bring on 2012

 

I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me in 2012, any more than the rest of us. I have a feeling it’s not going to be my favorite year, I know that there are some things I need to deal with that I don’t want to. But I’m not going to let that stop me from setting some resolutions for this coming year. And if I post them here, well, hopefully I’ll stick to them!

1) Finish up my December Daily! I was going good until Christmas, and then…I’ve had a great week with my kids & done other catching ups. Now it’s time to finish it already. Just 3 days to go!

2) Finish up Project Life 2011. I know I haven’t shared pics on here since about May, but I have (kind of) kept up with the photos. I just got a TON printed at Costco, so photo-wise my album is almost done. Journaling…well, I’ve completed it all thru May. Time to conquer the last seven months!

3) Purge. Heck, who doesn’t want a fresh start with a new year. Too bad I go back to work on the 3rd!

4) Begin 2012 Project Life with a new enthusiasm. I definitely lost my mojo at some point last summer. I think because my 2010 & 2011 albums are really similar. I want 2012 to focus on two things: improving my photography thru Capture your 365 (+1 for this leap year) and chronicling the everyday ala Ali Edwards. I want this 2012 Project Life to be a “true scrapbook.” You know, like a lot of us had in jr. high that really was scraps of life?

I think those are do-able?

So with that, I wish you & yours a happy new year.

Bring it on…

december daily | days 18 & 20

 

Day 18: I lifted this idea from Autumn Nguyen’s blog. I had a few photos of decorations from around the house, but not enough to enlarge & make look nice. I also had a few little embellishments I wanted to use too.

Day 20: Pickle day! In our house, we have a pickle ornament on the tree. To keep the drama to a minimum, we look for the pickle before Christmas as part of our advent calendar activities. Whoever finds the pickle gets to open a gift, which is always a “family” gift (some sort of game).

merry christmas

 

May you all have a happy, healthy Christmas!

december daily | days 22 & 23

 

So I have skipped a few days, and I’m filling in as I go. But for the most part I’ve kept up! Just two more days to go!

Day 22: We attended our church’s Christmas Eve service. We go to a HUGE church and there were 15 Christmas “Eve” services all week. I used the cover of the program, as well as photos shared on Bayside’s website. Then I added a sentiment in PSE, some word stickers & stickles. And I happened to have a strip of paper with “nativity” on it. Perfect.

Day 23: I copied Ali Edwards’ again, this time using the lines on the patterned paper for journaling lines. Maybe a bit messier than I intended, but that’s okay. It’s done & it tells the story I wanted to share.

december daily | days 17, 19, & 21

Day 17: My husband’s sister & her family came to visit for the afternoon. I always dream of getting great shots of them playing & hanging out like I see on so many other scrapbook pages, and yet…well, these ARE the best I got! And the one of the girls could be good if I’d realized I’d focused on the tree & not them. Ugh! Someday I’ll get good pics of them :)

Day 19: Olivia’s dance recital.

Day 21: Last day of school before break (aka, Party Day!). I included a card Brandon made for me. It’s supposed to open, but I sealed it shut since I didn’t feel like adding anything in it (it’s blank inside). I could’ve added photos, & thought about it, but just wanted the page to be done, lol!

december daily | days 15 & 16

Day 15: Today was Abbie’s last day of preschool (& mine too!) before Christmas break. There are three classes there in the mornings (and another three in the afternoons). All of the classes had a cute little performance.

 

Day 16: Pajama Day!

december daily | days 13 & 14

This year for teacher/co-worker gifts I made caramel in a can…first time I did it so I hope it turned out okay! It was SO easy too. I did not make it in the crock pot because I didn’t want to have to deal with it in the morning, and frankly, I was making it at the last minute & couldn’t fit all 10 cans in the crock pot. I found directions online that said to boil for four hours in a stock pot, checking the water every 30 minutes so that’s what I did.

 

I love how our actual Santa photo came out this year, although I’m bummed that I didn’t get two copies so I could include one here. Oh well! At least I snuck a few pictures in before being asked to put my camera away :)

december daily | days 9 & 11

I’m sure I got some interesting looks while taking pics at Costco; not just of my daughter in the cart, but also of random merchandise! Oh well, I like how my collage has some holiday merchandise in it too…so it’s not just a bunch of pictures of Abbie in a shopping cart :)

 

For today I fully scraplifted a layout by Ali Edwards. I was already planning on sending my kids an email from the North Pole, and of course I was going to take pictures & use them, I just didn’t know I was going to use the email too. Though cutting & pasting (& fitting) three names wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped!

december daily | days 6 & 7

It was so nice to finally have some time to get caught up this last weekend.

