all is calm, all is bright

hello and welcome to the strangest and most random page i've made for december daily so far. it actually doesn't have much to do with christmas, but it would never have happened if i wasn't doing this project:

ok, yeah, so i know what you're thinking, you're thinking, "hey lauren, have you gone nuts?!" well, possibly, yes... luckily with me, that sort of thing is hard to tell, lol! :) but lemme essplain: on one of the elebenty nights i was outside around dusk trying to get a nice photo of the outdoor lights, there was a full moon in a sort of hazy blue sky, hovering between the bare branches of our neighbors' trees. and it looked REALLY cool, so i took some pics, which came out pretty well, considering i was just shooting up into the sky using my iphone. at the time, this fact was actually slightly galling to me, because the shot i was absolutely failing to get was the one i wanted, of the xmas lights. but that's the way it goes, right? anyway, at some point i added a few p-shop filters and printed my favorite shot on an inkjet transparency, intending to use it on a journal page in january or so. but every time i saw it on my desk, i just wanted to make something NOW. so, eventually i gave in, layered it over some creamy/white glitter paper, machine stitched on top* and decided to call it a december daily page. is it crazy to make something random and pointless when there's already waaaaaaaaay too much to do? possibly. but i can tell you that the most relaxed and focused i have felt in at least a week was the 20 minutes or so i sat at the sewing machine, stitching over the handwritten words; and looking at the finished page makes me smile. so there ya go. that's the kind of crazy i'll take, anyday, darlings! ♥

*exactly how i made the page: i printed the moon photo in reverse (aka "iron on mode") on the pebbly side of an inkjet transparency sheet. i layered it over some old doodlebug sparkly glitter paper. i wrote "calm" and "bright" on the shiny side of the transparency using the AWESOME new fine point white sharpie paint pen and let it dry. i applied the dymo labels in the correct position, and tacked the whole sheet to the glitter paper using some 1/8" score tape. then i took the whole thing over to the sewing machine (loaded with white upholstery thread and set on 12 stitches per inch) and sewed over the thin white line of my handwriting. i did a few layers, until the curves were nice and smooth and the stitching really showed up. then i inked around the whole thing with waterproof black ink, punched a hole for the bookring, and called it DONE.