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Welcome, December!

It is December! And we wanted to create layouts that celebrated things we love. We hope they inspire you to create a page or two, too! As a reminder the layouts are bigger and the journaling readable in the gallery. Enjoy!!

 

THE CHANUKAH SONG
ALIZA DEUTSCH

12 x 12 | materials cardstock (Recollections) + patterned paper (BasicGrey, My Mind’s Eye) + stickers (Crate Paper) + fonts (Frente H1)

A Note from Aliza
I know a song is not really a product. But when I had to think about something that made me really happy on Chanukah, this song kept coming to me. So I just went with it.

December Fun Fact
There is a possibility that I will be by myself this coming weekend, and I am a little giddy at the thought of it. 

 

DECEMBER DAILY
TRACIE CLAIBORNE

 

6 x 8 | materials patterned paper (American Crafts, Heidi Swapp) + stickers (October Afternoon, Making Memories, Jillibean Soup, ) + die cuts (Pretty Little Studio) + wood veneer (Studio Calico) fonts (Galliard)

A Note from Tracie
This layout started my December Daily 2014. It uses my favorite holiday product of all time - vintage die cuts from Pretty Little Studio! I just ordered 15 more similar to this. These die cuts make me feel nostalgic for my childhood and days of Christmas past. My favorite illustrations are from the 1940's to 1970's and PLS uses graphics from that era for their products. They just make me so happy!! I am starting my 2015 December Daily today and it will be chock full of these little goodies.

December Fun Fact
Christmas is my favorite! As soon as Christmas is over, I start looking forward to the next Christmas.

 

 

WHAT MAKES CHRISTMAS?
LISA BORBELY

 

8.5 x 11 | materials cardstock (Bazzill) + patterned paper (Paislee Press) + post-it (Paislee Press) + numbers (Pink Paislee, Heidi Swapp) + sticker (Simple Stories) + stamp (Kellie Stamps)

A Note from Lisa
This layout is one of the first ones that will go in my annual December album. This is the third year that is going to be documented in the album. I´ll start a new one next year.

December Fun Fact
In my family I was known to secretly open the presents before Christmas.

 

 

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS{ABERS}
JENNY LARSON

 

8.5 x 11 | materials cardstock (Bazzill) + tags (Fancy Pants Designs, Pink Paislee) + gems (Stampin’ Up!) + letter stickers (Crate Paper, Fancy Pants Designs) + labels (Elle’s Studio) + die cuts (October Afternoon, Making Memories, Jillibean Soup) + stickers (October Afternoon) + font (Cambria)

A Note from Jenny
I scrapbooked our family’s favorite holiday decoration, recording one of our favorite holiday photos ever with this decoration, and used one of my favorite scrapbooking supplies—embellishments, particularly die cuts and stickers. I used no patterned paper on this page!

December Fun Fact
The tree skirt we use I made with my grandmother’s help.

 

TWINKLE LIGHTS
DEE ROSE

12 x 12 | materials cardstock (American Crafts) + patterned paper (Pinkfresh Studio Christmas Wishes Collection) and strip (Studio Calico) + Gold chipboard stars (Studio Calico) + letterstickers (Studio Calico) + white label (Pinkfresh Studio Christmas Wishes Collection) + label stickers in red & green (Studio Calico)

My thoughts about this layout
This layout came together pretty quickly. I knew I wanted to use the Christmas Wishes collection by Pinkfresh Studio wish has such a fun color palette… It’s not the traditional red and darkgreen.. It’s fresh and it’s fun! I paired it with some fun gold embellishments and letter stickers by Studio 
Calico. I love to do my journaling on vellum when I’m using patterned paper as a background to my layout. It doesn’t break the pattern yet it’s still visible.

December Fun Fact
I absolutely adore December! Lighting up candles in my home, spending evenings on the couch, watching movies and most of all Christmas time… We have a strong family tradition in which everyone prepares a course for Christmas dinner. No one knows what the others will be making, so it’s all a big surprise on Christmas day. It’s so much fun to see how much effort everyone puts into it. Love love love it! 

 

CHRISTMAS EVE PJS
MARNIE FLORES 

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper, elements (Heidi Swapp) + bow (Gennifer Bursett) + fonts (KG Primary Penmanship, Just Old Fashioned, MTF Cool Kid)

A Note from Marnie
This is one of my favorite holiday items: Christmas Eve pjs. Last year was our first year for non-traditional jammies and they were a hit. This year, though, we are segueing back to the more traditional. Shh! Don't tell!

December Fun Fact
This year, my tree is going to be all white and cream. Do you think the kids will miss the red decorations? :)

 

That's it! Small but mighty. We hope that you love the gallery and find it helpful and inspiring!!