This layout focuses on our Elf on the Shelf, and I was missing a photo. Finally got one, and finally got decent enough light to take a pic of the layout too.

I used Ali Edwards’ Advent boxes for the “believe” overlay. The brush itself is a square, so I just “lengthened” it in PSE to fit on my photo.

For day 7 I scraplifted this layout I saw on October Afternoon’s blog.

december daily | day 5

 

See, I told you I’d been keeping up :)

I’ve actually had this layout done for almost two weeks; I just was waiting on more Christmas cards so I could include a photo of our “wall of cards” with more than just our own card up!

sketch support | happy holidays at disneyland

 

Supplies – patterned paper: Crate Paper; letter stickers: American Crafts; chipboard accents: Crate Paper; ink: Tsukineko

First of all, *love* this layout! The trees were super fun & super easy to make, & made this layout nice & festive.

1) Instead of stars, I used snowflakes on the tree tops. They came in the chipboard pack.

2) I typed out a bunch of holiday things that we did at Disneyland for my journaling strips, rather than writing a LONG story about our vacation.

3) I added the date to a cute chipboard accent right on top of the trees.

december daily | day 4

 

I swear, I’m keeping up…kinda!

Last year I did a pretty good job of taking photos daily & putting my pages together every night. But this year I am working almost full-time (80%), and, well…I’m taking pictures every day but I’m not always getting everything put together every night.

And that’s okay. (At least I got my Christmas cards mailed out!)

For this layout I used some of the packaging from our Trader Joe’s gingerbread house kit, a few snapshots of the kids putting the together, a snip of paper, and a few embellishments.

sketch support | have a holly jolly christmas

 

For this card sketch & many others, head over to Sketch Support!

Supplies – patterned paper: Basic Grey Jovial; rub-on: Basic Grey Jovial; ribbon: Lush by My Mind’s Eye; brad: Lush by My Mind’s Eye; ink: Tsukineko; word stickers: Authentique; glitter glue: Stickles; punch: EK Success

1) Instead of stitching, I used lines of glitter glue.

2) I used a square bling brad turned on its side instead of a star, to add a bit of dimension.

3) To make my sentiment stand out a bit more, I used a rub-on to create a bit of a journaling block and then added word stickers.

december daily | day 3

 

Day 3: Today we decorated the Christmas Tree. Finally (if you ask my kids!)

I’m starting with the right hand side because of this photo. Abbie knows I love taking pictures, and she loves to pose, but obviously she (is only 3) doesn’t fully understand what makes a great photo. So when she turned to me with the ornament box on her face & said, “Mommy take my picture,” well, of course I obliged. And I knew as I took it that it would be my photo for today.

I embellished the page with a chipboard ornament sticker from Echo Park. I think the paper is Echo Park too. And the letter stickers are from my stash (October Afternoon).

Trick I want to share: I added metallic string in a bow on the ornament. However, it’s that funky string that is kinda stiff so it unties on its own. So I added a drop of silver stickles (because I couldn’t find my glossy accents) to the center of the bow.

I had fun with this larger photo of Abbie decorating the tree. The lighting in the room was awful, so I played around in PSE to make it work.

After adjusting the levels, I used the actions “slight light” & “soft faded” from Pioneer Woman. Love her! Then I cropped my photo to 6”x8.5” and used a brush to add the lyrics to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”.

I wanted to add a bit of journaling to this photo as well. I used an oval journaling tag and typed my journaling on it. I decreased the opacity to about 30%-ish so it would look like a vellum tag.  I’m bummed that what I saw in PSE is NOT what printed, but oh well. Life goes on. Sigh.

I was having a hard time getting my journaling into the exact spot I wanted, so I just added the “joy” sticker to cover up the white space. Once I was done I used gold stickles to edge the entire photo page. I think this is one of my favorite pages so far :)

december daily | day 2

 

Today I wanted to tell a story about our stockings. I found this great “then & now” journaling card in my stash (I think from my Feb GTKC). I added a few Jillibean Soup stickers and a fun little clip (that’s from my Feb 2010 GTKC!).

The transparency is from Fancy Pants. I’m so happy with how my “pre-made” foundation for day 2 ended up working with the photos.

Again I printed the photo at home. The colors were a bit darker than I anticipated, but that’s okay; I didn’t have to go to Costco this weekend to pick up photos, and I didn’t have to shell out and cash for it either.

december daily | day 1

 

For day one I choose to spotlight our Advent traditions. I took a couple of pictures from around the house, converted them to black & white in PSE (mostly because I took them at night & the colors were horrid!), added a twill strip from Ali Edwards’ “Christmas Twill Strips”, and then printed it out here at home. Not sure that I’ll be printing everything here, but it is handy this time of year!

