dd03: toys for tots

apparently, my december daily is going to mostly be a record of the things we do every holiday season. turns out, we have a lot more traditions than i realized! one of our very, very favorites? filling a cart at whatever store has the toys for tots drop-off* and then leaving all the goodies in the donation bin. i'm of the opinion that in terms of SERIOUS shopping fun, this is unbeatable; you should try it!

(vintage: xmas recipe page; photo printed on kodak premium high gloss; patterned paper: my mind's eye, imaginisce; chipboard thickers: american crafts; chipboard present: my mind's eye; border sticker: crate paper; deco tape: k and co; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick) 

page-wise, apparently i'm going to use a lot of 4" instagram pics this year. i've also unearthed a few sheets of christmassy numerals in my stash, and they are coming into play most handily. my favorite part of this is the funky moose guy... i have NO IDEA where he came from, but he was obviously destined precisely for this purpose!!! :)

*all the US branches of toys-r-us have a donation bin, you can also find plenty of local places via the official toys for tots website!

dd02: lights!

this being our first year in the new house, it's also our first experience with outdoor lights. thus, lovely husband jeff spent a fair amount of saturday and sunday afternoon up a ladder, first installing a whole bunch of little white hooks, then hanging the lights from them. my job? unwrap all the strings of lights, then stand below proffering them, whilst making herculean efforts not to imagine freakish but fatal holiday-ladder-based accidents. 

design-wise, we went uber-simple: just your basic icicle lights, on the eaves of the front and side of our corner-lot house. there were no big surprises, really, except that i don't think either of us realized HOW MANY eaves we have, or how many lights it would take to cover 'em. also, they are REALLY bright, and it keeps kind of shocking us to see an uneartly bluish LED glow outside the windows of rooms which are usually dark after dusk. frankly, if the tardis* arrives in our front sitting room during december, i'm not entirely sure we will notice!

(vintage: ledger paper; instagrammed iphone pic printed on kodak premium photo paper; patterned paper: basic grey; rub-on letters and numerals: making memories; labels: dymo; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick)

ok, so, the simplest page imaginable: a few interesting (to me anyway) calculations and another single, square photo. this one was surprisingly hard to achieve, actually. it turns out if you wait until it's fully dark, you don't get anything but blinding glare against inpenatrable darkness. on the other hand, if you don't wait until it's fully dark, you can't even see the lights. my solution was to take pics at dusk and then kind of pump up the saturation and contrast in instagram. the result isn't perfect, but i think it's ok. it doesn't need to be art, it just has to record our first year of bein' a winter wonderland. mission accomplished, lol! :)

*super-excited to discover today that there will be a doctor who xmas special this year! i had assumed that the recent 50th anniversary special (one of the best episodes EVER, imo!) meant we'd be forgoing the usual holiday festivities. HOORAY for being wrong! :)

dd01: bring it on!

already i'm loving december daily; and already i'm discovering that whereas i'm totally fine with actually making the page on time, i somehow really have trouble taking and posting the photo each day. since this has happened every time i've participated in a daily project (such as ICAD and DPP) it's not exactly a shock, right? anyway, please bear with me as i post three times on some days and none at all on others! :0

(vintage: sheet music; instagrammed i-phone photo printed on kodak premium glossy photo paper; patterned paper: teresa collins, echo park, doodlebug; cardstock sticker: my mind's eye; glitter letter stickers: making memories; (ancient) rub-on alphas (that i still really love!): scrapworks; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner) 

ok, so, in our house, thanksgiving night is all about starting up the fun things we save for the holiday season. christmas music and bayberry candles are probably our two favorite seasonal items--we will enjoy them every single day now, until the new year. since we are always most excited to welcome their return, it seemed like the perfect place to start december daily!

*a few years ago, the williamsburg candle company went out of business, and took the "perfect" bayberry with them. since then we've tried a wholllllllllllle lot of different brands. we've stumbled upon a couple of cool craft-fair vendors, and the more common cape cod candle are pretty good, but nobody quite captures the scent in the same way for us. if you happen to have a bayberry jones and a favorite brand, won't you share??! thanks, darlings! :)

i'm pretty sure...

...the "D" in "EAD designs" stood for delightful! i mean, seriously, just look at this gorgeous bold sentiment and the sweet baubles... i dare you not to smile! :)

(clear stickers and the most awesome rub-ons ever: EAD designs; transparency: hambly; patterned paper: october afternoon; bling flourish: recollections; flower sequins and tiny brads: queen and co; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape)

welcome to another EAD designs day, we had so much fun last time, we decided to do it again! today the theme is "holiday". i noticed when i was getting my stash of christmas cards together that i hadn't made many transparent cards this year. partially because my stash of hambly is sadly dwindling... so it seemed perfect to pair a few of my treasured EAD goodies with this half sheet of 12x12 hambly goodness!

and now i know you're dying to surf around and see what the other EAD tribute artists have done this month; plus there will once again be a few (four, i think!) prizes on offer randomly to folks who comment on all the blogs, so why not get hopping!

Amy 

Jessica  

Julie Smith  

Julie Tucker-Wolek  

June  

Kathe Deck  

Lauren Bergold (that's me!)

