Write. Click. Scrapbook.

2011 Calendar Mini-Album

A Note from Elizabeth

I love calendars—almost every year I get one (or maybe more than one) to admire or to use (or both). In the last few years I've decided that Etsy is the place to find some of the coolest calendars ever; this year I've decided to base an entire mini-album around one I bought! Disclaimer: I am sharing this project before I've actually done much of anything with it because I want you to go find your own coolest calendar ever and make this album in 2011, too!

I was engaging in one of my favorite hobbies (aimlessly browsing on Etsy) for owl-related items in preparation for my Gracie's 6th birthday recently when I came across Gingiber's Etsy shop and the perfect owl calendar. I immediately knew that this calendar had to be mine Gracie's (er, someday). Here is the image that stopped me in my tracks:

Is that not the coolest owl calendar ever? Click on that image to go buy your own. Or something else from her shop. I'll wait.

So anyway, as soon as I got it I decided that I would make a 12 page mini-album where each page includes the 4 x 6 owl-of-the-month, a 4 x 6 picture of Gracie, and a 4 x 6 area to include a little note to her or highlights about her month. If you do math quickly in your head, you will quickly realize that I am going to have to make my own album to hold this because there are no such things as 12 x 6 landscape albums on the market these days (sigh). I may decide to include more and make it a 24 x 6 spread; since I'll be making my own album, I guess I can make it however I'd like : )

So far the only thing I've done is collect my cardstock and match it up to each month. And print cute little "photo here" and "highlights here" placeholders for your benefit:

I reserve the right to change how I plunk everything down in this mini-album, but I'll be sure to share the results at the end of 2011. I love how simple a project it will be to maintain, how I can keep everything in one place and add embellishments if I feel like it, and how it will document an entire year of my daughter's life—not a complete snapshot by any stretch, but certainly more than nothing at all. Wouldn't it be fun to know what you were like each month of the year you were six?

2011 Calendar Idea

  A Note from Celeste

For the past couple of years, I've made CD calendars to give as gifts.* I used Microsoft Publisher to set up the calendars and I've shared them online as a free printable. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to Publisher so making my own would be difficult. I set out to find another free option to share. On Splitcoast Stampers, I found this free printable CD calendar from Cat. Thanks Cat! All you have to do is download the PDF and print the bases—then you can decorate the calendars to your heart's content.

For my calendar, I decided to create it digitally so I opened Cat's PDF in Photoshop and used the calendar bases to create my pages. I used a kit called 365 Days with You by Shawna Clingerman and Lauren Grier at Sweet Shoppe Designs. The kit has themed mini-kits for each month—an easy way to create a calendar! By creating my calendar digitally, I can print out a slew of them to give to relatives and friends.

When your calendar is finished, you'll need to find an old CD case you no longer need or buy some new empty ones. Follow these directions to create the CD case holder for your calendar. If you make a calendar, be sure to share it in the Flickr gallery. Happy Holidays!

*Pssst—a 2011 calendar makes a delightfully on-time gift for New Years' if you ran out of time before Hanukkah or Christmas : )

Christmas Eve Memories

A Note From Amy

I’m going to start my December post with a confession: while I love and adore and totally have a thing for notebooks (seriously: I am helpless in the face of a unique notebook and must buy it without question), I cannot stand altered comp notebooks. Not because of the altering itself, but because I hate the composition-book binding. Your hand bumps against the middle, and the side you’re not writing on can’t be tucked underneath. They’re just so hard to write in. 

At heart, I’m a spiral notebook sort of girl. Can’t help it! 

But! I do love a lovely altered notebook. And when, last Christmas, I filled up my Christmas Eve Notebook, I needed something new. And lovely. And spiral bound! Plus, I had this great pile of Bo Bunny’s Noel line, which is just my style—elegant and swirly and only sort-of grungy. That and a spare scrap of chipboard was all I needed!

