My One Little Word for 2013 & January Goal-Setting

POSTED ON January 17, 2013 IN Goal Setting, One Little Word

Welcome to One Little Word 2013. If you’re new to the idea of One Little Word, it’s super simple. All you do is select one word to keep in mind throughout the year. Last year I chose the word connect and I’ll admit, it manifested itself in a much different, but still good, way they I thought that it would when I chose it last year.

This year, I had my word picked out several months before the end of the year. That word was time. I was so sure about it that I even created a layout for it at the beginning of December as part of the Sweet Shoppe January Portfolio Challenge:

Layout Credits: Oh Happy Day by Mari Koegelenberg and Zoe Pearn; Kraftelicious No. 2 Alpha by Mari Koegelenberg; Inked Edges Alpha by Kristin Cronin-Barrow; Grey Alpha from A Beautiful Thing by Zoe Pearn; Small White Alpha from One For The Boys by Zoe Pearn; Wordy Bits and Clock from Time Flies by Meghan Mullens and Julie Billingsley; Clock from A Christmas Countdown by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Zoe Pearn; Curvy Corner Stitched Blocks by Anna Apnes; Fonts are Lobster and DJB 4 Lynnette by Darcy Baldwin

But when January 1st finally rolled around, something about the word time didn’t feel right. It wasn’t that was a bad or irrelevant word, it just didn’t feel bold enough or actionable enough. It didn’t feel like it encompassed all I wanted to focus on this year. It was a fine enough word, it just didn’t feel like my word anymore.

Later that night, Adam and I were talking and I mentioned how I was nervous about the start of the year because I had a lot I’d like to accomplish and I didn’t know if was really possible.

And he turned to me and said,

“You have the skills, you just need the determination.”

And something about the word determination clicked. It felt right.

But I wanted to be sure. So I did what any tech-lovin’ gal would do: I googled it.

And after looking at the definition and synonyms like these…

Perseverance, boldness, bravery, constancy, conviction, dedication, drive, heart, purpose, willpower

…I knew this was the word I needed for this year. Because it encompassed everything I had really wanted to get from the word time but in a way that’s much more powerful and really at the core of what I was looking for.

My 2013 One Little Word: Determination

So determination is officially my one little word for 2013. I even made a new layout for it – hey, why not use what you’ve got – that’s the beauty of digital, right?

She Believed She Could by Kristin Cronin-Barrow; Inked Edges Alpha by Kristin Cronin-Barrow; Grey Alpha from A Beautiful Thing by Zoe Pearn (clipped with paper); Small White Alpha from One For The Boys by Zoe Pearn; Curvy Corner Stitched Blocks by Anna Apnes; Fonts are Lobster and DJB 4 Lynnette by Darcy Baldwin

January 2013 Goal-Setting

One thing I’ve known for months was that I wanted to combine my One Little Word this year into my goals for the year. If you follow Elise’s blog, you’ll know she did something similar for her word “choose” last year. And in her Big Picture I Choose class (which I highly recommend by the way!), she talks quite a bit about the importance of not only setting monthly goals but of also capturing them in a creative way.

So I knew I wanted to do something similar to what she did but with my own spin on it. Something I could share here on the blog but also print out as a reminder of what I want to focus on that month. And I knew it to had to be simple enough to put together every month or else I wouldn’t do it.

I came up with the idea to make a 6×6-inch goal-setting inspiration card to go with my monthly goals each month. My plan is to set 4 goals each month encompassing a good balance of life areas (something else Elise talks about in her class. You don’t want all your goals to be say, work-related since you’re likely to get burnt that way).

This is what I came up with, themed around the phrase “This Month I’m Determined To:” in reference to my 2013 OLW Determination:

And here’s what it looks like printed and hanging up on my white board all pretty like:

Fun, right? I just printed it out here at home on Epson Premium Presentation Matte paper and trimmed it out with my paper trimmer. I like that it’s clean and simple but still a little scrappy. Very me, haha.

