More December Daily

More December Daily pages to share...

Today marked the first official day of December and Debbie and I spent our day at Hollywood Studios enjoying the different rides and shows.  We also park-hopped over to Epcot to ride the new Test Track with Matthew after he got off work. We got to preview it with other Walt Disney World employees. One word...awesome!!

The details:  Since this was Hollywood Studios, I thought it would be fun to do my photos with a filmstrip feel to them.  I was able to do this so easily using Kerri Bradford's Snapshots #2 photo clipping templates. Minimal embellishments on the page make the photos the stars. :)

 

 

This was probably my favorite day of our trip...Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! The evening was full of magic and special events that made our evening memorable! The fireworks were amazing and I loved the parade as well! :)

 

The details: The photos on this page tell the story of  our amazing night and the full page diecut on the opposite page adds holiday charm and a bit of Disney magic to create this page.  The diecut which says "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" is from Kerri Bradford's December Additions digital die-cut kit...there are lots of fun backgrounds with this kit. You can see the details here.

 

 

Another fun day at Disney..this was our last day at the parks and we spent most of our day at the Animal Kingdom.  Highlights included our 3rd and 4th rides on Expedition Everest (I am hooked!), Mickey's Jingle Jungle parade, lots of animal sightings on safari, and our favorite meal of the trip at the Yak & Yeti in Asia. Yummy food!

 

The details:  When I did the page earlier with the presents on it, I thought it would be fun to do one large present with the day's page title on it.  So I used the same die-cut as earlier and sized my title to fit the present.  The title is from Kerri's kit "December Twenty-Five"...love the variety of words in here! I also ended up adding the journaling around the outside of the page since my diecuts took up the whole page. 

 

 

On my first day home, I headed up Parkview North and the NIC-U to see my new nephew Conor. He is so cute and I snapped a few pictures of him. This was my favorite one of the day. :)

 

The details: A large snowflake diecut page takes center stage on this layout. Its from the same kit that the "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from December 2nd came from. This was probably my favorite of the group and I used it on several pages.  I also pulled out my baby stamps from Ali Edwards to create the fun title block and snowflake accent block.

 

As I started to edit my photos from vacation, I started thinking about all of my favorite moments of our trip to Disney at Christmas.  So I decided to scrapbook my top 10 favorites from the trip here and now.

 

The details: The striped paper is probably my favorite paper that I used in my album but here it proved to be a bit too bright and competed with my photos. So to tone it down, I added a piece of vellum over the top of it.  This really let my photos shine. :)  To correspond with the top 10 list, I added number stickers to each photo that went with each memory. Love the simplicity of this page!

 

 

On this day, I caught what my friend Debbie and I later dubbed the Plague.  I have not been that sick in a very long time...I missed work this day and the following 2 days as well and spent most of this day in bed.  So to remember this, I took a picture of what got me through those days...the meds. :)

 

The details: The overall design of the page is pretty simple and I was able to use a stamp from Ali Edwards (ups and downs) that fit perfectly with the theme of my page.  The journaling block is also a stamp from Ali Edwards...love her stamps and how simple they make putting pages like these together.

 

 

Since I was down and out for 3 days, I watched a lot of movies and tv shows.  I got caught up on all the stuff I missed while on vacation and also watched  a ton of other stuff.  This page documents some of the things I watched while I was sick.

 

The details: A pretty simple page but with a big impact.  The photos were all taken from the internet using Google Images.  I found the largest sized resolutions for each photo and saved them to my computer. I then created the collage using another one of Kerri Bradford's templates.  So easy to do...

 

 

Once I started feeling good enough to get off the couch, I worked on my Christmas cards. I hand-colored the manger scene with my Copic markers for about 30 cards and also stamped, embossed and die-cut enough stockings for another 30 cards.  It definately kept me busy but I ended up loving how both of the cards came out.

 

The details: This was a fun page to put together.  I hand-colored the wreath and the phrase "celebrate the season" with my copic markers and used some fun die-cuts and stamps to create this page.

