sometimes procrastination is a GOOD thing!

i mentioned last week that jeff had the chance to use up a few extra vacation days right before christmas, and that he was excited about last-minute opportunities to spend a day in bethlehem at christkindlmarkt and later for us to take an overnight near his parents' house so we could visit longwood gardens. we also unexpectedly go the chance to play host to some cousins from out of state who were in town for "a limited engagement" during christmas week. all of these events were wonderful, but there's only so much time in a day, so the thing that got pushed to the back-burner was december daily. i was still taking photos and composing pages, but photographing and posting just didn't happen. and i'm *fine* with that. afterall, there's no statute of limitations in papercrafting, darlings! my book is finished now, though, and i have a mega-wrap-up post for you, so let's get started:

dd19: oh rats

all december i'd been periodically checking the listings on the logo channel to see when they'd be showing their annual "battle of the nutcrackers" in which a different version of the ballet airs each night. and it was NEVER listed. the friday before xmas i discovered why... because it's not on logo, it's on ovation! so here's a page that's cute AND an excellent reminder to be careful about asking a question to which you THINK you know the answer.

dd20: (photo-less) christmas with the bergolds

apparently it's going to be a yearly tradition that there will be one BIG december event at which i utterly fail to take any photos at all. last year it was brunch with my family. this year it was christmas dinner with jeff's family, which took place on the saturday before the big day. somehow i came away with only one quick iphone snap of the badly backlit mini tree in my MIL's living room that i took when we first arrived. once there were cool photogenic PEOPLE onsite, it seems i forgot all about photos.

so i played around with filters and levels, printed the best version of the one pic i had, did some handlettering on top and journaling underneath on an attached oversized card. it's not the page i envisaged, but again it illustrates a nice point: during the holidays, it's more important than ever to just ROLL WITH IT. yeah, i can do that.  

dd21: longwood christmas

conversely, from our day at longwood gardens, i have waaaaaaaaaay more photos that i could possibly ever use. so i didn't even try. i chose one shot i liked, printed it at 5x7, attached the fold-out map and part of our e-tickets, added a couple of dimensional sparkly velvet flowers on top, and called it done. 

dd22: gangsta wrap

i love wrapping presents. i may have mentioned this about elebenty gazzillion times over the last few years. i like to take pics of gifts i think look especially nice... but they don't need many words, really, so a page covered with one of the textured papers i used, trimmed out with ribbon and featuring a nice big photo and a few thickers works for me. job done.

dd23: two trees

here's the only page in the whole album that i might actually go back and add to, or at least tinker with. once again this year we have two full-sized, freshly cut, seriously sparkly, uber-decorated christmas trees. and they are both kinda... well, MAGNIFICENT, actually... if i do say so myself, which apparently, i do! :) i took a pretty good full-sized shot of each and then made a pocket on the back of the page to hold a close-up detail pic of each tree. the back of both little cards holds typed journaling telling the type of tree, what kind of lights and garland i used, and other details i know i'll want to remember next year. i definitely like what's here, but i wouldn't rule out the addition of a few more decor pictures, on a different/extra page.

dd24: handmade holiday

i'm pretty sure this journal has more pocket pages than any project i've ever done, and here's another! it holds mini-snaps of the handmade gifts i gave this year: shadow boxes for my aunt and uncle, a funky ruffly rainbow purse for our new niece-by-marriage's little girl, and wooly caps for all the american girl dolls.

dd25: the yule log

this is probably only funny/interesting if you are me, or possibly if you are my sister. which admittedly, you might not be! but amie and i have both long been obsessed with the televised burning yule log that gets aired on smaller cable tv stations on christmas morning. which it turns out looks REALLY cool on the biiiiiiiiig giant tv that now (still rather surprisingly to me) resides in our living room. so of course i had to take and text a photo of it to my sis first thing that morning, and many, "i hope you have a dvd of fire extinguishers standing by" jokes ensued. again, you probably need to be us to find this even remotely significant but to me it seemed a fitting image to conclude this year's december daily festivities!

december daily 2014: the big sprawl

no journaling project of mine could be considered complete without the sprawly picture of the finished book, so here's this year's version. below, a more restrained photo of the same thing:

and this really does conclude december daily 2014... just in time to conclude december 2014!

happy new year's eve, darlings!

