I am back to share days 2 and 3 of my December Daily album...

Day 2 went over a few pages because it was all about the decorating and I took quite a few photos I wanted to include.

I began the Day 2 documentation with a large photo of our little Sparkle decorating the tree. This is special because this year is her first time decorating the tree - she was too young and destructive the other years! I'm sure you know what I mean ;-) The number '2' is from the gold Thickers in the Polka Dot Creative kit and I've just attached it to a punched out circle from a red paint sample swatch - yep again! I love those paint swatches - you'll be seeing them alot. After-all, they are FREE from Bunnings so it's a very cheap embellishment ;-) I've attached the circle to the page by a washi tape adorned paperclip!

It was the girls and I who decorated the tree through the day while Daddy was at work. The next double page focuses on the decorations and the fun we had with it all.

I really enjoy the look of the page with the photo circles showing some of our fave decorations. I clipped a printed hashtag word that I did myself into the paper clip at the top. I also used the Christmas title box from the stamp set by Kellie Stamps from the kit and also one of the APOCD cherry flair.

I didn't use any embellishments on the other page - just added a border with a black AC precision pen around the edge of the photos incorporating some words in the border as well. I LOVE this look and use it A LOT!!!

The last part of the story for day 2 was putting the bright shining star on top of the tree. Little Sparkle got to do the honours this year, assisted by Daddy of course ;-)

I hand wrote 'And on TOP of the TREE...' onto vellum and attached that next to the photo of our little one and Daddy admiring the handiwork - so cute - and attached it with washi tape to the journal card. A couple of wood veneer stars added some more decoration.

I decided to make a star shaped insert from Christmas patterned paper. I used some Heidi Swapp 'Believe' patterned paper and another piece of paper I had in my stash. To cut out the star I used my star shape cutter from Creative Memories.

I used the Rhonna Designs app on my phone to create the word 'bright' for the title and printed it off, used my circle cutter and attached to the star card. The letters are black glitter Thickers and white chipboard letters.

And that is Day 2.

Hope you have enjoyed the tour of Day 2 and 3 in my December Daily album :-)

Take care!

With Sprinkles of Sunshine...

Anna

Yep! This year I am doing a December Daily album. 

After last years attempt (I wouldn't exactly say it was a failed attempt because I did get 18 days documented!!!), I am determined that this year I will get it completed.

In order to help myself along with this goal, I decided to purchase a kit. 

I chose to order the Documenting December kit from Jodie of Polka Dot Creative. It came with a SN@P! 6x8" binder album including some extra pages and a whole heap of papers and embellishments to make it all happen!!

My kit arrived mid November and I could NOT wait to get crackin' on some pre-planning and foundation work. To start this process though, I decided to sort through the kit and store it all in a little basket in order to keep it accessible but in the one place.

Ha! I've only just realised that I've got the Polka Dot Creative kit in a polka dot lined basket. How appropriate! LOL!

I was keen to get my coverpage, inside coverlet and a few of the first pages planned ready to insert the photos and journalling when December rolled around. 

And I did just that!!!

I created some mini paper pressies using the 6x6 Christmas paper pad in the PDC kit. I tied these up with twine. It was a little fiddly but worth it! I stuck them down onto some background paper I had cut to size that was from my stash, attached a silver frame with foam adhesive to raise it up off the page. I used part of the stamp set from Kellie Winnell of Kellie Stamps which was part of the kit and stamped it onto white card stock, punched it out and backed it with a circle cut from a green paint swatch. I tied ribbon vertically and knotted it close to the top and popped some flair from the A Piece of Cake Designs flair set in the kit.

And that was done. 

I didn't want to over-do my front cover and I think I achieved that goal. It's rather simplistic but says CHRISTMAS to me - and that's what I wanted. Job done!!

My inside cover was fun to do!

It's no secret that I LOVE sequins. They just add an easy pop of colour and sparkle to pretty much anything!! I used one of the full 6x8" pocket pages and attached our family title on the front outer layer and stitched across the letters for added security - and it looks rather effective too I think. I used the gold Thickers supplied in the kit.

