It's a Tweet Christmas

After covering my December Daily album with fabric, I felt it needed a name.   I bought a bird print fabric along with the red gingham with plans of using a bird die and other birds throughout the album, so just couldn't go past having a play on words and entitling my album "Tweet Christmas Memories."

Here is my fabric-cover for this year.

The inside of the cover is lined with a piece of red card to hide the folded over gingham fabric but still it looked a little bare, though not for long.  In my stash of December Daily supplies were some Kaisercraft Christmas-themed Project Life style cards and they were just the thing. With a little paint, a few embellishments, stickers and some trimming, I created some festive patches.

Here they are before going onto the inside of the album cover.

And now on the inside of the album cover.

I had fun creating my little Christmas patches and I will be making more. 

As I add to my album this year, I'll update this post so that you can see my progress.

Title page

Before I show you my Day 1 page,  I thought I'd share how

 to create these number tags for each page below.

Step 1
 I pulled out one of my favorite dies to use as the base of my number tags. I then stamped the numbers with paint, doodled around them once they were dry and added in a doodled border before inking the edges.

Step 2

 Next I added in a holly vine stamp and then dusted off my water colour pencils to add in some detail to the stamping and a water coloured edge.

Step 3

 It was time to pull out some of my little words and letters as well as some twine to add a little more detail to some of the number tags. The others I will add to when I put them into my December daily.

 Day 1 with it's number 1 tag.

 Day one is always about putting up our Xmas trees.  

The crochet white doily at the bottom of the tree acts as the perfect Christmas tree skirt.

The background is Ranger Dauber paint and a Purple Onion holly spray stamp.

The 'hoot hoot hoot' title is a play on words as my tree has an owl theme.

Although I am using a 6x6 album this year, I loved the freedom in my last year's December Daily where I could create in different sizes for each day and wanted to still be able to do this. I will explain  how I managed it after showing you my latest pages below.

Day 2
 To create the background on my three cards I've used a scrap saved from punching out some leaves as a mask, so sprayed it with some Distress stain tipped into a small spray bottle. I have found that I do this quite a bit with my stains and have got a little collection of spray bottles on hand just for this. Once it had been sprayed, it was a bit too stark in places so while wet I patted it down with a tissue to take away some of the colour. When dry, I doodled around the leaves and along the mask edges.

When adding in my embellishments I needed to trim down the red arrow, the 'STOP'  word and my number tag. I included the cut off pieces as well on the third card. In keeping with my 'tweet' theme, cut out a bird from fabric, frayed the edges a little and added him in too.

Day 3

 The background on these cards is Tim Holtz distress paints dabbed on to recreate the spots on my paper pizza along with some small punched out circles, doodling and a water coloured border.

To keep the flow from the three cards to the single in the album I made sure that one of the arrow pizza pieces was pointing to the right.

Day 4

 I did have a photo of my car to use but as it wasn't that great so decided not to use it. I recreated the holly detail on the number tag to fill in the space and make the perfect perch for my water coloured die cut bird.

I had a few assorted sized divided 12 by 12 page inserts here and with some careful trimming made a bundle of mixed sized page inserts. In most of them there, is only one hole in the edge not long enough to have the second added in, therefore couldn't be put in the album without hanging down.

Here's the solution:

I didn't take photos of the insert bundle used on day 2-4 pages while I created it, so I've staged these photos to give an idea.  As I may not need this exact combination of inserts in my album nothing has been permanently stuck together.

Step 1

 These two insert are a row of three 2x3 (on top) and a row of three 4x4 (behind). I have folded the 4x4 inserts so that  you can pull them out to reveal hidden pages. I've lined up the two holes in each that were already there and secured them together with some stylus tape.

Step 2

Stick down a coordinating strip, avoiding the area directly around the hole, to the front that will cover the tape between the two inserts. Flip it over and using the hole already there as a guide make a hole in the strip.

Step3

Stick down the insert bundle to a quote card and add in the second hole so you can

 pop your bundle into your album.

And here is how day 2-4 insert bundle looks in my album.

With the inserts stuck together and to the quote card, the pages can't be turned as

 you would normally but can still be viewed easily.

Day 5

I tried to create a piece raisin toast as the background using two Tim Holtz distress paints a light and a medium brown in colour. The medium brown went down first in a rough square and once dry, the lighter one was added in patches to represent some butter.  

Then with a brown distress stain, dabbed it over parts of the area to make raisins.

 Some coffee themed stamps from Purple Onion and some printed words to finish it off.

Day 6 

Was a busy day so have two parts to the days events.

Santa visit.

Part 1- left side.

I wanted to get a 3d look to my page so created this one in layers. 

Some stamping and adhered the photo on a black cardstock base, 

this was then placed inside a plastic bag

(recyled embellishment plastic bag packaging which fit perfectly -see above )

 The second layer is on the outside of the plastic bag, with a bit more stamping, 

3d diecuts, some twine and stickers.

In the photo above to the right-  you can see the plastic bag page has been added to a strip of black cardstock punched with two holes to fit the binder rings.

Day 6

Part 1- right side

Three conjoined insert pages.... embellished on the outside.