 
Of course, I need to tell you why I need a Christmas Eve Notebook. Each Christmas Eve, after I have fulfilled my Santa duties, I take a photo or two of the tree. I make sure to get the pile of presents underneath (Santa wraps all the presents when he comes to our house).
They’re very rarely perfect, these photos; a little soft on the focus, maybe a little too dark in the exposure. That’s mostly because it’s usually about two in the morning when I take them, and my Santa duties have left me exhausted. 

But, no matter how tired I am, I always take a few minutes to write. As women, we focus so much energy on others during the holidays—children, spouses, friends, family members. It’s easy to forget that your response to the events is important, too. My Christmas Eve Notebook is where I record my emotions, thoughts, and ideas, the ones that are separate from my children’s responses. I like having a record of how I feel before Christmas happens, when the anticipation is the thing that keeps me going. I write about what I’m looking forward to in the morning, and how things have changed from the year before, and whatever else comes to mind. Then, when I develop my holiday photos, I just stick down the photo of the tree.
This is one of my favorite scrapbooking projects, and it’s easy to maintain once the notebook is made. Read on for my notes on how to make it.

This sheet of the Bo Bunny patterned paper was my inspiration:

 
Because I also love and adore and totally have a thing for books, this patterned paper might just be my favorite one in the history of patterned paper. I wanted to recreate the leathery feel of that pile of books for my notebook. But, I also knew I wanted this notebook to be a sturdy one. It’ll be written in for the next decade and be around (I hope) for much longer than that. So I wanted the paper on the cover to be adhered firmly. Instead of using traditional scrapbooking adhesive, I used Heat n' bond, an iron-on adhesive that quilters use. That way, the paper is secured firmly, even with the wrinkles. 

Make the cover with these steps:

1. Find a piece of spare chipboard. The kind that cardstock comes packaged with is perfect. I got mine from a shipment of 8x10s I had printed at WHCC—it was part of the packaging they used to protect my prints.
2. Cut to your desired dimensions. My pieces are 6.75"x8.5". If you’re going to be sewing on your cover, like I did, keep in mind the throat on your sewing machine (the distance between the foot and the inside edge). If you cut your pieces much bigger than your throat’s width, you’ll have a hard time sewing some on some of the pieces. Cutting the chipboard can take a few swipes with your knife (don’t use scissors!) to get through all the layers. Don’t worry if the edges are a little bit rough.
3. Use a nail file or a piece of sandpaper to smooth out the rough edges. These two pieces will be the cover to your journal.
4. Paint the covers. The side that will be inside the book needs to be painted completely; the front side just needs the edges painted.
5. Cut two pieces of patterned paper, each at least 1/2" wider and taller than your cover.
6. Spritz the paper with water, the crumple them up into balls.
7. Iron the paper while it’s still scrunched into a ball, then slowly start unscrunching, ironing the wrinkles into the paper as you go. Once it is unscrunched, iron the paper again. If you have any small tears, crumple the torn edge around the hole and iron it down flat. You want it to look a little bit aged.
8. Cut two pieces of the Heat ‘n Bond adhesive, the same size as the patterned paper. Iron the bumpy side onto the BACK side of the patterned paper. Let it cool, peel off the lining, then iron the paper onto the front side of the chipboard cover.
9. Punch the holes for the rings. Use a Crop-a-Dial or other tool designed for punching through thick items.

10.  Embellish the cover as desired.

 To further reinforce both the durability and the leather-book feel, I also sewed the paper and the title onto the chipboard cover. Here are a couple of tips for sewing on chipboard:

1. Use a heavy-duty needle. I keep a denim needle just for this purpose.
2. If you have a walking foot, use it. It moves much more smoothly over the chipboard’s thickness than a standard foot does.
3. Adjust your tension. Start with a practice piece to get it exactly right. On my machine, I set the tension dial to just over zero.
4. Increase the stitch length. Unlike with fabric, the chipboard will retain the holes left by the needle, and if the stitches are too small, the stitching will be more hole than stitches.
5. Sew slowly. If you go too fast, the needle is more likely to break.
6. Embrace imperfection. Part of the charm of sewing is its random imperfections. Don’t worry too much about an exactly-straight line!