♥♥♥

gingerbread and bratwurst? (oh ja!)

we are officially into christmas vacation now, and the normally home-loving jeff has become a fireball of holiday activity, so i'm not sure how many more of my december daily pages are going to be made and posted before the big day. but that's ok; because there's NO statue of limitations on papercrafting! today, however, he's immersed in a marathon of marketing and cooking so i'm sneaking in a couple more while i can:

dd17: christmas lights and gingerbread

we live pretty close to an open-air shopping mall in bucks county, pennsylvania, called peddler's village which hosts a number of yearly events, our favorite being the annual gingerbread house competition. we usually meet up with our friends kim and dave during the holiday season, have a nice dinner together, and then go check out the amazing gingerbread creations, enjoy the display of holiday lights, and maybe do a little shopping. this year all of that happened on wednesday night and was absolutely awesome, as usual. for my page i printed a small instagrammed pic of one of my favorite g-bread houses and turned it into flip-card to hold my journaling. then i mounted it on a full page (5x7) print of faux-bokeh holiday lights that i made by putting a pretty strong dose of pse9's "palette knife" filter onto an ordinary photo i took that evening. i had to play around with saturation and light levels a bit, and of course it's a total cheat, but i'm FINE with that, lol!

on thursday we drove up to bethlehem, pennsylvania, to visit the annual holiday event they call "christkindlmarkt" which is kind of half high-end craft fair and half holiday party. jeff and my mom are both big fans of this yearly treat (well heck, so am i!) and have been known to wax lyrical about the amazingly creative artisans who display their work, the live music provided by a variety of local groups and the awesome decorations, all set against the unique backdrop of the historic steel stacks, but don't be fooled, because i'll tell you right now, in reality, the two of them are all about the bratwurst, which is admittedly wonderful, and served in the bavarian-themed food court! :) :) :)

dd18: christkindlmarkt see-through pocket page

i'm a big fan of including "real life stuff" in any journal project, and i tend to collect paper ephemera wherever i go. at christkindlmarkt i bagged a few brochures, a vendor's map of the artisan booths, a menu, and a postcard of the steel stacks at night which was handed over to me in the very cool clear plastic bag from the artsquest visitor's center. i was especially psyched about the latter, because it allowed me to neatly include all of the above AND a few photos i took on the day. score!

well i guess that's it for today, except to wish you a fabulous friday, darlings! ♥♥♥

makin' a list (or several)

two things in life that should *ALWAYS* have pockets, in my opinion, are casual trousers and minibooks! because let's face it, we all carry around a bunch of stuff, and we need our hands free to fiddle with our phones! :) 

dd16: "makin' a list" pocket page

this is pretty straightforward: to make a nice deep pocket that would fit in my 5x7" book i took a 9x7" piece of double-sided patterned paper (this one happens to be from basic grey's aspen frost collection) scored it at the 4" mark, and machine stitched along the two sides. i went with old school BG alphas for the title (b/c they are STILL my all-time favorites!) and added on a poinsettia i had doodled and cut out for another project, but never used. then i stuffed the pocket full of my current lists of things to do and buy and send and finish:

most of these will get chucked out as i complete the tasks, but one that will remain after the xmas season is the "master" list of presents given; because i know from experience that next december jeff and i will want to buy exactly the same gift for one person, and make sure we don't replicate something else, and the only way we'll know for sure is if i've made a detailed list with brand- and store-names for specialty items and the amounts of giftcards and donations.