From the photo below to the left....  is another a strip of black cardstock punched with two holes to fit the binder rings, is adhered to the plastic inserts.

Day 6

Part 2 - Christmas card photo shoot (the reverse side to the above)

 A series of photo cards with sticker layering on the outside of the inserts again.

An in-between page...

A 'Midsummer Night's Dream' was Asher's end of year drama club production and wanted to include it in my Dec Daily. I have tried to recreate the stage background of sorts on the intro page. We had flower vines hanging down the back of the stage so that it looked like a forest.

I played around with Deb's background idea on one of her previous pages and included the words of my favorite line of Asher's in the show. 

And a small photo of her up on stage.

I have these two pages in my album back to back and have created a pocket for a copy of the program and my tickets.

Day 7 

Day 8

Day 9

Is in two parts. My day and Asher's day. 

Here is my day out of the album and in the album as I did some embellishing on the insert.

Out of the album

In the album

Asher's day

Out

In

Here is how I altered my insert.

After trimming down an insert sheet to get a small one I was left with two joined inserts. One pocket with no sealed edge and no place for the holes to add into my album.

I cut two strips of paper: the first 2 inches wide and the other 1 inch wide to the length I needed and scored them in half.

I used the 1 inch strip to seal up the cut edge and the other one as my spine piece.

Day 10

A rough day where I was on the verge of tears. I didn't get to take a photo used a photo from face book that several of my fellow Autism group friends had posted in memory of a little boy taken too early. This page is probably the one and only one that I will stray away from my colour theme.

Day 11

 Lots of paint to create a background for my banner.

Day 12

 I'm loving the ease of my Tim Holtz distress paints, just a few swipes and I have a background
ready for a few embellishments to be attached. Also added in a doodled and water
coloured boarder to match the date tag.

Day 13
 Here is my usual paint swipe. This time I added in my title before swiping then lifted the alpha off.
Once dry, I gave it a squirt with some Tim Holtz distress stain before
doodling around the title and the border.

Day 14

Left side

 To carry on the beach theme from the photo, I used a Purple Onion postage mark stamp to create a abstract wave background added to all the pages in this insert bundle.

Day 14

Right side

Day 14

Inner pages

Day 14 

Insert bundle

Day 15

 I added in a water coloured background to tie in the date tag and finished it 

off with some layering of trims.

Day 16

My friend Jane and I took a drive to get some Krispy  Kreme donuts and I scrapped on the doughnut bag. The bag was given a swipe with some  red paint to tone down the green dots a little before I added in my journaling and a doughnut stack created with a Purple Onion doughnut stamp.

Day 17

 Left side

Asher's birthday so scrapped over two inserts. 

On the tag I have recorded what she got for her birthday.

Day 17

Right side

I added on a whole strip to the side so that I could pop the insert into my 6x6 album and embellished the insert pockets with a few stickers and punched butterflies.

Day 18

Some misting, a few sticker words and some journaling.

Day 19

This page started out as a 6x6 but as I was working on it I didn't like how the bottom part was looking so cropped it down to a 6x4.

Day 20

I wanted to create a flap for another photo to hide under and so that it could be turned without having to take the page out of it's insert I decided to stick the top page onto the front of the insert.

Top page

I added in some of my trim off cuts to make a stack and a couple of stickers with the arrow pointing to the other page peeking out behind.

Bottom page

I repeated my trim stack but this time with the arrow pointing the other way.

Here are the two pages together with the arrows and trim stacks lined up.

Flap open

While I was popping these last pages into my album I couldn't resist taking a snap of how it was looking.

Day 21

 I kept the tickets from our movie night along with the docket for our gold class meal and scrapped this straight onto an envelope so they could be placed inside. I then added a strip with holes to the edge to fit into my album.

Day 22

Another trimmed down insert with some embellishing on the front. I have quite enjoyed adhering some of my embellishments on the outside of the inserts giving it a more 3d effect.

Quote Card

 I wanted to do my Day 23 on a 6x6 page, and had a blank spot,  perfect for a quote card and some embellishing.

Day 23

I wanted to try and keep this one simple and repeated the elements that were on my photo cards this year. I also made use of the inside pieces from the letters to make 'splotches giving my misting a 3d look.

Day 24

Part 1

Day 24

Part 2

Once again I have include a flap which has been stuck onto the insert.

Flap opens to reveal printed journaling.

Day 25

Part 1

I have journaled about the day and have got the photos following on from it.

Day 25

Part 3

Another flap page with the flap attached to the front of the insert.
This is the top page.

And the bottom

Under the flap.

Close up of the flap with parts of the bottom poking out behind it.

Part 4

A swipe of paint so that I could journal on, and some stamped circles for detail.

Asher's wish list.

I always add it into my December daily in some way. I gave a small envelop a squirt of distress stain, added in some trim, a sticker and a hole strip and popped the list inside.

I couldn't resist adding this to the back of the envelope. There was something similar on a printed sticker in the stash I had here but it wasn't in the right colours.

Here it is all finished. 

Chunky but I have come to the conclusion that's how most of my albums end up in the end.

I'm enjoying creating for my December Daily and am already thinking ahead to what I might do next year.