As I mentioned yesterday, Holiday Faves 2014 is here! So today I wanted to share with you a bit more about how you can use the Holiday Faves 6×8 Mini Album Templates to create your very own holiday mini album or photo book.

The idea behind the Holiday Faves mini album templates is you use them to create the foundation of your Holiday Faves mini album and then add your own photos and journaling during the holiday season.

But how do you actually use the templates to do that?

Well here’s a closer look at how it works:

For a quick refresher, here’s what this year’s templates look like:

The Holiday Faves mini album templates include four types of pages which can be mixed and matched to create your album: Foundation Pages, Accent Pages, Journaling Pages and Photo Pages.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the difference between all these pages and when you’d use them in your album:

Foundation Pages

The Foundation Pages are designed to be the pages on which you build the well, foundation, of your album. All of the foundation page templates are made of simple geometric designs with the idea being that you clip digital papers to them to pretty them up, print them, and then add photos, memorabilia, journaling or accents to them during the holiday season.

Accent Pages

The Accent Pages go along with the Foundation Pages in building your album, but rather than adding anything to these pages during the holiday season, they’re designed to stand on their own as is and be the pretty jewels of your album.

Journaling Pages

The journaling pages are where you’ll add the stories and photos behind your Holiday Faves or Holiday Memories. You can choose to print these pages ahead of time and add your photos and journaling later by hand or you can wait and print these as you go after you’ve typed up your story.

Photo Pages

The final piece of the Holiday Faves mini album puzzle are the Photo Pages. These pages are designed to make it quick and easy for you to add photo collages of your favorite holiday photos. Use them to support your Holiday Faves journaling pages or add them into the album on their own.

Putting All the Pages Together

Now that you know about all four of the types of page templates, how do you go about actually combining all these different types of pages to create your album?

Well it’s really it’s up to you!

All of the Holiday Faves 6×8 Mini Album Templates are designed to be completely mix and match so there’s really no “right” way to combine them.

But a few things you might want to consider as you’re ordering your pages are:

• making sure to leave room to add photos and/or memorabilia
• how often you want to include journaling
• whether you’re planning to add additional non-digital pages into your album as well (like page protectors, clear overlays, pockets, etc)

To give you an idea of how you’d can combine these pages together to create your album, here’s a quick before and after using my own Holiday Faves stories and photos.

Holiday Faves Mini Album Foundation Before:

As you can see, I’ve included 2 Accent Pages, 1 Foundation Page, 1 Journaling Page and 1 Photo Page. I’ve left the back of the Foundation Page blank so you can add a 6×8 photo later and while I’ve added digital elements to the journal page, I’ve left the photo and journaling areas empty so I can add my story later.

Here’s a look at what these same six pages might look like after I start adding in my photos and stories during the holiday season:

Holiday Faves Mini Album Foundation After:

Here you can see how I’ve left the accent pages alone but added a smaller photo to the front of the foundation page and a full-size 6×8 photo to the back. I also added my photo and journaling to my Holiday Faves #1 journaling card and added a series of photos to the photo collage page.

I hope that gives you some ideas of how you can use the Holiday Faves 6×8 Mini Album templates to create your own awesome Holiday Faves mini album!

Easy right?

If you’re interested in creating your own holiday mini album, be sure to join me in the Holiday Faves 2014 6×8 Mini Album & Project Class.

Not only will you receive the Holiday Faves 6×8 Mini Album Templates as part of the deal, but you’ll also have access to the Holiday Faves Planning Guide, tips & tricks for creating and printing your album, as well a private Facebook group where you can share and connect with other Holiday Favers.

Class begins December 1st and registration closes December 8th.

As an added bonus, I am offering a discounted early bird price of only $20 for the whole shebang thru Black Friday, November 28th.

It’s going to be a ton of fun so I hope you’ll join me on this holiday scrapbooking adventure!