another awesome use i've found for last year's december daily book is to figure out the logistics of various decorations. the most recent example is the garland that goes on our staircase. i like to change the "toppings" on it each year, but being able to look at a photo and see exactly which bannister posts from which it needs to hang in order to look centered* definitely speeds up the process and lets us skip the super-fun part where we take turns holding up the laden boughs single-handed. definitely a "labor-saving" device! :)

*you would THINK to make garland look centered you'd hang it on the CENTER post, right? nuh-uh. because of the angle of our particular stairs, hanging it in the center makes it look wrong. turns out, to make it look centered we have to hang it one post closer to the bottom of the stairs. tricky, eh? 

*RED* alert!

ok, no, there isn't an emergency, unless you count the fact that christmas is only NINE DAYS AWAY!!! which is obviously not something that any of us around here are panicking about, no sirree bob. :) no, in this case, "red alert" is actually the title of this week's challenge at shopping our stash. or rather --in honor of the fact that we are approaching the big day-- this fortnight's challenge; and you'll no doubt have sussed that the brief is to make a project that features red fairly prominently. it doesn't have to be a holiday project; it doesn't even have to be ALL red; let's just say, we shouldn't have to look for the red. does that make sense? awesome. here's mine. i'm sure you'll be shocked to discover... it's another december daily page!!! :)

bells cut from a vintage songbook; patterned paper: pebbles; transparency: teresa collins; journal card + diecuts on lower page: crate paper; florals: prima; brads: mme; tape: october afternoon, love my tapes, martha stewart; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape

something else that might not be surprising at this point, either: it's another double page... a solid base, over which the title and some journaling is "floated" using a transparency. i'm not sure why i'm making so many of these at the moment, but it works for me, so i'm just goin' with it, lol!

as you can see, i've got this year's xmas playlist on the bottom page, with a little collage of new + vintage items riding on the clear top sheet. something i was pretty excited to see on ali edwards' blog last week was a post where she talked about not worrying too much about which day things fell on; she has a certain amount of stories she wants to tell this month and when she can place things on the "correct" date that's awesome, but when there are multiple events for one day, she's happy to spread them out. i would go further and say if you have a little extra time over a weekend (like i did on sunday) why not crack on with some "dateless" topics (like a holiday playlist, or a little feature on xmas collections, or a pocket page to collect all your lists) and then spread them out into the following week, mixed with actual "events"? because let's face it, as much fun as this december daily lark is, doing a page per day can be daunting. wilna furstenburg had another idea for approaching this project that i absolutely ♥LOVE♥: she sets up a foundation for just 12 days... and then chooses which ones to document as the month unfolds! how brilliant is that?!

speaking of brilliant: why not head over to SOS and see what gorgeous inspirations the other DT darlings have made to spur you on for the next two weeks? ciao, darlings! ♥

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.

more december daily: 11, 12, 13

are you ready for some more december daily pages? ok, well, possibly not... but that's what i have today, so here they are, lol:

doilies, vintage music paper and lace from my stash; patterned papers: graphic 45, kaiser craft; glitter paper: best creations; journal card: october afternoon; florals: petaloo; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine

dd11: JOY

a page assembled out of the leftovers from the three vintage-style xmas cards that made up my very first teaching experience, at paper anthology, which was completely awesome! :) (i've just finished the prototypes for my jan/feb class, which involve watercolor paint and machine stitching; i will tell you more later this month!)

dd12: i (miss) ny

here's a page i love about a subject that's bumming me out: this is the first year in... i don't even know how long... in which my mom and i aren't doing our gala nyc windows tour* because i've been having an issue with my foot** that makes prolonged walking or standing a bit of a no-no at the moment. to sum it up in a visual way, i've layered a snowflake transparency holding my title over a 5x7 photo i took a couple of years ago of the baccarat crystal unicef star that hangs above 5th avenue at 57th street, and added just a tiny bit of typed journaling on the lower layer. easy, peasy.

