Hello all!
Can you believe it is December already? The busy season is upon us and I for one am looking forward to it!
This month, I received the new Teresa Collins 'Christmas Home' collection to play with, along with some great glittery red Thickers by American Crafts. I am in love with this collection, it is so elegant and versatile... several of the papers are great for non-holiday themed projects as well!
This is the first thing I created with this collection, a little countdown calendar....
I simply decorated the front of this press board piece with some papers and embellishments from the kit and added a little dollar store doily. I also snipped the prongs off of the brad that sported a green gem stone, and adhered it onto a small magnet. There is a small piece of metal under the green patterned paper and doily.
Using this sheet of patterned paper, I cut out all of the numbers to create my countdown tags. (Sorry for the crappy photo, it appears I got some adhesive on the lens of my camera!) I added a little envelope to the back of the piece to store the extra numbers.
Next, I created this layout. This picture of my littlest guy was taken a few years ago, and I love it!
I matted my photo onto white cardstock because it has a dark background and the papers are fairly dark and pattern heavy. I love how rich and elegant the designs of these papers are. Using an over sized mat allowed me to also mat my title and add a bit of stitching for some fun detail.
This collection included a wide assortment of fun embellishments, from stickers to bling, to ribbons and chipboard and more.
Then I created this layout....
If this were a 'real' ornament in the photo is would for sure be a favourite, but it is simply a picture of my son Photoshopped onto a picture of an ornament. Oh well, I think it's pretty anyway!
I added a doily and some Prima bling to this layout.
I also created these flowers using a MFT die.
And this strip of ornaments was punched form the glittery paper that goes with this collection. Love it!!
Next up is this layout featuring a Christmas Eve tradition at our house....
A fairly simple single page layout featuring three photos. I like that this dark snowflake paper mimics the snowy night shown in the photo. A sticker banner, some buttons and brads and journaling strips. It doesn't get much easier!
The journaling describes our tradition of sprinkling 'Reindeer food' each Christmas Eve, to help the reindeer guide Santa to our house.
The title combines part of a patterned paper and a little die cut tag, to read 'December traditions'.
I also created this card....
I kept the design fairly simple, to let the fun embellishments really stand out. The red glittery snowflake is punched from the sheet of red glittery paper. The red tulle is super fun! And the red and white 'quatrefoil' paper is my absolute favourite in this pack. Likely something to do with a big quatrefoil kick I am on right now and being on the hunt for black and white quatrefoil draperies for my dining and living rooms!
And lastly, I created this December Planner...
The patterned chipboard book covers are part of this collection, and would of course make a very sweet Christmas 8 x8 album. However, I thought I'd do something a little different with them. If you know me, you know that I am a huge list maker and that I have lists for everything. So I thought I'd combine my love of Christmas and my love of lists together and create a Christmas to do list book.
The first page features a stamped calendar so I can note any events we are attending as well as "to do's" that are time sensitive.
The next page I created to jot down things that need to be done, there is a date column as well as a column to check off completed items... a great way to see at a glance what still needs to be done. Hopefully this will help me achieve my goal of a fairly quiet week, leading up to the 25th.
This is a decorative divider page. I used this chipboard element to help demonstrate that this section is for holiday home decorating.
I created this master list of decorating we usually do, so that we can stay on top of it.
Another decorative divider page, for my naughty and nice gift shopping list!
On these pages I can list each person that we buy gifts for, their sizes etc. and some ideas of what to get them. I can add to this list all year long, as people mention something that they might like. Then when the holidays roll around I have a jumping off point for my shopping.
This is my master list, quickly outlining everyone we buy for and checking off when they have been taken care of. This way I can see at a glance who is done and who still needs to have a gift purchased/made for them.
Another divider page, for cards that I send out.
These pagers list not only who I send a card to, but I can also add who sends us one, that way if I update it this year, I won't forget anyone next year. It also lets me set a goal of a date to send out the cards and reminds me to pick up stamps and lets me know just how many cards I need to make in the first place.
The last divider page for holiday baking.
I can quickly print out as many of these pages as I need, to help me keep tabs on what I will be baking, how much and when and also what ingredients I may need to pick up before hand. The last few Christmas' I have kept the baking to only 5 or 6 different things. Just doing the family favourites so that we don't overindulge or have too many treats left over.
And this is the inside of the back over, with a cute little pocket to hold receipts, etc.
Can you tell this collection thoroughly inspired me? And in case you missed it, I also used this collection to create a couple of tutorials, like the paper ornament on November 16th and the treat holder card on November 23rd. Check them out if you haven't already.
And once again thanks for stopping by the blog today to see what I have been up to, I know this is a long post and I really appreciate you taking the time to have a look!
Laura
xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment