Oh how I love this project! I created my first December Daily album back in 2011. We were living in Riga, Latvia and I couldn’t wait to document Christmas in Europe. I brought a good amount of scrapbooking supplies overseas with me and created an 8x8 album with whatever Christmas supplies I had on hand. In 2012 we were still in Latvia and that was the first year I purchased Ali Edwards’ December Daily Kit, with a 4x6 album. It may have even been the first year she offered a physical kit, not sure. Unfortunately I didn’t create one in 2013. We were in the middle of a move and there was just no time (PSA..NEVER move during the holiday season–just don’t). 2014 (6x8 album), and 2015 (6x8 album) were also physical albums using Ali’s December Daily Kits.
In 2016, I had every intention of creating another physical album. I had Ali’s 2016 December Daily Kit in hand and was taking photos everyday. But that thing called a full-time job got in the way. By the time I came home after work and made dinner, I was too tired to do anything else. I mean I think I did one page along with the title page, but then I gave up. See...they are right here:
Fast forward to the summer of 2017. British software developer, Serif Labs, introduced the Affinity Photo app for specific iPads. Affinity Photo is an app that supports layered PSD files. I was already creating my Project Life albums on my mobile device so why not try and do a December Daily album as well. I remember “translating” the physical version of Day One 2016 to an app format and I never looked back! Look:
What solidified my decision even more to go totally mobile was that over Labor Day weekend in 2017, we took a trip to San Francisco. I was able to continue to work on my 2016 DD pages while on the plane! I had all of Ali’s digital December Daily products in iCloud Drive and could access them in Affinity Photo! This made me SO HAPPY! 2019 will be the 4th year I am creating my December Daily on my iPad, using Affinity Photo!
My December Daily Mobile Toolbox
Affinity Photo: One of the things I love about Affinity is I can organize my files into projects. So I have a project for each year of my December Daily albums, another for templates, and another for the working files of the textured embellishments.
iCloud Drive: I keep all of Ali Edwards’ December Daily digital products organized in my iCloud Drive. This is the easiest way for me to access them through Affinity Photo! I can have two windows open at once on my iPad, so I just drag and drop elements from iCloud Drive to the page I am working on in Affinity! I have a folder with all of the 2019 Digital December Daily products and then a bunch of other folders with Ali’s past December Daily digitals organized into different categories. Once the 2019 season is over, those products will be broken up and placed into those various categories. I will elaborate on this further in an upcoming post.
Project Life App: While I do not have my December Daily album printed through the PL App, I do place the pages in the full 6x8 collage to share on my Instagram account. I’ll explain more about this in an upcoming post, too!
So that’s it! Those are my go to apps for documenting our December on my iPad. Stay tuned! I have several posts that will be published that will show you what I do to prepare for December Daily prior to December 1st! If you have created a December Daily album on your mobile device in the past, what are some of the the things you to prepare before December comes along?