To purchase the Holiday Faves or see more details, click here to go to the Nettio Designs shop.

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Holiday Faves 2014 launches Monday which means we are in the home stretch of the countdown! Are you getting excited yet? I sure am! Holiday Faves is one of my favorite (pun-intended) scrapbooking projects of the year and I would love for you to join me on this Christmas crafting adventure.

Since Monday is only a few days away (and weekends don’t count in my book!), I’ve put together a sneak peek for you of six of the page templates from this year’s Holiday Faves album.

Like last year, the templates will all be 6×8 inches which is not only a perfect size for adding to a small binder or mini album, but 6×8 also happens to scale down perfectly to 3×4 inches which makes it easy to use for pocket scrapbooking as well.

All right, your sneak peek awaits!

Like all three previous Holiday Faves mini albums, this year’s set of mini album templates includes journaling pages, foundation & accent pages and photo pages all of which can be mixed and matched to create your own custom holiday mini album.

And since it’s FRIDAY and I’m feeling extra generous, here’s a full peek of one of the Holiday Faves journaling cards as well as an example of how you can pretty it up using digital scrapbooking supplies.

Holiday Faves 2014 launches MONDAY, November 24th here at Nettio Designs so I will be back then with all the details.

P.S. If you haven’t yet, be sure to read the story behind the Holiday Faves. It’s a good one.

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The year was 2006.

I’d been digital scrapbooking for just under a year and had just discovered Shimelle’s Journal your Christmas project. Everyday between December 1st and January 6th she would send you an email with a pretty PDF filled with ideas and inspiration for capturing one story of Christmas each day.

I remember distinctly sitting in the airport in Seoul, South Korea waiting for my flight back home after a year abroad and reading through all the prompts on my dying laptop. I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to get home and start my album.

Would you like to guess how many pages I completed that year?

Zero.

Yes, zero.

Fast forward to 2007. I knew this would be the year I’d complete Journal Your Christmas. I’d create my album digitally using the same simple template for each page. One story a day, simple, easy. How could I fail right?

Number of pages completed and printed?

Zero.

In 2008, I discovered Ali Edward’s December Daily. Oh the gloriousness that is Ali’s December Daily! I loved the mini album format. I loved the way she mixed pages. I love that she captured a mix of Christmas and everyday life.

One story a day – how hard could it be?

At that point, I had never done paper scrapbooking before but I figured, hey why not give it shot?

I decided to follow Ali’s advice to complete the foundation of the album ahead of time so I headed to our local Archivers, spent way to much money and got to work creating my foundation pages.

That year went much better.

Starting the foundation ahead of time was key and I made it all the way to December 17th. Success! 

But then we traveled home for the holidays and by the time we returned in January, I’d lost steam. Wah-wah.

In 2009, Adam was deployed to Afghanistan and well, Christmas just didn’t have that sparkly glow it usually did so I decided to skip it.

But in 2010, I decided to try again. This time I went into it fully prepared. I’d made it pretty far before so I knew what I had to do to get it done. And most of all, this year for the first time ever, we wouldn’t be traveling for Christmas. I knew of any year this would be the year: the year I would finish my December Daily album.

I made it to December 16th.

By this point I was starting to get discouraged. Was there something wrong with me? I loved the idea of these holiday albums and I LOVED the pages I created for them.

But as much as I loved these albums, there was clearly something about the process that wasn’t working for me.

And I was tired of wasting hard-earned money and time on them, only to be left with an unfinished album and a healthy dose of scrapbooker’s guilt to kick off the new year.

So not my idea of a good time.

So in 2011, I decided it was time for a change and to begin, I wrote out a list of what I loved and didn’t love about my previous holiday albums. This was my list:

WHAT I LOVED:

• COLLECTING MEMORABILIA – I LOVED picking up bits & pieces of life throughout the season knowing I already had a home for them.
• MINI ALBUM – I loved the small mini album size and I especially loved being able to flip through the pages everyday.
• PHOTOS – I loved printing photos at home to include in my album right away.

