Keep Christmas album: Day 1

Hello everyone!

Yes,  you read that right.. it's over halfway through December... Christmas is EXACTLY one week away, and I'm just finishing day one of my Keep Christmas album!

Do I feel bad? NO.

Should I feel bad? NO.

Am I behind? NO. 

Keep Christmas isn't about taking a photo a day and frantically trying to stay caught up through the hectic holiday season.. it's about keeping those Christmas holidays that are important. So, it's never too late to start Keeping Christmas, and no one is ever behind. :) 

I'm using my (if I do say so myself) amazing Christmas scrapbook/mini album/paper crafting kit, Keep Christmas, this season for all of my holiday memory keeping. 

The first two pages are sort of a combo start of the holiday season/pre-December photo, and an internal title /cover page.

I clustered and layered some bits of paper under the photo of my girls during their annual "appointment" with my mom, to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Even though we are Canadian and our Thanksgiving Day is at the beginning of October, this special day has become our little family tradition and sort of commences the holiday season here.

 I used one of the Home For the Holidays tags (included in the Keep Christmas kit, and also available separately, here), cut out the middle portion, and used it to frame part of the stamped December calendar and my little handwritten two words of journalling. The wood veneer star is also part of the Keep Christmas kit; I heat embossed it in metallic gold and placed it over the date the photo was taken on, on the stamped calendar. 

That adorable little retro Santa is a paper tab made out of vintage wrapping paper! TOO CUTE. This paper is so fantastic, it is almost like tissue paper. So lovely. Vintage wrapping papers are included in each Keep Christmas kit, and are also available at Things That Shine in a set, or individually in 4x6 or 6x6 sheets.

The right hand side page serves as sort of a title/internal cover. I love fancy covers on albums but don't find them practical for storage or usage purposes... putting this page as the first thing seen when the album opens was a great compromise to wanting a place to just make something pretty, while keeping the front of the album simple and plain. 

 The white cuts here are all included in the kit.. I added gold glitter to one of the branches, to make them stand out a bit more. The tags, papers, buttons, even the vintage red embroidery cotton are all in the kit, too! 

I'm not super-duper happy with the "christmas" tag, so that might get re-done at some point. Hmm.

I've also made the white cuts available for purchase separately: Festive Foliage cuts in white. They are cut out of white textured cardstock... as you probably know, I love using them white best, but they can be misted, painted, glittered....

For more photos... of kids, cats, coffee cups and scraps...  and daily peeks at my desk and my life... follow me on Instagram.