Well that’s it for this January installment of One Little Word Goal-Setting! If you’re interested in making your own OLW layout or Monthly Goal inspiration cards, have no fear – both products will be hitting the Sweet Shoppe on Saturday. Just consider this an extra early sneak peek for all you lovely blog readers.

How about you – did you choose a One Little Word for this year? Did you set any monthly goals? Are you doing anything fun to document them? I love to chat so feel free to share what you’re up to in the comments below.

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Holiday Faves Mini Album 2012 | Faves 6-10 & Final Thoughts

POSTED ON January 15, 2013 IN Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves 2012, Memory Keeping

Welcome to Part 2 of my Holiday Faves 2012 Mini Album update. If you missed Part 1, Faves 1-5, you can find that post here. In this post I’ll be sharing the second half of my album as well as my finished cover and a few of my final thoughts on this project.

For the cover of my album, I added a fabric spine to it following the same directions I shared here last year:

Since this album was a bit fatter than last year, the rings are a little tight but since it’s still easy to flip thru I’m not too worried about it. I’m not even sure I could find bigger rings since these are already 3″ I think!

On the inside of the cover I added a faux woodgrain paper – it’s actually leftover wrapping paper from Paper Source:

Holiday Faves: Decorations

In Part 1, I mentioned there were still a few themed sections I needed to go back and fill in. This is the Holiday Faves: Decorations section:

A little look at the decorated shelves in our dining room. All of these decorations are new this year and I loved how they turned out:

On the back I added a photo collage of some of the other decorations around our house and some journaling:

This was another foundation page I had left blank originally. I went back and added a photo from one of our nights on the Riverwalk:

Holiday Faves #6

For Holiday Fave #6, I chose one of our favorite holiday treats: apple cider from Jo’s Coffee in Austin:

It’s amazing! We love it so much we even stopped for one last drink on our way to the airport even though it was 90 degrees out at the time. (And yes, don’t talk to me about how ridiculous it is to still have that high of temperatures in December – it’s now in the 40s as the high today!)

On the back of the 5×7 photo, I added another photo collage. The word art is by me and the arrow brushes are from Ali Edwards:

Holiday Faves: Traveling

On the back of the journaling card, I added this 5×7 bingo card. I think it’s from Jenny Bowlin – I’ve had it forever! On the transparency on the right I added some letter stickers from American Crafts to signify our trip to California:

I love taking airplane photos (I have A LOT of these wing in the sky ones, haha) but this one is one of my faves ever since the sun was setting at the time:

On the back of the photo, I added a collage of a bunch of Southwest related scraps I’d saved:

On the map (the back of the drink napkin from Southwest), I drew a highly-inaccurate map of our flight path:

Holiday Faves #7

Holiday Fave #7 is one of my favorite San Jose, Ca traditions: Christmas In The Park. We’ve been going since I was a child and I still get excited about it, haha.

I started out this section with another two-page photo. I’m liking these a lot more now that the back of the album is all pretty woodgrain. Be Jolly brush by Ali Edwards:

Faves journaling card and another photo collage from the event:

On this foundation page I added another photo trimmed-like-a-polaroid – this time of our holiday drinks from Starbucks. Have to say, it doesn’t beat Jo’s!

A close-up of the card:

The Starbucks coffee sleeve I included was a little thick once I added the fabric spine to the album, so I just trimmed off the back of it. It’s not as pretty now but I’d rather be able to turn the pages, haha.

Holiday Faves #8

My dad’s birthday is December 23rd (and my grandma and Adam’s brother too – it’s super weird!) so that’s what I chose for Holiday Fave #8.

I kept it fairly simple – just another photo collage with journaling card:

Holiday Faves: Gift Giving

For the Holiday Gift Giving section, I added a little pocket from Studio Calico with a list of what I bought for everyone:

A closer look of the list. I love that it’s interactive but was super simple to put together:

This accent page is one of the only templates I pulled from my Holiday Faves Mini Album Vol 1 templates from last year. I love the bold splash of paper:

On the right side I added a decorative accent which is actually cut from an old Crate & Barrel mailer. I’ve been saving it for several years now so I was glad I finally found a spot for it!

