Christmas Journal.

Yesterday, I was reading Ali Edward's blog and looking at some of her older projects and it inspired me to get a mini album done.  I am not a huge scrapbooker I like doing ones for special occasions like a baby or wedding but I don't have a desire to scrapbook every picture I take.  I do however love Christmas albums.  I would love to be able to capture Christmas moments in a book.  I love Ali's idea of having the album done before December even starts and then placing bits and pieces of the whole month in the book.  Duh, why didn't I ever think of that. That sure beats scrapbooking photos after Christmas when your not even in the mood any more. 

I decied to document the whole process on my blog for a couple reasons one being that I like the idea of having this online scrapbook of creating a scrapbook, thats pretty cool and then also hopefully, something I do will give you an idea that you can take and create your own project.  So here I go...

I started by collection materials that I was going to use for this album. 
Some I bought and some I already had.

Here are a couple close-ups of the materials I am going to use.  I decided to go with a 7 gypsies 8 X 8 chipboard pieces which I will make into an album.  I am someone that thinks everything at Christmas should have glitter on it.  So a lot of what is in this pile is either glittered already or is getting ready to be glittered. 

I am loving these Mistletoe chipboard buttons by Making Memories here below.  Aren't they cute?

First things first, I got organized.

I always do this.  Everything that has a bunch of loose pieces I always put in a ziplock bag. Here I dumped out the Tim Holtz Fragments  and the Making Memories Silver (glittered) Flourishes and 7 gypsies tags and put them in bags.  That way I don't have to worry about keeping everything in those little packages.  I put all the remaining embellishments in another bag and then the painting supplies all together as well.  A little organization goes a long way here. 

And then I began...

I layed out how I wanted the book to go. 

I decided to alternate between chipboard, acrylic, and smaller white chipboard pages for a little interest.   By the way those are the Jenni Bolin papers that I am going to be altering next.

But first I painted the cover of the album red with Making Memories Cranberry Red acrylic paint. 

I started painting upstairs on the kitchen counter (over yesterday's Macy ad) because my little Ethan (10 months) was playing in this jumpy seat thing and I didn't want to disrupt his fun and take him to the basement where my space is. So anyway I painted this red and then I also put a coat of Making Memories Clear Glaze on too.

Next,

 I started by prepping some of the paper that I had bought.  I love the vintage papers by Jenni Bolin for  Christmas  but I did decide that they needed a little somthing. 

I started with Jenni Bolin's Bookprint paper and gave it a wash of MM cranberry paint.  Acrylic paints are water soluble so you can add water to thin them out if you want.  I wanted an uneven wash look. 

Next I applied a wash of silver paint to Jenni Bolin's Red Love song paper.  I love how this sparkly silver paint gave a nice shimmery wash to the whole page.  I loved it so much in fact I went back and added this layer to the Bookprink sheet. 

That is it for now....I am out of time

I will keep updating this project as I go along.  Thanks for looking.

-Kristen