it's beginning to look a lot...

 ...like christmas panic, lol! ok, panic is too strong a word, but there's always a point in the proceedings when i realize that i can either do all the things i need to do OR talk about them, and that's where i am right now. i have lots more december daily pages to show, loads of decor pics, and photos from our last-minute overnight trip this weekend which included a long and photo-heavy stop at the magnificent longwood gardens. i'll be sharing all of those, in dribs and drabs over the weekend, when things calm down! meanwhile, here are some fun giftbags, sitting under our vintage-ornament-bedecked tree, which i love beyond reason:

i used the current sketch at stuck on u sketches for my basic layout, though admittedly i have been pretty loosey-goosey with the proportions of the various elements:

since i usually need to make a bunch of kid-style gift bags at christmas, i almost always go for a hybrid design. i make the basic collage in photoshop using digital elements, print it out, and embellish with real-life lumpy-bumpy details. here's a closeup of riley's bag so you can see the collage properly: 

digi kit: an icy christmas by amber shaw and studio flergs, from sweet shoppe designs; plus a few other digi papers of unknown origin, possibly from katie pertiet of designer digitals; over the rainbow glitter style by studio flergs; colorful real-life paper scraps including october afternoon, echo park, we r memory keepers, studio calico, pebbles and lots more; florals: prima; felt snowflakes, red velvet wired ribbon, plain 10x13 kraft gift bags and gems: michaels; silver star brads, gem brads and xmas badges: oriental trading; ink: colorbox, vintage trimmings from my stash

ok, so which bits are which? the dark green mat at the very back, the red flower and white snowflake, the scatter of red rhinestones, the wonky layered trees, the red and white braided vintage trim and the machine stitching are real life elements... everything else is digi, bumped up with varying degrees of drop-shadow. i always go strongest on the name so it realllllly shows up... because let's face it, we all LOVE to see our names in big sparkly letters on a fancy present, right?

my favorite part of these miiiiiight be the gloriously wonky trees. the ones below are from lindsay's bag. there were a number of styles included in the digi kit i used, "an icy christmas" by amber shaw and studio flergs from sweet shoppe designs, and that's what i used in my digital composition, to get all the sizes and shapes lined up. then, before i printed out the collage, i deleted the digital versions of the trees, so that i could replace them with real-life versions, which i made by hand-cutting lots of colorful paper scraps into triangles, and stacking them in various combinations. this was definitely a fun and super-easy thing to do and i can imagine making a collaborative project in which a grown-up makes and prints the digi collage and some kiddos make the trees and attach the other embellies! 

i hope that your holiday preparations are going well and that you are taking time to enjoy christmas eve and look forward to the big day tomorrow! ♥♥♥