Holiday Faves #9

Holiday Fave #9 wins the award for being the most happy accident of our trip.

When we flew into San Jose on the night of the 19th, I saw this huge Christmas light display from the air. I had no idea where exactly we were, all I knew was it was likely by a lake since there was a big dark blog right next to it.

Well, fast forward a week later. Adam and I had gone to the mall in San Jose and randomly decided to drive to Los Gatos to have dinner at the Los Gatos Brewing Company (which was delish!) and there it was – one exit before the restaurant! I was WAY excited and of course, how could we not go – it’s like it was fate!

It’s a drive-thru light show with over 50 light displays – it was impressive! The only downside was we’d borrowed my parents stick-shift Toyota Rav and poor Adam was having to work hard since it was like being in stop-and-go traffic the whole time. His leg was a bit tired by the end!

This page is from the program they gave us:

Back of the map and a collage of photos. The photos don’t capture it but all the displays moved:

If you saw my Instagram photo yesterday, this is what the printed photo was supposed to look like, haha:

My favorite part was the dinosaur section – complete with loud roaring and an erupting volcano!

Another two-page photo spread. The little elf was actually building the snowman with a hose, it was cute:

Holiday Faves: Good Eats

Another one of the Holiday Faves themed sections, this one about the way too many sweets we ate:

Holiday Faves: Christmas Day

The big day finally arrived! This is the start of the Christmas Day section:

Behind the transparency, I added a family photo we took of all of us:

Photo collage of the big day. It was clearly the Christmas of the San Francisco Giants World Series t-shirts – everyone got one but Adam and I – because we’d already gotten ours, haha! #SFGiantsfansforlife

The big blue bag I’m holding is the Clover teal camera+laptop bag from Epiphanie Bags. It’s ginormous but I love that it can hold my laptop and camera in one bag!

On the right side I added a gift tag from one of my gifts as well as a photo-pocket insert with photos and journaling about mine and Adam’s gifts for each other:

Since Adam and I both gave each other items that would have had to be shipped back home, we each gave each other paper placeholders. I think he wins the award for creativity – he bought me a Silhouette Cameo and this was his paper interpretation of it!

A close up look of the photo pockets. I just trimmed down a larger photo pocket page and added grommets to it (pre-TSA-took-my-Cropodile that is):

Holiday Faves #10

Woohoo, we’ve made it! Holiday Fave #10! For Fave #10 I went with one of my most favorite faves – California! We ended up doing a bunch of touristy stuff this trip we’d never done before (cable cars in SF anyone?) and it definitely made us a little bit homesick!

I mean come on, how can a view like this not? Photo of the lone cypress tree taken on 17-mile drive in Pacific Grove:

Seriously, I know Texas technically has beaches, but they just aren’t the same. Although they are definitely warmer – NorCal beach weather usually involves coats, pants and wind (which is why my hair is looking all kinds of crazy in that photo, haha) much like this. I think it was actually warmer than in the summer:

One last accent page and another peek at the woodgrain paper:

My Final Thoughts on Holiday Faves 2012

And that’s it! The end of my 2012 Holiday Faves Mini Album!

Since this was my second year doing Holiday Faves, here’s a few of my final thoughts on this project after year 2:

December Daily: 0 for 3; Holiday Faves: 2 for 2 – I think we know who’s the clear winner for me in this one.
Love that this format allows me to change things up as I go. My first fave started before Thanksgiving but since the foundation of the album isn’t daily or date based, it was easy to adjust.
Loved having the themed pages mixed in this year. I did end up taking two of them out (Recipe Love & Music Faves) but I think they round out the album really nicely.
5×7 & 4×6 printable photo sheets make this album WAY easier – no trimming!
I’m thinking next year I’m going to be ready to switch the format up some. Not sure what exactly yet – maybe a different size? Same size but landscape instead of portrait orientation? We’ll see I guess!

My absolute fave moment of this album – seeing Adam get all mushy as he flipped through the album and saw all the stories and photos. Made all the hard work finishing it up worth it and reminded me why I love this hobby so much.