Here is a close up of the details on the overlay:

And below you can see my journaling (on hand drawn lines), plus a few extra details I added. Unfortunately I forgot to punch my holes before journaling, so I lost part of one letter. Oh well. I did go thru & punch all the pages now so I won’t have that problem again!

december daily | foundation, day 1

Is it December already?! Holy cow! And I can honestly say I have done NO Christmas shopping. Between that & the fact that I’m working 80% this year (compared with 50% or less in years past)…yeah, it’s going to be a busy month.

But I’m still doing my December Daily! I put together my foundation pages about a month ago, but never got around to photographing them (add that to my to-do list for this weekend!). I did take a picture of my day 1 foundation last night…so excuse the not-so-great lighting :)

I’ve been collecting transparencies since last Christmas when I saw how Ali Edwards put together her album last year. And most of the rest of the supplies were from my stash of Christmas goodies. I also copied the list from the Studio Calico December Daily kit & went to Green Tangerines (my lss) to pick up as much as I could & wanted.

My pages are all 6”x8 1/2” so that I could fit the overlays from Designer Digitals. FYI, I precut all of my paper before printing…bad idea! The outlines were going off the pages, so I had to scale down a bit (sorry, I didn’t write down the proportion!) to make it fit. No biggie; fortunately I noticed while printing my first page :)

(I’ll be sharing my completed day 1 sometime tomorrow, after I can get a decent photo in the daylight.)

sketch support 2012

 

It has been so much fun to be a part of the Sketch Support Creative Team for the past six months. Earlier today, Allison Davis (Sketch Support) announced the new team for 2012 and I am thrilled to be chosen for the team for another year! Congratulations to everyone on the new team!

Returning Members
Carolyn Wolff
Christine Chain (me!)
Christy Arthur
Janette Kincaid
Jennifer Larson
Jill Sarginson
Katrina Hunt
Lynette Jacobs
Megan Bickers
Melissa Bell
Noey Hunt
Shari Thurman
Suzanna Lee
New Members
Andrea Friebus
Ashley Horton
Cherie Nymeyer
Michele Edwards
Penny Grimsley
Sue Althouse
Virginia Nebel

two page sketch | at apple hill

 

This is from a couple of weeks ago at Sketch Support!

Here’s my take on the sketch:

Supplies – patterned paper: Echo Park, American Crafts, Imaginesce, Authentique; letter stickers: Bella Blvd; stickers: Bella Blvd. & American Crafts; brads: Lush by My Mind’s Eye; ink: Tsukineko; other: pop dots & embroidery floss (supplies from October GTKC)

1) The first change I made was that I included an extra photo.

I always crop, edit, & resize my photos in PSE before I print them. This time I made the height of all  my photos 4” & then I played around until I liked how the fit on a 8”x4” block. Originally I had them arranged differently, so I had my two group photos separated. Then I realized that if I wanted one of my kids to be in the center photo, I was going to have to cut their face in half to have their photo on two pages. That’s why I love playing in PSE first!

2) I used these pumpkin & apple stickers from American Crafts instead of a flower up near my title. I layered a phrase sticker from Bella Blvd on top. I added the cloud behind them because I thought a little blue would help the colors pop.

3) Again I swapped out the flowers (and used more pumpkins, apples, and a scarecrow). I used a few more phrase stickers from Bella Blvd…I’m so glad I got these! The phrases were perfect for this layout! I also omitted the swirls. My paper & pictures were busy enough & I think the swirls, as pretty as they are, would’ve been too much on this layout.

december 2011 | project 12

 

Okay, it’s from almost a year ago, but I got it done before THIS December!

I created this layout using this sketch for Project 12 at Scrapbook & Cards Today. It was my first layout as part of the Green Tangerines Design Team.

My challenge was to use lots of fun products from the Basic Grey Jovial line.

Supplies – patterned paper, journaling sheet & overlay, rub-ons: Basic Grey Jovial; letter stickers: Basic Grey Jovial & Lush by My Mind’s Eye; ink: Tsukineko; word stickers: Authentique

 

1) I used this fun journaling block/overlay for the title block. I put the smaller Basic Grey letters directly on the journaling block, covered it with the overlay, and then added the flocked letter stickers on top. I like how it slightly muted the black letter stickers. I also inked the chipboard edges of the letter stickers to help the stand out a bit more.

 

2) You can see how I inked the letters here too.

 

3) I added some word stickers around the page. I didn’t do any journaling this time; could’ve. Probably should’ve. But couldn’t find a good way to add it in. And sometimes, frankly, I just don’t want to write, lol!