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Christmas Journal: Days 9-11

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Creating a Christmas Journal gives me opportunities for experimenting. Most of the time, I'm pretty happy with the results and I have another technique up my sleeve for Project Life pages. For December 9, I tried printing on one of the patterned papers that came with the Ashley G. mini-kit offered by Ali Edwards. Can't say I'm thrilled with the results since reading the text is more difficult than I'd like, but I decided to go with it anyway. The idea for the page originated with the Ten on Tuesday posts that I discovered on Honoré's blog. This one was to record ten things you love to do around the holidays. 

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You can't tell from the photo, but the little dots are a beautiful gold, so the only embellishment was the 9 from the American Craft thickers I used on the cover of the journal. This list records ten things I love about Christmas: time with family, celebrating with friends, decorating the house, listening to Christmas music, entertaining, making Christmas cards, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, creating a Christmas Journal, and sitting by our new gas fireplace enjoying the lights on the tree and mantle.

December 10 records our trip to "meet" Santa at the George Eastman Museum. They always decorate the mansion beautifully, and this is the first time I've ever visited during the gingerbread house display. I have a lot more photos from this trip than I could fit in the journal, but even so I gave it three pages!

Dec10

I wrote about Skylar's hesitations around meeting Santa, and you can clearly see that in the photo with Grandpa. I blurred the face of the little girl talking to Santa since I don't know her at all. I'm not sure I would have thought to take a portrait of Grandpa with the girls on the staircase, but it seemed to be a pretty popular activity, so we joined in and I finally got a shot without anyone's feet going up and down the stairs in the photo. The left-hand page is a free photo template by Cathy Zielske.

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On this page, I included the two photos I shared yesterday for Pairs, one of Matt showing Skylar some projects on his phone while we were waiting for dinner, and one of the many gingerbread houses on display.

Dec11

Day 11 documents our book group meeting. We meet at someone's house and discuss the book, then go out to dinner. That night we went to Lemoncello's, one of my favorite Italian restaurants. I decided to include a list of the books our group read in 2015.

ReadingList

I read all but one of them. Fortunately, there's no pressure in this group (Tracy, Mary, and I have belonged to this group since 1990!) to read a book that doesn't speak to you, or if you're just swamped with other commitments. Although most of our group liked Gutenberg's Apprentice, neither Mike nor I could slog our way through it. As you can see, we don't manage to meet every month; some years we read more than eight books—it all depends on peoples' travel schedules. (Lovely to be retired!) I'm planning to do a post of the best books I read in 2015, but I can recommend any of these except Gutenberg's Apprentice (which you might enjoy since others did) or Bury Your Life (a murder mystery that just had too many evil characters in it for my taste.)

The journaling card is from One Little Bird, and I colored the books with TomBow markers after printing it. As you can tell, the embellishments are pretty minimal. They take me the longest to figure out, and since it's the photos and stories I want to get done, I often give up after a few minutes and say, "Good enough." Maybe I'll come back after the holidays and reconsider, but I think I'd best get back to my Project Life pages!

Pairs: At the Top, At the Bottom

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One of the fun things about visiting Santa at the George Eastman Museum is watching him come down the Grand Staircase in George Eastman's mansion. Here's Santa at the top.

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And greeting some children at the bottom.

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I'm linking up to Helena's meme "Pairs," and delighted to see that she has plans to host another weekly photography meme in 2016.

Happy Anniversary

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Today is Matt and Betsy's anniversary, and I'm here to share the card I made for them. It's so nice to have them nearby, and to be able to hand deliver our card and gift. It's a good excuse to get a little time in with Skylar and Ella as well.

This card was inspired after pinning this one by Joy Taylor awhile ago. I made a few changes, and I'm really happy with the results.

AnniversaryCard

I started with a piece of Tim Holtz's watercolor paper, and added some Kuretake watercolors in two shades of pink. Then I sprayed a bit of Heidi Swapp Gold Color Shine. The gold thread is from a spool I bought so long ago, I have no idea where it came from. I die cut two words from the Wet Paint dies by Papertrey Ink in Raspberry Fizz, layered them, and added the stamped sentiment from the same set. A narrow gold mat was added before putting it on the white card base. I think this is a design I'll be using again.

Hope your week is off to a good start. It's a busy one here, as I'm sure yours may be as well.

Christmas Journal: Days 6-8

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Day 6 in the Christmas Journal is all about getting Christmas cards made and in the mail. I know most of the cards have reached their senders in this country, but I'm not sure about those "across the pond." At any rate, there's a spoiler here if you haven't received yours yet.

