born to fly: December 2010

for the past several years i have followed along with the amazingly talented, ali edwards, and her december daily project. i love ali's idea of capturing the everyday moments and the special moments in the days leading up to christmas.

this will be my fourth year to participate in this project.

and i find my tastes continuing on with a love affair with all things vintage...

and making old things new again...

i found the below vintage christmas book, dating from 1921, for sale from one of my favorite etsy sellers. i absolutely fell in love with it, and knew it would work perfectly as a foundation for my december daily album.

could the words be any more perfect? the picture is a bit blurry, but it says...an anthology compiled by...

loving the mix of textures here...

using an exacto knife, i cut off the front and back covers from the book. i next punched three holes in the covers and inserted book binding rings. to these i attached scraps of fabric and ribbon. easy peasy lemon squeezy!

i also kept the first few interior pages intact as i loved the images so very much. i plan on using more of the interior pages in the month to come as i start to build the layers of my album.

a few views of the interior pages...

my foundation pages are compiled from a mix of sources...both vintage and new.

scrapbook pages from the dear lizzy christmas line,

and more pages from the melissa frances home for the holidays line.

i also sewed some lovely pieces of wool felt from heather bailey together with overlays from hambly screen prints. love how these turned out!

close up of a maya road mitten acrylic shape i painted over using a

jenni bowlin paint dabber.

lots of vintage ephemera included such as bingo cards, stereo cards, ledger paper and postcards. i simply punched holes in most of these items to include as pages.

i also included lovely pages that i took from my fave holiday magazine of the season...holiday with matthew mead. i thought the images were so lovely that i'd insert them right into my album. aren't the colors just perfect?

another scrap of wool felt that i sewed directly onto my page to make a christmas tree.

a few things i have learned from making past december daily albums:

i definitely like the size to be big enough to fit a 4 x 6 photo, yet small enough to not be overwhelming.
i prefer to insert my "numbers" counting down to christmas as i go. i've included over 25 pages in the foundation, so i know i have enough...i just like to have the flexibility to move the numbers around once i'm working on each individual page.
i don't worry any longer about "having" to take a photo each day to put in the album. sometimes holiday cards, receipts, recipes, or simply words describing a moment in time work just as well.

and MOST importantly...

remembering that i don't need to record a "picture perfect" holiday season. i just need to record.

the holiday season is compilied of many different moments...full of joy some years, and more difficult on others. last year was a very tough season in our home for various reasons. as a result, i was not in a happy place and felt as though i had nothing to record in a december daily album. oh, how i regret that decision now! truly, ALL the moments of our life are important and worthy of recording...the good, the bad, the pretty and the ugly. though the holidays will still be difficult this year, and in no way picture perfect...i'm in a much better place than last year. i would have liked to be able to look back and remember where i was in reference to where i am now. and throughout all moments of difficulty there are always the smallest moments of happiness that shine through. i missed out on recording all of those. this year, my intention is simply to capture the view of this year. the little moments, the hugs, the kisses, the cocoa. the difficult will still be there...the challenges still have to be met...but i want to remember the other lovely moments that made the hard ones a bit more bearable.

enjoy!

xoxo