December mini #fun

We had snow for a good 5 days before it rained away bohoo!

So I am very happy that we took the time to play a bit in it before!

This paper is one that comes with the Sn@p album and I thought it fitted in a Holiday themed album. 

This is the back with a paperstar and some cute wood veneer. 

The tree page! One of my favorites! 

I love that I am playing a little with see through and transperencies in this album! I need to do this more in my regular PL album!

I have a few more pages that needs journaling and some embellishments. I am going to work on those today. 

Have a great day!

WCS | The gift of time

Note: This post was originally posted on the WCS blog on December 17 2013.

I have been seeing a pin around Pinterest that describes something called The gift of time. As I read it it´s a thoughtprovoking statement that most of us have all the things we need and kids often more than anything need our undivided time with them. I totally agree, so I decided it was going to be one of the gifts for my daughter this year. 

And as a scrapbooker/papercrafter I wanted to do something pretty with it! 

I went on a Pinterest hunt for some numbered list cards and found some really cute ones. They are really printable escort cards but work superb for this purpose also! For the envelopes I used these printable number tags. My plan was to have one envelope for each of the twelve months in a year. In each envelope I would add a note with an activity me and my daughter would do just the two of us. 

 I added the number tags to each envelope and added some washitape. 

I will not say exactly what they all say (I don´t want her to know!) but here is a list I made with some examples:

a moviedate

a at home moviedate with popcorn

at home spa night

go for mani/pedi

go for a shopping date

a library date

bake something together

plan a suprise for someone

go minigolfing

take a walk

watch silly videos on youtube

It all depends on the age of the child and ofcourse your interests. I also think this gift would be awesome for your spouse!

I had an empty gift box and packaged it all nicely. On the inside of the lid I added a personal letter.

I am so excited to start this tradition! I hope that you are inspired to do something like this!

Lisa

Our Holiday cards

I had so much fun with this years Holiday cards! I decided to make 3 versions just to keep it fun. I used 2 different black and white photos of the three of us. As I printed them out on one half of a 4x6" photopaper, I also added one of the cute journaling cards in the digital Winter theme kit I bought at digitalprojectlife.com to the other half. So I basically just printed them out and added our message.

This is just a smaller version of the card, so I backed it with some black cardstock. Bam! Done!

Do you send out cards for the Holidays?

December minialbum | A fun transperency page

I made a fun page for my December minialbum the other day! I had this plastic transperency sheet that I cut to size a whole page. I adhered the photos and journaled around the edges with a permanent marker. 

Then I just slipped in into the page protector. 

This is the back. I don´t mind having the text showving through, but I did want to do something on the back of the photo.

I ended up putting another photo on there and a journaling card above talking about how we decorated. 

I love this addition in my December minialbum!

Ho Ho Ho

December minialbum | a few more pages

I shared the beginning of my december minialbum in this post and also a few thoughts about my process. Now I would like to show you the first pages.
This one above was one of the pages I did before december, as I always start planning and making crafts in november. Pinterest is clearly my place to go for all sorts of ideas! If you´d like to follow me, here is a link! This year I created a new board called December mini for all things minialbum. And here is one for all things Christmas.

To get into the Holiday mood we were out doing some shopping and found some ornaments to play with! And ofcourse wrapping gifts while listening to Christmas music!

And here is a page about one of my favorite traditions; gingerbraed cookie baking with friends!

As you can see I am keeping things simple and to the point. I am looking forward to doing more pages in there!

Ho Ho Ho

A new December minialbum

A week back I had a post up on WCS about my December minialbums past and present. Go read that and then come back as I wanted to talk a bit more about how I am doing it this year!

2013 is the second year I am doing most of my memorykeeping in Project Life form. In the past I have done a december daily type of minialbum during December. My very favorite is the one I did 2011 that has list prompts from the e-book List it! Christmas Edition from Ella Publishing.
This year however, I am starting a new annual minibook. Being in a new relationship that has already become a living-with-eachother thing creates a new situation. We all have a little different traditions that are sacred for us and I thought that starting a whole new book would be the right thing to do.

I am using a Sn@p minialbum from Simple Stories for this and I plan on adding in coming years too. The stories will probably be much like the ones I have documented before, with the difference of not having a new minibook to store each year. Depending on the bulkiness, I plan on having at least 3 years worth of Decembers in there.

I am using this mini to be a little more creative that in say my PL albums. I plan to play a bit with techniques I don´t normally do which is exciting!

I hope that i can capture our new and old traditions!

Holiday crafts

I do buy some gifts for others, but I always make some of my gifts, just because I love to! I also always craft something new each year for the Holidays. I am almost done with alot of projects and I have plans to start posting a few here in a week or so. Some will come a little later in December because they will be post on the WCS blog first. 

If you would like to see more of my past December ideas you can click here! 

December ideas | An update

A few posts back I shared 3 diy mini ornaments and the minitree that I put them in. Remember?

Yeah, and since them I have made a few more.

Isn´t that tree so cute?!

The Buddha is a keychain from the beginning, the elefant a toy that got some bling! And the gold ornament is an earring :)

I just wanted to pop in to show you that :)

December ideas | Personalized ornaments

I thrifted Christmas ornaments that in this case were white. I wanted to make some personal ornaments as a gift for a friend. 

Enter letter stickers! I simply added each family members intial to the oranments. These American Crafts foam thickers worked super well for this!

I also added a snowflake to the back and some silvery thread.

This box is one from Tim Holtz.

Here is just another example of a ornament I did for another family. These make such an easy and cute gift. And it takes like minutes to make them!

December ideas | gift wrapping ideas

I am back today with some simple ideas to spruce up your gift wrapping. This year I am going with kraft packaging paper and then embellishing it in different ways. In this post I also have one idea when I have used pink wrapping paper.

I just took my sponge and made dots. When they dry you can add something in the dots, buttons perhaps or a drawn heart. Or just leave them as is, I did!

I bet you have a stash of deco tape or washi after this year that mucst have been the year of washi :) Use some on the package. Maybe you can add stripes or make a tree with a few different tapes. 

Use those small bits and pieces to give some umpfh to the gift tags. 

I am not much of a stamper really, but this was so super easy even I thought it was fun! Maybe you have a more christmassy stamp you can use or (I just thought of this!) why don´t you use alphas and stamp the recievers inital all over the paper! Super cool!

December ideas | 3 diy mini ornaments

We have one tree at Christmas. One big family tree that me and my daughter decorate every year. This year it came to me that I really just wanted to use our old traditional ornaments on that tree like we have always have. But it would be fun to have a mini tree in my craft room with ornaments I have done or at least spruced up a bit. So today I am going to some thrift stores to see if I can find a small tree. But I have already begun the ornaments making :) 

If you have read my blog before and know me, you know that I love Converse shoes! This summer me and my daughter found one of those gumball machines you know, but with teeny tiny Converse shoes instead! They are so very cute and well, cheap so that the paint wear off like in seconds :) I guess that happens when you wear them with your keys all over the place!

Fear not, because glitter glue will fix that right up! I simply added the glitter and let dry. I added some more where I thought it needed some more bling and tada: glitter + shoes = love!

My daughter got this mini toy camera a few years ago and since we both love photography, I thought she wuldn´t mind me using it as an ornament! 

I added doublesided craft tape, and added some glitter and a big rhinestone. 

Again, instant happiness!

This is a ornament globe that I bought last year. I thought I would use it as a photo prop, but it just ended up on a shelf.

So, I dusted of my rub-on letters and spread some joy to the whole world! 

Can you say simple! 

:)