Dec6

I cut the front off from one of the Christmas cards and punched holes in it to add to the album. I enrolled in Ali Edwards December Daily Workshop this year, and have gotten several ideas from the lessons, including this one.

Dec7

I covered the back of the card with a piece of patterned paper from Ashley G's mini kit. December 7 documents the first Day of Little Candles in our neighborhood. One of our new neighbors is from Columbia, and introduced us to this annual tradition. Anny had hundreds of tea lights lining her sidewalks as well as the little angel at the corner. We lit luminaries and lined our sidewalk, but I decided to include Anny's Facebook invitation instead of a picture of our sidewalk. It's events like this that make every Christmas Journal unique.

Dec8&Transp

One of Shimelle's recent prompts for Journal Your Christmas talked about the tradition of wish lists. I journaled about the need for wish lists for adult children as well as grandchildren. In the space of one day, I went from being about half done with my Christmas shopping to nearly done—thanks to receiving wish lists from Sarah and Betsy. On the right hand side, is a page protector that I cut down from nine squares to six squares. (Thanks again to Ali's workshop.) Here's a better look at it with a piece of paper behind it.

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I finally broke out my fuse tool and used it to seal two of the pockets that I filled with glitter and some star sequins. Here's a look at the back side.

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This was a really fun "page" to create, and I may include another one before the month is out.

 

Christmas Journal: Days 3-5

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I've been keeping up with my Christmas Journal, and so far it's been a December Daily. I haven't done as well getting it photographed for the blog, but today I had some time to work on that as well. Here are the next three days, and I'll be back soon with a few more.

Dec3

I always document something about the holiday decorations. This year I decided to focus on the new things in the house. The big one is our gas fire place. We've talked about doing this for years, and should have done it a long time ago. We're really enjoying it, despite the fact that we're having one of the warmest Decembers in recent memory! I also found some tiny white lights for our mantel at a little shop in Indiana in October. I've looked for just the right thing for several years, and finally found them. The silver tray with candles is also new, and a bit fancier than my usual collection on the coffee table. The big red candle is a citrus cinnamon, and smells delicious!

Dec4

I also like documenting the Christmas displays I see around town, and here are a few that caught my eye this year. Love those little polar bears with their noses stuck in the shopping bags.

Dec5

December 5th was a busy day. We visited the South Wedge for their Christmas festivities, and hosted a family dinner that night. Skylar and Emma are sitting in a little chair that belonged to my father.

As always, I'm glad to be capturing these bits and pieces of our holiday season.

 

 

 

Pairs: Before and During

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I hosted a dinner for my daughter-in-law's family this weekend. I was delighted that her youngest sister was here visiting from Boston. The original intent for Pairs was to have it be Before and After, but by the time I remembered to take the After photo, most of the dishes had been cleared away. Luckily, I took a During photo for my Christmas Journal. So here they are:

BEFORE:

Before

I always love this view from our dining room table into the living room, but especially at Christmas. I also love these snowflake plates I bought at Target several years ago.

DURING:

During

José is missing from this photo. He had to work late, but arrived in time to eat his dinner before we started on dessert! I love my DIL and her family, and are glad they are all willing to gather around our table.

Joining in with other Pairs at Helena's blog. We're so near the end of another wonderful year of photographic fun!

Christmas Journal: 2015

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My first Christmas Journal was made in 2005, and I've documented December in some fashion every year since. Last year I added the pages to my Project Life album, but this year I wanted to go back to a separate journal. I signed up for Ali Edward's class and it was all the inspiration I needed to get going again. I haven't had time to watch all the videos, but I have everything in order to get this year's journal completed. Every year I put out a basket with the old journals. Even without children at home, every Christmas season has its joys and events that make it somewhat different from the previous years. Some years I did a December Daily (Ali Edwards style), and some years I followed Shimelle's Christmas Journal prompts. My intention is for a December Daily album this year, but I'm super relaxed about it, so if there's nothing to photograph and nothing to write about, I'll just move on.

Here's a look at the basket of journals sitting under the window in our living room.

JournalBasket

I haven't done a lot to prepare, but I did decorate the cover of my Simple Stories 6X8 album.

Cover

I found the "Merry & Bright" wooden sign at Michaels and painted it gold with acrylic paint that came with Ashley G's mini-kit from Ali Edwards. The colors in that kit are primarily black, white, gold, red, and green which really appealed to me. I picked up the black and gold Thickers (American Craft) in Chicago. The glitter tape came from Michaels as well.