Write: Layers of Memory

Yesterday at church I heard one of my friends griping about how much she hates January. “It’s cold and dreary and smoggy,” she was saying, “and you can’t do anything outside. You’re just stuck in your house.”

Which really is precisely the reason I sort of love January. It’s cold and dreary and smoggy, and no one expects you to get anything really productive done. What’s not to love about a month of staying home and getting other stuff done?

I tend to finish a ton of scrapbook layouts in January! And most of them are Christmas layouts, because I’m not one of those Super Scrapbookers who manages beautiful Christmases and December-Daily-style albums. All of which is to say: I hope you’ll bear with me while I share a Christmas layout:

 

It’s really just a standard Christmas layout: some red and green, some glittery embellishments (although, I confess, I love silvery glittery embellishments quite a bit). What I love about it—what I want to share—is the idea I had for the journaling.

While working on Christmas layouts, I’ve been thinking about how memory and holidays are so closely intertwined. You remember your kids when they were smaller, and you also remember yourself when you were young and experiencing that holiday. That idea infuses the stories I told on this layout. I wrote about how we used to always spend time with each of my grandmothers on Christmas, with lots of details about what happened there. Then I segued into my son’s experiences at his grandparents’ houses during Christmas. I included the addresses of all my grandparents in the story…I had to call my mom and my sister to figure them all out, but those conversations were full of details that sparked other layouts, too. (I wished, after I’d printed the journaling, that I’d also included my kids’ grandparents’ addresses, so I just wrote them in a note on the back of the layout.)

So here’s a little journaling challenge for you. When you are writing your stories, sometimes try to think backwards—remember something from  your childhood, or from when your child was younger, and connect it to the event (it doesn’t have to be a holiday) you’re writing about. Writing like this creates interesting, layered stories. It’s also an approach you can take when you’re stumped on what else you might write about.

Sketchbook Saturday

We are back this week with a new sketch from our original gallery, Why We Scrapbook. This week we are starting with a layout from Katrina Simeck, A to Z.

 

Here is the sketch. Did you notice there is room for 9 photos? Nine!

 

This week we again have two layouts using the sketch. The first doesn't stray too far from the sketch, with the exception of the missing journaling.

 

The second tips it on its side, moves the title and journaling, then centers the elements.

 

We hope you enjoy the sketch and find inspiration for using it from the layouts!

Happy Saturday!

 

Scrapbook: Changing traditions

Hello, and Merry Christmas! It's Jennifer Larson, sharing an idea for scrapbooking the holidays: letting go of traditions.

I love scrapbooking my heritage, those traditions that have been a part of my family for a while. This month, though, I was inspired to create a page about letting go of a tradition, specifically, the Elf. (I'm hoping everyone knows what I'm referring to!)

For a variety of reasons, primarily a hectic schedule and an early Advent after Thanksgiving, I couldn't do the Elf, or decorate for Christmas like I usually do. Stripping away those elements of the holiday made me focus on the tradition that WAS most important to me, so I made the following page to reflect on letting go of a tradition and a renewed focus on what is most meaningful:

I picked nontraditional colors for the layout, which seemed appropriate for a page about saying farewell to a tradition. I also kept the page free of most themed products--again, reflecting my story about stripping away the trimmings to find the most important tradition.

If you haven't scrapped your traditions, do so! Or scrap about traditions that are no longer a part of your holidays. Reminisce on the place they once had in your life and what you do now.

I wish everyone the best as the year winds down and the new year lies in wait for us all!

Click: Annual Front-Porch Photo

Welcome! I hope the day before the day before Christmas finds you happy & busy & not too stressed! This is Amy Sorensen, and I must share something:

An 80% chance of snow on Christmas day here. Especially since it's been astoundingly dry, that feels like a Christmas miracle! I'm excited for the snow and for the magic of snow on Christmas day, and it makes my anticipation even bigger. But I'm also excited for another, scrapbookery reason.

Last January, when I was sorting through my Christmas photos, I came across a picture I’d forgotten I’d taken. When we were finished opening gifts, I had to run outside to grab something out of the car, and I still had my camera around my neck, so I took this photo of my front porch:

It's not a fantastic picture, aesthetically. It's totally just a random shot, one that I almost deleted, but looking at it after Christmas made me pause for a second and notice how much is documented by that one quick click. The leaves piled up in my flowerbeds tell me I didn’t spend as much time doing yard work in the fall as I usually do. The old snow on the grass and roof let me know it was a cold December but that it hadn’t snowed for a while.  Looking at my wreath reminds me that I want to make a new one (I didn’t get to it this year, either!)

