December Daily Foundation Pages: Part 1

This is my first year doing a December Daily and I am having so much fun with it. December Daily is a concept started by Ali Edwards. Essentially, it is a mini-album that chronicles bits of daily life for the first 25 days of December. This year, Ali teamed up with Studio Calico to offer a December Daily kit and I purchased the kit.

I love the album in the kit. It’s a small, plain chipboard album made by American Crafts with 3-inch rings and 25 page protectors, measuring 6“ wide by 8.5“ tall. It’s a fun size. The kit came with assorted paper and embellishments but I decided to forego most of the kit and instead use primarily Echo Park.

My entry for December 1 looks like this.

　

I followed Ali’s lead and used a calendar page on the right and a decorative element on the left. Here I used 4-inch square pockets to hold introductory elements. The top square says: Welcome December; the bottom square says: The 25 Days of Christmas. To make the pockets, I used a 12x12 WRMK photo page protector that had 9 squares. I cut the page protector to just two squares and punched new holes to fit the album’s rings. I will use altered page protectors like this sporadically through the album.

My entry for December 2 is more typical of what the rest of the album will be: a decorative page on the left, a calendar page on the right and transparent divider in between.

The calendar pages are digital overlays that Ali sells on her website. I'll use these pages primarily for journaling and photos of the day's events or to record a holiday memory. The left side of the spread is a decorative page. On these pages, I stitched a red frame around each page to give continuity day to day.

Here's the foundation spread for December 3:

Throughout the album, I used Echo Park paper and embellishments for the decorative page on the left side of the album.  I primarily used a 6x6 pad of Holly Jolly and Metro Dots and Stripes.

This is the foundation for December 4:

The snowman strip at the top of this page is from Echo Park's 2010 Christmas collection and the snowman at the bottom is a Holly Jolly journaling card.

December 5:

On Day 5, I used a small photo pocket (as I did on Day 1) between the left and right pages of the spread in lieu of a transparency divider. I tucked a journaling card in the pocket and will write my list in December when I get to this day.

A lot of people put numbers on their foundation pages but I haven't added those yet, as I may move the decorative pages once December starts and I wanted to have that flexibility.

You can see my December Daily Foundation Pages: Part 2 here.

Supply list:

Echo Park: Holly Jolly - 6x6 pad, 12x12 collection kit, chipboard, stamps; Metro Dots and Stripes - 6x6 pad, 12x12 collection kit; Season’s Greetings 12x12 collection kit, chipboard, brads; Everybody Loves Christmas 12x12 collection kit.

American Crafts: Album

Ali Edwards: calendar overlays

Hambly: Transparencies

Bo Bunny: ribbon

Fancy Pants: ribbon

Cosmo Cricket: tiny type

Jenni Bowlin: letter stickers

Martha Stewart: kraft tags

The Twinery: twine

Making Memories: Buttons

My Mind’s Eye: Stamps

Ranger Industries: Ink

Sewing Machine: Bernina

Halloween Wrap Up

I wanted to post these at the end of October, but our internet service was kaput for a couple weeks due to some weather issues. I hope you will indulge me for a little Halloween wrap-up.

I used Echo Park’s Apothecary line for all these projects. I so enjoyed this collection. First up, are some pillow box treats. I took these to my son’s school and they were a big hit. They were super easy to do. I confess: I used pre-made pillow boxes from the wedding aisle at Michael’s and just covered them with patterned paper. Easy peasy!

Then I made a couple of cards just for fun.

And a wreath for the front door.

Then, just before Halloween, I stopped by a thrift store and found a small wooden birdhouse for 25 cents. I took it home and started to paint it white, then realized it would be better painted black. I covered the birdhouse with little scraps of Apothecary and added an oversized Raven sticker. We sat this on our bookcase in the den and it gave just the right Halloween feel to the room. Quote the raven: Nevermore!

First Trick or Treat

Last Halloween, my son was 16 months old and was ready for his first trick or treat. Before he quite discovered what going door to door was all about, he thought Mom was just dressing him up in some dumb costume and he wasn't particularly happy about that.

He eventually warmed to the idea, however. While he never quite got the hang of carrying the plastic pumpkin, but he loved going up to the neighbor's door and getting candy. That really was a treat and he would run back so excitedly to show us his candy. I'm not sure that he even knew it was candy. He just liked the game of going to a door and getting something - anything! Oh, the joys of childhood.

Now that we're almost ready to trick or treat this year, I thought I should scrapbook the photos from last Halloween.  I had a hard time choosing my favorite photos, so I went with a collage so I could use them all.

Paper and embellishments are Echo Park. I used the Apothecary and Victoria Garden lines.