my nyc pic printed on hp 5x7 photo paper; snowflake transparency: creative imaginations; patterned paper: mme; thickers: american crafts; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, sewing machine

my photo of the gorgeous vintage mailboxes at the kenvil, nj, post office printed on hp 5x7 glossy paper; deer, elves and holly cut from various falling-apart vintage xmas books; vintage trading stamps; diecuts: october afternoon, studio calico, pebbles, mme; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape

dd13: goin' postal

so it turns out, i've been doing my holiday mailing WRONG all these years! see, i've always gotten all my cards and packages ready to go, and made one biiiiiiiiiiiiiig trip to the PO. that's the most efficient way, right? well.... maybe not... somehow this year i've wound up making 4 or 5 "little" trips with a portion of cards and/or gifts each time. and here's the thing that shocks me: I LIKE THIS WAY BETTER! it's less daunting, somehow; and i've avoided seeing that panic-stricken-reindeer look in the eyes of the various postal employees i've encountered! big win, darlings! :)  

*a couple of years ago, i wrote quite a long post detailing my favorite stops on our gala ny xmas decorations tour; that post is still right here for anyone who'd like to use it for a real-- or vicarious-- nyc holiday experience! 

**long story short: in september i mysteriously --and pretty suddenly-- developed plantar fasciitis in my right foot. i've had the cortisone injections, i do the stretching exercises, i wear a diabolical metal boot thing to bed every night and orthotics during the day, i've changed my gym routine, etc, etc, and though it's thankfully a bit less painful... it hasn't really gone away... in the range of health problems i realize this is very much on the "light" side, for which i am VERY grateful. but it's inconvenient and a bit disheartening. ah well, c'est la vie, non, chers?

december daily: 8, 9, 10

this happens every time, so i'm not sure why it still surprises me: i have very little trouble keeping up with the pages of a daily project, it's the photos and posts that get me!!! luckily, there is no statute of limitations in papercrafting, so here's a lovely bonus round-up of december daily:

dd08: LIGHTS!

we actually had them up and running the sunday after thanksgiving, though we were tinkering with the little a-frame around the door for a bit (garland and a new kind of lights there this year); mostly, though, i had a hard time getting outside at the right time on a day that wasn't raining. i'm not in love with this photo, but it's infinitely better than all the others so i'm calling it DONE! :)

dd09: rudolph

i'll admit i built this whole page around the fact that last year my cousin ann sent me this awesome xmas card, and wrote inside, "have a holly jolly christmas!" but as a matter of fact, on tuesday night at 8pm, when jeff was flicking around the channels, i said, "hey, can you check cbs, i want to see what night rudolph's on" and it was just starting right then. score! (yeah, i'm pitiful, but it's been that kind of week, ok? this WAS "the big win" lol!)

dd10: up on the housetop?

the yellow illustration part of this page is from an old ideals magazine; it was intended for one of the etsy december journals, but i accidentally cut it too small. so i put it in the pile to use in my own book. but the funny thing is: any other year, i would just see a pretty picture of a cosy little house in the winter. but... having had a new roof put on our own home less than a month ago... right now all i can see is a potentially damaging build-up of snow and ice, and wonder if the contractors used the correct type of sheathing for harsh weather, and was the flashing around that chimney installed properly? because perspective is EVERYTHING, darlings! :) :) :)

dd07: (almost) postal

the big xmas-readiness news from sunday was that i finished the design of our mailing labels in photoshop, then list-merged names and printed them out using printshop.* then i wrote out and signed all the ones that get mailed on their own; i still have to do the ones that will be sent with gifts. for that matter, i mostly have to BUY the gifts, but that's another story. to sum up: my dd06 page is the embellished postcard-sized label:

mailing label created digitally in photoshop using elements and brushes from "an icy christmas" by amber shaw and studio flergs and the "hello winter" kit by llilea designs plus damask tonal papers by katie pertiet; vogue and tabith fonts; printed on avery full-sheet labels via broderbund's printshop; real-life products: core'dinations cardstock, love my tapes washi, studio b cardinal sticker, otc snowflake brad, queen and co mini brads, stickopotamus metallic snowflake stickers, hero arts snowflake gems, and ranger white glossy cardstock

the fun thing about using vintage paper, and only working on one side of the page, is that some of my pages have a completely unrelated image on the back, like this one:

in the past i've often wanted to cover up such "distractions" but this year i'm amused by the random juxtaposition of images-- in this case a green tinted naval officer with my fancy label-- so i've just been leaving them as is. it just adds another layer of interesting, really; and there's nothing wrong with that! :)

*whereas i now do all my digital design in photoshop (because it's all about the LAYERS, baby!) when it comes to printing, i jump back to my trusty broderbund printshop; a very old graphics program that i still use because it still works. an ancient version of the same program was actually the very first piece of software i learned... on a secondhand apple ii which came from my b-i-l c.1988 or so! :) i love that it has basic templates for pretty much anything i might want to design and print (mailing labels, calendar pages, letterhead, business cards etc) so that i don't have to think about basic things like size and shape but i can import whatever graphics i'd like to use and arrange them, add text, list merge with my address book, etc etc. i'm all for learning new things but when the old things work i'm happy to stick with 'em. 

dashing through the...

...MUD? yepper, that's what we did, on a quest for the perfect christmas tree! it rained here yesterday. it rained a lot. and here's a little known fact about christmas trees: they grow in dirt! so what happens to dirt when it rains? uh-huh. let's just say that today, there's a little less mud at the peterson farm in cherryville, new jersey, thanks to the copious amounts we carried home on our boots, jeans, tires, etc. the crazy thing, however, is that we managed to be out and about in pretty much the only hour of yesterday during which it not actively POURING. so whilst we were muddy, we were not soaking wet and chilled to the bone. which was nice. how do you swing something like that? well, it's 99% luck, but for the other 1%, it helps to marry someone who's addicted to the weather channel, who will spend several days beforehand glued to radar forecasts and somehow determine that there's going to be a little break in the... something impressively scientific-sounding... and thus we need to get ready and go NOW. so we did. and we found the perfect trees. yes, trees, plural; we got two. it's a long story. :) :) :)

dd06: peterson tree farm

one of the best parts of collecting vintage paper is that whilst making things like christmas ephemera packs and holiday journals, you are sorting through LOTS of lovely xmassy bits and it's possible to nab some of the best ones and save them for yourself! :) that's what i did with this beautiful page from an ideals magazine, which really does look quite a lot like the farm belonging to jeff's godfather, whence we get our tree each year. for the words, i experimented with a few different types of journaling card, but they covered up way too much of the illustration, so i chose to type right onto the top section of the barn. i cropped my photo-shopped photo of rain-soaked evergreens pretty tightly too... for exactly the same reason. thickers and dymo label made a nice strong title and i called it a day.

last year's view of uncle john's farm; quite a bit sunnier than it was yesterday! 

speaking of days, i hope yours is already delightful, but if not, there's still time to whip it into shape! we're hoping to put some lights and things on the trees we acquired, which should make it quite a bit more festive around here. ciao, darlings! ♥

toys for tots!

as you know, jeff and i are huge fans of the us marines' toys for tots program and we like to include them in our holiday gifting budget every christmas. of course it's easy to donate online but i have to tell you, confidentially, that this is one of those times the quick option isn't (imo) the best... we've found that it's sooooooooooo much more fun to go fill up a cart with toys* and drop them in the collection bin! and since we're lucky enough to live close to a toys-r-us store, we can buy and donate our toys in one trip. this year's deadline to donate toys at a toys-r-us store is december 7th (aka tomorrow) but check your local drop-off point for the exact dates. we made our annual pilgrimage last night, and as always, it was one of the highlights of our holiday season, so i bet you can guess what my december daily day five is about, can't you?