Rose  

Stephanie 

Wendi

thank you, redux

we're still making our holiday thank you cards at *JINGLE BELLES* and we'd love for you to join us!

(patterned paper: hambly, october afternoon, studio calico, love elsie, basic grey, my mind's eye, dcwv, making memories, glitz... and maybe a few more; snowflake stickers and bling: recollections; chipboard letters: american crafts; border punches: ek success, recollections, martha stewart; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

this time i used unscripted sketch #232... plus a whollllllllllllllllllle lot of skinny scraps!

be sure to hop over to *JINGLE BELLES* and see what stephanie has made, then check out the readers' gallery and link up your own gorgeous creation!

SOS129: holiday/winter

i'm pretty sure you'll have already guessed, from the title, what this week's challenge is at shopping our stash, right? yepper, it's a timely one, in which you can make a christmas or hanukkah themed project...(card, tag, layout, etc) ...or go all wintery, and make something with snowflakes, sleds and icicles! i sort of split the difference, and made a "december daily" book. see?!

(vintage: christmas card "frame", sheet music, re-sized illustration from "a christmas carol", s+h greenstamps; (ancient) acrylic book dividers: 7 gypsies... i think... (i suspect discontinued, anyway, sorry!) patterned paper: dcwv,; cardstock: scraps of every green core'dinations ever made... typed on, layered together, machine stitched, and cut with a sizzix xmas tree die; sparkly snowflake stickers: martha stewart; badge: studio calico; numbers tag: pink paislee; labelmaker: dymo; bookrings: staples; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick, 3m foam tape)

having read ali edwards' blog and seen all of the fun the DD folks have making their holiday compilations, i've secretly always wanted to make one, too. realistically* this may turn out to be one of those short-lived, hilarious-in-retrospect ideas; i mean, it's only jeff and myself-- no kids, no visits to santa, etc-- so i'm not all that sure we'll be doing enough "christmas stuff" to merit an entire minibook. on the other hand, it's our first year in the new house, we ♥LOVE♥ decorations and lights and giftwrap; and at least one of us (ok, me, lol!) realllllllllllllly loves collecting and playing with both vintage and new christmas supplies, so i figured why not? worst case scenario, i fill 25 pages with instagrams, old holiday illustrations and pictures of the nieces. or wind up with a sort of holiday-themed art journal. either way, i've definitely done sillier things than that. so let's go! :)

you've seen the cover, but these shots (kind of) show that it's actually two layers. the base of my book is a rather elderly set of acrylic dividers that i think were made by 7 gypsies. i always loooooooove acrylic, for minibooks, especially, since you get that awesome "peek-a-boo" effect of being able to add layers and still see behind them. or rather, i always love acrylic... right up until i have to photograph it. ugh. well, anyway. you get the gist of it, right?

as for pages, i've got a few cool patterned papers, including some pocket pages i made from double-sided sturdy prints, because in my opinion all minibooks need pockets. trousers do, too, but that's another story. :) the rest of the pages are made up of vintagey bits... book paper, old cards, sheet music, illustrations from "ideals" magazines, etc. no rhyme or reason, i just spent a really fun evening flipping through my supplies and if i liked it, it went into the book. some take up the full amount of space, others are shorter or longer to add variety. any paper i deemed too flimsy to be a page (for example, some of the super-old sheet music is VERY thin and a bit brittle) i either backed with patterned paper or shored up with an inkjet transparency run through my xyron.

i haven't decided yet if i'll be using fronts and backs of pages, or just fronts or... if there are some really exciting days... maybe i'll need more than one page for each? so i've started with about 20 pages, figuring i can add more as i go on. i thought about numbering them, but decided i'd rather not be locked in just yet; that way i can pick a page that "goes with" the content of a particular day. for example, this lovely 1950's painting reminds me very much of jeff's godfather's christmas tree farm, where we get our tree each year, and i'm thinking i might use it for the day we visit uncle john!

ok, so i think this is it for now. c'mon back on december second to see how it goes! meanwhile, be sure to check out the awesome projects my fellow SOS dt members have come up with, and be sure to link up your own winter holiday goodness, darlings!

*don't you just HATE the whole concept of that?! being realistic, i mean? yeah, me too. hence the book. wahey! ♥

thank you, thank you!

this fortnight at JINGLE BELLES we have a little bit of a change-up: we're making holiday thank you cards, so we'll all have something nice to send to our family and friends AFTER christmas! nice, right?! here's what i made:

(patterned paper: crate; journaling card: making memories; florals and leaves: prima; brads: my mind's eye; sentiment sticker: srm; cardstock: core'dinations; vintage ribbon from my stash; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape; scotch doublestick tape)

I used this week's cardabilities sketch (#87) which i think you'll agree is rather awesome:

since it was sooooooooo easy to pull this one together, i've got a little extra time this week, which i plan to spend making sure all the christmas cards i made this year have my signed logo on the back, a sentiment inside, and the right-sized envelope ready to mail them. so when i sit down the first week of december to write these out, there will be absolutely no last minute card-related stress!

and now, why not jump on over to JINGLE BELLES to see what stephanie has made, and get a glimpse of a little prize that miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight just be on offer to one lucky cardmaker this week! :)