 Make the yearly dividers. I used one sheet of patterned paper for each divider; the large images on the papers made them perfect!

1. Using the same dimensions as the cover, cut 10 dividers. You can “fancy cut” some of the papers, so the images fall exactly where you want them.
2. Use a punch to make the index tabs. I used this one: 
   to make the index tabs. Punch twenty tabs out, using about 2/3 of the shape: 
3. Stamp the years on ten of the tabs.
4. Embellish as desired.
5. Adhere one tab with the date to the front right edge of one divider.
6. Adhere one blank tab to the back of the dated tab.
7. Repeat for the remaining nine dividers.

Print the journaling pages. Because I want the focus to be on my words, I didn’t embellish these at all. instead, I simply printed the lines on both sides of a cream-colored writing paper. Here’s a printable version for a book with the same dimensions as mine (6.75 x 8.5):

Download Christmas eve notebook journal pages

It’s easiest to print all of the right (first) pages first, then turn them over and feed them through your printer again to print the left (second) pages. Make sure you know how your printer feeds pages so you get the second side printed on the right place! When you trim the pages down, cut just to the inside of the grey line, and your pages should all be the same size. 

Make the photo page. In my book, this is a 5.5x7.5 sized mini-layout. I put just one embellishment on each photo page and left enough room for one 4x6 print. This is where each year’s Christmas tree photo will go.

 

Assemble the book. It goes in this order:

• Yearly divider
• Photo page
• Three journaling pages 

Write! Every year! I would love to hear about your way of documenting your responses to the holidays.

A special thank you to BoBunny Press for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!

In the Holiday Kitchen

from Rebecca

from Monika

from Elizabeth

Simple Albums, Year After Year

A Note from Erin

Every Christmas morning, I set up the tripod and take our annual family picture in front of our Christmas tree, a tradition started when Michael and I were first married. We’re always in our pajamas and always take the photo after we’ve opened presents. I love seeing how our family has grown, what the girls are wearing or which toy they’re holding. This year, I decided to use them in a mini album. It’ll be an easy way to see how we’ve changed year-to-year and also be a great album to display each Christmas season.

When creating the mini-album, I wanted to keep it simple. I’m using an American Crafts 6x6 Modern Album in Chestnut. (Sadly, the last one in my album stash.) I’ve used the new Jillibean Soup Chestnut Soup collection plus some border punches and number stickers. I’m going to pre-make the pages for the next, oh, 18 years or so, just leaving a space for each year’s 4x6 photo. This way, all I have to do each year is stick down the picture and I’m done.

6 x 6 mini-album | materials cardstock, patterned paper (Jillibean Soup) + journaling spots (Jillibean Soup) + letter stickers (American Crafts) + punch (Fiskars) + fringe scissors (Martha Stewart) + ribbon (Jillibean Soup) + pop dots

One thing I try to make myself do is embrace the imperfections. While this has not yet extended to my handwriting, when I make mistakes I try to make the best of them. I also don’t dwell on perfection, so things are often a bit crooked or not quite lined up. I say it gives my page personality.

If you look at the title page, you might notice that the album title is printed on strips of cardstock that is adhered to the journaling spot. Recall that line above about not embracing my imperfect handwriting? I didn’t like the title I wrote, and since I only had one of this specific journaling spot, I had to figure out a way to salvage it. That way was printing my title on strips of cardstock and using them to cover up my handwriting. Is it perfect? Nope. But it works, and I still get to use the “tradition” definition journaling spot on my title page.

