December Daily® │ days 9 and 10

Two days to share with you today. The first is the 9th. I always like to include our Christmas Card in the album and I usually do it on a slow day when I don't have another story to include. The fact that we got them all stuffed and ready to mail in about 20 minutes (not including addressing time) was a bonus. Many hands make light work.

I made sure to snap a shot of the stamps because they were just the cutest things ever. I kept the left pretty simple so the card was the focus. I sprinkled some tiny gold heart sequins and glued them right where they fell. I printed the text right on the page which made it super easy.

Here's the back side of the card, I didn't cover it up because I wanted it to show.

Here it is inside the album, I'm pretty sure this will be a favorite card for a really long time.

Now on to Day 10, my daughters birthday! I got her a giant silver number balloon last year but this year they had gold!! I really love these balloons and it totally makes for a really great shot. I snapped some pics of her before school celebration but man the morning light is tough in December. I snapped this shot here after she got home from school when the light was a bit better.  On the left I used a piece of Cosmo Cricket vellum that I had been hoarding since last year. The silver letters were also from last year and came from the Target Dollar Spot. I think I bought 10 packs because they were so perfect. I used vellum adhesive to lay them down but the silver glitter on the vellum kept them from sticking really well so I had to staple each one down. I added one of the tab stickers from Ali's kit because it needed something to grab to turn the page.

Here you can see the vellum a bit better.

For the photo, I added the banner and text in Photoshop Elements and just changed the opacity of the banner so it looked like vellum. I added the two red pearl dots and the veneer 10 on the outside of the protector.

 And here it is in the album.

Its storming pretty bad here today so I have a feeling today's page will be weather related I'm just not sure of the what and how yet.

See you soon,

December Daily® │Day 8

Since this is the first year we will have an Elf visit us for the whole month I wasn't sure how I was going to include the pictures in this album. I thought about doing one whole collage at the end but then I thought it might be fun to do smaller collages weekly. So here we are day 8 with the first seven days of Twinkle.

I made a simple collage for the left side to showcase six days and picked my favorite photo for the right side of the spread. Its a bit out of order and that's bugging me a little bit but I'm rolling with it anyway. The little date tabs that I used are actually larger flash cards that Marcy Penner gave away on her blog last year. I don't think she has the file up anymore but you can at least see them full size on her blog. These cards were the perfect way for me to date each photo, its just such a perfect and simple design. But everything Marcy does usually is so no surprise there. She's pretty awesome.

To dress up the top part of the right side I cut the Twinkle from Digital Design Essentials out of POW aqua glitter paper. In order to beef up the lines a bit I opened the file in Photoshop Elements and then just added a 3px stroke outline to the center of the image three times. It made the thinner lines thick enough to cut out on my Cameo without trouble. I added a simple line of text before printing the page and adhered the 8 and a few red pearl dots. This is printed on photo paper and its sized to 6x8. I'm not slipping it into a protector because I'm trying not to make the whole thing full size 6x8, which I have a habit of doing. Its not a bad thing to do it, I just want to keep the sizes more varied as best I can plus I won't use them all up the first week! I'll figure out what to back it with when I know what I'm doing today.

My plan at this point is to do another similar spread on the 15th with days 8 to 14 and another on the 21st with days 15 to 21. I'll probably cover the last three days on the 24th since that's Twinkles last day with us. Unless something super amazing ends up happening on those days but since we don't have anything planned at this point I think it will work out.

So, if you have an Elf visiting, how are you incorporating it into your album?

December Daily® │Days 5, 6, 7

I didn't have a chance to work on these until Sunday and Monday so I'm sharing a few days here. The weekends are always hard, to much stuff going on to stop and work.

Day 5 is a super simple day, not a ton of photos but we all got out in the evening which was fun. I only had the two photos and of course our movie tickets but what to do for the bottom pocket? Originally I had the photos down there and I thought I was done but you know when something just doesn't feel right, well at the last minute I pulled it out and started over. I knew the spread for the 6th needed a full size pocket so I added in that cute full size page from Ali's kit and just stuck some silver star sequins down on the outside of the protector.

One of my go to embellishments for this project is to layer ribbon, it fills space and its always super simple and easy. I love these two layered on top of each other.

Day 6 was a night out with some friends to a special light show that is happening at our fairgrounds. I'm so glad we went and the light displays were amazing. I opted to focus just on the photos and keep it super simple. The template on the right is from Ali and it was from last year I believe.

I of course made all my friends wait for me as we were exiting because I had to have a map of the event for the album. Everyone I asked was out but thankfully I found some at Guest Services. Since I didn't have good tickets to include (we bought them online) I needed at least something in there to show what this event was.

Day 7 is a bit of a cheat again with dates because we actually saw Santa at the event the previous night. I'm so glad we did it there because the line wasn't super long and Santa was super nice. My daughter has written Santa 2 letters so far so this one was written purely to insert here. I just printed out the paper for her and told her to write what she wanted. She asked if she could draw a picture of the skates which I'm so glad she did, I mean the laces are adorable. The journaling is printed on a piece of white velum and the ribbon was added on top, the red wraps all the way around to hide the adhesive.

Here you can see how it looks in the album.

See you soon,

December Daily® │days 3 and 4

I wasn't sure what I was going to share on Day three until my husband and I popped into to See's Candy for our annual Christmas Stocking trip. While waiting for the sales lady to fill our custom pack half pound boxes I spied this super cute bag behind the counter. I asked another sales lady if I could see one, she obliged and once I had it in hand I asked if I could keep it. I mean, hello awesomeness!

Once I had the bag I knew I had a story and so I made sure to snap a few pictures while we were there. I ended up using a snap of my Egg Nog Truffle against the menu of candies and it makes me want to go back and get some more right now. I did struggle for a bit on how I would use the bag. It was just a smidgen bigger than 6x8 so I knew I could go any direction. I knew I didn't want to cover up the graphics but I also wanted to add the story so I decided to put the story on a tag so that it would move out of the way of the bag as you can see below. The red plastic flower on the tag was from one of Ali's kits a few years back and I now have only one left. I need to check but I'm pretty sure I have used them in the past three albums now.

The red plastic 'tradition' came in Ali's kit and the fave circle was a freebie from Digital Design Essentials the other day and it looks like its still available. I've purchased quite a few things from her store over the years and just recently too so you'll see more I'm sure.  I just printed and cut this one with my Cameo so it was super easy. I've never shared our See's story before so I'm kind of glad we ended up there and that they let me have this super cute bag.

Now for Day four, which was pretty much a stay in the house and finish my latest book kind of day, so nothing too exciting. I decided to add in our story of hanging our outdoor lights that we always put up right before Thanksgiving. I totally staged that shot of my daughter but it was totally worth it, she cooperated up to but not including allowing me to actually light the lights. It would have been so cute! Anyway, the word art on top of the photo I made but its absolutely inspired by a piece in this set that I own from Ali. I planned on using hers but I needed the Christmas divided up to work and I couldn't manipulate her file easily enough so I just made one that was similar. It makes the shot so thank you Ali for the amazing inspiration. On the right side I used a card that came in a recent Studio Calico kit as the base for my number and layered a piece of red ribbon and a chipboard piece from Ali's kit. The Deck The Halls card I made myself and I kind of love it.

I added some really tiny silver stars on either side of the Deck the Halls in red and it was a miracle that they were the right size. You can sort of see that I had colored those two aqua but I liked the silver better. It added another metallic element to play off the veneer number.

 Here you can see the shine of the number a bit better.

I really love these two spreads and I can't wait to see what the weekend brings. I hope yours is a great one!