I decided, right then at my computer, that I’d inadvertently started a new Christmas tradition: every year, I plan on taking a photo of my porch on Christmas day. I’ll pay more attention to composition this year, and turn on the house Christmas lights. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them—a mini album a few years into the future? Maybe just a scrapbook page about my front porch (a topic I’ve never scrapped before!), my affection for it and the memories it holds. Maybe an observation in some form I can’t imagine yet, about how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same. I’m not sure. I do know I like the idea of this new tradition. It makes me even more excited for Christmas, because this year I'll get to photograph it with snow falling.

So tell me: do you have any annual holiday photo traditions?

Write: Journaling Ideas from Embellishments

Hello, and welcome to today’s Write post. If you’re anything like me (Amy Sorensen), you’re feeling a little bit frantically busy, preparing for Christmas. I have a billion things to do today, but I wanted to share a quick journaling tip first, before I shop, bake, make candy, pick my daughter up from the airport, and go to a family party.

When you find yourself lost for words, or unsure about the story you want to tell, try using the words from an embellishment, card, or patterned paper as a starting point.

Take this photo:

 

It’s from Christmas Eve 2004 (I’ve been trying to scrap all of my 2004 images this month), and I love it so much. Quite a bit has changed in our world since then, but when I look at the photo what I remember most is how it felt to have a whole passel of Santa-Claus believers.

It was a pretty sweet night.

But I didn’t quite know how to frame my words—how to start saying what I wanted to say. So I flipped through some supplies, and a Maggie Holmes sticker caught my eye. It so closely matched what I was trying to say but couldn’t quite, yet, that I pulled it out of my pile, thought for a few minutes, and then I wrote my journaling. The words flew out of my fingers once I had that spark!

Here is the layout I made. The sticker that inspired me is the one that says "my heart is full," and it was inspiring because a full heart is exactly what this photo made me feel.

(I wish the sparkly snowflakes and title could be properly conveyed in a photograph!)

So! If you happen to find yourself with a little bit of scrapping time in between last-minute shopping and all that wrapping, turn to your embellishments for a journaling idea. See where it takes you!

Happy holidays!

Printable Celebration

Today's printable present is the gift of celebration! With only five days until the big day, it is just around the corner!

If you would like, you may download it here. Thank you for stopping by during this busy holiday season!

December Daily Update

 

Hi there! It's Cristina here, and today I want to give you an update on how my December Daily album is progressing. Last month I talked a bit about what my plans were for this year, and it's time to check in and see how I am doing.

My plan for this year included: handmade album, with pages of different sizes; one story per day.

As fate has it, this December has turned out to be by far the busiest I have  ever had. I thought it would be hard to top last year's craziness, but it has indeed happened. In the past two out of three days I have been at the office from 8 AM to 10:30 PM. And I see no end in sight, yet Christmas is less than a week away. Ugh! So while I am not up to date with my December Daily album, given that I have very little time to work on it, I have made a little progress and I have been taking photos regularly and keeping track of what story I want to tell each day. I hope to get a good chunk of it done just before Christmas, because I know my inspiration dips significantly once Christmas Day has passed. 

I haven't bought any new Christmas supplies this year, but I have a sizeable stash to draw from and it is fun to finally use all these pretty bits that I had been hoarding.

Now it's time to show you some pictures of my album so far. I haven't worked on the cover yet - I will do it at the end since I need to see what size my album will have. But I plan to include this pretty gold star vellum paper at the front. of the album.

And here's what all my pages stacked together look so far. I have days 1-7 done at this point.

I love having pages peeking out. I think it adds a lot of interest to the album!

For December 1st, my story was about the tea advent calendar we got this year.

For this page, I included a 3x4 pocket as a page to hold some journaling.

I like to include stamping in my album because I love stamps so much!

And now.. I'd love to hear from you! Have you been documenting your December? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Write: 31 Childhood Christmas Journaling Prompts

Welcome to the week before the week of Christmas! This is Amy Sorensen, and I hope your holiday plans are going smoothly. (Me…I still have 75% of my shopping left to do. It’s been way too warm here in Utah, unnaturally warm, and the weather is totally raining on my Christmas spirit. Actually, I’d welcome even some rain right about now!)

When I was a little kid, one of our holiday traditions was to hop into the car one night close to Christmas, all six of us squished in together. Then we’d drive around for as long as we could, looking at the lights on people’s houses. Sometimes we’d bring treats to snack on, or stop for a soda to drink in the car, and a few times we’d go to a restaurant somewhere along the way. But the focus was just on being together and admiring beauty.

I’d forgotten all about that tradition until I read the journaling on Jennifer Larson’s layout in this month’s gallery , and then the memories came tumbling back: the way the vinyl seats of our old Plymouth felt against my legs, the shivering before the car got warm and the luscious heat after. All those big, beautiful houses lit up to celebrate Christmas. My sisters and I alternatively arguing and laughing, my dad telling us stories.

How’d I forget that?