WHAT I DIDN’T LOVE:

• THE DAILY-NESS – As much as I love the concept, I realized that a page a day was WAY too much work for me. I wanted to be able to skip a day and not feel guilty or even close the album on the 26th and call it done.
• MIXED SIZED PAGES – While I loved the look of the pages showing behind each other, the mish-mash of sizes made it too complicated to put together each day.
• THE COST – Paper supplies are expensive. Plus it made me a little sad to see all the beautiful digi kits out there and not have a reason to use them.
• NOT AS TRAVEL FRIENDLY – Living so far from family we often traveled for Christmas which meant I needed an album I could easily take with me on the go.
• THE GUILT – I wanted an album that once Christmas rolled around I could call done without there being obvious gaps in the album to make me feel guilty about it.

While all this holiday scrapbooking craziness was happening, I had also been steadily working on another project of mine: the Monthly Faves. Started in 2009 and then repeated in 2011, the goal of the Monthly Faves was to capture a list of my top ten favorite things each month for a year. It was the only year-long project I’d ever completed successfully – and I’d done so twice.

So I had an idea: what if I combined a holiday mini album with the faves?

Light. Bulb.

Instead of focusing on capturing a story a day until Christmas like I’d done before, my goal would be to capture my top ten favorite things from the holiday season.

If I made it to ten, awesome! If I made it to eight or five or even three, I’d be ok with closing the album after December 25th and calling it done, guilt-free.

To keep things simple, I’d create my own set of mini album templates and use my favorite digital scrapbooking supplies to create the foundation of my album. Then all I’d have to do during the busy holiday season is add photos and journaling and I’d be good to go.

To my surprise, it worked.

In 2011, I captured all ten holiday faves.

In 2012, I captured all ten holiday faves.

In 2013…I didn’t. BUT, in my defense, last year I was in the first trimester of my pregnancy, physically exhausted and creatively drained, and I made the executive decision after creating and printing my foundation pages to just let it go for the year.

2 out of 3 sure beats 0 for 4 in my book.

Ultimately what I’ve learned from this whole crazy holiday scrapbooking adventure is this: just because you LOVE a project doesn’t mean it’s right for you, and that’s perfectly ok! That isn’t a sign to give up. It’s a sign to take what you love (and don’t love!) and tweak it to make it work for you.

For me, that’s Holiday Faves. And if, like me, you love the idea of creating a holiday mini album but are need of something a bit more easy and doable than what you’ve tried in the past, I have the confidence Holiday Faves is the right solution for you too.

On Monday, November 24th, I’ll be opening registration for the 2014 edition of Holiday Faves.

This year in addition to an exclusive set of mini album templates designed by me, you’ll also receive a Holiday Faves planning guide, weekly emails from me with words of encouragement and access to a private Facebook group where you can connect with other Holiday Favers and share your work.

Interested in scrapbooking your Holiday Faves? Join me and almost thirty other awesome scrapbookers as part of the Holiday Faves 2014 6×8 Mini Album & Project Class. Early bird pricing of only $20 is available through Black Friday, November 28th. Class begins Dec 1st and registration ends Dec 8th. Find out more here.

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Oh yes, it’s happening…

If you’re new around here, Holiday Faves is my take on a not-so-daily, stress-free, holiday mini album. No worrying about daily details or getting behind, the focus here is on capturing your top ten favorite things from the 2014 holiday season, guilt-free, using all the digital scrapbooking goodies you already know and love.

This year will be my fourth year doing the Holiday Faves and I’m ready to make it bigger and better than ever. All week long I’ll be sharing details about the Holiday Faves as well as sharing peeks and some other fun things over on Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to follow me so you don’t miss out on the fun!

Registration for the 2014 round of Holiday Faves will officially open next Monday, November 24th here at Nettio Designs.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back to share the story of how Holiday Faves came to be. See you then!