And that’s it for Holiday Faves 2012! As I’ve said many times before, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this project. But I am definitely ready to call this one done and move on to some brand-new 2013 projects.

Holiday Faves is a yearly November/December mini album project celebrating the holiday season. Find all of my Holiday Faves posts here.

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Holiday Faves Mini Album 2012 | Faves #1-5

POSTED ON January 10, 2013 IN Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves 2012

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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Holiday Faves Mini Album 2012 | The Foundation Pages

POSTED ON November 29, 2012 IN Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves 2012

Happy week-after-Thanksgiving everyone! Since Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday season around here, I figured it was high time to get on it and share the foundation pages for my 2012 Holiday Faves Mini Album.

If you’re new to Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves is my not-so-daily hybrid twist on Ali Edwards’ ever-popular December Daily holiday album. After three failed attempts at December Daily, I decided last year that the dailyness of it simply didn’t work for me and since I’m a fan of capturing faves, it seemed only natural to capture that same magic with my holiday album by documenting my top ten favorite things from the holiday season.

And well, it worked! Not only did I actually complete my Holiday Faves mini album last year but I loved the result so much, I’m doing it again this year. Having a Faves-inspired hybrid mini album turned out to be the perfect companion for the holiday season and the type of traveling we do every year.

2012 Holiday Faves Mini Album Plan:

For this year’s Holiday Faves mini album, I’m following the same format as last year with a few additional twists to keep it interesting. Here’s a breakdown of my plan:

Same 5×7-inch hybrid mini album format using my Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album Templates Vol. 2 as the foundation for my design. This size is perfect for me because it’s easy to travel with (being a child-free military family living far from home means we always travel for Christmas) and it saves trees since I can print two 5×7 pages on a single sheet of 8.5×11 paper.
Foundation of the album printed and ready to go ahead of time – This is a trick Ali Edwards highly recommends for December Daily and I have to agree with her. Having the design foundation of your album ready to go is KEY to getting the album finished. It takes away the number of design decisions you have to make during the busy holiday season and it frees you up to focus on capturing stories and photos instead. If you try to do all of that at once, I guarantee you’ll get overwhelmed and stressed out which is not fun. This is very much a case of where a little planning goes a long way.
A mix of Holiday Faves & Themed journaling cards – This is the biggest change from last year. Last year I documented only my top ten favorite things from the holiday season which, while I loved that, I found I missed capturing some of the broader holiday themes as well, like our decorations, music, traditions, etc. So this year I’ve included a mix of journaling cards: 10 numbered Holiday Faves cards and 10 general holiday-themed journaling cards. My hope is that by including the more general themed cards, I can use the 10 faves to capture my absolute favorite mini moments from the season. I’m a little worried about the additional work I’m adding to my album, but I figure if I use all the themed cards then great and if I don’t, that’s fine too.
Handwritten journaling – Last year I wrote all of my journaling by hand and I plan to do the same this year. Believe me, I would much rather use my handwriting font instead because it’s so much prettier, haha, but this is a case of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Capture my favorite stories in the moment trumps all and that’s not going to happen if I have to pull out the computer and print each time, especially when we’re traveling. So this is the best compromise.
Photos printed at home and added later – This year we’ll be traveling to California for Christmas so my plan is to print my photos at home up until the point when we leave and then I will finish adding photos, etc once we get home in January. This is what I did last year and since I already had all the stories written down, it made the process really quick and easy.
A mix of digi & paper supplies – For my album I’ll be using a mix of digital scrapbooking products I already know and love as well as a few paper scrapbooking bits & pieces thrown in here and there. For my foundation pages, I used a mix of these four digital scrapbooking kits from my favorite Sweet Shoppe designers: A Lot Like Christmas by Zoe Pearn, Christmas Countdown by Zoe Pearn & Kristen CB, Tis the Season by Zoe Pearn, and Christmas Dearest by Mari K.