I stitched down one side, the bottom and the other side of the pocket - poured in a variety of Christmas coloured sequins and the vellum stars from the kit, and secured it all by stitching across the top. And I've got a pretty sparkly shaker-pocket title coverlet!!

I had stamped another circle the same as the front cover from the kit set - only this time I cut the circle dividing the 'December Daily' from '2013'. Popping one of the patterned card inserts behind my shaker title page, I adhered the 'December Daily' part of circle to the top right corner and the '2013' part to the bottom right of the page.

DONE!!

And now that December is here, the documenting has begun!!

I have completed days 1-3 but have only fully photographed Day 1 so will share that now. 

December 1, we went to the beach and we took a family photo, which I used as our first photo in the album. I embellished around the larger size photo (5x7") using the washi tape, and offcut papers from the kit paper pad and my stash.

That evening we put up the tree together and I documented that by creating a collage on my phone using Diptic and printing it out as a 6x6" square. I cut the little photos out and attached in a little tag booklet that was in the kit. It sits in a paper pocket I created.

Here it is...

The number one was just a punched out circle from a gold paint swatch, a stamped number '1' (I used an Amy Tangerine stamp set from an SC Project Life kit). I glued a rim around the edge of the circle and sprinkled it with glitter to add some sparkle!

As for the 'hello december' card - I created that myself. It was basically a pile of punched circles from some different green patterned papers and gluing them down on a 6x4" grid card overlapping each other to create the background. I used washi tape, twine, letters and wood veneer stars and arrow to embellish it as is in the photo!

And the tree was UP!!!

You will notice two little girls with tinsel-tied hair on this page too.

Yep! We decorate our kids before the tree around here!! hehe ;-)

Day 1 was done.

I just love seeing my kids enjoy the traditions we have established in our home.

Christmas time is such a joyful time - I just love it!!

I will be back with more as soon as I get it all snapped!!

With Sprinkles of Sunshine...

Anna

Hi!

I'm back.

I must say, it wasn't planned to have this length of a blog break but things just happen and time gets away with us and WHAMMO - I'm a month behind blogging! 

Oh well.

In my defence, there has been sickness - never a good thing!!

I have been busily creating and living life as best I can in between the bouts of sickness though :-)

And...

We ran out of high speed data after a week of it being reset! Somebody decided to do a 6GB download and sucked up half our data - and it wasn't me...nor was it our daughters...hmmm...

Ahhh. Gotta love him ;-)

So I've been VERY patient for 3 weeks with ultra slow internet which wasn't really conducive to blogging and uploading photos etc so it all got put on the back burner!! Until now...

Anywhoo....

An all NEW mood board challenge is up over on the Jot blog created by the awesome Raquel! It's a beautiful pastel Christmas themed colour palette. So soft and dreamy. I love it.

I knew what look I wanted for my layout. I had a combination of so many patterned papers that would fit the colour palette that I thought I would incorporate them all in a tiled look on my page!

It took me a little bit longer to find a photo that suited the theme BUT finally I did. I wanted the photo to stand out but not TOO much as I didn't want it to completely take over. I think the sunflare softens the photo alot which makes it suit this layout. The mood board to me brings about soft, dreamy, floaty feelings so I went with that and tried to bring that about in my layout. I was surprised but really happy with what I achieved actually.

See what you think...

Hope you love this too.

You can join in on the fun as well - just head over HERE for more details. And you can check out all the inspiring samples from some of the Jot team too.

Yay! Christmas is on it's way. I have plenty going on at the moment.

I will be back to share more later :-)

Take care.

With Sprinkles of Sunshine...

Anna

There is a NEW Mood Board out over at Jot

and this month it was put together by the one and only...

ME!!

Yay!!

Haha!

Bright and bold! I just couldn't go past the bright pink, magenta hues coupled with the gold. It's rich, it's elegant...everything I'm not ;-) hahaha

It DOES, however, reflect my personality and the personalities of my girls. Bright, bold, friendly and fun :-)

Here is my take on the mood board...

