Holiday Album divider page

 So back to the Holiday Album I showed you a few posts back.  I painted one of the Simple Stories album page dividers white.  Then using white flocking material I created a snowbank along the bottom.  I painted some decorative wood trees green and used Liquid Pearls to decorate them.  I used yellow glitter glue for the top fo the tree.  For the background above the "snowbank" I used silver glitter paint in an attempt to make it look like it was snowing.  It looks better in person than in the photo. I had the red glitter snowflakes and added those to the "sky".

A closer look at the snowbank.

It didn't turn out quite as I envisioned it but I am happy with it overall and learned a few things along the way.  Now I need to figure out what I am doing with the back of this divider page!

Journal Your Christmas

 Here is a look at my Journal Your Christmas album. 

The numbers are flat number
stickers that I used Glossy
Accents on to make them
look raised.

 
I used the Glossy Accents on the diamond shapes in the patterned card and on the berries too.  I used pop-dots to have the banner card and holly & berries stand-out.  Ribbon from my stash and December Documented from Simple Stories are the other products used.  The silver reindeer shown in the first photo ended up on the inside of the back cover.  See yesterday's post for details on the painting of the album. Links to the Simple Stories December Documented products I am using this year can be found on the right.  

Journal Your Christmas 2013

 This last week I put aside my 30 Days of Thankful project to begin preparing my album for Journal Your Christmas.

I started with a basic Simple Stories album and painted the brown chipboard part black.  I just used an acrylic paint from Michaels.  

I then use Martha Stewart's silver glitter paint to cover the front of the album .  Let that dry I started on the divider pages.  

I haven't quite figured out how I'm breaking out the topics. 
I'm thinking preparation, every-day and Christmas day but that could change as I go on.  I've also considered a memories section but I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of time to work on that.  As you can see from the photo above the divider pages began to curl but they flattened out as they dried.  
I've done December Daily for the last 2 years and decided to use Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas this year.  With December Daily I felt like I was forcing my story into someone else's formula so I'm hoping this feels more authentic.  I hope too that I have time to build it on a daily basis.  I liked having the album ready by December 1st with December Daily but it did not leave room for changes in plans, life getting busy, etc.  
I'm looking to have less filler and more content.  
Do you have any plans for documenting your Christmas?

Thanksgiving Eve

This month has just flown by (as usual)!  My husband and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving tonight as he works 12 hour shifts the next two days.  Our grown children live on the opposite side of the country from us so it's just the two of us.  Dinner will be a pared down version from what it has been in the past but hopefully just as yummy!  

I've been on vacation this week. I'm enjoying not getting up at my usual time and really enjoyed not driving to work this morning after the foot of snow that fell yesterday and last night!  

I've not been out of the house except to take Lily (our dog) out so I've not gotten the rest of my photos to work on more 30 Days of Thankful pages. Tomorrow I'll probably venture out again.

In the meantime I wanted to share that in the November edition of "Family Fun" magazine there is an article about teaching your kids about gratitude that I thought those of you with children may be interested in.  I really liked several of the ideas listed in the article but I think my favorite is taking strips of red and green construction paper to make a gratitude chain.  Each day the child writes down something they are grateful for on a green strip of paper and a good deed they performed on a red strip of paper.  Staple the ends of the strip to create a circle and with the next strip place it through the circle and staple to create a chain.  At the end of November you have a holiday chain to decorate your house or tree.  

I'm getting ready to do Journal Your Christmas with Shimelle this year.  I did a December Daily style album last year (for the 2nd year) and followed along with Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas (JYC).  I'm really looking to do more journaling this year and pull in some Christmas memories as well so I'll be following JYC much more closely this year.  

Guess I better go get dinner started....Have a wonderful and thankful Thanksgiving!  

 

December 2012 album

Simple Stories Album - front cover

I really like the combination of cardstock pages and
page protectors in the Simple Stories albums

Our city has Snowflake lights decorating
the downtown area during the holidays.  I used some snowflakes that were meant to be ornaments on the page on the left and cut a Hambly snowflake
transparency to size and added it to the left. 

The Hambly snowflake transparency covered a blurry photo on the right that I wanted in the album.  Its a motorized Christmas tree in our annual Christmas parade.

I added the program for a holiday pops concert we went to.  Fits perfectly!