A fun fact, A Lot Like Christmas is a bit of a kit request from me as Zoe designed it based off a mood board I made for my Holiday Faves album. I wanted something with a color scheme that was modern and not too traditional with bold patterns, lots of kraft, all with a bit of a whimsical feel to it. And Zoe totally nailed it! I love how it turned out – the chevron/kraft/apple green/teal-y blue combo is my favorite – and best of all it prints beautifully.

Speaking of printing, let’s get to some printed Holiday Faves foundation pages shall we…

My 2012 Holiday Faves Foundation Pages

Here’s a look at my cover page. Right now it’s just printed card stock but I plan on adding a thicker chipboard cover as well to make the album a bit more sturdy. This page will then become the first page inside the album.

On the back of the cover page I included an additional themed journaling card as intro page. The “Holiday Manifesto” wording comes from Shimelle’s Journal Your Christmas class. Over the right page I included a Hambly overlay. I have a mix of Hambly and ink-jet printed overlays sprinkled throughout the book to add a little texture to it. I love seeing the pages through the overlays since it becomes kind of like a mini sneak peek of what’s to come in the album.

Here’s what the accent page looks like when you turn the overlay…

Here’s my first Holiday Faves numbered journaling card:

I purposely designed the themed cards and the faves cards to look a little different. I used a kraft background for the faves journaling cards and white card stock for the themed cards and then switched up the title colors: red & white for the faves, green and grey for the themes. I like that it keeps them similar but different enough that they stand out. The blank page on the left side will be for a photo.

On the back of the Holiday Faves journal card is space for another photo:

It’s hard to tell from the image but the paper on the right page is actually an embossed paper so it has this awesome raised hexagon pattern on it. I loved the texture it adds to the hybrid album. Not sure what I’ll do with that page yet – I may add another photo or I may add some embellishments and just use it as an accent page.

Here’s a look at a few of the foundation & accent page combos. Last year I used these foundation pages to hold memorabilia or additional photos:

Because I printed all my pages on double-sided paper (I used Epson’s Premium Presentation Matte Double-Sided paper since it’s a heavier weight than single-side and therefore more sturdy), I have quite a few blank pages and spreads in the album like this:

For now I’m choosing to leave them blank figuring I will either add photos, memorabilia or patterned paper to them as I put the album together, or if I end up not needing those pages, I can simply glue the two blanks together to make a single page. Plus this gives me more flexibility if I end up needing to move pages around.

I did the same thing last year and it worked out really well. It provides enough of a structure for the album while still giving me flexibility to adapt the pages to my stories as I go.

Here’s another accent & foundation page combo. The paper on the right is from an American Craft’s paper line by Amy Tan and the overlay is an ink-jet transparency I printed at home:

Here’s one of the themed journaling cards that comes with the templates. The music note overlay on the left is included too:

Over some of the journaling cards I added a transparent overlay figuring I will add in a full-page 5×7 photo to go behind it:

At the end of the album I also added an additional themed journaling card for Christmas Day:

If you want to customize any of your journaling cards like I did using the templates, I included a PDF with names and links to the free fonts I used in the template download. On the subtitles, I also added a small 2 pt stroke to give the text a little extra weight so you may want to do that as well.

Here’s a look at all of the pages in my album:

One thing that’s key to remember when building your Holiday Faves foundation is that it’s just that: a foundation! So don’t stress about it being perfect or choosing the “right” kits or products (because we all know with digital the options can be practically endless). Just remember this is just the beginning stage and the real magic will happen once you start adding photos and stories and bits & pieces of life into your album.

So what about you? Do you have your Holiday/December Daily album foundation pages all ready to go? Are you getting excited to start documenting yet? I’d love to see what you’re up to so feel free to link me up to your pages in the comments!

Psst…want to make your own Holiday Faves-style album? Pick up the 2012 Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album Templates here.

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It’s Time for December Daily Nettio-Style, Round 2

POSTED ON November 17, 2012 IN Announcements, Holiday Faves, Holiday Faves 2012, Shop News & Releases

Wow, November is half already half over! The holiday season will be here before we know which means it’s time for one of the scrapbooking projects I most look forward to every year: December Daily.

