RaptorMama

Well hello there day 3.  Michael took Kate over to his parents’ house this morning so I got in some good quality December Daily time.  Oh, and there was some Gossip Girl watching at the same time.  Trashy TV *and* scrapbooking?  Yes please!

We went with some friends to the Children’s Museum on Saturday to decorate gingerbread houses so I had a million a few really cute pictures to work with.  I couldn’t narrow it down to 3 or 4 pictures so I added extra pages.  They weren’t all 6×6 so I went ahead and put the binder rings on before I took the pictures.

Here you can see the back side of Day 2 and the front side of day 1.  Now, it’s on a transparency so you can see the next page peaking through.  I <3 playing with transparent pages.

I adhered the photos back to back sandwiching the transparency so the adhesive wouldn’t show.  You can sort of see the back of the rick rack and Christmas tree, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I had more photos to include, so I added some extra pages.  I typically make them *not* 6×6 so that it’s obvious, at least to me, that they are not the start of a new day.

This is just a 4×6 photo with a thin cardstock mat.

On the back, I did the journaling for the day.  You can’t really tell from the photo, but that’s an acrylic snowflake.  I ran it through my xyron and set it on a piece of patterned paper.  Then I cut around it with an exacto knife and filed the edges with a nail file.  So the patterned paper is on the bottom and the acrylic is on top.  Hard to explain, but it looks pretty neat.  🙂

Still had a few more pictures (honestly, is there much that’s cuter than a 2 year old decorating a gingerbread house?) so I made 2 more pages that were a just big enough to give a little frame to a 2×3 photo.

These mini pages each have a picture on the front and the back so I was able to add 4 more photos.  I love that I have the freedom to add more pages when I need to!  I’m pretty please that I’ve been able to keep up so far, but the month is young.  We’ll see how I do next week.  🙂

 

Here’s day 2!

Kate was helping her Bitty Baby do stickers while I worked on the pages for December 1st.  🙂  The background paper is from My Mind’s Eye and the red strip is from S. E. I.  I used these collections for most of my Christmas pages last year and deliberately bought some extra so I would have it for December Daily this year.  🙂  I used some washi tape across the bottom and spiced it up with some stickles.  The title is made from October Afternoon letter stickers.  I have been using these on everything!  I found a rubbon “2” and put it on a scrap of paper.  The tag border is from the making memories tag maker thingy from a million years ago.  I never did buy the tool, but my hammer still works just fine.  I love using up old stuff on December Daily.

On the back, I added a picture of the girls’ lunch and an artsy shot of the living room floor.  Sometimes it looks like a bomb went off in there at the end of the day.  They were having a blast!  The trees are cut out from some patterned paper from a couple of years ago.  I like them a lot better cut out than I did as a whole 12×12 piece of paper!

By the way, I listed the wrong app yesterday.  We tried Pixelmator, but ended up going with TurboCollage instead.  It’s so much easier!  I made my collage today all by myself.  Those of you who are familiar with my computing skills will be impressed.  🙂

And we’re off!  I structure my December Daily so that each day gets one front and back page.  Here’s the front of day 1.

I’m thinking of adding something in the top right corner, but I’m not sure what.  Thoughts?  I my incredibly thoughtful husband helped me print 2 pictures on 1 4×6 print.  I used to use Picasa to do this, but since I’ve switched to Aperture that’s not an option anymore.  Never fear, Michael found me an app to do it.  It’s called Pixelmator if you’re interested.  🙂  I love to scale down pictures for this project.

Here’s the back of the page.

I tend to leave the backsides of the pages quite simple and this one is no exception.  Last year, I even left a few blank!

And just in case you’re curious, here’s the cover with page one underneath.  You can see the first page peaking out so I was mindful of the colors I chose.  🙂

Pretty simple pages today as I had to work.  I’m actually pretty impressed that I got them done at all!  I should have more time to play this weekend so I expect the next few pages will be more, well, more.

I know I said I was going to do the front and back cover today.  I lied!  Get over it.  🙂  When I sat down to get started, I remembered that last year I waited to do the back cover until I had done the last page.  That because I’m using acrylic pages as a base for the front and back cover and they are see through so I kind of need to wait and see what the last page is going to look like before I make the cover.  I did, however, get the front cover done.  Yay me!

   

You’ll notice that they are mirror images of each other and that’s because it’s see through.  🙂  The main piece of paper is double sided and I loved both sides so I used it here.  The other elements are placed so that they cover the back of the page.  Does that make sense? The acrylic base page is sandwiched between them.  They are also covering the adhesive.

If anyone is interested, I can look up the manufacturers for this stuff.  I’m just too lazy busy to dig through the pile of paper at the moment.  So far, I’m just using leftovers from last year, though if we’re being honest I overbought last year so I would have plenty of goodies to work with this year.  🙂

I’ve taken lots of pictures today and the plan is to upload, edit and print a few of them tonight so they are ready to go tomorrow.  Anyone else doing this?  I’d love to see your pages!

I haven’t blogged in so long it’s disgraceful.  No more!  I’m starting December Daily tomorrow (um, I guess technically today as it’s after midnight) and my goal is to post my pictures every day.  Anyone want to place bets on the likelihood of that happening?  lol.

My plan is to take pictures during the day and then upload, edit and print them after Kate has gone to bed/ I’m done working for the night.  I’ll then make the page the next day either during Kate’s nap time or during Kate and Mama craft time if she’s wants to play.  Last year Kate made 2 of our December Daily pages and they are some of my favorites!

That’s last year’s on the left and, as you can see, it ended up being quite a thick book.  I went ahead and cut down all of my old Christmas paper to 6 inches by 6 inches as that’s the size book I ended up going with and bought an acrylic album that I’ll use for the covers and probably 2 or 3 other internal pages.  That’s what’s stacked up on the right.  I love the 6×6 size because it’s manageable, plus you can get 4 pages from a single 12×12 sheet of paper.  I’m cheap y’all.

Michael works from home in our office/ art/ craft room so I will be doing December Daily at the kitchen table.  To facilitate that, I went ahead and pulled all of my old Christmas paper and embellishments, plus anything else in the red/ green/ blue color family that I thought might be fun to play with.  The goal is not to have to go rooting through the office 15 times a day while Michael is trying to work.

   

Here’s a random assortment of goodies I’ll be incorporating into the book.  I can’t wait to use the washi tape!  (It’s like printed masking tape.  I don’t know why it’s so awesome, but it is!!!)

I also cleaned out my pink tote thing and so it just has tools and goodies for this project. Hopefully I can keep this project at least somewhat contained since it’s in our kitchen.  🙂

The plan for tomorrow today is to take lots of pictures and make the front and back covers.  And yes, I’m still doing Project Life.  I’m a bit behind, but I plan on keeping up with both for the month of December.  And yes, I’m a little bit crazy.  It’s all good.  🙂

Remember the rice that Kate’s been playing with for a while?  Well, I’m she’s starting to get bored with it so we decided to make rainbow rice!  By the way, like most things on the blog this was not an original idea.  🙂

First, grab your materials: rice, ziplock bags, food coloring and rubbing alcohol.  Put rice in the bags, add food coloring and alcohol.

Let the kids smoosh the rice around in the bags.

The girls loved this part so much that we ended up making 6 colors instead of 3.  Well, that and I love doing things in rainbow order.  🙂

Seriously, it’s that easy.  I think we might dye pasta next to make necklaces.  I saved the bags.

It was super awesome looking when all of the colors were separate, but it looks quite nice now too that all of the colors are mixed up.  It’s like confetti.  I’ll have to take another pic of it and add it.  I totally recommend this.  Super easy and super fun.  I’m not going to lie, playing with the rice is super messy though.

 

We gave Kate her very own sketch book a few months ago and she loves it.  Michael also has several sketch books and she really enjoys getting to draw with him.  We encourage her to use one page at a time and then put the date at the bottom.  She usually ends up using it once a week or so and I think it will end up showing her progression quite nicely.  Plus, it makes me feel a bit less guilty about throwing away the approximately 3000 other pieces of art she creates a week.  🙂

So as may of you undoubtedly know, Halloween in pretty much my favorite holiday.   I am so excited to start some spooky art projects!  I also get the feeling that Kate is supposed to start learning to use scissors and glue, thus this project was born.  🙂

First I cut some strips of orange paper and drew lines on the to show where Kate and Abby should cut.

Abby, who just turned 4, totally got it.  She cut apart the strips and glued them in the pumpkin shape.

Kate clearly needs some more practice with the scissors.  It seems like her hands are still too small for them.  No problem, she ripped up the strips and I cut out some squares for her.  She was all over the glue stick though.  🙂

And here are the finished masterpieces!

 

I’ve decided to get back on the blogging bandwagon.  We’ll see how long it lasts this time.  lol.  I have a lot of fun stuff to put up, I just need to actually write the posts.

Here’s a scrapbook page a made a few weeks ago.  I’m so in love with these little letters from October Afternoon.  🙂

I bought this glimmer mist (it’s like spray glitter) forever ago and I’ve never used it.  I decided to try it on a layout this weekend and I’m in love.  Like I might have to go and buy 15 or so more colors this weekend.  🙂