Oh Holiday Faves, how I love thee…

Now that 2013 is here and the holiday season is officially behind us, I figured it was high time I got around to sharing my mostly-completed Holiday Faves Mini Album.

Well the part I’m sharing is mostly completed. I still have to finish Faves 6-10 from while we were in California and finish up the cover. (I want to add a fabric spine to it like I did last year.)

But since Faves 1-5 are ready to go I wanted to share them now. And really this post is going to more than enough Holiday Faves eye-candy in it as it is so it’s probably good to break it up.

Holiday Faves Mini Album 2012 Cover + Intro

First up is a look at my Holiday Faves mini album cover for this year:

In the interest of keeping it real, I’m not going to lie – this is not my most favorite cover ever. In my head I had a bit of a different vision – something clean, all-white and simple – and for whatever reason I just could not make it work the way I wanted with the supplies I had.

So I eventually ended up adding the kraft paper (which is actually an old product wrapper from West Elm that I saved last year) and the stars and I think it’s ok. Not my fave but ok. Let’s just call it a #makeitwork moment a la Tim Gunn and move on.

One of the items from my original vision that did work (well mostly, haha) was the white tone-on-tone chevron background. I wanted it to be fairly subtle so I started with a slight cream/off-white paint as my base color and then misted over it using a Studio Calico chevron mask and a Mister Huey’s Color Mist in Opaque White.

This was my first time using one of their misters and I’m not sure I totally had the uh, misting part of it totally down. It came out a bit drippier than I thought it would and after two solid days of letting it dry, the mist still hadn’t set. Like if you rubbed your finger gently across it, you’d end up with white paint on your fingers.

Since I was planning to travel with my album out to California, I was kind of panicking that it was going to get white paint all over everything, so I ended up spraying it with a couple of coats of Krylon Clear Spray in Matte which seemed to finally seal it.

Here’s a look at the inside of the cover. Ignore the fact that it’s terribly ugly inside as I’ll be covering it up with paper once I add the fabric spine to it. If you look closely you can still see some of the gold paint along the right edge from one of my failed attempts to fix what wasn’t working. I told you I tried a bunch of things!

On the first journaling card page, I wrote a short paragraph about what this album is about and added a small decorative badge from American Crafts onto the overlay on the right:

One of things I’ve learned to embrace with my handwritten journaling is the fact that it almost always slopes down to the right a little bit. I’m pretty sure this is a lefty thing, probably due to the many years of trying to write in spiral-bound notebooks and having to contort my paper to a crazy angle to avoid resting my hand on the metal spine. That is until I got smart in college and started using all my notebooks back to front, which I loved, but it made for some rather hilarious experiences for those who tried to borrow my notes.

On the right page of the album I left the accent page as is:

Holiday Faves #1

On the back of the accent card I added one of the photos for Holiday Fave #1 – Jet Pack Santa! I actually cheated a little bit this year with the start date of my album since this technically happened the weekend before Thanksgiving when we went up to Dallas for the Cowboys game. But it was too awesome NOT to include.

I mean come on, as part of the Dallas downtown lights on celebration, Santa flew in on a jet pack. Where else can you say you’ve seen that? It was hilariously awesome and amazing and even Adam, who almost never gets excited about stupid things like I do, was like a kid on Christmas. It was so fun!

Here’s a closer look at my journaling. All of my pages were printed using Epson Premium Presentation Paper in Matte and then I just wrote on them with one of my regular pens. I haven’t found a scrapbooking pen I like yet that is both thin enough and dries fast enough to not smear when my left hand drags across it. If anyone has a good recommendation, let me know!

For the title on each Fave card, I used some tiny stickers from the American Crafts Dear Lizzy line. I love the little bit of gold sparkle they add:

On the back of the journaling card I used one of my photo collage templates from the Holiday Faves Mini Album templates to put together some of the photos from the night.

The photo on the right is a 4×6 photo of the tree they lit at the event. It’s hard to tell in this photo but I also a Merry+Bright word art in red over the black area of the photo.

By far one of the best things I did this year was purchase 4×6 and 5×7 sized photo paper to print my photos on. It made it SO much faster and easier to put together since no trimming was required. Plus it wasted a lot less paper than printing on 8.5×11 sheets!