Back in 2010, I created a 7×9 mixed-sized paper mini book and I have to say I LOVED it. Of all the scrapbooking projects and layouts I completed in 2010, my December Daily album is the one I never stopped thinking about.

There is just something magical about putting together the foundation of the album ahead of time and then seeing it fill up with memories over the course of the holiday season.

But in thinking about my December Daily plan for 2011, I realized there were a few things about the album that didn’t work for me: the daily-ness of December Daily, the mixed-sized pages and the lack of any digital goodness.

So last year I came up with a new plan for my not-so-daily December Daily mini book which I lovingly called the Holiday Faves. It was a 5×7 hybrid mini album complete with foundation pages which I printed and then filled up with goodness over the Holiday season.

And I have to admit, I may have done a happy dance or two in excitement over it because it worked out even better than I’d hoped.

(You can find an entire video of my 2011 Holiday Faves album here.)

Which brings me to today’s Sweet Shoppe Saturday New Release!

The Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album Templates Vol. 2

Yes, the Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album templates are back with an all-new more awesome design combined with the same hybrid 5×7-inch tree-saving style!

And I could not be more excited. Seriously, lots of oh-so-excited (and occasionally awkward, I’m sure) happy dances going on over here, haha. Especially knowing just how well the Holiday Faves worked out for me last year.

You can read about all the details of the Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album Templates here at Sweet Shoppe Designs but here are a few specific things I want to point out:

The mini album templates are 5×7 inches which for me is the perfect balance of size and at-home printability since you can print 2 5×7 pages on a single 8.5×11 pages. Woohoo for saving trees!
I designed the templates to be a starting point for building your Holiday album foundations pages so I kept the design simple so you can dress them up or down depending on your personal style. The goal is to let your photos, memorabilia and memories take center stage.
I will be going with a Holiday Faves theme for my album with my plan being to document my top ten favorite things from this Holiday season (with the backup plan being if I only get to say, 5, it’ll be ok). But if you’re not a Faves fiend like I am, haha, I also included a “Holiday Memories” cover and journaling option as well a list of the fonts I used so you can customize your own.
One thing I missed from December Daily last year was capturing a few of the more broad holiday themes, like decorations, music, etc so this year I’ve included 8 additional more general holiday-themed journaling cards for documenting those stories.

What’s really cool about these templates is not only can you use these mini album templates for creating your own Holiday album but I will be using them to create my own album as well.

And starting next week here on the blog, I will be sharing more details on how I’m personally using these templates to create the foundation for my own Holiday Faves album and of course throughout December I’ll be showing how it all comes together as well. It’s going to be fun so I hope you’ll come scrap along with me!

The Holiday Faves 5×7 Mini Album Templates Vol. 2 are available now at Sweet Shoppe Designs and are 20% off thru Saturday, November 17th.

So now’s a great time to get yourself ready to scrap your holiday heart out.

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How to Create an Awesome Holiday Gift With the 2013 Mini Calendars, Part 2: Printing & Packaging Your Calendar

POSTED ON October 25, 2012 IN 2013 Mini Calendars

Woohoo, welcome back to Part 2 of the 2013 How To Create An Awesome Holiday Gift with the Nettio Designs’ 2013 Mini Calendars Templates tutorial. In Part 1, I wrote about how to design & customize your mini calendars and in Part 2, I’m going to walk you through printing your mini calendars and customizing and creating your hybrid gift packaging.

This tutorial assumes your calendars are designed and ready to be printed so if you haven’t done that yet, start with Part 1.

Step 4: Customize Your Hybrid Gift Packaging in Photoshop

Once you have the design of your mini calendars completed, the next step is to customize the hybrid calendar gift packaging to match your calendar. The finished hybrid packaging creates a pocket that look like this:

With thumbnails of the calendar designs on the back:

To customize your hybrid packaging, first open up both the front pocket and back pocket templates in your graphics program of choice. I’m using Photoshop CS3:

When open, they’ll look like this:

These two files represent the front and back templates we’re going to use to design a custom paper pocket for holding our 5×7 Mini Calendars. Let’s start with the Front Pocket file on the right.