I pulled all my supplies together ahead of time, and put them in two separate boxes:

JournalStation

EmbellBox

And spray painted a few wood veneer die cuts.

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I never have much luck with what Shimelle calls a Manifesto, and Ali calls an Intention page. It always seems a bit over the top, but this year I came up with a three word reason why I create a Christmas Journal.

Manifesto

Just recently (through Pinterest, I think) I found Azzari Jarret's blog. I knew about her work as a designer for Paislee Press, but had never gotten as far as her blog. She had a December calendar as a free download which perfectly fits my album this year.

CalendarPage

It might seem to be a strange way to start a Christmas Journal, but my first page documents the memorial service and celebration of life for my friend, Jim. Actually, it was the most beautiful service I've ever attended, and a wonderful celebration. He loved Irish music and craft beers, so the celebration was held at an Irish bar downtown and the Dady Brothers performed Irish music. Three of his daughters sang a song they wrote for their dad on his 75th birthday.

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I'm keeping embellishments to a minimum this year and doing all my journaling on white cards I cut myself. The "remember" sticker is from Pink Paislee and the number cards are all from the Ashley G. kit.

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I decided yesterday's post for Pairs could be the basis of Day 2 and added two more photos of flowers around the house.

My plan is to complete each day's page the next morning. So far that's worked, but I know for a fact, it will be impossible to do this weekend. Too many early morning commitments! Nonetheless, it's great to back to documenting the holiday.

 

 

A Pair of Poinsettias

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I love Christmas flowers. At the moment we have two Christmas cactus; one in bloom and one covered in buds. There's always a cyclamen because that's the flower my father always sent me at Christmas time. And then there are the poinsettias. This year there are only two since we already had so many flowers.

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A Pair of Poinsettias
White & Pink and Red

Linking this up at Helena's blog for her weekly meme. I'm one of many hoping she'll be hosting a new meme in 2016!

With Sympathy

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It's been a difficult week. One of my very best friends had to admit her husband to hospice this week, and he passed away on Friday night. Six of their seven children arrived from all over the country, and it was as peaceful and kind as it could possible be. Nonetheless, we will all miss Jim's sharp intelligence and great sense of humor. It reminded me that I had a couple of sympathy cards I hadn't posted yet.

Sympathy cards are one of the hardest cards to make, and CAS ones have always seemed appropriate to me.

SympathyLeaf

This is a smaller card by Memory Box, a die cut circle cut with Simon Says stitched circles, and a die cut leaf by Memory Box. The sentiment is from Boutique Borders: Sympathy by Papertrey Ink.

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The next card uses the same sentiment with some border dies from that set stamped on the die from the Center Style: Masculine die set.

Sympathy

This is a fairly new die for me, and I can seen lots of applications for it, but it was perfect for a simple sympathy card.

I almost never have a sympathy card made ahead of time, and I was certainly not prepared for this week's events. Once the memorial is complete, I'll sit down to make a card for my friend.

Pairs: Process and Product

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Yesterday was Ella's first birthday—how time flies! Typically she is a happy little girl, and she and her sister are lots of fun. For once I started her birthday card with a pretty clear idea of how I wanted it to look. Here's a view of the card in process.

Process

At this point, I had colored and die cut all elements for the card, and was laying it out on my desk trying to decide on which sentiment to use. After I assembled the card, as I stamped the last word of the sentiment, I got a smudge of ink on the card. So I took it apart and decided to use a brighter pink cardstock. So here's the final product.

Product

The adorable little animals are from Simon Say's "Baby Party Animals," the frame from Pretty Pink Posh, the #1 from Papertrey's "By the Numbers," and the sentiment from Papertrey's "Stylish Sentiments: Birthday." The animals were all colored with Copic markers.

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And of course, I couldn't post this without some photos of the birthday girl. Matt and Betsy had a lovely party for family and a few close family friends. Ella is teething, and was sound asleep when the party started. They woke her up an hour later, and she was not her usual cheerful self. She showed no interest in eating any of her personal cupcake. (There was a big cake for the rest of us.) 

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But once she was given a spoon, she had a good time going at it!

I'm popping this card into the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.

 

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Papertrey November 2015 Blog Hop Challenge

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Two days ago, I woke up with ideas for this month's blog hop. I wanted to try the watercolor technique with the Spruce and Sprigs stamps, and it took awhile before I got anything I was happy with. I tried painting directly on the stamp with watercolor paints which I've see done on the card blogs with great effect. I never managed to get the right consistency, so I went back to using the Papertrey inks and spritzing them with water. I also added water directly to the watercolor paper before stamping.

