December Daily: an album for the whole of December

December is the month when the most happens and the least gets kept. The photos stay on your phone, and the children's drawings end up in the recycling in January. A December Daily captures those weeks in one small book, with a page for each day. The nice thing is that most of the work is done before December even starts.

What is a December Daily?

A December Daily is a mini album in which you record the month of December day by day. The idea was created by the American scrapbook designer Ali Edwards, and scrappers in many countries now make one.

The classic set-up is simple: an album with 25 numbered pages, from 1 to 25 December. For each day you add a photo, a few sentences and sometimes a receipt, a card or a drawing. It doesn't have to be a work of art. It's about the little things: the tree going up, the first frost on the car windscreen, the chocolate letter that's already half eaten by 3 December.

Many scrappers actually like that the project has an end. If you tend to abandon a weekly album or a year-long project after a few months, a single month is often doable. On 1 January you have a whole book.

Why you prepare it in November

The golden rule of December Daily: put the album together before December. Then in December you don't have to cut and search, just print photos and write something down. That way you're present, instead of having your head at your craft table.

Good preparation in November looks like this:

1. Choose an album. A ring binder of 15 x 20 cm (6 x 8 inches) or 15 x 15 cm (6 x 6 inches) is common. Small enough to finish, big enough for a photo and some text.
2. Allow for growth. The book gets thicker every day with photos, envelopes and cards. Choose a ring binder with larger rings, or an album you can add pages to.
3. Make the pages in advance. Stick down backgrounds, add the day numbers and fill a few pockets or cards with paper or a short Christmas phrase.
4. Leave room for the photo. Don't cover everything. Often the photo decides what the page will look like, so it's fine to leave some pages half finished.
5. Put together a small kit to work from. A box with glue, scissors, a pen, washi tape and the cut-outs that go with the album. That way you can catch up on a day in ten minutes.

Many scrappers do the cover last. Made with the leftovers of your paper and embellishments, the cover then shows straight away which colours and mood are inside.

Buying a kit or putting your own together

Around autumn, plenty of December Daily kits appear: packs with paper, numbered cards, stickers and sometimes an album. Handy if you're short on time or like everything to match. Pocket albums with ready-made cards in different sizes also work well, because you can easily move a card to another pocket if you don't like it where it is.

Still, you often need less than you think. Look in your own stash first. Christmas paper from previous years hardly dates, and leftovers from earlier mini albums, envelopes, transparencies and loose numbers all come in handy.

Two things help if you put your own together:

• Choose a limited colour palette, for example kraft, white, black and gold with a touch of colour here and there. That way leftovers from different kits still go together.
• Make an honest list of what you have and what you're really missing. Take anything out of your basket that your own stash already covers.

A common pitfall is buying a big kit out of enthusiasm and then feeling guilty about it. A pile of Christmas paper you feel you have to use up makes scrapping heavier rather than more fun. Use what makes you happy and feel free to give the rest away.

If you prefer to work digitally or half digitally, that works too. Print digital elements on sturdy matt paper, cut them out and stick them in your album. All you need is a printer, scissors and glue.

Sinterklaas, Christmas and New Year in one album

The original idea stops on Christmas Day. In the Netherlands and Belgium, December starts with Sinterklaas and ends with oliebollen and fireworks. It's exactly that mix that makes a Dutch December Daily special.

You decide how long you keep going. Many scrappers fill the whole month up to and including 31 December, because family visits and New Year's Eve still come in those last days. Others stop after Christmas and turn the week between Christmas and New Year into a single round-up page. If you like, you can even carry on until Epiphany on 6 January and give the album a general title such as 'Our holidays' with the year.

A few ideas to give every celebration a place:

• Use the first days for Sinterklaas: putting out your shoe, a surprise in the making, the poem you were still writing at midnight. Fold a poem or wish list small and tuck it into a little envelope on the page.
• Let the Christmas tree be the turning point. Many scrappers start the Christmas section on the day the tree goes up.
• Save New Year for the last page: the list of resolutions, the oliebollen, a photo of the empty street on New Year's morning.

If you go for 31 days, set up 31 pages straight away and expect a thicker book. You could keep the last week flat, with just photos and cards, so the album still closes.

Days when nothing special happens

Not every day in December is a celebration. There are workdays, rainy Sundays and evenings when you fall asleep on the sofa at nine. Those days belong too, and looking back, they're often the loveliest to reread.

What you can capture on a day like that:

• something from home: the Christmas decorations, a candle, the pile of cards on the windowsill
• an ordinary routine: breakfast, the bike in the frost, the school gate at half past eight
• something you kept: a receipt from the Christmas shopping, a cinema ticket, the label from the stollen
• a short thought: what you're looking forward to, what you miss, what you heard that day

If you forget to take a photo, stick in something else. A bag from the bakery or a cinema ticket in an envelope tells the same story.

If it helps to have something to hold on to, write a list of short questions or prompts in November. What was on the table today? Which song was stuck in your head? On a quiet day you pick one and you're done in five minutes. You can also combine a few quiet days into one page. The album is no less for it.

Keeping up when December is busy

December is a full month, and that's exactly why a December Daily can feel like a squeeze. It helps to keep the project light.

• Collect every day, stick things in later. Take a photo, put a card in an envelope or jot three words on a note. The sticking can wait for a quiet hour at the end of the week.
• Print photos all at once. In the meantime, put a piece of paper the size of the photo on the page and write on it which photo goes there.
• Plan activities, not obligations. Think about what you really want to do, like going to see the lights or baking biscuits together, and let the rest go. Your album is about your December, not about a full diary.
• Leave out embellishments if it gets too much. A day with just a photo and a sentence is a perfectly good day.
• Accept that you'll fall behind. Many scrappers only finish their album in January. That way you get to reread the whole month straight away.

If an album fills up, you can split it. Some scrappers use two small albums, one for Sinterklaas and the run-up, and one for Christmas and the turn of the year.

The book the year after

A December Daily gets more beautiful the more of them there are. If you choose the same size every year, you end up with a row of small books on the shelf that you can leaf through one by one in November, before you start the new one. You see the children grow, the tree change places and traditions take shape.

So don't start out wanting to do it perfectly. Start with 25 or 31 blank pages and a promise to yourself that every day can be something, however small.