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.  

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?

Sn@p! from Simple Stories

Wanted to share this video with you from Simple Stories.  You may remember from previous posts that I love Simple Stories Collections and now they have several new collections along with albums.  If you are doing Project Life or are looking for a simpler way to preserve your memories  - check this out!

Project Life Blog Hop

Welcome back to our monthly blog hop and Happy National Scrapbook Day! 
Project Life has been a little bit of a challenge for me this year.  I've not taken a lot of photos this year at least yet.  There's been a few reasons for that.  For one, life has been pretty ordinary & I just didn't feel motivated to capture just the routine day in/day out things.  I use Week in the Life for that.  Secondly, I've become very conscious of how many albums I already have created and the space that they take up so I'm trying to find a balance between preserving the memories of my life (ordinary or not) with the amount of materials I'll leave behind to my children/grandchildren one day. So I switched to a monthly format for February through March instead of a weekly format.  In May I'll switch back to a weekly format as we have several things scheduled in May that will provide photos.
This is also the second year that I have done (or attempted) A Week in the Life (WITL) in my Project Life (PL) album.  Ali Edwards' set the last week in April for WITL.  I suprised myself and took 54 photos in one day which I think has to be a record for me.  However, there are days I only took 1-3.  I did pretty well with the journaling although I have some ideas for next time (I think Ali will be doing this again later this year) that I think will help prompt me to write down some other details.  I think I'll adapt Ali's journaling sheets for that. I want to add prompts to remind to write down what I'm reading, restaurants we go to, movies we watch, etc.
So here are my regular April pages.  I had hoped to have my Week in the Life pages done too but
I'm still working on them.

left side

right side

left side

right side

Not too much going on - you can probably see the weather was back & forth.  Spring one day, winter the next. I used the journaling cards from the Cobalt kit along with some items from Simple Stories.  I can't remember if they were from Life Documented or year.ography sets.  A little Easter basket added to the photo of my cats. I also put the postcard for the Art of Observation class I received with my scrapbook.com order along with my Heidi Swapp Memory Files stuff.  So nothing fancy or exciting - just me and my life!  Thanks so much for hopping by!
If you've been hopping along from the start the next blogger to visit is Lois & you can find her here http://loishouston.typepad.com/thoughts-along-lifes-highway/

     

Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com   To start at the beginning START HERE

Devon http://www.youhadmeatneurotic.com

Nikki www.inkyart.com.au

Laew www.crafty-creativity.blogspot.com

Lois http://loishouston.typepad.com/thoughts-along-lifes-highway/

Helen www.helen-mills.blogspot.com

Jennifer http://vogtstories.blogspot.com

Brighton www.dearbrighton.wordpress.com

Project Life 2012 Week 1

 2012 is my second year doing Project Life (PL).  I don't have any hard & fast rules for how I do this. Week 1 found me visiting my son, DIL and 9 month old grandson in Seattle.  I was happy to do some baby-sitting while I was there and I snapped a lot of photos of Owen.  So there are a lot of pages for this week!  I also use divided page protectors for creating 2 baby albums of Owen (one for me and one for Owen and his parents).  I usually put Owen's photos in the baby albums but these I'm including in PL since its was about my visit there.




 



 For these pages I'm using a mix of items from Becky Higgins PL Core Kit and Simple Stories Year.O.Graphy collection.  The 2" border at left is one of Year.O.Graphy pieces.  So easy to do - just cut and slide into the pocket!  I tend to shoot quite a few vertically oriented photos so I need to use a variety of divided page protectors like this one.  I use page protectors from Becky Higgins, We R Memory Keepers and American Crafts.





 

 

Page on left is same as the one on right.

Different photos are showing on right with the use of Close To My Heart Flip Flap Memory Protectors.

 

Page above still needs some work. I want to do farm animals for embellishments on the 2" paper strip. Haven't found exactly what I want to do yet. The 2 pages above are the same page but the one on the right shows a Close To My Heart Flip Flap Memory Protector in the bottom right hand corner flipped up so I could include more photos.  Its great that these work both horizontally and vertically.

2" paper strip needs embellishment yet

Added children's menu directly to album by using a 3 hole punch to punch holes.

Right hand with menu page turned.  Simple Stories Year.O.Graphy pieces on bottom of page along with receipt from dinner.

PL Core Kit and Year.O.Graphy pieces mix well together on this page.

 



Arrived home in western NY to snow!  No suprise there although it has been quite a warm and generally snow-less winter here.  Very unusual but appreciated. 

Notes to self - need to include more journaling and try to stay with a select few photos that show the best represent that time period!  I ended up with 2 very full albums (probably should be 3) last year.  I just have a hard time leaving out photos of Owen!

Hope you enjoyed my first week!