dec daily advice

Your album is beautiful. I think all the added "bits and pieces" is lovely and you will cherish those pictures forever. If the extra layers of matting and multiple pictures is making this too time consuming with everything else going on in your life during this busy month, why not try printing large pictures for one page of the spread. I do 5x7 prints for one half of my spread and then the other page may or may not have any pictures at all. During days that have lots going on, I add the extra pictures to page protectors with multiple openings to stick between the 2 page spread.

Another thing that Ali did one year, that I have also done...is use a beautiful picture from a catalog. Two years ago I used one from a Crate and Barrel ad and last year I used one from Restoration Hardware. Just cut down a lovely catalog cover and it helps fill in the days which not much is going on.

Over the years I have learned to scale back on the embellishments, because my books end up being HUGE. I am also learning that planning ahead to use both sides of the double sided paper cuts down on the thickness. Some years my page protectors would have 6 layers of paper by the time each page was put in (each page was matted plus a picture). I am trying to incorporate more digital stuff to help with the thickness as well.

I really do think your book is lovely. If you want to make it look less "busy" (although I think it is quite nice), you might want to think about the scale of your pictures. A large picture of your mittens will look less busy than a picture of a table set with the Christmas dishes. etc. Maybe alternate between days to include some more white space as well.

Look forward to seeing this year's creation.

Gorgeous DD, but I can imagine how time consuming, and I see it's pretty thick
Maybe print most photos smaller, so you can put more on just 1 page or 1 divided page? That would cut down on page numbers.
I do a full 12x12 layout for any photos I want to scrap in a larger format (or if multi-photo event) and then I only include 1 photo in a small size in the DD album itself.
Your embellishment is lovely, I guess you just have to decide how much effort you are willing to put in this year

I buy the templates Ali Edwards produces every year. I think your album is lovely, and if you want to do something like that again, I think it will be lovely again; I am suggesting the templates because I find that if I don't have to think, the process takes a lot less time. My layouts are usually a template on one side of the layout and then maybe a photo on the other side. I try to do one every day, and then, at the end of the month, the thing is done, done, done.

I don't think it's over embellished at all. It's a very pretty book. Did you think to maybe make a few collages? That would cut down on the number of single pics. I like it the way it is, and I like that you used a real book. Nancy