Documented December - Day Twenty two - On The Menu

Hi all,

Nicole here today to share a fun prompt with you - 'On the Menu'. I created some fun little menu cards that serve two purposes - they will fit in your album for documenting purposes. But they will also print and go on the table on everyone place setting as a mini menu. I love when I can use a kit and get lots of uses out of it. I used the papers from the gorgeous new Sarah Hurley Documented December kit.

I laid out the papers and used a chalkboard journaling card from a previous kit and added text to it digitally. You could of course do all this manually and hand write and cut out instead of on the computer, I am just really into computer creation lately. I love that Sarah's products allow for this versatility!

You can see my little set of menus below...

And a peek at one of the menus set up on the table...

I hope you enjoyed this prompt and you are having fun planing your menu!!

Create a Calendar - January

Hello, it's my turn (Claire N) to share with you the calendar page I have created for January.

This has been on my wish list of projects to do for a very long time, but never actually got around to doing. So when Sarah asked us for our ideas and plans for the blog in 2015, it seemed the perfect opportunity to begin.

Using Sarah's downloadable template, I have created a scene reminiscent of January. This first month of the year can tend to be flat and grey, but in crafting grey is a fabulous colour to pair with vibrant colour. So here I have added an injection of  yellow to bring a bit of sunshine to the scheme.

Using a calendar template, that will be available via Sarah Hurley's website, I have created the first month, January.

We will have a Pinterest board where myself, Clare, and Jaine will post our monthly pages, and we would love for you to join in too.

We will post our pages each month regularly to build up an entire calendar for you.

I will be working a whole year in advance and preparing this as for 2016, and will be perfect to give as a gift.

Materials

Sarah's papers from monthly kit club.

Sarah's calendar stamps

Nests are Best Stamps - Special edition by Jaine Drake

Documented December - day Twenty One - Christmas Games

Thanks for joining me (Claire N)today, on the last Sunday before Christmas. How are your preparations going?

It's a very busy time of year for us all, so today is a quick share of my page documenting Christmas Games.

Games play a huge part in our Christmas entertainment, and each year Father Christmas leaves a new one for us all under the tree.

We usually start playing after dinner, at the table where we have space for sweets and cakes also. We don't take anything too seriously and we do get a bit rowdy, even when there is only the four of us. 

Our favourite last year was a game called 'Heads Up', where you have to guess what the card is that someone else chooses to put in your headband (or cChristmashat in my case above ..LOL!).

It was one of Stephens presents last year (he was 6) but it is surprisingly difficult.

Other favourites that always come out are Smallworld, Candyland, Logo Game, Marvel Superhero Monopoly.

What games do you have, are you very competitive, does everyone join in?

Remember to use the hastags #documenteddecember and #sarahhurley.

I'll be seeing you again a bit later on today where I will be sharing my first calendar project with you.

2014 Calendar January.

Hello it's Jaine here again and I'm really excited and happy to be a part of this new project for 2015. It's great to get my teeth into a new project and I'm really hoping that my teamies Clare, Claire and I will motivate you to join in too.

If you'd like to join us Sarah will be offering the calendar blank as a download along with the co-ordinating stamp sets.

 I've gone ahead and printed all twelve of my blank sheets ready for filling in. I've added my dates in manually with the new Calendar stamp set and added a journal page at the top. I've since added a couple of holes at the top of all of my pages and slipped in binding rings and mounted it onto a flat canvas so I can hang it up and flip the pages as I go.

For my artwork, I've created a background with spray inks and used my new background stamp Pebbles which I'm really excited about using, and added some die cut elements which I've layered up on the left. I added a few little stamped images too on the calendar itself for dates which I need to remember.

It's a lovely project to do in one go, adding photo's maybe to all the pages and to give as a gift or create artwork as you go along to keep for yourself. Once you have the download and stamps you can create as many as you like and continue year after year.

We'd love to see how you work with your calendar download.

Jaine x

Documented December - day Twenty - Festive Spirit.

Wow day twenty already, that went by pretty quickly.  I'm here to share with you today my thoughts for the Festive Spirit. 