The inspiration piece for this month uses pretty non-traditional colors, but I ended up liking them a lot. 

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Here's the first of two cards I created with the watercolored images.

PTIMerry

I cut the watercolored piece with the Stitched Tag die and adhered it to a Tropical Teal card. Then I added a die cut sentiment (Christmas Cheer) and a snowflake (old Sizzix die) from silver adhesive paper and some sequins. The "Merry" came from the Stylish Sentiments: Holiday set from several years ago. I tied two different kinds of silver twine through the tag to finish it off. I also added some Clear Star Gelly Roll pen to the sprigs. 

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Only one card can be posted for the blog hop, so I thought I was done, but as I was cleaning up, I picked up another piece of the watercolored paper, and came up with another card, which I like just as much.

PTIHoliday

Most of the supplies are the same. The two stitched rectangle dies are from Simon Says and they're added to a Rustic White card base. 

You can find more holiday inspiration on Nicole's blog right here.

Ten Things on Tuesday

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On this week of Thanksgiving celebrations in the U.S., the Ten Things prompt is so appropriate:  10 Things You're Thankful For. I have a lot more than ten, but these came to mind in a matter of minutes.

  1. Our health
  2. Our family
  3. A wonderful marriage
  4. A warm and comfortable home
  5. Good friends
  6. The library
  7. Retirement
  8. Crafting space and crafting time
  9. Photography
  10. The internet—source of inspiration and ongoing learning

And a big part of the inspiration I get comes from this wonderful blogging community, so this card's for all of you! Thanks for visiting, for taking the time to comment, and for including me in your blogging family.

  Grateful

 

All the supplies except the card (Memory Box) came from the November Simon Says Card Kit. I'm linking this to the Simon Says Monday Challenge:  Thanks/Thanksgiving. 

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Hope your week is off to a good start!

 

 

Simon Says November Card Kit

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The November Card Kit from Simon Says was filled with great patterned papers and some really cute die cuts. I don't usually create without using the stamp set from the kit, but I didn't touch the stamps for either of these cards.

MarcyBD

I love the fall colors of this card–perfect for a November birthday. I trimmed around the die cut so there wasn't so much white, added some brown glitter (I think from a previous card kit) to the cap of the acorn, and a bit of gold pen to the veins of the leaf. The sentiment from Papertrey's "Birthday Style" was trimmed by hand into a banner and tied with some thin twine, also from Papertrey. 

MarcyClose

I also needed an anniversary card, and love this card by Debbie Hughes where she used a cluster of the die cuts. I added another pear to the group, and created the sentiment on the computer and die cut it with one of the banner dies from Papertrey's "Simple Frames." 

PerfectPair

I added some Stickles Glitter to the pears and berries.

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It was fun to create a couple cards using some different types of materials. Another reason I love my subscription to the card kit. 

 

 

Fall Cards for Guys

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There were a number of birthdays for guys on my birthday calendar this month. I made a few multiples but have three different cards to share. Two of them are a variation on the same theme.

LeafBD

When Papertrey Ink released the Leaf Prints stamp set, I passed on it. After a year or so, I decided it would be a good addition to my collection, and I'm happy I changed my mind. I stamped the leaf on watercolor paper after rolling the edges in a slightly different ink color. Then I took a water brush and blended the colors some more, adding a third color with one of my Clear Color markers. Then I embossed the veins with gold embossing powder. I die cut and stamped the birthday sentiment from the "Swoosh" set.

LeafClose

Then I tried a slightly different version which I think I like even better. This time I trimmed the main part of the card and mounted it on a Classic Kraft card.

Leaf2BD

The last card has a totally different vibe. 

GuysBD

I used the same die cut and sentiment set, but layered some of the papers from the Black and White collection. It's a riff on one of the cards Maile Belles created when she released the paper collection.

Now I have a pile of tags to make for our annual gift exchange drawing on Thanksgiving, and a project I promised to create for Sarah that needs to be in Chicago by the first of the month. There just hasn't been much studio time this week.

 

Pairs on the Canal

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My friend, Debbie, and I are still getting in our long walk on the canal every week. The weather for November has been wonderful, and although it was a chilly start yesterday, the sun warmed us up pretty quickly. We almost always see ducks swimming in the canal, but yesterday there were large groups of Canadian geese—-

on the water and in the air
swimming and flying

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I wish I'd had my big camera with me, as it was hard to get a closer, clear shot of the geese swimming across the canal.

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Surprisingly, the iPhone did quite a good job of capturing them flying overhead.

Linking up to Helena's blog, and wondering how we've gotten so close to the end of the year!