The Front Pocket file includes a layered digital template for customizing your pocket as well as optional crop and fold marks to help you assemble your pocket after you print.

The first thing you are going to do is customize the paper accent strip and calendar accent tag. To do this you can add either a color Fill layer, Color Overlay layer style or clip a digital scrapbooking paper directly to those layers. If you need step-by-step directions on how to do any of these method, see Part 1 of this tutorial here.

Here is what mine looks like with a green Color Overlay layer style added to the paper accent strip:

The next step is to customize the background of the front cover of the pocket. In my case I would like to leave my pocket the same shade of white as the card stock I plan to print on, so I am going to hide the front cover background layer like so:

This is where the crop marks come in handy so I’ll know once I print where I need to trim to get the correct pocket size.

Now that we have the front cover of our pocket customized, now we’re going to customize the back pocket template.

The back pocket template looks like this and includes space for thumbnail images of each calendar as well as customizable optional gift tag and directions for assembling your pocket.

Let’s start by adding our calendar thumbnails to the back template.

First open one of your completed calendar templates in Photoshop and select all of the layers except the calendar and the calendar background layer. Click Cmd/Ctrl+E to Merge Layers. Your layer palette should now look like this:

Next we’re going to drag the merged layers onto our calendar background. You may want to rename the layer so you know which month is which:

Now we’re going to resize the layer we just merged to be the same size as the month thumbnail. Drag the top left corner of the merged layer just over the top left corner of the January thumbnail. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to bring up your Tranform Tool and resize your layer down until it matches the size of the thumbnail. It should be about 1.5″ wide by 1.2″ inches tall, or scaled down by about 30%.

Hit enter to save your transformation. If there’s any unwanted white or pattern showing, clip your image to the template thumbnail or hide the calendar thumbnail layer in your layers palette. Continue the process for each of your calendar thumbnails until your background is complete.

(Note: If you want to create a title page for your calendar using the title page template, these thumbnails are the same size so just copy and paste.)

The final step is to customize the background of your back pocket. Since I want my pocket to be white like the card stock, I’m going to hide my background layer so it looks like this.

Now that we’ve customized the back and front the pocket it’s time to print.

Step 5: Print Out Your 5×7 Mini Calendars

The printing for the hybrid pocket files are straightforward since they are already on 8.5×11 sheets of paper. I highly recommend printing on a heavier weight paper like card stock to give your calendars and pocket some extra stability. I’m using Wausau Bright White Premium Cardstock which I bought at Target but Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte is a great option as well.

To print the 5×7 Mini Calendars you have two options:

1) You can either have them printed at 5×7 by a photo printer

2) You can print at home on 8.5×11 card stock, two calendars per page.

I’m going to show you how to quickly set up your calendars for printing at home.

First create a new 11 x 8.5 inch document in Photoshop:

Next turn on your Grid (View>Show>Grid or Cmd/Ctrl+’) and Guides and draw out guide marks at the 1 inch and 8 inch vertical marks and the .25 inch and 5.75 inch grid marks. If the background of your calendar is a different color than your card stock you can likely skip this step but since my calendars are white, I find it helpful to line up the calendars on exact marks so I know where to trim them later.

Now we’re going to flatten each calendar and drag it onto the grid we just made. If you want to make things really easy, make sure your Snap To Grid & Snap To Guides settings are on by going to View>Snap To and selecting both Grid and Guides. This will automatically make our calendars line up where want them. Place your calendars like so:

Once we turn off the guides and grid you can see why knowing where we need to trim will be helpful later:

Once you have all your calendars added to your print sheet, it’s time to print.

Since every printer is different, I’m not going to give detailed instructions for printing but a few tips:

Set your paper landscape mode
Make sure your printer is not scaling your image up or down as you want to maintain that 5×7 inch size. If you have a borderless printer and you choose borderless printing, it will scale up your image a little bit so keep that in mind.
Make sure to print all 12 of your calendars, your title page if you make one and your front and back templates for the hybrid packaging. It should take about 9 sheets of paper.

