December Daily 2020 Days 16 Thru 20
Hi everyone and welcome back to my 2020 December Daily album! My favorite thing about building foundation pages, even when they don’t feel like they’re coming together right, is when you go to finish those pages and you hit your stride. I am able now to finish several days at a time, and the process is fairly simple at this point. For today I have Days 16 thru 20 to share, and I think you are going to love these pages and the stories they are holding. If you’d like to see how the album has come together so far, check out this link: December Daily 2020. Follow along with my process.
For Day 16 I chose to use this circle page I created using the Citrus Twist kit from last year. I loved all the beautiful patterned papers in this kit! So I punched circles from different ones, folded up the edges, and adhered them to this number transparency. This transparency is so old I’m not sure where it came from! But I do think it was Studio DIY from American Crafts. Once they were all adhered, I then added different bits and pieces, chipboard, stickers, die cuts, and whatever looked like fun on top of these cute circles. I also added my number 16 (from Sahlin Studio) at the bottom of the page. You can also see the back of Day 15 here with the back of the quilted heart.
My story and photo for Day 16 were more melancholy, as Nick and Natalie returned to their dad’s house. I used a bokeh photo for the back of the circles, and to achieve this I printed my photo through the Silhouette with registration marks and allowed the Silhouette to cut out these circles from the photo. I added a few acrylic pieces as a title, choosing white so that it would contrast against the darker photo. To tell my story, I created a tag from Ali Edwards and punched it to go into the album. Along with words, I added a bit of twine and a chipboard word. This really served as a reminder to me that even in the sad parts of our routine, there is still comfort to be found.
On the back of that tag, I used more red stamping and my Hero Arts wood block alphas. This tag leads us into Day 17. In the spirit of full disclosure, this photo was not necessarily taken on Day 17. But at this point in my December Daily journey, I dump all my photos into one folder and choose photos to go with the pages. I highly recommend this strategy if you are not a daily photograph-taker! For this day, I had sewn a 3×8 pocket to a 3×8 transparency similar to what Ali Edwards had done in her album. I’ve used red sewing thread in a zig zag. To build the page, I stacked circles and a star to resemble a Christmas tree on the left, and slid a photo of Emberlynn into the pocket on the right. The number circle is from Sahlin Studio, the star and pleather circle are from Ali Edwards. Our story for this day was about finally decorating the Christmas tree!
The back of this page was easy! I repeated the circles directly onto the transparency, and also used a 3×8 journal card to add my words. At the top of the card I stamped the together word and also used a red puffy sticker. This is a favorite page!
Day 18 was a very special story for me. Our son Addison has been working at McDonalds since about three weeks before the pandemic started. When they did this Disney promotion, it failed and he found the Mickey trains in his restaurant trash can. Thinking of me, he asked his manager if he could bring it home and give it to me as a gift. His manager said absolutely, and that is the story of how we came into this treasure. For me, however, the story is about how Addison thought of me, and how much that means as a bonus mom. So the gift template was perfect for this page! I printed my photo at full page size and adhered it inside. I then added just a few embellishments here and there, along with my words to tell this special story.
I also used the felt numbers to note the date. You can see a peek inside the gift below.
Days 19 and 20 were very simple. I used a template for Day 19 from Ali Edwards with a simple photo from the laundry room. The word art says December Gratitude, reminding me even in the mundane tasks and even in the discontent that I am still thankful that we are ok. For Day 20, we had a car date out to a neighborhood in Greensboro, NC called Sunset Hills. They do a really big light display each year, I’ve always done a page about it in my books! None of my photos really wowed me, so I took a blurry one and ran it through a few fun filters in Photoshop to get this look. I couldn’t tell you the exact steps! But after that I printed it out full page, added the opaque numbers (Elle’s Studio) and the label to make the easiest page ever.
That is all I have for you today! I look forward to the next time, when I will go through the last few days including a very special Christmas. See you soon!
~Theresa