By now you must have seen the beautiful December kits called “Different Places” – they are already starting to ship. To help you over the waiting time I’ll show some paper combinations, some ideas for layouts and share an unboxing video at the end of the post.

Different Places is the perfect kit to transition into a new year, it talks about new adventures, fresh starts and uses maps as symbols for new beginnings and goals. It could help you to document all the little adventures of your daily life, the big trips that you reminisce about during the dark winter time (in the Northern hemisphere) and the goals that you set for yourself for the new year.

Here are some of my favorite papers and embellishments of the kit! I love how these papers work together, to me it is the perfect mix of light and dark patterns. And they are my favorite color, so that helps as well! And that washi tape just add the perfect amount of black to the mix. Did you see that Cocoa Daisy now has exclusive enamel dots that go perfectly with the colors of the kit? I think this is the most exciting element in this whole kit. I hope they will often be included in future kits! The stamp set from the pocket kit on the contrary is not very exciting, but I already know it will be a staple in my project life spreads in the upcoming year. I love the font and the size. They also go well with an alphabet stamp set that was included in the Planner Add-on kit for June 2017.

After looking at all the fun bits in the kits, I usually look at all the papers and embellishments one more time. But this time, I look for story prompts. I found them in this reddish paper from Alexandra Renke, this paper was included in the Paper Add-On “Adventures” and the little banner that says “live life now”. I immediately knew of a story I wanted to tell and just went looking in my photos for the right one to go with the story and the paper.

Here is another selection of papers and ideas I grouped together. Here my starting point for these elements or layout is two things: the envelope and the photos that go with the flyer that is supposed to go in the envelope. You cannot see them here and I haven’t started working on this idea yet. I had several photos of this event that all told different aspects of the whole story. I couldn’t decide which photo to include and which to leave out but I also don’t want to take up too much real estate in the album. Here is where I am at right now: I printed one photo at 10×12 that is going to the left of this layout. Then I printed the other two photos at a smaller scale (3×3) and will include them on this layout.  The rest of the layout is still forming in my head. I hope it translates well onto paper once I’m ready to film the process.

Here is a closer look at all the elements that were included in the kit and that I talked about above. Tell me, how do you go about creating a layout? How do you choose stories to tell, pictures to scrapbook and papers to bring them to life? I would love to talk about this with you in the comments! Oh, and please follow my journey to complete these layouts on Instagram where I usually share these glimpses into my thought process!