Last Monday, fellow Jot creative team member, Lauren Hender, launched the awesome Jot Kids program.

It had free printables, the chance to 'meet' and see other crafty kids and their work, AND it's own special mood board challenge.

When I showed my 5 year old this mood board, her eyes grew wide and she exclaimed - "

"It's RAINBOW colours!! I love drawing rainbows!"

 

Her concept of this activity was slightly askew at first - in that she wanted to use the EXACT things that were shown on the page.

"Mummy!" she said, "We need to go to the rainbow shop to get everything I need for this moov board!" ;-)

But don't worry - I set her on the right track letting her know it is a mooD board and you don't actually put balloons ON the layout cos they wouldn't fit on paper - or an album for that matter - but you can draw them or paint them. You just need to use all these rainbow colours on your project.

She totally got it then.

And she got the perfect idea and knew exactly what she wanted to do!

And so the creating began!

 

 

Watercolours.

 And here she is holding her colourful creation with utmost pride and happiness...

 



Wow! We are up to the TENTH mood board challenge over at Jot Magazine!

And it's LIVE NOW!!

This time, it was Sharmaine's turn to select a colour combo and what a great choice she made!!

 

GREENS!!

And these things aren't called Challenges for nothing! This one definitely did make me think abit harder than usual!! But I loved being pushed creatively and get me to work outside my usual little comfort zone. Matter of fact, my Jot experience as a whole has been like that! I feel myself growing and evolving creatively and I LOVE IT!!

 

Anyway -

Here is my layout I came up with...

 

 

Yes I know - a BLACK background. Never done that before but felt it would make the colours and textures I was using POP a little bit more.

With the world globes and trees and mountains all in the mood board, I wanted the photo choice I used to be set in the outdoors hence the sun above the trees and me laying in it :-)

 

Some little features I want to point out that I really enjoyed doing were:

- doodling some little trees with birds flying around them. I used a circle punch to cut the trees out.

- Incorporating a paint swatch into the layout. Free from Bunnings - you can't go wrong and they add the perfect touch to any layout :-)

- using maps and graph paper from ephemera packs.

- And my fave would have to be the text on the page. Amazing what you can do with mini ink pads, cotton buds, and your own handwriting! And some stickers of course ;-)

 

I am really happy with how this layout turned out actually. I am looking forward to experimenting with dark backgrounds more.

 

Anyway, I hope you like ;-)

Feel free to join in - head on over to the blog for more details and to see all the sample pages from other team members for loads of inspiration. They are all so awesome and unique to each individual's style. Love it!!

And you've got the whole month of October to play around with this one - entries close midnight of October 31st.

 

Have fun!!

 

With Sprinkles of Sunshine...

 

Anna

Yep!

That was what yesterday was all about.

I headed off to Miss J's Kindy class Sports Day.

It was held in the afternoon and involved running races, obstacle course, bowling, sack races, and the fave...egg and spoon race. Parents got a go at that last one - Miss J insisted that I had to go in it ;-)

Here is some of the afternoon in photos...

 

 It really was a great afternoon. You can see that Little K was keen to join in on some activities just like her big sister ;-)

 Miss J was rather excited that she won some of her races, including the sack race! I can see that she is going to be quite athletic I think and has a bit of a competitive streak - wonder where she gets that from!?! dum-de-dum-de-dum ;-) - but at the moment that is greatly over-rided by the pure fun of it all!!

The day ended with icy poles and a sweet rendition of Skid-a-merink sung by the kids to the parents! Heart melting moment (with a glint of a tear in my eye) was when Miss J would turn and point to me whenever the line 'I love you' came around. Awwww...sniff sniff. Love her.

 

BUT THE FUN DIDN'T STOP THERE!!!

 

Between 4-5pm there was a juniour disco happening at the big school and I decided to take the girls along. They had a WOW of a time dancing around with friends. Even Little K joined in with her grooves (and she has got groove I can tell ya! haha!).

 

The highlight for Miss J though, would have to have been getting her face painted...