Recording Your December

Hello, Practical Scrapper Alison here with some holiday inspiration!

I don't do Project Life as I just can't imagine keeping up every day with the mundane goings on of school drop offs, dance practice, soccer practice and commuting to work in rush hour traffic. Instead I choose to create layouts about special events and moments. However, for the past 3 years I've kept a December Daily - inspired by the great Ali Edwards! Okay, last years DD got put away unfinished when my hard drive crashed and took with it a lot of my December photos but ... one of these days ...

Do you do a daily album in December? Not sure what I'm talking about? Check out the link above for more info but basically you keep a daily documentation of the everyday and holiday goings on for the month of December. Today I want to share my 2013 album with you.

I am using a 6"x8" SN@P pocket page style album by Simple Stories - here's my cover.

My intro page - I talk about my expectations for the month and how we are introducing a new tradition in the form of an Elf on the Shelf.

And now the days that I've completed so far (I'm a teeny tiny bit behind).

December 1: 

For my pockets with only a photo I am endeavouring to embellish as if it were any other layout. Here's a close up of the bottom left pocket.

December 2:  

I had the privaledge of being a guest designer for Monica Bradford's Your December Inspired class and this was the page I did for one of my inspirational prompts - Scrap The Music. I created a cut file with my Silhouette to look like a musical score and then talked about some of my favourite Christmas songs.

December 3: 

It was unseasonably cold at the beginning of December so on this day I chose to document that as well as some of the fun we are having with our new Elf - Suzie McJinglebells. 

December 4: 

It was Parent Observation Day at my daughter's dance studio so I devoted one whole page to her.

Day 5: 

I love this giant picture of Suzie with her request for Candy Canes. When not a lot has gone on or perhaps the photos you took of the 'action' aren't as great as you'd hoped, choose something else to focus on!

Day 6: 

And then there are those days that a lot seems to happen! What to include? These pocket pages make it easy to include a little bit about everything. We had a Breakfast with Santa at our school for which I was on pancake making duty yet again. Plus Suzie was a bit mischievous with the dining room chandelier and some stickers she found laying about. And if that wasn't enough, my middle daughter lost a tooth!

Day 7:  

This was another busy day and I didn't even get to include photos from my husband's Children's Christmas party at his office (mostly because I wasn't there so the photos are on his phone!) but since the perfectly ordinary things like swimming lessons are still going on during the early weeks of the month, that was the story I went with.

I did also include a little pull out 'mini' documenting our wee Elf again. She got a bit cheeky and requested the girls clean their bathroom so she could take a bath and I felt that needed to be in the album!

 

This is the photo on the back of the journaling tag.

Then this and the photo below are back to back - this one shows Suzie with her note that was waiting for the girls when they got home from the party.

And then a close up of the note itself.

When you pull out this little insert you find this hidden photo.

Yep, that's my middle child!! Always pulling faces!

I hope you feel inspired by my peek and behind the scenes tips to documenting your holiday season. At the very least the fact that I am over a week behind should make you feel good, right? 

Have a wonderful week and Merry Christmas!!

A Happy Scrappy Holiday

Hi everyone!  Practical Scrapper Laura here, with a couple of ideas for
Christmas/Holiday scrapping!

For this LO I used the new Echo Park Tis' the Season collection.....
Here is page one:
  

And a second page....it makes a nice two page LO or each could stand alone:
  

One of the best things about scrapbooking is layering!  You can add a lot
of interest and make your pictures pop using embellishments to create
focal points near them.  If you choose a few embellishment sets from one
collection....that way they are all coordinated for you...it makes layers
much easier to do!

Here are a few close ups of the embellishment clusters--foam tape gives this
added height and texture.  I also added a few Want2Scrap pearls....can't
resist a little "bling"--it's the bottom right corner:

Top right:
This one has a journal card tucked under sideways, with the chip letters
added on to that.... 

Top left of second page:
A little Trendy Twine finishes off the ornaments....the Merry and Bright
is another journal card piece: 

Bottom right of second page:

Are you ready to scrap your holiday pics?  They're coming......hope you've
gotten a little inspiration to get those creative juices flowing!

