One Last Christmas Book and a Happy New Year!

 Couldn't help it. I had to do something with all these Santas so I decided to make just one more book even if it was after Christmas.

I just loved the shiny red foil paper I had and I love it combined with the satin red foil paper. So the front of my book has both and a little bling too. I decided to make a belly band for this one. I added a little sticker I had in my stash.

The pockets are just simple shapes. I picked a paper pack from GingerJournals on Etsy called Bohemian Christmas. 

The kit had all the colors I was looking for and they were vivid so I knew they would go perfectly with my collection of Santas and Santa postcards.

I am still cutting out this die set from Anna Griffin and using it in my journals because it is so pretty. It looks like lace to me. I use every piece of this set.

For the Santa shapes I just cut out foil card behind them in the same shape to make a shadow layer. These are hand cut. I don't have a die for the two shapes.

That red foil was so gorgeous I had to use it every chance I got.

This paper pack came with pockets and cards that match the papers so I tried to use them all.

I really love the ornament pattern in this set. I could have cut out some of them and made them dimensional if I needed more ideas to fill in my book.

I made six signatures with six papers in each set, then sprayed them lightly with two colors of ink. Sometimes my ink sprayer clogged and put blobs of ink on a page but I just went with it anyway. Not a perfectionist on these journals. I really don't think you can make a mistake you can't cover up or cut and replace.

I love these die cuts because you can use the pieces as frames and let the beautiful papers show through.

I have a collection of old postcards and I print them out a lot so I try to put a few in each Christmas book I make.

I got these Santas from the Met. You can go online to the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art and do a search for public domain images + Santas and find a whole lot of them there for free.

Well it's been a hell of a year. Hope the next one is better. I got my cabbage and my dime ready for tomorrow. Santa Claus is waving goodbye again until we see him again next year! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and will have a Happy New Year ahead in 2024!!! <jingle~jingle~jingle~jingle sound as Santa flies away in his sled>

Anna Griffin Christmas Journal

 I had published this on my facebook page but forgot to post it on my blog so I'm back posting it for December 30th. So here is the journal I made out of Anna Griffin papers and ephemera products only.

I made the cover with a card front that I cut out windows in. I hand dyed the ribbon tie.

I used the die cut set from the Carte Noel box to make a few houses. I also used the card sentiments on a few pages.

I really liked the ornaments this year but they were just too big for my tree so I put them in my journal and just used them for decorations.

There are just so many embellishments in the box for these that I could have easily decorated dozens more pages if I wanted to.

I did get some snow people this year and I just love them. They are so cute and they go with every page.

I even used my leftover pieces to make a couple of ornament pages. I hate throwing leftover scraps away when they are this pretty.

My finished journal had quite a few pages and six signatures. So there is plenty of room to write, draw and put photos in there.

I had such a great time making all these journals. I have so many Christmas papers and embellishments that I could make four more easily and still have a big supply of all these pretties.

Now I gotta start thinking about Spring and Valentine's Day next. Love to see Christmas coming and I'm relieved to see it go. I don't know if I'll still be making these flip flop journals next year but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be making something with all this paper.

It's Christmas Time!

 I actually made three Christmas journals this year. After nearly two years of knitting and crocheting, I immersed myself in my journal making most of this year. This is the latest finished one.

I started out with a turquoise/aqua with red accent color scheme and somehow pink worked its way in to it. But I really like the way it turned out.

You never know what ideas you get when you are working on these. I had some plastic metallic trim that I had not used yet so I wanted to use that.

So I cut it up into single pieces and used it for tree ornaments on the front.

I also made some more die cuts for backgrounds. I love this die cut. It's perfect for my journals. And I also used some leftover die cut pieces in places. Nothing this pretty goes to waste.

I don't always use pockets and tags in every journal but this one had many pre-printed pockets so I used all the tags and pockets for it.

I made six signatures to go in this one. I usually don't decorate the signature outside pages but I had so many tags and embellishments that I did use them all up.

I love this set of digital papers. It's from LianaScrap on etsy and it's called Winter Tales. The blues are subtle and the watercolors really give it a beautiful look.

I also like to add laces on the pages and I made a couple of pom pom paper clips for this one. 

I used a silver pearl foil paper with this. It really made the aqua pop. I wish I had more of it but I only have one or two sheets left.

I also used a lot of glitter glue on this one. I have a silver glitter glue that I love. It has transparent snow glitter mixed in with it that just makes it sparkle even more.

This journal turned out to be one of my favorites. 

Merry Christmas Journals

 Well, here it is. Christmas 2023 is upon us. And not surprisingly I have made a Christmas journal. I'm always working on a couple of things at a time and I'm still making those beautiful journals that I love so much.. This is the one I love the most!

I actually made three of the Christmas theme ones this year. I thought aqua and red would be nice colors for this year's journal so I did make one using those colors and graphics and I really liked the way it turned out. But looking back and comparing it to the others, I see that I'm not done with it yet. Here's a sneak peek at that one:

And then I ran across some beautiful papers with red, green and pink. Not the bright pink, but the light red shades of pink that actually look good with red without clashing. So I made a beautiful journal with the emphasis on trims and ribbons. That's the one I'm showing the pages of in this post.

Then I made an Anna Griffin journal using papers and ephemera from last year and this year. I have so many Christmas cards made up that I haven't sent yet and I really don't need a lot more so I decided to use up some of the pretty things I have by making a journal with them. Here's a sneak peek of that one:

And I also had time to work on my Marie journal too. Made a bunch of Marie Antoinette shoes and tiny shoe paper clips. Can't wait to show how cute they are! Here's a sneak peek at Marie:

  

But back to Christmas. More than any other kind of journal I've ever made, I love to make the flip flop kind of journals out of recycled throw away junk envelopes. I also like to add embossed die cuts where I can and fancy paper edges. These are pages from the red and green Santa journal at the top of the page.

I like to work with Anna Griffin die cuts and The Graphics Fairy images and combine them together with 3D ephemera like jewels, fibers, laces and ribbons. But I also like the themed paper packs I find on Etsy and this theme is one of them. It is from Lianascrap and it's called Patchwork Christmas.

I put six signatures into this journal and a lot of cards and pockets. It's a little chunkier than most of them that I do. I also used glitter glue on top edges of cards to give them a little punch.

I like to use the pom pom ball fringe sometimes and I found these at the dollar tree but I haven't seen them since. If you run across some, you better get them because they will go fast.

I use a lot of dollar tree craft items. I like the fringe, jewel stickers, dot ribbons and faux diamond ribbon that you can cut into single strips. I get a lot of edgings and strings too. I used to get ribbons and trims on sale at Michaels but I haven't been to Michaels in over a year. I quit going when they went all "Home Goods layout" and "JoAnn checkout" on us. They just don't have the craft stuff anymore like they used to. Since covid, their prices are just insane. I get better deals online.

Honestly, I don't shop the craft stores anymore because most of them did away with their coupon discounts. I think JoAnn's still has coupons for some things but you better read the fine print on them.

There were a lot of tags in this journal kit and they just got prettier with glitter glue edges and fiber trims. One of the tricks I learned for dimension is to print off two tags and fussy cut one of them out, say a flower or leaves and just foam tape it on top of the other one to make it stand out. I did that with the pink poinsettias.

So I got these completely done but most of the time I just get the bones put together and then I get another idea. I can always go back later and embellish and over-decorate. The more stuff the better on these. And I'm always getting new ribbons and trims.