This past week I finished my December/Holiday mini book using Simple Scrapper’s 2012 Holiday Kit. (I first shared details about the kit and my project last week.) Click on any of the images for an enlargement.
One of my double-page spreads focuses on our tradition of sending greeting cards each year. For this spread, I created the journaling circle in Photoshop. The Pink Paislee tag and the Elle’s Studio number tag are both part of the kit.
One of my favorite pages in the album documents our tradition of going out to see Christmas lights. I stamped one of the kit’s Pink Paislee tags with an Ali Edwards Technique Tuesday stamp. The “Merry & Bright” tape strip is from Crate Paper and is also included in the kit. For the most part, rather than add the Crate tape strips as I went along, I waited until I was done and added them to pages for a little extra spot of color.
Another double-page spread documents our family’s letters to Santa. I have letters to Santa from my mother (written in 1933 with my grandmother’s help), a letter written by me, and several written by my sons.
For the center of this spread, I punched one of the Pink Paislee tags to which I added a photo of Santa. On the back, I journaled about our various Santa “sightings.”
I scanned and printed a couple of my sons’ letters to Santa. I also scanned the letter written by my grandmother for my mother and put it into the envelope included in the kit. The envelope is just behind the Santa card. I liked being able to personalize the book with these extra additions.
I also used a double-page spread to write about our stockings. This page includes a rare photo, taken by my brother-in-law, of my husband and I together after the stockings were stuffed.
I wanted to have a dedicated page talking about my husband’s aunt’s Christmas angels. These are more than ninety-years-old and have a special place in our annual decorating.
The album wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the soggy, stormy weather that we have this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. In the same manner as the aforementioned Crate Paper tape strips, I used the Cosmo Cricket word stickers from the kit to add subtitles to the pages. The “keep calm and carry on” sentiment was the perfect addition to a page documenting a three-day power outage.
Because my album documents many previous Christmases, it is definitely heavy on journaling. If I were creating an album for a specific year, it would be primarily photos with brief captioning.
I’m thrilled to have this mini album as part of my memory-keeping library and look forward to seeing the various approaches scrappers take to creating mini albums this upcoming December.
