december daily kicks off... and free is (STILL) good!

when i was making this page last night it finally dawned on me why i've been so obsessed by the concept of december daily and/or keeping a pre-christmas journal the last couple of years: it's pretty much the grown-up papercrafting equivalent of an advent calendar, isn't it? with one fun, special, glitter-encrusted page to assemble and reveal each day. OF COURSE i want one!!! so here's page one:

base collage: torn scraps of doodlebug and best creation glitter paper, basic grey notebook printed paper, vintage sheet music and doilies; top layer: teresa collins transparency with a strip of hambly, mambi silver chipboard letters, basic grey old skool alphas, photo printed on kodak premium glossy paper

ok, yeah, there are A LOT of layers, and doilies feature prominently. remember all the crazy doily collages i made for ICAD over the summer? well, it turns out i was just warmin' up! :) in this case i had so much fun making the base that in the end i didn't want to cover it up too much, so i put my photo and lettering on a piece of transparency to float it over the background.

most years my first bit of xmas decor is a holiday plant of some sort, that i can buy just before thanksgiving without feeling like i'm jumping the gun. often it's a poinsettia from the grocery store. this year it's a christmas cactus from home depot, which obligingly began to bloom over the weekend.

the torn paper is pretty much all scraps: some glitter paper, some notebook paper, some vintage sheet music, doily bits, etc; roughly torn and stuck down (working from the bottom of the page to the top) then machine stitched. i find making this sort of collage almost hypnotic, which, i suppose, is why i do it so often.

in case you're wondering where "free is good" comes in, just a reminder that SOS179 is an extra long challenge, in honor of the thanksgiving holiday, so there's still a whole week in which to join in! this time, my free thing was a beautiful piece of white-on-white cardstock packaging that enclosed an older set of pink paislee mistable papers. i chose it because i *THOUGHT* some of the background was going to show in my collage. in the end, i covered the whole page, but free is still good, right?! :)