elf cut from a vintage flash card; patterned paper: dcwv; mini bingo card: jenni bowlin; flair badge: studio calico; foam thickers: american crafts; present diecuts and journaling circle: recollections; photo printed on kodak premium glossy paper

dd05: elfish!

there's a lot going on here, but that sort of captures the experience of shopping at a toys-r-us on a friday night in december, lol! the cute little elf is cut from a vintage flash card; the rest of the elements are bits and bobs from my xmas stash; the journaling was typed on my vintage typewriter. i think that's about it! happy saturday everyone! ♥

*toys donated to the toys for tots program need to be new, still in their packaging, but unwrapped. all toys-r-us, babies-r-us and ac moore stores nationwide are official drop-off points, but there are lots more, so check the official website for locations and full details. if it's past the drop-off deadline (which is generally the first week of december) you can make a cash donation online at any time of year! 

gala ♥JB14♥ wrap up

well, i can hardly believe it, but we've just wrapped up our fourth year of ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and there's really no better way (imo) to celebrate having all your holiday cards finished by the first week of december than to spread them out in a big pile and take a group photo. so i did, see?

stephanie did, too, and we invite you to join us by linking up your own cardpile photos; OR, if you're still working on cards, share them and leave some love for the ones others are making at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥! we'll leave the "linkfest" post open until christmas eve, to provide maximum inspiration, then we'll be back on new year's day with the first prompt of 2015, and we'd love for you to join us!

with such momentous goings-on, i suspect you can guess the subject of my december daily page for day four, right?

dd04: yepper, the big story of the day is having 48+ unique holiday cards ready to sign and mail by the date that, pre-JINGLE BELLES, i would have been either stressily mass-producing or heading out to hallmark. i know it seems utterly crazy to start up again on january first, but the fact is i *LOVE* making christmas cards and once i got my head around the idea of doing it every single week... (which, admittedly, took me a good six months of the first year that stephanie and i started the JB blog!) ...i realized this works for me!* page-wise, what's been working for me this week is one pic + a title + a few embellies, and this time i used up another transparency scrap when my photo looked too stark on the pink page but too overwhelmed on patterned paper. hoping to branch out a little over the weekend... maybe do a couple of pages with hand lettering or more interesting collaged/stamped backgrounds or something, but otherwise i'm pretty happy with how my pages look so far!

*if you think it might work for you, too, click on over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ on new year's day... we'd love for you to join us! ♥♥♥

dd02 & dd03

hooray, it's a december daily two-fer! by the way, have i mentioned in the last five minutes how much i love christmas decorations? and sparkly things, generally? and the fact that the christmas season gives one carte blanche to hang sparkly things all over the house?!?!! (woohoo!)

page built on the back of a cool green harlequin-patterned xmas card; american crafts green glitter thickers; dymo labels; paper accents glossy black cardstock and a peacock feather that fell off one of my mardi gras masks but was too pretty to throw away!

dd02: i ran in to michaels the other day in quest of one particular (not-at-all-xmassy) item, discovered that ALL the holiday decor was 50% off, and came home with quite a selection of peacock colored goodness! so now i'm even more excited to get our tree on saturday. if you know anyone at the weather channel, could you ask them not to let it rain torrentially until lunchtime or so, please? kthx.

patterned papers: studio calico, cosmo cricket and recollections; mambi dimensional tree sticker; sharpie marker and black ranger archival ink

dd03: you'll have sussed that i ♥LOVE♥ holiday decor, but you may not realize that i love pretty much ALL holiday decor. so if, for example, you're a major supermarket chain who decides to build a christmas-tree-shaped display of pellegrino (or motor oil... or spam...) i will support your efforts by grinning like a lunatic and blocking the aisle during prime shopping hours so that i can take a picture of it! :)

happy thursday, darlings!

hope you are having an awesome day!