Thanks for stoppin' by Practical Scrappers today! 

Christmas Tree Cards 4 ways!

Hi there! Practical Scrapper Patty here to share a collection of Christmas cards I created.  I was at my local Archiver's when I stumbled across a collection of papers from the Theresa Collins Spring Fling collection.  The first thing that came to mind was these would be perfect for Christmas cards.  Weird, Right?  But even in a spring collection, there can be great colors to work with for any season!  

Once I had the papers I knew I had to make several different cards from this collection.  I used a tree as my centerpiece for each one but created the look of each in a different way.  

This tree was created using strips of glittered swirl border and red eyelets as decorations on the tree.  The tree topper is a simple piece of green tulle tied with a piece of red satin ribbon.  

This tree was created with sequins.  I began with a row of 10 green and decreased by one each row above.  I added red, blue and purple sequins to look like ornaments.  The star at the top is a stick pin which I removed the pin from.  I layered loops of ribbon at the bottom to create the pretty bow with Christmas sentiments on it.  

This tree is simply cut from patterned paper and sequins were added as decorations.  I tied a piece of twine at the top and created a banner also by hand cutting from patterned paper.  The sentiment was printed on twill tape ribbon.  

Last but not least, This card is my Favorite!  The trees are super simple triangles with sequins and a star pin for toppers but what really makes this card stand out for me is the layers of snow created from layers of vellum. It gives it such a soft and whimsical look!  I used coordinating washi tape around the whole edge of the card to hold the vellum in place.  

Have fun creating your Christmas cards this year!  

Easy Holiday Ornament and Gifts

Hi All!  Practical Scrapper Laura here today!  I absolutely
love holiday crafting.....don't you?  One of the things that
I'm a fan of is taking simple items, and creating gifts or home
decor.  This ornament is super simple, but would make a great
gift, package decoration, or pretty addition to any tree:

To think it started out with grabbing a dollar store type ornament and
a few random embellishments from my stash:
  

I added an American Crafts rhinestone brad to the Tim Holtz
metal charm, and then wrapped it with a small bit of tulle:

I punched circle from BoBunny paper, and inked around the edges
with Black Soot Distress Ink, then I glued the circle to the snowflake,
and the deer to the paper using Glossy Accents:

In this pic above you can also see how I strung the tulle thru the
crystal bead charm, and also used it to attach the "25" to the
ornament as well.  Here is another view of the attached pieces:

The finishing touch at the top was a pretty bow, with some tinsel
twine, and an American Crafts sparkly button.

Don't be afraid to pull out some miscellaneous items from your
stash and just create....you never know what you'll come up with!

Happy holiday crafting.....and thanks for stoppin' by!

Disney Christmas

Happiest of Tuesdays everyone!  Practical Scrapper Charissa here today to share a little bit of Disney Christmas with you.  My family recently had a Disneyland vacation and we had planned it to make sure that we would be there after they made the transition from Halloween to Christmas decorations.  It was so much fun to be there surrounded by all of the Christmas decorations.

One of the best parts (at least to me) was the holiday fireworks show that they put on behind Cinderella's castle in the evening and I wanted to document that little bit of the Christmas magic.

I built this layout using a variety of products, including gelatos, stamps from Studio Calico, American Craft Thickers, and papers from Webster's Pages and Elle's Studio.

I loved the whimsy of this Deck the Halls stamp and it was the perfect sentiment for this pictures with the beautifully adorned castle.

I layered in lots of stars from Freckled Fawn, Fancy Pants, 2Peas, and Studio Calico.  They reminded me of the fireworks in the photos.

Hope you enjoyed this peek at a little bit of Disney Christmas!  I hope you have a fantastic rest of the week!

Paper Trees for Your Holiday Mantle

Hi everyone! Practical Scrapper Alison here with a project that has been in my "to do basket" for 2 years now. Do you have any of those? A scrappy friend of mine refers to them as UFO's - Unfinished Objects! I'm sure I have more UFO's than FO's!!
Anyway, this was the year to realize my vision for these ...

Three Styrofoam cones and a pack of battery powered lights.

