***CLOSED/Winner Announced*** Clean Slate Challenge - DYD 2018

CONGRATULATIONS @AnotherAmanda, you're the clean slate challenge winner!

Hi everyone!

Are you excited about DYD this year, but you have an unfinished book from last year still lurking in the background, clouding your excitement? I know I did! I always start out so strong and then as the pace of activities pick up as Christmas Day approaches, I get behind. I do get a few more knocked out during MOC, but by February, I've moved on and the project sits idle.

Two weeks ago, I decided to take a peek at last year's project. I still had NINE pages left to do for my 2017 book.... NINE! I really thought I was closer to being done than that! Time to make a plan.

I do my DYD differently than some. I don't do a daily project, I do a book of 31 Christmas "things"... some of those are days if there was a Christmas event that day and others are just things. Thankfully, I make a DYD section in my bullet journal each year. It's a mess, but it works...



I always start with the list from here at TLP each year and modify it as the month progresses. I tend to bounce around a bit, so it's nice to have a list to cross things off on. I see which "days" I have left and what I had planned for that day. Sometimes the reason the page didn't get done is because I didn't end up getting the photos I wanted. So next I check this...



This was my list of ideas. I look to see if there is anything open that I have photos for that might fit into a "day". I also ended up going through my photos from December to see if I had anything else I could use (I did, thank goodness). Once I had figured out my topics, it was time to scrap.

The thing about coming back to this project months later is that I was able to let go of a lot of my hang ups from when I was working on it before. I had felt that I was overusing certain kits in my book, overusing certain template sets, etc. But coming back to it after a break, it was all fresh and new. I concentrated on knocking out pages as quickly as possible and lived by the motto "done is better than perfect". I had my pages done in no time and my book ordered. It arrived today....



.... I'm in love! I'm also in love with being able to start fresh with 2018 without having 2017 hanging over me.

So... do you have a previous year's unfinished DYD project lurking out there, tempering your excitement for 2018? If so, this challenge is for you! There are still a couple of weeks before December begins, plenty of time to knock out some pages and give yourself a clean slate for starting this year's book. In addition to posting your pages, this is also a forum for discussion on how to tackle catching up and a place to offer and receive encouragement.

This is a challenge, so there will be a random winner of a $3 GC. Each catch up layout posted here will be considered an entry (so be sure to make a new post for each layout). Challenge closes on Monday, November 19th at midnight EST.

Can't wait to see your pages!!!

 

Thanks Maribel! Sahlin Studio's stuff sure prints beautifully, doesn't it?

Tackling 2015 sounds like a good plan! I have the DYD bug right now and our Christmas stuff won't start until next week, so I decided to do a book for a previous year. I attempted this last year and failed, but I picked a year with a lot of photos. This year I picked one that had very few photos (but enough to stretch to 20 pages)... I used Soco's new templates and it's coming together super fast. At first I was sad about how few photos I had, but instead I'm focusing on how glad I am that I have these photos (they were on a dead EHD we had recovered)! Maybe you could stretch yours to 20 with some journaling only pages or filler pages with word art and elements?

 

Thanks Jan! And the thing is.... no matter what, the pages always look perfect to me once they're printed! Maybe it's the seeing the pages all together vs. focusing on them individually... but I always love my books once they're here.

 

Thanks Jenn! This is just my second year to finish and I'm loving my little stack of (two!) books I think seeing that stack grow is motivation to keep doing it.

 

Thanks Jan!

I've done that too... I have several years like that in fact... sigh. My advice, in addition to having some ideas in advance, take a lot of photos I was so thankful that I had taken "extra" photos throughout the month. One I scrapped for my book wasn't really even taken with Christmas in mind... it was a pile of Amazon boxes by the front door that I took to show my husband. It ended up being my last page I needed to do for my book... that and a little journaling about our "Amazon Christmas"! So, take lots of pictures and be flexible in your thinking about what makes up your Christmas story

 

I'm so glad to hear that you're doing DYD this year!

Here are the prompts for 2018 and here are the ones from 2017.

 

Oooooooo.... that sounds so exotic!!

 

You can do it! I love the page you just posted. I printed through Shutterfly and it turned out really nice.

 

That sounds like a good plan... I'm not good at photoless pages either. I really like the full page photo idea.