This is one of the themed journaling card spreads I haven’t finished quite yet. Since this one is for decorations, I wanted to include pictures from both our house here in San Antonio and my parents house in California. I’ll include this one when it’s finished in the next update.

On the right side of this spread, I added a photo I took of Adam when we went to the Renegade Craft Fair in Austin the weekend after Thanksgiving:

It was actually a wooden cutout but I cropped the photo to make it look more like a card. I told Adam if we were organized enough people that we actually sent out cards, this is the one I’d choose, haha. Does it get more hipster than a merman with a beard in a lumber jack suit? I’m thinking not.

Holiday Faves #2

For Holiday Fave #2 I chose Thanksgiving so on the back of the Mer-jack? photo page, I added two of our thankful cards. Well I should really say our only two thankful cards since despite plans to write these out throughout November, these are the only ones we did. #weareawesome It was still fun to see what each of us wrote though!

On the right is a Happy Thanksgiving card my mom sent me in the mail. I love that my mom still sends cards for all the holidays by real mail – it’s so much more fun than getting an e-card or email! Plus is he not the most adorable pilgram ever?

 

On the overlay page on the right, I added a little Making Memories tag held on with some brads:

I used the tips of my scissors to punch through the overlay since it was too thick for the brad to poke through.

A look at our Thanksgiving table – I totally Macguyver-ed the center piece last minute from a bunch of random plants we have in our yard. And I added a little triangle tab on the back of a few of the blank Give Thanks cards to use in place of place cards. Since there were only two of us, it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out who sat where, haha.

More Thanksgiving journaling and photos. I have to laugh because clearly I don’t have the spacing down for the title stickers just yet:

This accent page I’ve left blank for now. I figure once I finish the second half of the album, I can add any leftover memorabilia or photos I have or I may just add a decorative accent and call it good.

Holiday Movie Faves

Here’s a look at one of the completed themed journaling cards. I used this movie one to document my love of Elf:

A closer look at the journaling card:

On this overlay on right, I added a couple of accent stickers:

Then behind the overlay I added a photo I took here in Texas. Figured it was appropriate given we won’t (hopefully) be living in Texas for forever:

Holiday Faves #3

Holiday Fave #3 was the Holiday River Parade down on the Riverwalk which has become one of our favorite day-after-Thanksgiving traditions here in San Antonio.

On the left side I added a photo collage (also one of the templates included in the Holiday Faves Mini Album templates) as well as our tickets from the parade.

It’s hard to tell from this picture since it was a bit dark but in the top photo of the collage,the Chik-Fil-A cows are totally dancing Gangnam style and that’s supposed to be Psy in the white jacket. We thought it was hilarious but we were surrounded by a bunch of older people – like in their 70s & 80s older people – who clearly had no idea what was happening. It was rather hilarious hearing some of the younger people in their group trying to explain what was going on.

Faves journaling card on the right, now with extra sloping:

Oh and a friendly note for all you Crop-o-dile hole punch lovers, if you attempt to carry-on your Crop-o-dile when flying, TSA will confiscate it because it’s over 7 inches and therefore considered a dangerous “tool.” #askmehowIknowthis

For this page I decided I wanted to print out a photo to span across the full spread. I like how it turned out but I cut my covers a little larger this year so the gap between the pages is wider. I think it might have worked a little better if the gap was smaller. But I like the concept, the execution could just use a little tweaking I think.

I also added one of Ali Edwards holiday brushes onto the photo before printing:

Does anyone else look at Ali Edwards handwriting and wish it was your own? Her handwritten journaling always looks so cool. I’m pretty sure I could do a ton of practicing and mine would never look like that, haha.

On this page I added a little random photo of our 1st sweets of the season, some super delicious brownies Adam made. The photo wasn’t a polaroid obviously, but I trimmed it down to look like one and added a little washi tape from Target to hold it on.

This left page came courtesy of a Pottery Barn catalog I received in the mail. Love when that happens!

Holiday Traditions

Our wedding anniversary is on December 10th, so in honor of our 7th anniversary, I added some American Crafts Thickers onto the overlay on the right:

If anyone from American Crafts is reading this, I have a request. Could you pretty please bring back the white chipboard Thickers in the Shoebox font? I know you’ve brought it back in a glitter form which gives me hope but I’m still holding out for the all-white to return. It’s my fave and I’m still hoarding the little bit of it I have left. *Note: I’m pretty sure no one from American Crafts is reading my blog.