So I’ve been thinking this month about my childhood Christmases. The strongest memories and the vaguest. (I have a very fuzzy memory of sitting in an old, unfamiliar house next to an old-fashioned Christmas tree, eating those walnut cookies covered with powdered sugar, but no one in my family can explain it for me.)  Writing down some details, asking my mom and sisters about others, even sifting through old photos at my mom’s. Even making a layout about myself!

 

(Forgive my crooked photo of this layout. My regular camera is being repaired and I just cannot seem to get a straight-on picture with my cell phone! I tried 18 times...)

All of this remembering has given this December a unique feeling. It’s put me back in touch with how it felt to be a kid at Christmas (wasn’t that the best time to be a kid?), as well as given me some renewed holiday energy for making my kids’ Christmas more magical this year. I think that sometimes, in the rush and excitement of December-daily style albums (of documenting right now) we forget that our memories of Christmas are also important. So here’s a little tiny December challenge: write down something about your childhood Decembers. Maybe make a layout, or post it on your blog. Don’t make it complicated—just write down a story or two!

To get you started, here are 31 Christmas journaling prompts. I’m including a PDF at the end for you to download and keep.

1. The Christmas tree. Just one, or multiples? When did you decorate the tree? Real or fake? What color of lights?
2. Ornaments. Cute? Elegant? Homemade? Fancy? What were your favorites? What stories can you tell about the ornaments? Where are they now?
3. Decorations. Aside from the tree, how was your house decorated? Thematic or eclectic? What decorations did you love?
4. Gift-opening traditions. When did you open gifts? What kinds of things did Santa bring and what did your family do? Did you open gifts one at a time or was it a free-for-all?
5. Holiday meals. What sorts of food did you have at Christmas time? How did meals change during the holidays?
6. Christmas breakfast. A tradition every year, or random dishes? Did you eat before or after opening gifts?
7. Baked goods. What sort of baking did you do in your home, specifically for the holidays? Do you still make these treats?
8. Siblings. Did you exchange gifts with your brothers and sisters? What experiences did you have with them?
9. Extended family. Did your grandparents show up on Christmas morning or did you go to their house? What about aunts, uncles, cousins—how did you interact with them during the holidays?
10. Santa Claus. How did the man in red function at your house? Did all the gifts come from him, or just a few? Did he wrap or not wrap?
11. The stockings. What did they look like? Where did you hang them? When did you open them? What gifts were you likely to find every single year in your stocking?
12. Your worst Christmas ever. Which Christmas had some memorably bad or difficult parts? How did that change you or your relationship to the holidays?
13. Christmas Eve. Did you leave cookies for Santa? On what kind of plate? If not, did you leave something else? What other Christmas-Eve traditions did your family have?
14. Parties. What kind of holiday fetes did you attend? Do you have any stories of things that happened there?
15. Going to visit Santa. Where did you see him? Did you see the same Santa every time? What do you remember asking him for?
16. A unique experience. Do you have something unique that happened to you during the holidays? Something that was unlike anything else and only happened once?
17. Favorite gift. What was the best gift you ever got?
18. Memorable gift. Maybe you absolutely hated it, but you never forgot it: the most memorable gift you ever received?
19. Life-changing gift. Big changes can sometimes be caused by small gifts. What gift altered your life, and how?
20. Wrapping traditions. How were your presents wrapped, and who wrapped them? Was there anything unique about how your family wrapped gifts?
21. Your adolescent Christmases. How did things change after you were a teenager?
22. Finding out about Santa. When and how did you find out about Santa Claus? How did this change you?
23. Christmas music. Did you listen to Christmas music as a kid? How and where? What were some of your favorite Christmas songs?
24. Church + Christmas. How did your family combine Christmas with religious observations?
25. Christmas break traditions. What kinds of things did you do during the weeks between Christmas and school starting again?
26. Gifts that repeated. Which gifts were always under the Christmas tree? Did you like this repetition or did it start to be obvious after a while?
27. Christmas entertainment. What movies, books, or TV specials were a part of your holidays? Did you go to A Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker or Handel’s Messiah?
28. The holidays at school. What kinds of holiday crafts, programs, or plays were you involved in at school?
29. December weather. Was it usually snowy during December? Did it ever snow on Christmas day? Was there a time when the weather influenced your plans or traditions?
30. An old photo. Find a picture from one of your childhood Christmases and study it. What details does it include? What memories does it spark? Write down a list of memories, or pick one to focus an entire paragraph on.
31. Snippet of memory. What has writing about your childhood Christmases helped you remember about Christmas outside of these questions?

Here is the PDF:  Download 31 Childhood Christmas Journaling Prompts

Printable Peace

Today's printable present is the gift of peace! What a lovely thing for this holiday season. Mmm. Peace.

If you would like, you may download it here. Thank you for stopping by during this busy holiday season!