December Daily

Cover: Scenic Route 8x8 grid mini book, trees are cut from Fancy Pants Happy Holidays paper, felt letters are Prima. I added Stickles to different places in the cover to accent it.

Inside Cover: KI Memories Festive paper, Elles Studio Tag, Maya Road Sheer tag backed with KI Memories Festive papers. Journaling list on tag is done with stickers from a 7 Gypsies 97% complete sticker set. Felt 'JOY' is Fancy Pants felt. Strip of Reindeer is from Sassafras Life at the Pole.

Day 1: Making Memories Fa La La paper, Misc. ribbon and Making Memories Fa La La Tiny Alpha stickers and glitter number

Day 2:KI Memories Festive papers, Elles Studio tag, rubons

Day 3: KI Memories Sheer Delight (cut in 4ths so it makes 4 pages for the album) Added stickles to some of the trees to make them pop.

More to come!

Decorating

finally.

It feels good to get the house all dressed up for the holidays.

We got the tree up, the mantle done and all of the outdoor lights up.

Our electric bill should be very large this year.

Just a couple of pictures. December Daily pictures tomorrow.

Scraproom Photos

I spent hours cleaning this week. An hour here, and hour there, but its finally done. I still have more to do but at least its clean and things are back where they belong.

I even got rid of some stuff to make room for newer things or things that didn't have a home before. I made my desk and the immediate area around my desk a little more organized and put things within reach.
Make sure you check the Store Blog this week to see the rest of the Design Teams rooms.

Heres mine:

My Desk area. My mom got me a drafting table for Christmas about 7 years ago. It was my first scrapping desk. It came with a tray attached to the side, a stool and the lamp. Pretty neat setup. My old rolling totes fit perfectly underneath this when we lived in the condo and space was at a premium.

This tray is awesome. There is a place for everything. I just cleaned it out to make room for some new stuff too. The little sections were getting cluttered.


The extension of my drafting table. When I moved everything into the loft, I expanded. I added this desk and the computer desk below. Each one is a combination of laminate pieces from Lowes. This desk is made up of closet organizers while the one below is a garage workbench.
I used several different pieces from the closet section and then added plain sheets of laminate for desktops. It measures 8 feet long. The bottom half is 48 inches wide and the top half is 24 inches wide. The bottom half is out from the wall. I designed this and my engineer dad made sure it was functional. He braced the back half of the laminate desktop with braces and a thin strip of wood. The upper half is actually up against the wall so it looks like a desk with shelving around it.


Computer Desk:

I added this table after I moved the room from a spare bedroom to the loft. The setup is actually a garage workbench from Lowes. I just had my dad leave the doors off the bottom for storage. Its a bit higher so I can stand and work or I use the stool that goes with the drafting table.

You can see a new catalog from Making Memories on my desk. 2 new lines coming soon!





The drawers are FULL of stuff. Paints, Stickles, Felt and chipboard.




My ribbon storage. Its not quite done. A tedious task of stringing all of those ribbons on the racks. I borrowed this idea from Michelle Hill. She bought a pants hanger with multiple bars. She strung her ribbon on each bar. The best part about this is, you can unhook one side of each bar and swing the arm out. It gives you a better idea or what ribbon you have. Now, if I can only finish it......
And those paper racks are from Target. Each shelf is a different manufacturer. I love being able to find the line of paper I'm looking for easily. I don't do things by theme or color (except my cardstock) so this was the easiest way.




My Expedit from Ikea. I wish I had the huge 5x5 unit, but this one was the biggest I could fit in this room. Right now, it holds a basket of flowers, all of my idea books, my acrylic stamps and folders where I keep layouts and sketches I like. My self made idea book. On top is a speaker set for the iPod, XM Radio and some pictures.






My book of rubons. I like to be able to flip through rubon sheets easily. I took a 3 ring binder (one of the 4 inch spines) and added page protectors with sheets of paper in them. One set of rubons in each side of the page protector. And for companies that like to do different color versions of the same rubons (like Basic Grey) they go in the same page protector. Easy to flip through, but you can see my 'stash' is getting kind of big.



My ink drawers. Two small plastic drawers from Target. One drawer for each color. All of my Cats Eye Chalks, Distress Ink Pads and Staz-on Ink pads are in there.

Misc. things around the room:
Drawer full of punches. I stick to the basic punches. Nothing too fancy.
Stamp rack above my desk. This is the rail system by Lisa Bearnson.

