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! ♥