Altered Frame for Halloween

I love altering ordinary picture frames around the house, especially for the holidays. I looked around our den and spied a nice black frame in the den that holds an 8x10 family photo.  I removed the photo and ended with this.

This project was really easy to make. I started with a piece of white cardstock, cutting it down to 8x10 inches. I grabbed some of my favorite Halloween paper, Echo Park's Apothecary, adding in an orange pattern from EP’s previous Halloween release for a punch of color.  I used a square punch to make 20 squares, then moved them around in a grid with five rows across and four down, leaving a little white border between them. I also left a white border around the page so I would have some wiggle room for the image in the frame.  

I tacked the squares down lightly with adhesive, then used a sewing machine to make diagonal lines across the squares with black thread.

Here you can see the squares before I embellished them. And, yes, the project is shown upside down.  Hee! I didn’t realize that until I uploaded the photos.  I tried flipping the photo, but it looked weird. So, we’ll just go with this. J

To embellish the squares, I used element stickers from Apothecary and Happy Halloween. I backed the stickers with cardboard to give them a little dimension. You can also use pop dots but for large stickers, like the tree, I prefer to use cardboard as it gives a smoother look.

So, there you have it. A really quick, fun project that you can make for any holiday. This was my last project as guest designer for Echo Park. I uploaded this project to 2peas and was happy to look the next day to see that of 425 projects, it had made the daily top 3 most bookmarked.  

World Card Making Day

I love making cards and how perfect that there is a holiday just for people like me. World Card Making Day is the first Saturday in October.

I made a card to send to a friend whose birthday I missed.  Oops!  Hopefully, he'll forgive me once he gets this.

The outside of the card says: Blast it!

 The inside sentiment is: Can't believe I forgot your birthday!

I used October Afternoon's Rocket Age collection. Love this cute collection of space-themed papers and embellies. 

Freehand Scraps kit club is having a World Card Making Day challenge to make a card with a travel theme. You can find details on their blog here.

Just Add Water

We're enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer here in North Carolina and we made one last beach trip before the season turns to Fall. While at the beach, my toddler loved playing with the boogie board most of all. He spent a lot of time at the beach either tugging it along behind him in the sand or sitting on it at the ocean’s edge. He never did get the hang of standing on it and riding the waves, but he’s just 2. Next year...
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I used the colors in my toddler’s swim trunks to guide my paper choices. I used a mix of Echo Park lines: orange from Splash, yellow from Victoria Gardens and green from Sweet Summertime. 

I knew I wanted to have a surfboard, so I drew one on cardboard and cut it out as a template. I cut a surfboard from the same yellow paper under the photos. I painted it white with acrylics, then used a swirl border as a mask. I misted over the mask with yellow and blue mist and inked the edges of the paper and added some stitching. Then I sewed on a big wave sticker to anchor and balance the page.

For the title spot, I used a journaling card, a phrase sticker (“just add water”) and some alphas, To finish the layout, I added a little photo tab on the top picture and a border sticker down the length of the photos.

Supply List:

Patterned Paper: Echo Park (Victoria Garden, Splasy, Sweet Summertime, Country Drive)

Stickers: Echo Park (Splash)

Alphas : Webster's Pages, Echo Park

Country Drive: journaling card

Paint: Ranger

Ink: Ranger

Mists: Tattered Angels

Sewing Machine: Bernina

Thread: Craft supply

Fun with Puns

I've always been a bit corny and am partial to jokes that are dumb but funny. At least to my funnybone. Just to give you an idea of how easy it is to make me smile, these jokes did:

Why did the pirate go to the Caribbean?
He wanted some Arrrr and Arrrr.

Why couldn't Dracula's wife get to sleep?

Because of his coffin.

Why did the skeleton go to the party alone?
He had no body to go with him...

I'm always on the lookout for punny sayings. My favorite place to use puns (and lame jokes) is on cards. I'm the kind of geek who will browse in Hallmark and giggle. A sad but true fact.

This is a card I made over the weekend and somehow hoodwinked Echo Park into putting it on its blog.

As soon as I saw this cute bottlecap pp in EP's Happy Days line, I knew it was ripe for a pun.  This was a really fast card to put together. I used a blank American Crafts 5x7 card as my base and just cut it down to a square.  The pink pp is the flip side of the bottlecaps. The banner, alphas and red scallop line are EP stickers. 

To give the banner a little oomph, I backed it with cardboard, then sewed it to the card. This gives a bit of dimension and texture but still makes it easy to mail in a standard envelope.

Echo Park posted a couple more of my punny cards on its blog today.  You can see them here.  Methinks the kind folks at EP are feeling a little sorry now that they named me as September's Fresh Face....