Finally Getting Back to Regular Life

Whew! The holidays were busy, busy, busy. We had a great time but I'm kinda glad it's over, kinda sorta ...

 

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and are looking forward to a bright New Year! Thank you for sticking with me during my hiatus.

 

Here's a few pics of the fam in case you're interested and then the project I made is after that so keep scrolling!

 

 The fam

 The fam in our hats

4 dressed dogs all in a row

 Besties

My parents, Joy and Dave with us.

 



I couldn't show you what I'd been working on since it was a gift for my mom but since Santa has come and gone I can show you now. As I told you earlier, we are going on a cruise in mid January to celebrate my parents 60th wedding anniversary. I decided the perfect gift was a smash book of sorts to highlight the places we'll be going. It totals 12 pages besides the front and back cover. I painted the chipboard first and then embellished with papers stickers etc.

 Jolee's Boutique had some great cruise stickers. I used a Fiskars wave punch to make the rows of water and added some Deco Art texture to make the sea foam.

 Background papers were from Auntie Social's cruise collection. The passport is another Jolee's Boutique item and when you open it it looks like a real passport with a place for your photo and personal information and then pages for pictures, journaling or whatever.

 The gold paper is actually wrapping paper and the slides on top are by K & Company. I'm not sure where I found the journaling spot at sorry. The map I pulled off the Internet and then added the picture corners and chipboard letters both of which are made by Recollections.

 

Inside the package of one of the Jolee's stickers was this image you could cut out to create a parcel package. I filled it with some lace, strings of pearls and a gold chain to make it look like they'd been shopping. On the opposite page There are beach stickers also from Jolee's. There's a towel with sunglasses, some flip flops in the sand, a water bottle, and some sunscreen.

For this one I found a map and a flag of Belize on Wikipedia, mounted them and ran some ribbon down the edge to make it look more finished, then added the chipboard letters.

On the next page I painted a sun setting over the water, attached the word sunset out of the chipboard letters, and put corners to mount a picture. A very simple page.

OK so I was stumped on this one. I knew I wanted to incorporate the ruins but I couldn't find any stickers etc. of them, only pictures. I wanted it to be more 3D so I took a thin piece of foam, cut it into brick size pieces and created my own. I painted it with grays and browns to resemble stone. After mounting on the book I added Flower Soft to make grass and trees. I think it came out OK but I would have like it to be better. Again added the chipboard letters and the journaling tag.

On the opposite page I modge podged some mint green tissue. I was going for that rough sea look. I used a Studio G stamp for the Ahoy in black pigment.

For this page I found a picture of Cozumel written in the sand. I added some white flower soft along the edge of the water for foam and some sand colored (duh! :) ) for some texture in the sand areas. It's hard to see here but it came out cool in real life. Then I used a ruler and drew on some journaling lines.

For the opposing page I used another K & Company slide but I mounted it on white CS to make it stand out a bit more. I put some sand Flower Soft at the bottom of the page and set the Jolee's drink stickers in the "sand". I made a pop out picture album with another of Auntie Socials papers as the front and then attached a closure of paper with a Recollections little plastic suit case  for the front.

I can't show you the back cover because my mom walked in just then and I forgot to take one later. For the back I used glue to do a crackle paint technique so it would look like wood (get it? wood of a boat) not that boats are made much out of wood anymore but I like the idea.

So that's my big project for December. My mother seemed to be thrilled with it so I hope she can fill it with lots of memories from our upcoming trip.

Til next time...

Love ya,
~Deb~