♥♥♥

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?! :)

free is good!

it's also the subject of this week's challenge at shopping our stash: we want you to make a project which incorporates something you got for free... and please be sure to TELL US in your post what it is and where it came from!  it just so happens my mother recently gave me a couple of the most wonderfully kitschy red doilies, made of some sort of funky plasticized paper, that i absolutely fell in love with; so my choice was pretty clear, and the embellishment for my december journal cover was completed in record time!

funky red vintage doilies of mysterious origin that my mom found in her dining room cupboard; flowers cut from an old christmas card; lace cardstock paper by k and co; red chipboard thickers; hambly snowflake transparency; chipboard book covers wrapped in vintage music paper; little scrap of pink tulle i found; ink: colorbox; adhesives: elmers gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

as you can see, just remembering how much fun i had doing december daily last year was enough to make me cave pretty quickly on the subject of whether or not i was making a december journal for myself this year. because of course just making the blank books for my etsy shop wasn't quite satisfying enough, i really wanted one i could keep and work in, so i whipped up one more 5x7" ringbound book. i had some pretty cool vintagey things leftover, so most of the pages are made up of scraps, old greeting cards, sheet music, etc. there are also a few "outtakes" from the other books: pages accidentally trimmed too small, or ones with the hole punched in the wrong spot. there's nowhere near enough pages here, but i know from experience that there'll be days i'll want to build something from the ground up, so i didn't get too caught up in the numbers.

did you notice the "over cover" built on a piece of transparency? i suppose, since this is my own book, i could've just embellished the music-wrapped chipboard, couldn't i? but i had a piece of hambly snowflake print that was serendipitously the perfect size, and i couldn't resist.

should i be embarrassed at nabbing the very coolest vintage ornament page from one of my old christmas ideals magazines to use as endpapers? naaaaaaaaaah. there are at least three styles of bauble in this photo that i actually own, and since they'll be hanging happily on my vintage tree again this year, clearly i HAD TO have this photo page for my own book! 

being as thanksgiving weekend is nearly upon us here in the states, bringing its heaping helpings of travel and family and food and fun with it, this challenge will span two weeks; thus you'll have twice as long to jump in and play! meanwhile, be sure to check out the awesome work of my sos teammates! ♥

xmas books-a-million!

ok, technically, there are only six, but "books-half-a-dozen" sounds waaaaaaaaaaaay too lame, so i took the liberty of exercising a little artistic license! the six books in question are part of some december journal kits i've put into my etsy shop, they look a little something like this:

book covers made of heavy weight chipboard and covered in vintage sheet music from my stash; each music cover has an "over cover" made of a 5.5 x 7.5" piece of hambly transparency that i've decorated with bits of vintage illustration, cut up christmas cards, washi tape, prima, basic grey and petaloo florals and velvet leaves, bits of ribbon and doily... pretty much anything pretty and xmassy that fell under my eye was fair game! :)

they have 25 pages each, made up of some vintage papers backed with patterned paper, some double sided cardstock weight christmas patterns, pocket pages (also made from double-sided cardstock patterns), and some larger old christmas cards trimmed down to fit the 5 x 7" page format. i also made mini christmas ephemera packs (quite a bit smaller than my regular sized ones) to include with each journal, there's a selection of different sized, shaped and themed holiday book pages, music paper, postcards, decorative seals, and even some music-bedecked chipboard reindeer that i diecut especially for this.

i made three of the books in landscape orientation*...

...and three in portrait orientation. this is the size and shape of the december daily book i made and worked in last year, and it seemed like just the right size to be able to fit in lots of nice bits and bobs; but not so big that i felt like i was struggling to fill the pages.

i've been on the fence about whether or not to do december daily again this year, but the more i look at these the more i kind of feel myself leaning towards, "yes"... hmmmmm... where did i put that extra music paper...

*there being quite a few primary school teachers in my family, we refer to these as hotdog and hamburger, lol!