Every year I place a lot of emphasis on the decorations, the perfect tree, the perfect table etc etc etc but I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say it all comes down to spending time with family and loved ones. Years ago we used to live in the Middle East where Christmas was hot as usual, a day off if we were lucky on Christmas Day and finding inventive ways of Santa visiting the children (no snow for a sleigh so he came by helicopter, camel and scuba boat onto the beach one year!) but being away from home made it even more important to be with friends on the day.

Christmas Day would be spent in a local hotel for dinner with all of our ex-pat friends, laughing, singing and watching the children playing but most of all having a wonderful time together.

This journal page from a Christmas journal a few years ago, is what it's all about for me. Being together with those you love. 

So for me the Festive Spirit is showing love to one another. 

2014 Calendar

I honestly can't tell you how excited I am that I can finally share this awesome project AND I get the chance to do this every month alongside my very talented team mates Jaine and Claire. How fab is that? But hang on that's not all, you can join in the fun too, yay!

Before I get onto the how, I want to start off with the WHY I created this particular layout for January. 

Personally I think it's the perfect time to reflect on the year gone by and I take from that how I want to see myself in the new year. So this year I have decided I want to SPARKLE and with plans in place already, I hope to achieve just that. Exciting times ahead!

Now I can tell you HOW I created this calendar....

1 - Download and print out the free calendar template from Sarah's shop.

2 - Using Sarah's new calendar stamp set that she designed for this profect,  stamp the days of the            week diagonally across each box, on the top row.

3 - Next stamp the small heart image above the text.

4 - Take the number stamps and use these to create a box for every day of the month of January.              Starting on Thursday stamp from left to right, working your way down the page.

     You should now have 3 empty boxes on the left hand side of the second row and one empty box          at the far bottom right.

5 - The first three boxes I want to keep free for adding notes later but the the bottom box I wanted to        fill with Sarah's cute little bird stamp. I got this from one of my 'A Few Of My Favourite Things'        kit.

That's the bottom half completed, now for the top......

1 - Mat and layer pink and black card stock.

2 - Cut one of Sarah's doilies and stick to the left hand side of the pink card.

3 - Pop two mini wooden pegs through some parcel string and stick down.

4 - Punch a large heart from some lime card, add some Tim Holts letter stickers with a round sparkly 

     embellishment place at the bottom.

5 - Next stamp out two sentiments onto white card then mat and layer them onto black card. Punch a        star from yellow card then add foam squares to the back before sticking down.

6 - Using white card and a Tim holtz die, create a round tag, then stamp the January sentiment in the        middle. Attach the tag to Sarah's moustache paperclip using a jewellery jump ring.

7 - Now arrange along the string line and stick down.

8 - Finally adhere double sided tape to the back of the layout and attach to the calendar template.

Here's a close up of the layout.

and another close up

shopping time....just click for a direct link to Sarah's shop.

calendar stamps 

AFOMFT kit

Stars stamp set

Embellishmnets

Clare x

Documented December - Day Nineteen - Christmas Blessings

The prompt for today (can you believe it is day 19 already?!) is Christmas Blessings. I am not a religious person, but I regularly like to think about what I am thankful for, or to "Count My Blessings", as my Gran used to say!

This Christmas, at the very top of my list is "Dad". In February this year, he was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth and neck. He started his treatment in April and has been very unwell as a result, not to mention all the associated worry that accompanies the diagnosis. I'm pleased to say that the treatment seems to have worked and he is doing well, although his body still has a long way to go to get back to normal!! But it is wonderful to acknowledge the good. (By the way, that's my mum and my nephew in the picture too.)

Originally, my layout was going to be all about my dad, but then there is just so much to be glad about, so I changed it to be one for each day of the month!! It mostly uses last year's Christmas kit, together with some more of those gorgeous turquoise gems from a previous kit.

So, what will your layout include? I'll look forward to seeing them.

Susie x

P.S Please grab your badge from the sidebar for your blog, leave your links in the comments, hashtag us on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with #documenteddecember and #sarahhurley so we can find and like your projects - we'd love to see!