I've seen many examples of paper trees on blogs and Pinterest over the years so I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do, my only conundrum was how to work the lights in.

Thank goodness for washi tape! I used it to tack down the lighting wires until I could wrap the paper strips around it. The other two cones got covered in some patterned paper first and then paper strips.

I wasn't sure how to cut my paper to the correct shape at first and then it rolled around my desk and gave me the idea to trace it's path. Below is a close up of tracing line. 

I cut out the curved shape and then glued it to the cone with hot glue.

By placing a line of hot glue along one edge and slightly around the upper corner, I was able to place the cone on it and just roll it up, gluing as I went. No hot glue burns for once!

Here's what the the cones looked like before I started adding all the paper strips to them. In hind sight I wish I had wrapped the larger cone in paper before attaching the lights ... live and learn!

And now a word about my paper. I wanted to use multiple shades of green but as I was looking through all my green papers (yes, I arrange my papers by colour!) I realized that I needed BOTH sides of the paper to be green which most patterned papers are not. What to do? My stash to the rescue once more! Stampin' Up makes these great paper stacks of tone on tone patterned papers in each of their colour stories. As a former Demonstrator I have all these colour stacks so went through them and pulled out all the green papers. Then I started cutting them into strips of varying widths.

Once my strips were cut I created a fringe on one edge (fringe scissors would have been very helpful for this step!), added double sided tape to the non-fringed edge and wrapped it around my cone. Each strip was layered above the other by approximately 1/4 to 1/2 inches. These created a nice waterfall effect. To create the curls I simply used my bone folder and swiped it down each little strip of paper - just like you do when you're curling a ribbon with scissors for a parcel.

A topper made from a paper rosette and a bit of Gold Lame Color Shine spray finished things off and now they are ready to hang out on my mantel this Holiday Season. You can't really see the lights in this photo but the larger cone does have lights. It looks pretty cool too! I was trying to place my paper strips in a careful manner making sure each light would peak out but eventually just gave up and I found that as I was curling all the paper, the lights appeared! Love it when stuff like that happens!

So there you have it. One UFO finally complete. 1,930,298 to go! 

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Sparkly Joy Altered Letters

Good morning, Scrappin' Friends! I'm Wendy Coffman from Stamping Rules, and I'm here to share this glittery holiday display today. I got these cool paper mache letters which I painted with layers of grey and silver acylic paint. The front of the letters I coated with lots of silver glitter, just some standard chunky kid glitter. Then I got to work with the Mod Podge, pasting on hexagons I cut with my Cricut machine. After all the hexagons were attached and trimmed around the letters I did a final coat of Mod Podge and coated the letters with a clear chunky plastic glitter. 

Here you can see the final coating of what I always call kid glitter because it's uber chunky. It adds a lot of sparkle but still let's your paper shine through! I topped off each letter with a snowflake embellishment I built out of glitter paper cricut cuts and some rhinestone brads that I've been hoarding for just this kind of special project. I finished off my bling with a sparkle flourish for each letter. I adhered the flourishes with lots of Liquid Glass, which dried clear so it didn't interfere with the sparkle of the letters. For the parts of the flourish that were not actually attached to the letters I just flipped the whole thing over and coated the sticky part of the flourish with more Liquid Glass so it wouldn't attract hair or dust. I can't wait to add these letters to my holiday mantel!

If you'd like to see more pics of this project, and links to my craft sources, please visit me over at Stamping Rules. Thanks for stopping by!

Advent Tree Calendars

Hello Marcia here to share a fun Advent Tree Calendar that I made using the Doodlebug North Pole collection and an SVGcuts file. This 3 dimensional calendar is going to be displayed on my fireplace hearth. I wanted to use some bright cheery paper with lots of pattern choices for variety. This collection has some adorable matching stickers and those fabulous Doodle-pops for dimension too.

These were so fun to make I couldn't stop at decorating the front, I had to decorate the sides too.

Each tree is constructed from sturdy cardstock and then embellished with pattern papers.

and each of the 25 doors open to stash a piece of candy or small toy...

My kids are older, but they still love getting treats :)
What are you crafting this year for the Holidays?
~Marcia