Holiday Traditions: Let's Get Sketchy December Daily

It's only the first week of December and I'm already getting behind on my December Daily album. But I did complete a few layouts. Here is one I did using a sketch from over at Let's Get Sketchy.

Some supplies I used: washi tape from We R, sticker from Making Memories, Letter Stickers from Basic Grey, Pen from Uniball, and a chipboard frame and background paper (unknown).

December Daily Advent Calendar

I've been so busy getting my book out that I haven't been posting on Sunday, so I'm posting my usual Scrappy Sunday post a day late. I've been seeing advent calendars around town and on Pinterest lately, and I've wanted to make one for a while. So when I saw a plain craft one at Hobby Lobby, I couldn't resist.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the blank box. So just imagine it here.


Here was the next step. I got really lucky and found out my square punch fit the drawers almost exactly! It made it a breeze. Even without, you could use a paper cutter to easily cut out 25 squares. I used an old collection of Basic Grey paper I had, Blitzen collection, and one page of the Dasher collection. Then I used my circle punch to cut out a little spot on each square. I wasn't too picky about placement, as you can see! But I did the whole thing on December 1st, so I didn't stress about making it perfect. I inked the edges of each piece of paper with red ink from an Around the Block inkpad.



After I had that step done, which took several hours, I started to do the numbers and embellishments. I mod-podged everything on. I am not very creative, so at this point I went to Pinterest to find something inspiring. I found the toolbox calendar on this post helpful. I used her method of getting numbers from any source possible. I have tons of letter stickers, so I used number stickers off some of those sheets. I also used chipboard, some little tags I had from getting my car serviced (I never throw anything away, and once in a blue moon, that is a benefit!), cutout from Making Memories paper and 7 gypsies bingo card paper, an ATC from Paper Studios, Smashpads calendar tape, and 7 gypsies ephemera for the numbers.





Then I added embellishments. Again, I used a lot of stuff I've had for a long time. I didn't buy anything for this project except the box, which was great. I have a big bag of Christmas stuff, and it was nice to use some of it up, and a nice challenge, too. I'm not even sure where some of them came from. But some embellishments I used are:
word strips from Making Memories (Day 2, 24), We R Memory Keepers washi tape (6, 11), Spare Parts acrylic sticker (Day 20), Love Elsie (22).
Other: stickers, 3-D stickers, ribbon, bakers twine, tags, punchout snowflakes, copper word accent

The last thing I did was fill the drawers. It was so fun putting it all together. I put little candies in some of the drawers (See's Candy, our favorite), a few pairs of Christmas socks, some little presents like Lego mini figures, and a bunch of paper strips with tasks on them, like donate old toys to charity, sing carols with the family, take Christmas photos, visit Santa, etc.

 



 

Scrappy Sunday: Nearly Naked December Daily, Part 1

This is the first year I've decided to participate in the December Daily project that Ali Edwards (and many others) does every year. I don't do mini albums very well, and I love adding lots of pictures, so I went with 8.5x11, which is about as close to mini as I get.





First page and ATC by Paper Studio, holly sticker by ?

Unfortunately, I'm very slow and unorganized about scrapping, so it took me 6 hours yesterday just to get all my Christmas stuff together, decide what order it went in, make sure I had pages for each day, cut them to size and bind them all.

It was also the first time I used my bind-it-all machine, and as you can see, I am still learning it! I punched a bunch of extra holes, messed up on some of them, etc. I think I had it down by the end, but I already had made my album look all sloppy. But I forged ahead anyway, since I didn't have more chipboard for the covers and I wanted to stick with the paper I'd chosen. So it's going to be a messy project! I wasn't very picky about my paper selection, as you can see. I cut some envelopes in half so they'd fit, but most of the pages are full sized layouts and mats that I bound in for extra photos. I probably should have made sure all the tones matched, but I threw a few extras in there that didn't match very well. I have a lot of family birthdays in December, and I didn't want my paper to be too 'Christmas-y' on those days. So there's some pink pastel pages in there as well as more traditional Christmas paper and distressed looking pages.


Added half a silver envelope by DCWV.

I've noticed that most of the December Daily albums I've looked at only go through Christmas, but that's not really daily for all of December, so I continued until New Year's Eve. I will probably leave that page how it is, because I love that paper, and put my pics on the inside of the back cover. If I need more photo space, I can always paste in more envelopes or a waterfall somewhere.

 I haven't done the embellishing yet, so this is probably going to be a 2 or 3 part post. I will post later once I've embellished.

 

Happy scrapping!

Scrappy Sunday: OWSE Red and Green Challenge

So I've been doing most of my scrapbook challenges off the Pagemaps blog, but I also do one for the wonderful group over at Outlaw Women's Scrapbooking Emporium. They have awesome challenges every month, as well as a great website and store.

This was actually the November challenge page I made. It was supposed to be anything using red and green. I was going to go with the Christmas theme (obvious), but I'm not very good at making pages for pictures I don't have yet, and I wasn't in the mood to scrap old pictures from last year. So I did some of Gabe's soccer team this summer. The red gingham reminds me so much of summer!

Here's the 2 page layout. The left page layout design is lifted from one of the wonderful weekly sketches over at Sketch Inspiration, another wonderful site I don't utilize nearly as often as I should. Stop over if you have time! Another group of wonderful, supportive, talented scrappers over there. Thanks!