to your heart’s content but they don’t make your page actually thicker like real elements do.

In between my journal card and photo page, I added a printed transparency of one of the Holiday Faves templates I designed.

On the second page of the Holiday Fave No. 2 spread I used a two photo page template to create a collage. I’m not going to lie – I’m not 100% happy with this page yet. I think it needs some embellishment of some kind but I couldn’t decide on something that wouldn’t interfere with the look of the transparency page, so for now I’m leaving it as is and figure I can always add to it later if I want.

One of the reasons I chose to create my Holiday Faves mini album as a hybrid album rather than a straight digital album this year is due to one big thing: pocket pages.

If you’ve been around scrapbooking the past year, you probably already know that pocket scrapbooking has become all the rage thanks to Project Life and those pocket-style pages have trickled down into smaller albums as well. The Studio Calico album I’m using includes a handful of pocket page protectors in various combinations of 3×4 & 4×6 pocket sizes and I plan to use these pages in a few different ways in my album.

Below is a look at the back of my Holiday Faves No. 2 page. For now the page on the left is blank but I plan to add a photo of our Christmas tree. On the right I plan to use the themed card to write a little bit about our decorations.

On the back of the pocket page (below left), I plan to add photos of our decorations. Since this will likely be our last Christmas living here, I want to make sure I capture all those details as part of my album.

Holiday Fave No. 3 | For Holiday Fave No. 3 I chose Ryan’s First Christmas since it’s a pretty big deal around here. To start the section, I made a sort of sudo title page featuring a cute photo of him.

One of my favorite things about his first Christmas is watching him experience everything for the first time. The looks on his face as he tries to figure out what in the world is happening is just priceless! So I plan to use another pocket page protector to hold a collection of those types of photos from the entire holiday season.

This pocket page has 2×2-inch squares and is by Simple Stories so it doesn’t quite fit into my album as is (it’s slightly taller) but I just punched new holes using my Crop-o-dile punch and it fits fine.

You can see I’ve kept it pretty simple for now but I plan to add more embellishments and details once I have a better idea of how many photos I’ll have all together. I’ll also likely live some of the pockets blank, or with small embellishments so you can see through to the journal card behind.

Once you turn the page protector you can see the Holiday Faves No. 3 journaling card with a photo of Ryan putting his very first ornament on the tree (with a bit of help, of course).

On the backside of the Holiday Faves No. 3 journal card, I added an accent page followed by a foundation page with a 4×6 photo on it.

The 4×6 photo captures where we were at exactly Dec 12, 2014 at 15:16 (aka 3:16), so 12-13-14 at 15:16. It’s only taken me a decade to capture a photo like this but since it’s the last one I’ll see in my lifetime, I figured I’d better get on it! The letter stickers are from Kelly Purkey and the gold star is from Studio Calico.

On the bottom of the photo I added a Kelly Purkey label tag with a little note about where we were. This is what I mean about my handwriting font being a little bit neater – the letters here are a wee bit wonky.

Holiday Fave No. 4 | For Holiday Fave No. 4, I chose to focus on Holiday Treats because what’s the holiday season without a little indulgence, right?

On the left I included the Holiday Faves No. 4 journal card template with some digital elements on it from a variety of kits.

On the right, I included a four pocket page protector which includes photos, memorabilia and an 3×4-inch accent card. The Sprinkles Cupcakes is a piece of the bag I trimmed down to 3×4-inches and the accent card is from Kristin Cronin-Barrow’s A Fairytale Christmas: Sweet digital kit.

On the back of the page protector are two more photos, another accent card and memorabilia. I added some digital text to one photo and a digital label to the other before I printed the photos.

Here’s a closer look at the bottom of the page protector. The bottle cap on the right does make the page a little puffy but no more than any other dimensional embellishment. I just glued it down using a little Tombow liquid adhesive.

On the right side of the spread is another accent page.

Holiday Fave No. 5 | Holiday Fave No. 5 was the Tomball German Christmas Market. I’m technically half-German but this was our first time going to a German Christmas Market. It was a lot of fun!

One thing I realized while putting together my Fave No. 5 pages is while I love the look of photo collages, they definitely add quite a bit of time to the process, especially when I have to select and edit all of the photos first. Adding them to the photo template is the quick part!

This page is actually a 6 square photo collage that I adjusted a bit on the right side for the one vertical photo I wanted to include. And yes that’s a boot of beer, haha, but it’s actually the same one because they were $21 a piece! The strap on the cup seemed a little dorky but it did come in handy when we were trying to carry food, beer and push a stroller at the same time.

On the right is another Holiday Faves journal card with digital elements.

On the back of the journal card is a 6×8 photo of Ryan meeting Sinterklaas and on the right is another photo collage.

As you can see Ryan wasn’t exactly a fan of the man in the white beard, haha. To keep things simple, I added some journaling on the photo before printing.

For the photo collage on the right, I used a 6 square photo template again, but this time I turned off the squares for photos 3 & 6 and added scrapbooking paper and a printed 3×4 card (trimmed down) after I printed the page. I really love the mix of digital and paper. And yes, we ate entirely too much food – this wasn’t even all of it, haha.

And that’s where I’m at with my album so far! Overall, I’m really happy with how it’s coming together. I’m always hesitant when I first start putting it together and then once I start seeing the album come together, I get more and more excited to see it make it to the finished version. As we get closer to Christmas, my momentum definitely picks up and this year is no exception.

A little note about credits: Digital elements include a variety of Christmas kits by Zoe Pearn & Kristin Cronin-Barrow, primarily Memorable: Christmas, A Homemade Christmas and Life Stories: Christmas. I didn’t include links for any of the paper products I used because they were all purchased in years past and are quite possibly not available any more. But if you feel like hunting any of them down, you should be able to do a Google search using any of the names I mentioned.

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