Here's another album idea that you can set up once and just add to year after year:

Each year, my mom gets me, my sister and her grandchildren Hallmark Keepsakes ornaments. The girls and I (and soon Ryan) pick out an ornament for Michael. I wanted a way to both keep track of the ornaments, whose is whose and all, plus have somewhere to showcase them. I wanted to keep each year’s ornaments together. It’s a neat way to see how our interests have changed, as each ornament represents something we care about or are interested in.

Merry Christmas!

A Note from Jody D-P

Now that our Santa Photo days are behind us, I had 13 years of the boys on Santa’s lap. Time to put them all in an album. Luckily I had jotted down a few notes each year about our visit, so this really helped when it came time to journal plus these are the little details that are so easy to forget.

Merry Christmas from Australia!

[Ed. note: The Write.Click.Scrapbook. team would like to congratulate Jody's son Oscar, who recently passed his Australian exams and will be admitted to university to study graphic design!]

A special thanks to Jillibean Soup and SEI for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!
 
 
 

Simple Pages + Cards

A Note from Jody W.

If you’re anything like me, scrapping takes a back seat in the month of December. I was fortunate enough to be given the lovely Dear Lizzy Christmas line to play with, though, and coordinated products really do make it easier to get inspired at a busy time. The papers, rub-ons and ribbons were the perfect accompaniment to the photos I had chosen.

8.5 x 11 | materials patterned papers, letter stickers, buttons (American Crafts-Dear Lizzy Christmas) + circle punch (EK Success) + twine (Martha Stewart) + pop dots (Therm O Web) + font (Georgia) + jewels (unknown)

It’s an annual tradition to pose with the Santa hat in front of the tree. When we are done posing, the hat goes to its rightful spot on the beautiful carousel horse my father-in-law carved for us in our foyer.

8.5 x 11 | materials cardstock, patterned paper, rub-on, ribbon, and glitter letter stickers (American Crafts-Dear Lizzy Christmas)

I added jewels to the rub-on to mimic the jewels in the floral ribbon. I used a photo of my girls from last Christmas, I love how our Christmas tree sparkles in the background. Add a coordinating paper for the bottom, add the date and  *voila* a simple holiday page.

8.5 x 11 | materials cardstock, patterned paper, letter stickers, rob-ons (American Crafts-Dear Lizzy Christmas) + corner punch (EK Success) + pop dots (Therm O Web) + font (Arial)

And now another simple holiday page…I don’t know about your kids, but mine enjoy goofing around while having their pictures taken; this time my husband got in the act.

A Note from Vivian

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper, rub-on, dimensional stickers, and tag (American Crafts) + baker's twine (The Twinery) + border punch (Fiskars)

My solution for what to do with all of the holiday card photo outtakes? Collage them together for a quick and easy layout! I love using the free downloadable PhotoSheet program, as it allows me to collage photos together very quickly. For this layout, I created two 6-photo collages on 4” X 6” photo paper (collaged and printed in under five minutes!) and lined them up across my layout. I added patterned paper and embellishments to create a quick and easy layout capturing the silliness that developed during our holiday card photo shoot.

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Cosmo Cricket) + thread (Coats and Clark)

Letters to Santa capture so much: your kids’ spelling and handwriting at the time, their interests, and, if they add a picture, their artwork. Even though letters to Santa are not photos, they are definitely worth recording on a scrapbook page! This simple design highlights the letter my son wrote to Santa in 2007. (Interestingly enough, three years later he is still completely obsessed with Star Wars and Legos, and even more so with Star Wars Legos.) I scanned the reindeer Eli had drawn on the front of the letter as well as the text he’d written inside. I cut and pasted the scanned images into a Word document so that I could cut the letter out as an 8” square. I printed the document on white cardstock and trimmed it down to 8” X 8”. I adhered the letter to the center of a 12” X 12” sheet of dark green cardstock. A row of punched stars stitched with red thread embellish the top left of the layout and a tag embellished with another punched star, a brad, and a Santa handcut from patterned paper embellish the bottom right and provide a place for journaling.

cards | materials patterned papers, three-dimensional stickers, rub-ons, and buttons (American Crafts) + (baker’s twine) The Twinery

What to do when you’re in a pinch and need a quick holiday card? Use one of these five easy (under five
minutes!) design ideas!