 

 

One of the cool things that our local hospital does is that it puts up each new baby's name and birth stats on a billboard.  It rotates with each baby's name and its a fun thing to add to the baby book and it was great for my album too. :)

 

The details:  This was another fairly simple page.  I used the diecut snowflake background page again and also added a print and cut from my Silhouette that coordinated with the Echo Park This and That Christmas collection. 

 

 

One of our family's traditions is my dad making his stollen bread.  I took this picture of him baking his bread and added the recipe handed down to my dad from his dad. 

 

The details: The red die-cut on the right is from the Silhouette online store...I just love the clean graphic look of this page.  Minimal embellishments and a picture of the finished bread finishes off this page. 

 

I will be back to share more of my album soon.  Now I am off to snuggle with my sweet nephew. :)

 

 



December Daily Catch Up

Wow it is so hard to believe that I haven't blogged on here since November.  So many things have happened in the past 6 or so weeks including a recent trip to Disney, my nephew being born, Christmas has come and gone, and we rang in 2013. A new year and new possibilities ahead...

But I promised that I would share more of my December Daily album, so that is the first thing I want to do.  :)

 

One of our holiday traditions is visiting the Festival of Trees in Downtown Fort Wayne.  I just love seeing all the beautiful trees and practicing my photography skills.  This year we also went to the Botanical Conservatory where they had decorated and themed it to the story of the Grinch.  It was a fun afternoon and I enjoyed every minute of it. :)

 

The Details: The page on the left was created with a die-cut from the very talented Kerri Bradford using this kit from her digital store.  I used several of these pages throughout my album and it made for fun and interesting pages. The photo templates were from Ali Edwards over at Designer Digitals. So much fun stuff to use with your Silhouette too! :) 

 

One of my all time favorite traditions at Christmas is decorating our Christmas tree. We turn on Christmas music and pull out all of our favorite decorations from over the years. There are so many memories attached to these: the first Christmas that we had Bailey, memories of trips to Frankenmuth, Disney, and other places, and some of our collections of ornaments like Mom's rocking horses and my Snowball and Tuxedo collection. :)

 

The Details: The title was diecut from a design I found on the Silhouette store and cut with my Cameo.  The ornaments were all stamped with various Hero Arts stamps and colored with Copic Markers.  They were pop dotted on the page and hung with embroidery floss. :)

An ordinary December day....a new haircut and packing for my Disney trip. :)

The Details: I used another background diecut from Kerri Bradford and the date diecuts are from her as well. An EK Success border punch and some elements from the Echo Park This and That: Christmas collection finishes this page.

 

 

The first day of my Christmas Disney trip with my good friend Debbie to visit my friend Matthew who works at Epcot in Mission: Space. :)

 

The Details: The photo collage and large snowflake diecut are both from Kerri Bradford.  Her photo clipping masks are so easy to use and I am now addicted to them. I just totally love how many photos I can fit on a page. :)


 

 

This was our first full day spent in Disney. Debbie, Matthew and I spent our day in the Magic Kingdom, celebrating the magic of Disney.  This is also the day that  my sister gave birth to my beautiful nephew, Conor, by C-section 3 weeks early. So my friends and I celebrated my becoming an aunt as well! :)

 

The Details: A fairly basic page with lots and lots of photos on it.  All photo collages are from Kerri Bradford Designs.  I also stamped a few Ali Edwards phrases on my photos using white Staz-On ink.

Another amazing day at Disney.  We spent most of our day at the Magic Kingdom again but headed over to Hollywood Studios to see the Osborne Spectacle of Dancing Lights. One word...AMAZING! Hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights blinking and dancing to the music. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip...amazing! :)

The Details: Another large snowflake from Kerri Bradford as well as some awesome stamping and embossing to create this cheery page.

One of my favorite holiday events at Disney - the Candlelight Processional and Illuminations in Epcot. Add to that delicious food in Mexico and Japan and it was an amazing day! :)

The Details:  This page came together when I found the "Joy to the World" die-cut phrase on my Silhouette Cameo.  I added the 'International Skyline' stamp from Hero Arts along the top of the page with some black embossing powder to make it pop. I then embellished the bottom of the page with a border sticker from Echo Park and the date with some Kerri Bradford die-cuts to create my page.

Well I will be back with more pages hopefully tomorrow. Until then, enjoy!

December Daily 2012

For this year's holiday season, I decided to challenge myself to be a bit more creative and truly document the day to day happenings of the season.  The bits and pieces of my Christmas experience that truly make the season special for me and my family: our traditions, favorite things, and fun and unique experiences that I am going to have this season. :)

I absolutely fell in love with this idea from one of my favorite papercrafters/scrapbookers/cardmakers, Nichol Magouirk.  She made an amazing album last year that documented her family's traditions and everyday life during the holiday season and it made me want to have one of these of my own.  I can just imagine looking back on it in years to come and remembering some of my favorite holiday traditions and seeing how things have changed. I also loved Nichol's actual design of the album and I used her provided PDF sketches as a springboard for my album. You can see Nichol's December Daily album here: http://nicholmagouirk.typepad.com/things_that_really_matter/december-daily-2011/

The actual idea for this album came from Ali Edwards.  She is an amazing photographer and captures everyday life in a truly amazing way.  I am also in *love* with her stamps and will be using several sets in my album. To see more about the concept of the December Daily Album and also to see Ali's past albums, you can go here: http://aliedwards.com/2009/12/december-daily-compilation.html and here: http://aliedwards.com/projects/december-daily

For my album I am sticking with a pretty dedicated supply of products for the majority of the album with some fun doo-dads and such thrown in.  Here are the basic products I am using this year:

Simple Stories Snap Album: This is an amazing new product and I just love the smaller album concept for these types of albums.  There are also divided pages and all sorts of fun stuff for use in these albums as well as your full scrapbooks too. :)

 

Echo Park This and That Collection: A perfect collection with gorgeous patterns and colors to create my pages with.  Love, love, love this collection...oh and pick up the 6x6 paper pack too. Its perfect for diecutting small shapes.



 

Silhouette Cameo Machine: The perfect diecutting machine.  It lets you cut pretty much anything you want and if they don't have it you can create your own diecuts using any JPEG or PNG image...And the intricacy, oh the intricacy! It cuts images that my other digital diecutter could only ever dream of doing. 

 

Diecuts from Kerri Bradford Designs: About 90% of the diecuts I am using in my album are from Kerri Bradford Designs. She creates the most gorgeous diecuts and they are pretty reasonably priced too. Here is a link to her online store: http://www.kerribradford.com/products-page/  She is a whiz with the Silhouette and if you want to learn more about your Silhouette, take one (or all) of her classes over at JessicaSprague.com. 

 

Ali Edwards Christmas stamps: As I mentioned above, I *love* Ali Edwards' stamps.  They are perfection....the perfect blend of words and design to use on scrapbook pages, cards, and other projects.  I have become quite the collector and user of her stamps and this album will be no exception. You can check all of her stamps out here: http://www.techniquetuesday.com/category/Ali-Edwards-Designs.html

 

I also pre-prepped all of my pages prior to beginning the album. I drew out sketches of what I wanted everything to look like and precut all the background papers and most of the diecuts for each page.  I then just put the pieces in the album pages so all I have to do is pull out the pieces I need and look at my sketch, print my pictures, and put together my page. This should speed up my process drastically.

 

 



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These are my first few pages for this year's album:

 

 

 

Around our house the holiday season kicks off the day before Thanksgiving when my dad and I head out to do our Christmas shopping. We love it because we still get a lot of the great deals you get on Friday but without the crowds. This layout documents our traditions and some of our stops this year. :)

 

The details: The large tree is a Hero Arts diecut for Silhouette.  Love how elegant the tree is but it is super delicate and I had a heck of a time getting it off the mat.  I ended up having to piece it back together again for my layout.  I think next time I will make it a bit thicker with the offset feature.

But altogether this was a super simple and easy layout to put together.

 

 

Just higlighting a few of my favorite photos and stories from Thanksgiving Day.  This was a relatively quick page to put together because all I had to do was print my photos, stamp the date and phrase and do a bit of journaling and it was complete.

 

The details: I created the quick photo collage in photoshop elements and printed it all out as one photo. The "Gathering Together" piece is a grouping of several different diecuts from Kerri Bradford and the Silhouette store.  Love the holes in the red paper that let the text paper peek through. 