Behind the overlay I added a self-portrait I took of Adam and I on our anniversary:

One of our yearly traditions while we’ve lived here in San Antonio has been to spend the night up in Austin in honor of our anniversary. It’s a fun little getaway and since we aren’t usually up there late all that often it gives us a chance to try out some new places for dinner. This year we went to this Mexican restaurant downtown called La Condesa. By far my favorite thing was the guacamole and salsa sampler (well and their crazy patterned paper-esque wall):

I included a business card from the restaurant punched with my now confiscated-by-TSA crop-o-dile:

Another card from my mom, this time for our anniversary:

Little did she know she was sending me so much scrapbooking material, haha.

Since this has become one of our traditions, I used the Holiday Traditions themed journaling card for my journaling:

On the back of the card, I include a two-page photo spread with photos of the hotel where we stayed. The past two years we’ve stayed at the Westin at the Domain because they ofter a good military rate but this year we stayed at this awesome (but not cheap) little boutique hotel called the Heywood Hotel:

Seriously, they had me at hello as soon as I saw that graphic wallpaper and modern wood bed on the website. I’m pretty sure I would have moved in had they let me. Oh and ignore my ghostly-ness in that bottom left photo – clearly my pale skin and my black coat are not a camera match made in heaven, haha.

In the middle of the spread I used some paper I picked up from our room to journal about the hotel. The travel tag is from Basic Grey:

I also included the free map of Austin they gave us. Not that we needed it but it makes for great scrapbooking material:

The right side of the photo spread. I so would have taken the chair from our room home with me. I’m not normally a black & white print girl but I loved how graphic and super comfortable it was. Plus I was way excited they had the most recent issue of Austin magazine which I’d been eyeing at Whole Foods the week before. #itsthelittlethingsright?

On the back of the map page, I added the card the hotel had left for us in our room. Love when places do nice things like that:

Holiday Faves #4

And now it’s time to leave Austin behind and head back to San Antonio for Holiday Fave #4 – The Nutcracker!

I had never seen The Nutcracker before so Adam and I thought it would be fun to go this year. I have to say, it was kind of surreal hearing the music you’ve heard a thousand times in it’s actual intended context.

More punched tickets. To keep them together I just added one strip of tape runner to the back of the top one so when you turn the page, they move as one.

The cover of the program from the ballet:

The funniest part of the night happened when we first arrived at the theater. Adam had chosen to pay a little extra to get the upgraded seats that came with valet parking so we wouldn’t have to worry about finding parking in downtown San Antonio. I had figured when the tickets came and they said “Box R3” on them that we’d be off in some corner since we bought them rather last minute. But when we got there the usher just kept walking and walking and next thing we knew we were walking past where we thought we’d be…

See those boxes hanging off the side in that top right photo? That’s what it turns out we were sitting in. Hence the “Box” on the ticket! The bottom right photo was the view from my seat. We had NO idea that’s where we’d be sitting but I told Adam, hey at least I can cross “sitting in box seats in a theater” off my bucket list now, haha.

For dinner before the show we went to one of Adam’s favorite places, Texas de Brazil, since it’s right across the street from the theater which meant we could valet park and then go eat without moving the car. For the photos from dinner I trimmed down a divided page protector to make a little pocket:

Holiday Faves #4 journaling card on the right:

Holiday Faves #5

For Holiday Faves #5, I kept things fairly simple, just a journaling card and photo collage. Adam and I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood and check out the lights – definitely one of the perks of living where it’s still 70 *cough* or 90 *cough* in the winter!

Well that’s it for Part 1 of my Holiday Faves Mini Album update: Faves 1-5. If you’ve made it this far, congrats! 1000 awesome points to you! I’ll be back either Friday or more likely Monday with Faves 6-10. And then it’ll be time to wrap this baby up and move on to new projects for 2013. Eeek, so excited!

Anyone else still working on your December Daily or Holiday Faves album like me? Have a completed album you want to share? Feel free to link me up because I’d love to see your stories!

 

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