Step 6: Trim Your Mini Calendars to 5×7 inches

Once you have your pages printed, it’s time to trim them to the finished 5×7-inch size.

Start by trimming off the top and left & right sides of the calendars:

To trim off the bottom of the calendar, line up the top edge at 7 inches so you’ll know where to trim along the bottom:

To trim the two calendars apart in the middle, line the left edge up at 5 inches and trim, then trim off the left edge of the second calendar:

Once your mini calendars are trimmed to 5×7 inches, they’ll look like this:

Here’s a little peek at what all 12 of my mini calendars looked like once printed and trimmed:

Aren’t they fun? I just love these little guys…

Step 7: Trim & Assemble Your Hybrid Gift Packaging

Once you have your mini calendars printed and trimmed, it’s time to trim and assemble the hybrid gift pocket to put them in.

As a little reminder, this is what the finished pocket is going to look like:

To make your pocket, you’re going to trim and fold following the crop & fold marks included in the pocket files. This is what they look like once printed:

The first step is to trim and fold the front panel for the pocket following the crop marks:

Line up the crop marks on your paper trimmer like so:

But don’t cut all the way across the paper, you just want to cut to the next crop mark like so:

If you trim all the way across the paper, you’ll trim off the crop mark as well which will make it a little tricker to get your pocket to the correct size, especially if you’re trimming out a white pocket like I am.

Keep trimming all the way around until it looks like this:

Then pop out the front panel of your pocket:

Next trim out the back panel of the pocket following the crop marks. I included assembly directions and a customizable gift tag on this sheet so you’ll want to trim those off first, then trim all the edges:

Once your back panel is trimmed, it should be a square like this:

Next you need to trim off the angled corners. This will help your pocket go together more smooth and not get bunchy in the corners. You can use scissors and trim the corners off following the line (it doesn’t have to be perfect) or you can use a paper trimmer like I did:

Once you have both your front and back panels trimmed, they should look like this:

Next we’re going to assemble the pocket!

Start by folding the front panel along the gray fold line. You want to fold just above the dotted line so that none of the line shows on the front of the pocket.

I found the easiest way to get a crisp line was to use a metal ruler along the edge of my desk like this. Just line it up and fold:

Do the same for the edges of the back panel of the pocket:

If you need to get the line a little crisper, a ruler works great:

Once your edges are all folded, this is what the pocket pieces look like:

Now we’re going to glue the front and back panels of the pocket together to create our pocket.

Start by laying the back panel design side down with the arrows pointing away from you towards the top of the pocket. Line up the folded edge of the front panel design-side down along the bottom of the back panel and add a bit of glue or tape runner to the folded edge of the front panel like so:

Next, gently fold back the edges of the back panel to give yourself a little more room to work:

Line up the bottom edges of the two panels and fold the glued edge onto the inside of the back panel to create the bottom of the pocket. Press firmly to make sure it’s glued down nice and tight:

Now add glue or tape runner along the folded edges of the back pocket:

Fold up the front of the pocket and glue it down to the folded edges, being careful to keep the edges of the pocket nice and lined up. It’s a little tricky so slow & steady is the way to go:

Now you have a pocket!

The last step is optional but if you want to add a little design detail to your pocket and make it easier for someone to pull the calendars out, use a circular paper punch to cut a half circle out of the top of the pocket. I used one that was 1 1/4″ wide:

You’ve now finished your mini calendars and hybrid gift packaging! I added a little paper clip by Tim Holtz to my calendars to keep them all together:

Just slide your calendars into the pocket…

And your mini calendar gift is all ready to go!

Well that concludes this two-part super-sized tutorial on how you can use my 2013 Mini Calendar templates to create your own awesome holiday gift. As always, if you have any questions, let me know in the comments section!

And of course, if you’d like to create your own awesome holiday gift using this tutorial, you can find my 2013 5×7 Geometric and Photo Love Mini Calendar Templates at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

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