 

 

This is one of those layouts that I did more prep work on than others.  The presents and date were completely done for this layout, so all I had to do was add my photos, a bit of stamping, and my journaling and the page was complete.  It took me maybe 20 minutes to complete it tonight.  :)

 

The details: The presents were all created in my Silhouette software using a few different bow diecuts and squares of paper for the boxes. I used papers from the 6x6 paper pad so that the patterns would be more in scale with the size of the boxes.  I also nestled my journaling box in with the presents and added a bit of stamping  to personalize it.  I also added the holly stamping and the red dots to the top of the page because I felt like they needed more color. :)

 

 

Well this has turned into a CrAzY long post, but I will be back later to share more of my December Daily pages with you. :)

 

 

Thanksgiving

It has been fun sharing the little things I am thankful for in my life over the past few weeks. I had a few catch-up sessions but overall I did much better than I have in years past.  So today I am going to finish up this series of posts with my last 2. Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 21:  I am thankful for my parents. They have always been there supporting me and helping me along the way. I am so blessed to have them in my life and I love them so very much!

Thursday, November 22: I am thankful that God has given me so many blessings. When I look at all the things that He has given me, I realize how precious I am to Him.  :) Thank you Lord for everything you have given me!

Third time's the charm....

Arrrrgh!!! It happened again!!! This time in the middle of my typing. :(

So here goes try #3

Sunday, November 18: I am thankful that I live close to a scrapbook store. Today I was working on prepping my December Daily album (more on this later) and my Silhouette blade died on me. So I hopped into my car and drove over toArchiver's to get a new blade. Now I was grumbling the whole time, complaining that I had to go to the mall in this crazy holiday traffic and i couldn't even park close, but as I was driving home I realized that this is not something that most of our customers can do. They live an hour+ away from us and have to plan out their trips because of the time it takes and gas. $$.

Monday, November 19: I am thankful for technology like FaceTime and Skype so that  tonight we could have our small group with Matthew in it even though he is in Florida and we are here in Indiana.  It turned out to be a very fun evening. Also this is looking more and more like this is how I will meet my first nephew Conor because my sister will probably be having him the week I am in Disney. Thank goodness for iPhones and technology!!!

Tuesday, November 20 (today): I am thankful for books and reading. I love how a book can transport you to another place and time and how a book is like a dearly loved friend, always there to comfort you and help you see the eorld in new and exciting ways. :)

And this wraps up my long very extended catch up session of thankfulness. I am going to finish these posts of thankfulness up on Thanksgiving day because I am going to be starting my December Daily project tomorrow. So stay tuned...

Catching up

Well my iPad decided to do something weird so this is a continuation of my post from earlier...if you haven't read that one scroll down to it and then back up. :)

Friday, November 16:  I am thankful for Impromptu family hang out nights. Renee and Zach invited us out to dinner at Cracker Barrel and it was so much fun just hanging out, catching up on life and enjoying each other's presence. :)

Saturday, November 17: I am thankful for Saturdays off. I love hanging out at home with my family, eating together, and spending time in my scrap room with the paper and glue flying. :)

Catching up....

Wow it has been over a week since I have posted on my little blog. Trying to keep up with my month of thankfulness and I have been jotting 'em down but they haven't been making it to the blogosphere. So here goes...

Monday, November 12: I am thankful for friends who are there to cheer me up when I am feeling blue. :)

Tuesday, November 13: I am thankful for fun surprises like today's when Debbie invited me to go see Fiddler on the Roof with her and her mom and our friend Lisa. She had extra tickets at the last minute and it was a great pick me up in the middle of my crazy week. The show was amazing and I loved every minute of it. Plus the guy who played the main character, Tevia, was amazing!!

Wednesday, November 14: so very thankful for good meals shared with friends. Last night I went to dinner with my dear friend Rosalie and today I got to have a wonderful lunch with Debbie. Lots of time to catch up on life, share joys and heartaches, and plan fun future events like Disney and summer break plans!!

Thursday, November 15: I am thankful for my Thursday night group. We are a little crazy but we know how to have fun like we did tonight at our pre-Thanksgiving dinner.  The food was delist (especially the deep-fried turkey...yum!)