 I originally set out to do a December Daily type of album.  Date card at top of page is one of Ali Edwards' digital items that I printed and decorated. Working full-time I did not end up with enough "daily" photos and had multiple event type photos so the album evolved into a December album.

I alternated 2 different page protectors throughout the album.  On the right I cut to size another Hambly transparency (reindeers).  I love how these look in the page protector pockets.  (Idea came from Ali Edwards) 

Added a Christmas card right into the album

Cut 4 x 6 photo in half to add to the top 2 pockets.

I've been working on this album since Thanksgiving on & off.  I was able to finish it on Saturday at a Crop.  I used Simple Stories Handmade Holidays and 25 Days of Christmas pieces throughout the album along with items from my stash.  I have a Christmas basket with all sorts of Christmas embellishments that works really well for me. Things I'll do differently for my next December album include:

• I'll not set the album up ahead of time.  This seemed like a real timesaver to me but ended up making me feel like I had to fit a mold that didn't work for the photos I had and stories I wanted to tell.  It felt forced.
• I'll definitely gather a variety of supplies and will probably use the Simple Stories album again.
• I'll set up a paper journal to write things down daily.  This year I just had a sheet of paper that I wrote notes on each day and then I lost it!  
• I'll try to save more memorabilia
• I'm not using a December Daily format.  I took Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas and will use that type of approach instead.
• I'll take more photos.  I'm not a big picture taker.  Probably a throwback to so many years of film photos.  I thought I was taking a lot of photos but when it came to pick photos for the album it didn't seem like many.  

So that wraps that project up - on to the next one!

Here comes 2013!

So here is what my craft room looks like as we approach the new year.  I'm slowly working on my 12/12/12 album(top photo) from Big Picture Classes (BPC) Twelve class.  I didn't complete 144 layouts (12/month) as part of the class but I learned a lot about storytelling thanks to Stacy Julian!  I'll be reviewing this class with several other class members as we continue to dig into the enormous amount of material that was part of this class. I love the Simple Stories album that we are using for this project.  I'm trying to think how I want to do Project Life and also do another Simple Stories album in 2013.  I love the idea of a Year in Review album like this.

The middle photo shows my December Daily album in progress.  Several snowstorms have prevented me from getting to CVS to print my latest photos but hope to get that done today before more snow tomorrow!  I'm enjoying this process and have several ideas for how I would like to do this next year.  I think I'm changing it to a Holiday album and include Thanksgiving through the New Year next year.  I'm also working my way through Journaling Your Christmas with Shimelle.  Shimelle provides two prompts a day - there is a lot of material and I need to catch up with those as well.  (Can you tell I have a large "to-do" list for the next five days?)

Bottom photo is a look at my three work tables.  Can you see my Project Life album buried and shoved up against the wall in the photo?  That's on my "to-do" list too.

What's on your "to-do" list for this last week of 2012?  And what are your plans for 2013?  Stop back tomorrow as I talk about my One Little Word for 2013 and what that means for my goals and plans for 2013.

December Daily/Journal Your Christmas

The top two photos are a few of my foundation pages in my December Daily/Journal Your Christmas album. I'm using templates from Ali Edwards for these journaling cards and then embellishing them.  Since I didn't not get much journaling done in last year's December Daily album I added Journal Your Christmas (JYC) to my process this year.  Two days in to the class and I'm amazed at the amount of information and material that Shimelle provides. If you're interested, check out www.shimelle.com
I apologize for the slightly dark photos above - its always an adjustment this time of year as I get the lighting figured out.  It gets dark to early and today we didn't the sun at all.
The next photo is a shot of Becky Higgins' 6" x 6" Small Envelope Pages.  I found out these fit in the Sn@p! albums very well.  I was looking through all my stuff for items to use in my Sn@p! albums for December Daily/JYC and 12/12/12 when I figured that out.  Also, in Becky Higgins Small Variety Pack Page Protectors there are 5" x 7" page protectors - the 2 vertically aligned ones work in the Sn@p! album also.
The last photo shows the chaos my room is in right now.  Those are photos I'm gathering for the 12/12/12 event at Big Picture Classes.  We're creating a mini-album showcasing photos and memories from this past year.  All around the photos are Christmas/Holiday items for embellishing the December Daily/JYC album.
Are you doing a holiday album this year?