1. Arrange 10 buttons in a triangle shape and measure the length of each side of the triangle. Cut a cardstock triangle to size and adhere buttons to the triangle. Attach the triangle to a card base with foam adhesive. Add a star embellishment above the triangle and a rub on greeting below.
2. Tear the edge of a piece of patterned paper and adhere it over a card base in a contrasting color. Add a horizontal strip of cardstock embellished with a rub-on greeting and a three-dimensional sticker.
3. Adhere a 2” piece of patterned paper to the bottom of a card base and adhere a strip of ribbon just above. Add a three-dimensional sticker in the white space above.
4. Cover a card base with patterned paper in a small-scale print. Add a rub-on greeting to a small tag, tie it with baker’s twine or ribbon and adhere to the card base at a diagonal. Add a three- dimensional sticker overlapping the top of the tag.
5. Cover a card base with text-print patterned paper. Adhere a patterned paper image (or a piece of cardstock with a rub-on greeting) across the card. Finish the card with a three-dimensional sticker placed to connect the text paper with the image.

A Note from Katrina

Having a stash of simple holiday note cards is so helpful at this time of year! I love using coordinated collections to easily pull together cute cards.

4 x 6 cards | materials card bases (American Crafts) + patterned paper, rub-ons (Kaisercraft)

A Note from Jody D-P

For a quick and simple handmade gift, gather smaller pieces of paper to create a collection of cards!

Package them in a clear bag with a matching topper for a special finishing touch!

A special thank you to American Crafts, Cosmo Cricket, Kaisercraft and SEI for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!

Weekend Projects You Can Create With Kids

A Note from Autumn

I love finding fun things I can do with my kids during the month of December, but it can be hard to come up with new things to do each year. We have some traditions, like gingerbread (graham cracker) houses, that we do every year, but this year I found a few new projects to get us into the holiday spirit.

Kid Project #1: Snowman Notecards

Since my boys are starting to get a little older, I wanted them to focus a little more on the gifts they are giving others this year (instead of just what they want to get). We made simple snowman note cards as a gift for their grandma using scrapbook supplies I had on hand and a couple packets of white buttons from the craft store. Originally I was going to add a stamped sentiment on the front of each card so Grandma can use these as thank you notes after Christmas, but I decided they looked cuter blank, and this way she can use them for any occasion she’d like.

To make these cards you’ll need: white cardstock for the card base, blue cardstock for the front, three white buttons for each card (try to find buttons that are larger than standard shirt-size), scraps of black and orange paper, and adhesive. If you use small buttons, you’ll also want some extra white cardstock to make a “hill” for your snowman to stand on.

I cut out the hats and noses, then let the kids go to town gluing everything on. We used Elmer’s to attach the buttons because that’s what I had handy, but I realized after the fact that glue dots would work better and cause less warping. But whatever you have is fine. Remember, this is a kids’ project, and it’s ok if the finished product looks like it was made by kids. Grandmas love this kind of stuff, and the kids will be way more proud of themselves if you just let them do their thing and don’t worry too much about making it perfect. My boys can’t wait to wrap these up and give them to Grandma.

Kid Project #2: Letters to Santa (and a quick layout)

Since my boys are starting to get older, I’m not sure how many more years Santa will be important to them as part of Christmas. I decided I needed a layout this year that preserved Santa letters—it’s going to be fun to look back and see what they wanted for Christmas, what their handwriting looked like at this young age, and how much they still love Santa right now.

So this project was as much for me as it was for the kids, but they still had a fun time writing their letters. I cut out 4x4 inch squares of cardstock in colors that coordinated with some Christmas patterned paper, let them each pick what color they wanted, and asked them to write a letter. Younger kids will probably need a larger piece of paper to work with, but I wanted to put all four letters on one scrapbook layout, so I stuck with a small size.