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Welcome to Holiday Faves 2013. 

Here’s what I love about the Holiday Faves: if I were doing a normal December Daily “capture something every day” type of album, I’d probably be panicking right now because it’s December 6th and I’m just starting my album which means I’d already be six days behind. But with Holiday Faves, I know I’m exactly right where I need to be and it’s going to be perfectly fine. No stress. No guilt. 

If you’re new to Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves is my solution for creating a more simple and do-able holiday mini album. After several years of failed attempts at December Daily, I realized I needed a solution that was a better for me and my lifestyle. So back in 2011, I made a list of all my likes & dislikes about December Daily. The list went a little something like this:

What I Loved About December Daily:

• Collecting memorabilia – LOVED picking up bits & pieces of life throughout the season knowing I already had a home for them
• Mini Album– Loved the mini album size and I especially loved being able to flip through the pages everyday. An 8×8 all digital album is definitely not for me.
• Photos – Loved printing photos at home to include in my album right away

What I Didn’t Love About December Daily:

• The Daily-ness – As much as I love the concept, I’ve realized that a page a day is WAY too much work for me. I want to be able to skip a day and not feel guilty or even close the album on the 26th and call it done.
• Mixed Sized Pages – While I love the look of the pages showing behind each other, the mishmash of sizes made it too complicated to put together each day.
• The Cost – Paper supplies expensive. Plus it made me a little sad to see all the beautiful digi kits out there and not have a reason to use them.
• Not As Travel Friendly – Last year we stayed home for Christmas so it was fine but this year we’ll be traveling which means I need an album I can easily take with me on the go.

Based off the list, I came up with a new solution: a 5×7 hybrid mini album complete with foundation pages which I’d print and then fill up with goodness over the Holiday season. Instead of focusing on daily entries like December Daily, my goal would be to capture my top ten favorite things about the holiday season. No worries about keeping up or getting behind, the top ten entires could be added at any time, in any order and hey, if I got to the end of the album and only had 8 or even 5, well I was perfectly content to remove those additional pages and call it done.

And well, considering I’m 2 for 2 completing my Holiday Faves mini albums, I’d say this method is working quite well for me! So I’m forging ahead with a 2013 edition of Holiday Faves – with one little tweak.

This year, instead of sticking with the 5×7-inch size I’ve used the past two years, I’m going with 6×8-inch pages using the Studio Calico Handbook from their Magical line as my album. It’s a four-ring binder which means it will still be easy to add or move pages around and it’s plenty thick enough to hold all the pages as the album grows. The album itself is quite a bit bigger than the 5×7 albums (it’s closer to 7×9 inches) but it should still travel nicely with us when we fly out to visit family.

Holiday Faves 2013 Products

For the foundation of my album, I’m using my Holiday Faves 2013: The Collection templates (which you can purchase here at Sweet Shoppe Designs). One of my reasons for going with the Studio Calico Handbook album this year was I loved the idea of mixing in some additional pocket page protectors into my album, Project Life-style. So the templates include 6×8 mini album templates as well as additional 3×4 & 4×6 card templates.

For my digi goodies, I’m using a combination of Christmas kits by Kristin & Zoe, as seen below. I’m normally primarily a kit scrapbooker, but for this project, I love mixing and matching to give myself more options. I just try to focus on a specific color scheme, in this case red/green/teal/cream/kraft with gold accents, to keep things from getting too crazy.

1. Holiday Faves 2013: The Collection by Nettio Designs; 2. A Christmas Wonderland Bundle by Kristin Cronin-Barrow; 3. Christmas Spirit: Merry & Bright by Zoe Pearn; 4. Life Stories: Christmas by Kristin Cronin-Barrow & Zoe Pearn.

