December Daily - Days 6, 7 & 8

Still playing catch up - slow and steady wins the race, right?

December Daily - Days 3 through 5

There's really no good time to come down with a cold, right? hence my delay in keeping up with my December Daily posts but happily, I now have Days 3 through 5 to share with you!

Christmas Countdown Banner

Whenever we go to see our grandchildren, or they come to see us, I create "countdown" cards to send to our granddaughters. Sometimes it's a 10 day countdown, other times, a 7 day countdown. I mail the countdown cards to my daughter, and she hands them out to the girls, one day at a time. This year, my daughter & her family are coming home for Christmas and the countdown is well and truly on!! In the past, I've used photos of activities we've done when we have spent together (adding text to each photo), or created "postcard" type cards. I decided to kick it up a notch this time & created this banner. It counts down 7 days until they fly to Calgary (a word which is coincidentally, 7 letters long - perfect for a 7 day countdown!)

What you can't see is that each of the banner days have a pocket on the back of them where I have tucked in stickers for the girls, bringing a little "advent" aspect to match the holiday spirit. I'm also going to send along some little chocolates (which I couldn't fit into the banner pockets), bakers twine and mini clothespins in the package to be mailed to my daughter, tomorrow.

December Daily - Day 2

Ok, while I like the 8.5x11 size, it's not the easiest size to deal with, especially when you want to post photos on instagram!! Oh well ... lesson learned!

December Daily - Day 1

Ok, I'm on my way ... completed my first layout for my December Daily album. I would like to contain each day to 1 page, but depending on the day, that might not always be possible. For day 1 I included hidden journalling under the photos of the "Ladies who Lunch". I like having interactive elements on my page, and because I had so little space to journal, it was the perfect solution!

December Daily!

For years I've admired from afar, many December Daily projects created by others and this is the year I resolved to join in! With our daughter and her family coming home for Christmas, there will be no shortage of photo opportunities and no excuse not to create a December Daily album. While 6x8 seems o be the most popular size, I'm going with a 8.5x11 format, and created this for my cover page.

Sharing my latest scrapbook pages, both Christmas themed. "Oh the Wonder" features a photo of our eldest granddaughter, being initiated into our family's Christmas Eve tradition and "So Sweet" featuring a photo of my daughter Rachel at 3.5 years old and son Lyden, at 8 months old.

Sharing my most recent scrapbook layout; I created the watercolored galaxy background thanks to an awesome tutorial by Katie (she's @katiebug92 on instagram) from the Get Messy online community. I also created all the embellishments, using free clipart I found on the web. I have to say, when I was painting the background, it was not coming together the way I visualized it would; I was repeatedly tempted to throw in the towel and start over again on more than one occasion, but I persevered, added the salt to the wet page and once it was all dry, I was very pleasantly pleased with the result. I guess the lesson learned is "go with the flow, don't give up & keep at it". The photo in the layout is of my daughter Rachel and our youngest granddaughter Torah, meeting Col. Hadfield at a booking signing at Indigo in Toronto last night (for a children's book called "The Darkest Dark"). The minute I saw Rachel's FB post, I recalled seeing a watercolour tutorial on the Get Messy website and got busy creating this page & I am very happy with the overall result.

Sharing my most recent scrapbook layout; I created the watercolored galaxy background thanks to an awesome tutorial by Katie (she's @katiebug92 on instagram) from the Get Messy online community. I also created all the embellishments, using free clipart I found on the web. I have to say, when I was painting the background, it was not coming together the way I visualized it would; I was repeatedly tempted to throw in the towel and start over again on more than one occasion, but I persevered, added the salt to the wet page and once it was all dry, I was very pleasantly pleased with the result. I guess the lesson learned is "go with the flow, don't give up & keep at it". The photo in the layout is of my daughter Rachel and our youngest granddaughter Torah, meeting Col. Hadfield at a booking signing at Indigo in Toronto last night (for a children's book called "The Darkest Dark"). The minute I saw Rachel's FB post, I recalled seeing a watercolour tutorial on the Get Messy website and got busy creating this page & I am very happy with the overall result.

Sharing my most recent scrapbook layout; I created the watercolored galaxy background thanks to an awesome tutorial by Katie (she's @katiebug92 on instagram) from the Get Messy online community. I also created all the embellishments, using free clipart I found on the web. I have to say, when I was painting the background, it was not coming together the way I visualized it would; I was repeatedly tempted to throw in the towel and start over again on more than one occasion, but I persevered, added the salt to the wet page and once it was all dry, I was very pleasantly pleased with the result. I guess the lesson learned is "go with the flow, don't give up & keep at it". The photo in the layout is of my daughter Rachel and our youngest granddaughter Torah, meeting Col. Hadfield at a booking signing at Indigo in Toronto last night (for a children's book called "The Darkest Dark"). The minute I saw Rachel's FB post, I recalled seeing a watercolour tutorial on the Get Messy website and got busy creating this page & I am very happy with the overall result.

Not gonna lie, I'm not in love with this page but it's done, and so for that reason alone, I'll count it as a win. My hope is that a year from now, I'll look back on my early art journalling pages and be pleased with how I have progressed. I feel confident in my scrapbooking abilities, but art journalling .... ooh, that's a bit scary!! Just like exercise is good for my body, I believe art journalling is a good way to exercise my creativity, and I'm diving in!

With my husband and son on their annual deer hunting expedition, it just seemed appropriate to create this layout today using Wild Whisper Design's "Adventure" collection and the papers which couldn't be more perfect! This layout came together so quickly; the Adventure collection papers definitely inspired me to scrap these photos of my son and husband sitting in front of camp with my husband's long time friend and fellow outdoor enthusiast. I cut the title and the deer silhouette with my Brother ScanNCut, added a bit of washi tape, a Maple leaf (we are proud to be Canadian!), a few embellishments & sprinkling of gold Colour Shine and called it done!

I created this layout using papers designed by my fellow scrapbook enthusiast, Heather Ulmer, who just launched her new online scrapbooking business with her friend and co-owner Suzy Dube, called "Wild Whisper Designs". The papers are from the "Adventure" collection which are just perfect to use when scrapping photos of time spent outdoors, in this case, fishing. Living in Calgary means we're just an hour away from the Rocky Mountains and I have to confess, we sort of take that for granted. Summertime can be busy but setting time aside, packing a lunch and heading to the mountains with our fly fishing gear is always so worth it!

My exploration with art journalling continues. These pages are in response to the Get Messy "season of dreams" prompts.