Christmas Advent Calendar Project

It is almost November and I am starting on some Christmas crafts. While I was out shopping for supplies for my Christmas cards, I was pretty excited to come across this DCVW Advent Calendar kit at my local Joanns last week. 

The kit is amazing.  It includes two 12x12 red and white chipboard background pieces, 25 envelopes, three sheets of 8x8 decorative paper, ribbon, rhinestone jewels and tons of stickers and chipboard pieces to decorate each day. 

It also comes with an idea sheet, but you can decorate the days as you wish (with the exception of the 4th, it is printed on the sled, so you are pretty much stuck with the sled for the 4th).  I used the decorative papers to cover the envelopes for some of the days.  The kit includes a red snowflakes patterned paper, a green plaid paper and a light blue polka dotted paper that resembles snow. I also used Stickles to accent the envelopes for the 21st-25th and I utilized my Crop-o-Dile to add eyelets to the corners to thread ribbon through.  I am not sure I like how long the ribbon is at the top, so I might incorporate a larger ribbon bow at the top to take up some of the white space when it hangs on the wall.

I have the perfect recipient for this advent calendar, my friend Melissa's son Mason.  He is four and when I found this kit I knew instantly I needed to make this for him.  I have to find some tasty treats to fit inside each envelope.  I am hoping that Ghirardelli chocolate squares will fit perfectly in the first twenty days and I am thinking I will fill the last five days with lollipops or candy canes since those envelopes are smaller.  Maybe I will fill the envelopes with a little note too!

So I am still learning all the features of my new camera, so these pictures aren't the best, but at least it gives an idea of what the project looks like.  I think taking pictures during the day might be helpful in reducing the flash glare.  As you can see, the chipboard background has a glossy sheen.  I figure the more posts I write and the more pictures I take, that this blog will show gradual improvement with time.  I hope to showcase some of my completed Christmas cards in my next post.  I am currently using the Jolly by Golly line from Cosmo Cricket and also the Noel line from Making Memories for my holiday cards this year.  Look for my next post in the next couple of days.  Thanks for reading!

Camera issues and Christmas Projects

Honestly, I have had some issues trying to update this blog.  To take the photos of the Halloween cards in the previous post I borrowed a digital camera from my parents (it is 4 years old, only 4MP, has crappy battery life and apparently new SD cards are too advanced for the camera).  We had a pretty awesome digital camera until this past summer when our home was burglarized and someone stole it.  We had been meaning to replace it and hadn't gotten around to it until I realized I wanted to start this blog and photos of the projects I was working on were kind of necessary. So we finally bought a new camera last weekend. Hooray! Costco had a great deal on a Fujifilm 14MP point and shoot camera and it also does HD video. Hopefully I will find the courage to do some tutorial videos for the blog soon. 
My plan for this weekend to is to upload some photos of the Christmas projects I am currently working on. I am almost finished with an advent calendar that I am making using a DCWV kit I bought at Joanns and I started crafting some Christmas cards.  My plan is to hand make all my cards this year.  In years past there have been two lists of card recipients; the handmade card list and the store bought card list.  A friend outed me on facebook about the two lists, so I figured this year I better start making cards sooner so everyone gets some handmade love. 

Halloween in Wonderland cards

Truthfully, I made these card in the beginning of September. 

I have been waiting until the calendar page turned to October to send them out.  Last year a friend mentioned to me, "I didn't know people sent cards out for Halloween".  Oh, little did they know that I do not necessarily need a holiday to send cards out.  I think that is the best part of making cards, being able to send a little note to someone out of the blue. 

Back to these Halloween cards.  I just love this Graphic 45 Halloween in Wonderland paper.  I especially love the tags and the playing cards.  Tracking this paper down however was a little bit of an adventure.  I try to support local scrapbook stores as often as I can.  I often find myself calling stores in search of a particular line or brand of paper.  In this case, Halloween in Wonderland was a tricky to track down.  I could find none in Tacoma, but truthfully there is only one scrapbook store in Tacoma (Scrap That! which I love).

I was able to find a few pieces at Papermuse in Sumner, but they were almost sold out (and that was back in the beginning of August). I was able to track down the remaining papers in the line and the tag sheet at The Scrapbook Nook in Kent. 

One free Sunday afternoon, a little bit of ribbon, some basic cardstock and some Stickles later, viola!