A wooden 'E'. I found some lady who was selling these online. Any font, any size. This is a 26 inch one.

My basket of tags. Mostly Elle's Studio but there is a mix of other stuff as well.

My Bazzill collection and my Clip It Up.

NOEL Banner

How to instructions on the NOEL Banner

You need:

Jenni Bowlin chipboard banner (large or small)

Pink Paislee Tinsel Town papers (Or any other holiday line)

Bazzill cardstock (used circle and scalloped circle punches)

Plain chipboard letters inked and covered in glitter (I used Pink Paislee Pixie Stix)

Fancy ribbon

I flipped the chipboard banner pieces so they looked more like trees for the holiday. Cover the banner with your patterned paper. I used the new Pink Paislee line, Tinsel Town, but you can use any holiday paper. I only covered the banner with patterned paper to the top of the scallops. Then I covered the scalloped portion with cream cardstock. Coat the cream cardstock with liquid adhesive (I used Glossy Accents). Pour loose Glitter (I used Pink Paislee Pixie Stix) over the wet glue and allow to dry. You can also use Stickles, but you have to wait a lot longer for it to dry. And you may need to use a different color cardstock as a base since the glue is clear. Or you can do two coats of Stickles - your choice.

I used my 2.5 scalloped circle punch and my 2 inch circle punch to make the base for the letter. Pop dot that on top of the patterned paper. For the letters, I used plain chipboard letters. Inked them and coated in Pixie Stix glitter again. You can use stickles or just leave them inked. Because Christmas always means glittery to me, I used a lot of glitter. I used Stickles to accent the scallops too.

You can also use regular letters like American Crafts Thickers in the color of your choice. I like to dress up plain chip letters.

Use your Crop o Dile or other hole punch to punch a hole in the top of the banner. Something that will cut through a piece of chipboard. I find my Crop O Dile works best.

You can either loop ribbon through each banner piece or string them like a banner. Because I'll be hanging these in a specific place, I made individual loops.

The lighting was awesome outside today but it was windy. So forgive my chubby finger in the pictures.

Where did he come from?

He looks like a mix of my husband and me but his personality and energy are something else!

I've been trying to capture this face for a while now. This little monster face. I had this picture in mind when I ordered the October Afternoon Night Ligth papers........ Took me forever to get the picture but now I have one....

And the little German Boy. Authentic Lederhosen from Germany courtesy of his grandmother and aunt.

Team Edward

Yeah, I'm obsessed with the Vampire. But my obsession goes back a little further than Edward, Bella and Jacob. I *love* Brahm Stokers Dracula. I love the dark love story, the history. I love it. Of course, I loved Frankenstein too. I'm a sucker for the classics.

So when all of these crazed mothers atarted talking about these books their daughters were reading, all I had to hear was Vampire. I never got into the Anne Rice novels though. I started them and never finished. Something was missing.

But the Twilight series - oh my. Friday night, we headed to the theater with our pre-purchsed tickets and stood in line with a gazillion teenage girls. Some there with their mothers. I heard 'I'm here to see what the hype is all about' from several of the moms there. Lets just say they were pretty impressed when they walked out of the theater.

I had prepared myself for cheesey. Total hokey teen movie. Instead, I got a decent flick. Yes, it was hokey in some parts but others, just made me fall in love with Edward all over again. I loved the way they portrayed some of the characters. Others, seemed a bit off to me. Jasper. Wow. I know he's supposed to be a 'newborn' but he looked like a robot.

We had to run to keep up with all of the teenies wearing their Twilight gear. On our way out, we were trampled by the next group of teenies arriving for their scheduled movie.

Teen girls everywhere. Wearing Twilight shirts. So I scoped them out today. Over 9,000 designs eh? I have some of them saved. I'm getting something to wear. I need a Team Edward shirt for sure. And maybe a bumper sticker that warns people about my mad driving skills.

Anyway, Robert Pattison just renewed my obsession with Edward. And the good news is, the movie is grossing enough for the sequels to be made. Yeah. Too bad New Moon doesn't feature much of Edward. Is the wait going to be like Harry Potter? I just waited for them to come out on video. I can't do that with this one. I NEED to see it in the theater. Need. Not want. Need.

Finished up my Golden Harvest mini from Christines class. Just the first few pages posted here. I'll get the rest of them taken and posted this week. I have a stack of layouts I've been meaning to photograph/scan and get loaded into the gallery. Creating them is a lot more fun than uploading them right?