Month: December 2011

december daily, document christmas, digital scrapbook album

December Daily – Week 2 Recap

Published by Sula H.

Another week has passed, which means I have a whole new set of December Daily pages ready to present to you.   (This page was featured at Logyourmemory.com earlier this week!) Being well into the project now, I have to say that I still don’t feel overwhelmed at all trying to catch up. Having prepared that foundation page, and given some thoughts to how to tackle it before I started, really helps me now to stay on top of everything. It’s an easy project, and I look forward to scrapping a new day every single time. On to another week …   PS.  All images are linked to the gallery for credits. PPS. You can find my Week 1 Recap HERE.

Freebie Friday: Taking Another Break

Published by Sula H.

Can you tell that I’ve been busy with real life lately? I hardly have time to catch up with all my blogging. So, I decided to give myself another break again this week. But that doesn’t mean you have to be disappointed. Let me remind you that over at SSD you can pick a new free template every day throughout the month of December. So that should give you plenty of templates to work with! And if that isn’t good news enough already, I’ve got something to top it! SSD also has a retirement sale going on till Dec. 24th. Hundreds of products are for sale at half price (that’s 50% off!!!), so make sure you stop over there for your share of scrappy goodness! Anyways, winter break is around the corner, which means very soon I’ll have more time to create my own freebies for you again. So stay posted!  

A Lot Like Christmas

Published by Sula H.

First it was only my apartment, then it was our dining hall, and now, finally even in our lobby it begins to look a lot like Christmas. As I’ve said before, whether you like the style and decorations really is a question of personal taste, but at least signs of Christmas are popping up everywhere even around campus. Well, if that’s not reason enough to welcome the season!

P2D: Christmas Cheer

Published by Sula H.

I decided to switch things up a bit. Since I’m posting my December Daily project every Saturday (during December), I’m going to share another paper to digi project with you today. I found this paper layout a while back: Basically, I love everything about this page. So I wanted to try my hand on it digitally. I loved all the tags, the scattered elements, and the journaling around the center piece. So, I went ahead, and created my own page, using various tags and tag-overlays and what not, and here’s how it turned out: If you haven’t tried your hand at P2D yet, I highly recommend it! It’s just a whole lot of fun!

Food Corner: Vanilla Cookies

Published by Sula H.

Usually, I only present you with short descriptions for the food corner. Today, however, I have something special in store for you: A very easy cookie recipe. You will need: 2 cups flour (all-purpose) / 250 g wheat flower 1/3 cup granulated sugar / 75 g sugar 1-2 teaspoons vanilla powder / 2 pouches vanilla powder (16 g) 1 pinch salt 1 egg (medium) 1/2 cup softened butter (unsalted) / 125 g softened butter or margarine Time: about 40 min. Difficulty: Easy Preparations: Preheat oven to 350 F (180-200 °C depending on your oven). Lightly grease baking sheets, or line with parchment paper. Dough: Sift flour into a bowl. Add all other ingredients. Stir until the dough is smooth. Take some of the dough, roll out to about 1/4-1/3 inch thick (about 1/2 cm; depending on the crunchiness you prefer). Cut out cookies with shapes/cookie cutters, and place cookies on your baking sheet. Bake for about 9 min. If desired, decorate the cookies with melted chocolate. Yield varies on how thick/thin you roll the dough …

Enable Me: Glitter Styles

Published by Sula H.

What is Christmas without the magic … and the glitter? Of course, when scrapping, we want to capture the wonders of the moment, and with our pages we try to preserve as much of the magic as possible. Using glitter accents on scrapbook pages isn’t anything new. A lot of designers offer glitter backgrounds, glitter elements, glitter word art, and whatever else you can think of that glitters. Some of them even offer glitter styles for purchase. Today, however, I bring you some glitter styles for free. Actually, the web is full of free styles and actions that you can just download onto your computer (thanks to the generosity of their creator). All you need to do is search the internet a bit, and you’ll find tons of great stuff. But today, and since it’s Christmas season and all, I’ve made your search a little easier. Just click on the image above to get to the corresponding website from where you can easily download these glitter styles.

Behind the Scenes: How to Create Custom Shaped Text Paths

Published by Sula H.

If you’ve seen my recent posts, you’ve probably stumbled across my December Daily pages. If you took the time to look at one or two, you might have noticed how the journaling wraps neatly around all the embellishments without really interfering with them. Today, I’m going to show you how to create such a text path that is customized to wrap around your elements and clusters. (This is useful not only for December Daily projects, but for any layout that requires a custom shaped text field.)   In this tutorial you will learn how to … …  make a customized selection (based on your element and text layers); … contract your selection; and … turn your selection into a text path.   Here’s How It Works …   STEP 1 | Duplicate and Merge Layers Assuming that you’ve already put together your layout, including all the embellishments and element clusters you have wanted to add, go with your cursor to the layers panel, and select all the layers that you want your text to wrap …

St. Nicolas Has Come

Published by Sula H.

December 6th. In Germany that is a date all the children look forward to. Because it’s St. Nicolas Day. That morning kids wake up to find a Santa boot or a Christmas stocking in front of their door – filled with sweet treats like cookies, chocolate, candy, some fruits, and nuts, and maybe even a small present. Waking up this morning, I knew I wouldn’t find said boot in front of my door. No one even knows about St. Nicolas here. But that doesn’t mean I can’t leave a little love in front of someone else’s door (or in their mail boxes for that matter!) So, I spent all afternoon together with my students baking cookies. And while I have no Santa boot or stocking for the cookies to  go with, I know some people around here still will be glad that there’s something like St. Nicolas Day. And that there’s someone here who cares about St. Nicolas Day. On that note, happy St. Nicolas Day to all near and far!   PS. The cookies you …

Journaling Café: Christmas Preparations

Published by Sula H.

Christmas season has officially started, and for most of us that means lots of preparations need to be made. Today’s journaling prompts are all about those preparations. Sometimes we can get so focused on documenting those special moments in our lives that we tend to forget to record that part that has to do with the everyday little things, and yet, it’s those little preparations that help so much to make our special moments unforgettable. I hope these prompts will help to inspire your journaling this week, and enjoy telling your stories! The font used here is my own handwriting font DJB Squirrels In My Pants by Darcy Baldwin (available at the Sweetshoppe).

Thrown for a Loop

Published by Sula H.

Got off on the wrong foot today. At least that’s what it seems. First thing I realized after getting up this morning was that it was raining. Yet again. Now, rain isn’t necessarily a bad thing -except when it rains on Mondays or Tuesdays. That’s when my classes are on the far end of the campus, which means, I have a long way to get there. And when it rains, I can’t really ride my bike to class, and that means, I need twice as much time to get to work, which is twice as much time to get soaked by the rain. Second thing, last night, I wasn’t able to get the copies I needed for class today, so I had to get them this morning before class. But you know how things work when you leave them to the last minute (which is why I usually do everything I can to avoid that) – they throw you for a loop. Now, in order to avoid that loop, I made sure to get up …