Once they were done with their lists (which took quite a while—there was lots of comparing and deliberating going on), I spent just a few minutes making this quick layout.



Kid Project #3: Photo Ornaments

For this project, you’ll need 3 ¼ in round unfinished wooden circles (I found them at Joanns), a circle cutter, photos, patterned paper, ribbon, adhesive, and a way to punch holes through the wood circles (a Cropodile works great, but a drill would work also).


We made these photo ornaments as a gift for Great-Grandma, so we gathered pictures of each great grandchild. The kids helped me cut the pictures and patterned paper into circles that would fit on the wood circles, then they glued them down (we used a very generous layer of glue stick because it’s easy for them to work with—but you can use whatever you’d like). On some ornaments we used a picture on the front and another picture on the back, and on others we used a picture on the front and Christmas paper on the back. I thought about inking around the edges of each ornament, but decided that leaving them unfinished would look better with Great-Grandma’s tree.

Once all the photos were adhered, all we had to do was punch a hole at the top of each ornament and thread a loop of ribbon through to make a hanger. Very simple and very cute.

Note: if you want to protect these ornaments from fingerprints, you could finish each ornament with a layer of ModPodge over top of the photos/paper. If you choose to use ModPodge, be sure the photos and/or paper are securely adhered to the wood with ModPodge or lots of gluestick—because once ModPodge covers the paper or photo, any parts that are not securely adhered down will puff up,
causing bubbles in the final project.

A Note from Monika

When my now 19-year old son was just a youngster, we lived in a townhome without a fireplace, and all kids know that Santa comes down through the chimney. Yep, he was worried. Mommy reassured him that Santa would find a way to get in and somehow Santa always left some gifts and ate his cookies!

When I saw the Santa page title dimensional stickers that SEI had in their Kris Kringle collection, this project came to mind. If you have little ones that are worried about Santa getting in the house, crafting this fun project together might ease their worries.

I had this door hanger in my stash from a project earlier this summer, so after inking the edges of the wood hanger and adhering my Snowball Fight textured cardstock from the Assortment Pack, I sanded the edges and then inked the paper edges. Add some SEI die cut accents and stickers and you are finished with your project!

Another idea would be to thread some ribbon through a key and attach it to the door hanger, so Santa has no problems at all finding a way to leave his Christmas goodies. Of course, make sure it’s not your actual door key...safety first!

Wishing each of you happy holidays and happy crafting, too, of course!

A Note from Beth

Buttons make anything cuter! Here I adhered them to Hershey kisses for an extra sweet holiday treat! This makes a super-easy, satisfying project for children to create—maybe as a substitute for traditional cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve!

A special thank you to My Mind's Eye, SEI, and Little Yellow Bicycle for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!

 

Tags!

A Note from Kelly

gift tin | materials patterned paper, stamps, ink, punches, felt snowflake (Stampin' Up!) + twine + bells + ric rac

A friend of mine ordered these metal tins for me (you get a great discount if you order in bulk; find similar www.papermart.com ). They measure about 5 1/2 inches by 3 1/4 inches, and are just the perfect size for mini cards or gift tags. I decided to use stamps and make a gift tag kit to give as neighbor gifts.
I added a divider to the bottom of the tin to make it a bit easier to separate big tags from smaller ones. The divider measures 6 3/4 inches by 3 3/8 inches, with a "mountain fold" (an origami term: score three lines about1/2 inch apart and fold the center one up to make a mountain) just off center to make two
compartments in the tin.

Who needs to buy tags at the store?

A Note from Katrina

 4x6 cards | materials cardstock (Bazzill) + patterned paper, stickers, tape (dear Lizzy for American Crafts) + heart punch (Fiskars)

I had the privilege of meeting Katrina Kenison this summer, and absolutely ADORE her book—The Gift of an Ordinary Day. I decided that it would be the perfect gift for a few moms in my life. I dressed up the books with these simple book cards—no wrapping needed!