   

Here’s a look at my foundation pages this year…

Holiday Faves 2013 Foundation Pages

This year’s cover was really simple since the majority of the work had been done for me! Love that! For the window, I rotated and trimmed down a 3×4-inch green polka dot card and added gold 2013 letter stickers. Both are from Kelly Purkey’s December Project Life kit from Simon Says Stamp.

A look at the inside cover page. Can you really go wrong with a grid of delicious digi papers?

A closer look at the cover page. All of these pages were printed at home using my Epson photo printer on Epson Premium Presentation Matte paper. I fully expected I’d run out of ink part way so I was very excited when that didn’t happen!

On the blank page on the left here, I plan to add a Christmas manifesto/why I made this album journal card. The page on the right uses one of my Holiday Faves 2013 templates, but instead of clipping paper to the template strips, I used digital washi tape and ribbon to give it a more crafty feel. I love how it turned out!

Since this is only the foundation of my mini album, none of the pages have been glued together, leaving lots of blank spreads like this. This gives me in the option to add photos or move pages around. Once I design the individual pages, I’ll glue them together to get rid of the blank pages.

A foundation/accent page combo. I love these spreads because I can easily add a single photo or note for a story that maybe isn’t quite “fave” status. Right now I’m thinking I may go with a holiday bucket list on the left page here.

My first Holiday Faves journal card spread. I like to swap these left and right throughout the album as well as leave some blank pages for full-size photos.

I’ll be handwriting all of my journaling so this year I got smart and added optional journaling lines to the Holiday Faves templates. Hopefully now my left-handed journaling won’t end up all slanty.

As I mentioned earlier, one of my reasons for choosing the Studio Calico Handbook album is it includes 6×8 divided page protectors as part of the album. I am planning to include a few of these in my album to capture some of the more general themed stories, like our holiday decorations or traditions. I like to reserve my faves for some of the more unique moments that don’t happen every year so this gives me a good way to include those stories still.

For now I’ve kept all of the page protectors empty except for my template cards, but I plan to add accents and photos to them as my album comes together.

Holiday Faves No. 2, you can see this time it’s on the right (and the digital details are flipped to match that so nothing gets cut off by the album holes.

Holiday Fave No. 3…

Another holiday themed pocket protector, this time Holiday Traditions…

The gold hello December on the right side of the page is from Mari’s Twenty Five Days of Joy kit. It comes in silver but I recolored it gold using the Hue/Saturation slider in Photoshop.

Holiday Fave No. 4…

Holiday Fave No. 5…

This Holiday Traveling card spread will mark the dividing line between Christmas in Texas and Christmas in California. I plan to move it wherever I happen to be in the album once we leave.

Holiday Fave No 6…

Another pocket page spread (this time the back of the card)…

I’m planning to use this spread to right about the gifts we buy everyone…

This page on the right is actually a pocket I made. To make the pocket, I printed the top and bottom half of the page template separately, leaving the bottom half of the blue paper page blank to save ink, and then trimmed and stapled the two halves together. The gold trim is glitter tape from Kelly Purkey’s December Project Life kit. I plan to slip a list of the gifts we buy for family into the pocket.

Holiday Fave No. 7…

Holiday Fave No. 8…

Holiday Fave No. 9…

Holiday Fave No. 10…

Final page in the album. I’ve included all the additional page protectors at the back of the album. I figure I can use them to add additional photos/accents later and just remove the ones I don’t use once I’m finished.

A closer peek at the final page…

And that’s my Holiday Faves 2013 album so far! My goal with the foundation pages is always to give myself a guide for my album while still giving me plenty of options for moving pages and adding details and photos. I’m really excited to see how this year’s album comes together!

Have any questions for me about my Holiday Faves album? Feel free to ask them in the comments below! And if you’re using the Holiday Faves 2013 templates for your own album this year, I’d love to see what you’re planning so feel free to link me up below as well!

Want to join in the Holiday Faves 2013 fun? Pick up your own copy of the Holiday Faves 2013: The Collection templates here. 

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