new year, new stash?

as you know, at shopping our stash, we're all about creatively using the stuff we already have; but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy getting our hands on new things, too; especially (but not limited to) during the holidays and the after-xmas sales! so this week we want to see any project, in any colors, with any theme... but... we want to see you use something that's either brand spankin' new, or new to you! easy peasy, right? yeah, we thought so!

you can see that i've made myself a planner/journal for 2015, but i want to re-emphasize that your project doesn't have to be new-year-themed in any way! i just happened to need a planner, having failed to find a pre-made one i loved as much as my cool kinokuniya student dayplanner from last year. so i used one of broderbund printshop's embedded calendar templates to fashion something similar to-- but a bit bigger than-- some i've made in other years.

being a lucky so-and-so with some really awesome crafty friends, i was spoiled for choice when it came to cool NEW stuff i wanted to incorporate: the birch bark pattern on the chipboard numerals is actually very realistic-looking, textured giftwrap i got off the sale rack at pier 1. i'll warn you right now that i'm slightly obsessed with this stuff, so you can expect to see it fairly often over the course of the coming year, lol. the gold leather-ish scalloppy trim came in a crafty gift box from the lovely june; it is both more sparkly and more dimensional in real life, and thus even cooler than the photo implies! the brown shipping tag and vintage library card came from the lovely amy tsuruta, as did my very favorite thing on here. see the little bit of red paper with the poppies on it? that was a wrapper from some chocolates that amy's boss brought back from a trip to russia! amy selflessly forced herself to eat some of said awesomely-bedecked sweets, just so she could send me the fab wrappers--now THAT is friendship, people!!! :)

i was inspired by the gorgeous combination of white and neutrals in the "winter wonder" theme at curtain call inspiration challenge; ok yeah... i added a tiny splash of red, too...

i used the new sketch at stuck on u to guide my layout; but it's admittedly quite a loose take:

i tried to add some swirly bits under and around the tag,  to make my project a bit more like leah's gorgeous sketch, but since my background is another of the torn-layers collages i sooooo love making, it's already quite busy; and additional embellies never really looked right. plus, i know from experience that the cover of a journal that will get used every single day needs to be pretty streamlined; any fussy sticky-out bits are destined to be caught or torn or wrinkled beyond recognition within the first month of laureny use.

each of the 52 or so pages inside the book has a week's worth of space for recording things i've done, and the back is either a coordinating print of crafty double-sided index stock, or some vintage paper i've fused with the modern calendar page using my xyron machine. below you can see a sheet music cover that's definitely got flaws... but to me that just adds to the cool-factor!

there are a few "not-so-vintage" pages, as well, i am a sucker for foreign text magazines, so whenever friends are traveling abroad and ask if they can bring me anything, i give them $10 and tell them to pick the most interesting thing on the rack at the airport before they come home. this has netted me everything from arabic newspapers to french fashion bibles to thai gardening to icelandic gossip magazines! i love the variety and the fact that everyone i know interprets the dictate, "most interesting" in a completely different way! :)

   
this is the biggest planner i've ever made, the cover is 8.5x11" with the pages trimmed to just slightly smaller.

the spiral binding was punched and set with my bind-it-all, and with quite a bit of help from lovely husband jeff. i used to say that he was my bindery assistant whenever i make books, but really i'm his assistant, since he's the one who remembers all the little adjustments for making the machine punch multiple identical sets of holes on multiple sets of pages, whilst still getting everything to all line up correctly at the end. on these occasions i'm basically just an extra set of hands, which perfectly suits my skill-level for engineering-intensive tasks, lol!

having waffled on for far too long already, it's about time i should send you over to see the gorgeous creations of my SOS design team sisters, then break out those new goodies and get your craft on, darlings! ♥