As you probably know … doing the ‘December Daily’ journals is a huge thing these days, but I have never done one, simply because I know I would never finish one, but I love the idea of this diary styled mini album! I am huge into making myself aware of ‘little gifts’ … you know, little intangible things that happen to brighten your day. They can be as simple as seeing a cardinal on your feeder, the first snow of winter, your child getting a great grade at school, finding $10 in your coat pocket that you had forgotten about, or chatting with a friend from far away. Just anything that brings a smile to your face and warms your heart.
For this diary I used the Basically Bare ‘Tiny Tabs’ mini album and Lily Bee Designs ‘Christmas Cheer’ collection of papers and stickers. For the front cover, I used a ruler and kraft knife and cut a line just through the top layer of kraft paper from the corrugated cover, then sprayed it with a mist of water and waited for a couple of minutes. Then I easily pulled the top layer off, revealing the corrugated cardboard. I did leave about 1/2 inch of the top layer where the binding holes are for extra security. Next up I cut a few triangles from the paper for a pennant, and a couple of bits of coordinating cardstock that I applied letter stickers to and ran them through the Xyron 1.5″ Create A Sticker tool. I really love this thing for adding adhesive to chipboard, stickers that have lost their tackiness, and small bits of paper! Then I simply applied the new stickers to the front cover.
I cut rectangles of patterned paper just smaller than each page. The pages (not counting the binding) are approximately 3″ x 5 1/4″, so I cut the patterned paper to 2 3/4″ x 5″. Then I adhered them to the pages and inked all the edges with brown ink. To adhere the patterned paper to the pages, I used the Xyron Mega Runner, and I can honestly say I now have a very favorite new tape runner! This one’s refills hold 100 feet of tape, and each refill has a little cover that is hinged and pops up to cover the end of the tip so you don’t mess up the adhesive. And the adhesive holds great!
Then for each page I cut a piece of white card stock (Bazzill ‘Card Shoppe’) to 4 1/2″ x 2 1/4″ then trimmed the top and bottom using a decorative border punch. I adhered these to the pages using the Xyron Glue Stick, added number stickers from the Lily Bee Design collection for 25 days. Next I simply cut small lengths of Tim Holtz’ Idea-ology Tinsel Twine – Winter and tied it to the spiral binding. I also punched 3 holes into the tabs on the clear acrylic sheets in the album and ran more of the Tinsel Twine through the holes and tied it on. This added lots of color and texture to the album.
The Tiny Tabs mini is perfect for this, as it has 13 pages plus the two covers, and leaves you with enough pages for the 25 days plus a couple of pages for notes. And if you have a few small photos that you want to add, you can do that, too!
Thank you so much for visiting today, and to Xyron for joining us in the fun blog hop! Please check out all of the Xyron and Basically Bare Design Teams pages for lots of more crafty goodness!
Blessings,
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