A special thank you to American Crafts for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!

Christmas Scrapbooking On-the-Go

 

A Note from Donna

Last year my family traveled to New Jersey to spend Christmas with my in-laws. We were all very excited about our trip—my husband because he hadn’t been home in a few years, Gabe because there was the possibility of snow and I was looking forward to all the lovely Italian-American food we’d be eating so characteristic of where my husband grew up (like cannolis, real cannolis. I planned on having way too many cannolis). While we were there we did our best to get the most from each day. We had an amazing time and my husband and I agreed that it was one of the happiest Christmases either of us had
ever had. When I got home from our trip I was inspired to put together an album of our trip. And then, can I let you in on a secret? I never did. I did make a few layouts from our time there, but the album I imagined in my head never came to be.

This year we’ll be traveling to New Jersey again, and this time around I’m coming prepared. I’ve made a very simple 4x6 album in advance so that I can record the details of our trip as they happen:

The album is broken into three tabbed sections: family, food and fun. I’ve left the pages blank and included spaces to record journaling. On some pages where the paper is more decorative I’ve placed a journaling spot, a tag or die-cut:



On the pages where the paper is plainer I stamped journaling lines:

Finally, I also included a couple of envelopes in my album to store ephemera from our trip such as receipts, tickets or business cards from the various places we plan on visiting:


Once I get home all I need to do is print my favorite photos from our trip and place them in the album. I won’t need to worry about forgetting the details of our trip or about making a big elaborate album—if I don’t want to. And if I do want to tell more detailed stories through layouts or make a larger album later on I’ll already have journaling and memorabilia for my stories.

With that taken care of I’m ready for our trip—bring on the cannolis!

Merry Christmas!!

A Note from Jody D-P

Want to keep Christmas memory-keeping simple? Make a basic album ahead of time—this is just a $1.00 album that has been dressed up with patterned paper and space for minimal journaling. They make great gifts for friends who might be traveling for the holidays, too!

Slip one of these in your suitcase or carry-on and you'll be set to jot down memories as they happen!

A special thank you to My Mind's Eye and SEI for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!

Thoughtful Gifts for Teachers, Neighbors, and Colleagues

Today we're featuring clever, elegant, and do-able ideas for the gifts you can make in batches and share with teachers, neighbors, colleagues, or anyone else you'd love to share some holiday cheer with!

A Note from Katrina

jar covers | materials journaling spots, stickers, cardboard elements, ribbon (Jillibean Soup) + mason jars, vanilla beans, bourbon

I love to bake, and love high quality vanilla extract. I found an easy recipe for diy extract online, and decided to make a few extra jars for gifts. So easy to embellish the jars with these goodies from Jillibean Soup!

A Note from Kim

Last year for neighbor gifts, I baked a whole bunch of shortbread and gingerbread.

To decorate them, I used a couple of scrap supplies, namely my square punch and a piece of chipboard, to create templates. I placed them on the cookies as I topped the cookies with either decorative sparkling sugar (before baking) or powdered sugar (after baking).

I was very pleased with how well they came out. They looked so festive.

A Note from Beth

materials ribbon, chipboard (My Mind's Eye)

It’s always good to have small gifts/favors on hand this time of year. Here, I wrapped ribbon around a recycled water bottle and filled it with holiday m&m’s. Quick, easy and delicious!

A Note from Celeste

materials patterned paper, embellishments (Cosmo Cricket) + coin holders

I had a few hundred of these #3 coin holders leftover from another project and I wanted to put them to use. I was pleased when I figured out that a gift card would fit inside the envelope. I decorated the fronts of the envelopes using supplies from Cosmo Cricket's Mitten Weather line and now I can just slip them into a holiday card for a customized handmade touch.

A special thank you to Jillibean Soup, My Mind's Eye, and Cosmo Cricket for their generous sponsorship of our second annual WCS For the Holidays celebration!