It's time to share the next batch of my JYC2015 pages. Day 5 probably came together the easiest for me, whereas day 6...let's just say that was harder. My day 5 (Shimelle's day 6) prompt was Christmas cozy. We were supposed to find things that made us feel cozy and warm this time of the year. I just bought a pair of silly Christmas light tights from Walmart to be my pajamas, so I jotted down a few little lines about lounging around in my ridiculous pants. The actual day 5 prompt was about Christmas communications. I decided to put it off until the 6th because my cards weren't ready yet, and now as I sit here writing this, they are still not done. I did finally decide on a design on the 8th, and that is when I finally got the page done for day 6. Here is my Day 5 & 6 spread.
On the day 6 side, I wanted you to be able to get a sense of what the cards will actually look like, so I fused a waterfall pocket to the front of the page protector, and cut up one of my sample cards. When you lift the front of the card up, you see the family photo that we will be including with the cards in another waterfall pocket. I attached the waterfall pockets with my fuse tool.
Below the picture, you see the sentiment that will be printed on the inside right of the cards, which is adhered to the patterned paper in the larger page protector. I wanted a little bit of space to mention why it has been hard to get the Card design down this year. The truth is that it doesn't have anything to do with the design itself, it's the family update. I usually do some sort of family update in our cards. I don't like it to be a traditional Christmas letter, because those feel a little pretentious to be coming from me. Not to judge anyone else who does them, but I didn't want to feel like I'm bragging or complaining, and I wasn't sure how to word a letter so that it wouldn't come across that way. I have done subway art that highlights new developments. I've done a photo collage of memorable moments, and I've even done a QR code link to a youtube video that highlighted my favorite pictures and had a video greeting from the family at the end. This year, I didn't have the energy or feel inspired to do anything like that, and it took me a while to reconcile myself to the idea that I would have to do some sort of traditional letter or leave out the family update altogether.
Days 7 and 8 were much easier. On day 7, I recorded elements of our holiday season that have to do with all 5 of the senses. I typed it up as a list, and printed it right out onto kraft cardstock, with room at the top and bottom for a little bit of embellishment.
Since the previous spread had been so difficult, I just let this one be as simple as possible.
I made very small embellishment clusters on the top and the bottom of the page and left it at that.
Day 8 was all about the tree, and I kept it simple again with a big photo of the tree glued right onto the page. Since this minibook has a combination of pages in page protectors and pages that are exposed, I've been very careful about my use of adhesive. Where I'm working with page protectors, I'm using my ATG gun, but on the exposed pages, every single element is glued down with Glossy Accents.
At the bottom of the Day 8 page, I added a couple of tags and the number for the day. I wrote a little bit about the tree itself.
Okay, those are my day 5-8 pages. I don't want to jinx anything, but I think I might actually get this project done afterall.
