Welcome to my Holiday Faves Album Update #1 – the Intro Page and Faves #1 & 2!

I’m not going to lie – this little Holiday Faves album and I got off to a bit of a rocky start this weekend, due to some printing issues and my inability to punch holes on the proper side of the page, haha.

But despite that little non-digital reality check, I’m feeling good about how things are coming together so far.

As I mentioned in my Foundation Pages post, on the backside of the cover page, I planned to add an intro page. Here’s a look at what I did:

Here’s a close-up look at the intro page. And no, my handwriting is not usually that neat, haha. I added the journaling onto the card in Photoshop using my custom handwriting font from Darcy Baldwin and then printed the entire card out at once. So it’s my handwriting but WAY more perfect, haha.

On the transparency page on the right side, I added one of the free downloads from Shimelle’s Journal Your Christmas class. On the front is a fill-in-the-blank card…

And on the back is a copy of the Christmas Manifesto from this year’s class. Sums up my thoughts on the season perfectly.

For Fave #1 in my album I went with Thanksgiving or you know, that holiday you have to get through to get to Christmas, haha.

On the left page I glued one of our extra Thanksgiving paper napkins down as a background and then added a turkey I cut out from the center of one of the paper plates.

(And of course my buying them had nothing to with the fact that I thought they’d look adorable in my album. That would be craziness, hehe.)

Here’s a close-up look at the turkey – isn’t he cute?

As you can see, the paper strip journaling says “so thankful to spend this holiday with you” which as much as I love that little turkey, would have made WAY more sense had that page been next to the page I’d originally intended, this lovely 5×7 photo of Adam…

But I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t pay close enough attention to which side of the page you should be punching holes on, haha.

I’ll admit, I was really really tempted to reprint the Faves #1 journaling card and 5×7 give thanks photo (I’d already glued them together) but in the end I decided to embrace it’s imperfectness figuring no one but me will know. Well and all of you now, haha.

A close up of the text I added onto the photo. I just added a simple stroke to my text and reduced the Fill of the text layer to 0.

Here’s the backside of the Thanksgiving photo collage page. On the transparency page on the right, I added a little 12 days of Christmas element from Making Memories.

For Fave #2, I decided to write about some of the local events we attended Thanksgiving weekend. The photo on the right is from downtown San Antonio, the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was SO crowded down there due to the Holiday River Parade but I loved the contrast of the Alamo next to the giant Christmas tree too much not to include it, crazy cotton candy seller and all.

On the backside of the Alamo page, I added some photos from the San Antonio River Parade, one of my favorite holiday-themed events here in San Antonio.

On the right side, I added a page from the River Parade program that I trimmed down and folded to fit my 5×7 size. On the back of the folded part of the page, I stapled one of our tickets from the parade using my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher (love that thing!).

Here’s a close-up of the ticket. I also punched two holes and added some baker’s twine to make it a little easier to open the flap.

Here’s a look at the whole page folded out. It wasn’t too long but just long enough that there was no way for me to trim it to fit without cutting out part of the poem.

A closer look at the page. I love the way they rewrote Twas the Night Before Christmas to be River Parade themed – it summed up the spirit of the event quite nicely.

On the back of the program page I included a map of the parade route as well as some journaling about that weekend’s events.

If you’re wondering how I added the titles and journaling to the two Faves cards, the answer is I ended up adding the text in Photoshop and then reprinting the cards, which was not my initial plan. My attempts at printing the titles directly onto the pre-printed cards didn’t work (I couldn’t get the spacing quite right) and my handwriting looked crazy messy due to the pen I used. Clearly I need to mess with this a little more because I really don’t want to reprint all 8 of the other Faves cards I’ve already printed.

On the last page of the Faves #2 section, I included two more pieces of memorabilia – one from the place we had dinner at after the parade and one from the Holiday Renegade Craft Fair we went to in Austin on that Saturday.

I mention both of these events in my journaling but I think I may end up adding another photo card in between these two pages. Right now it feels a bit unfinished.

What I have learned so far

So with 1/5th of my Holiday Faves Album completed (2 of 10 Faves), here are few of my take-aways so far:

1) It doesn’t have to be perfect. Really.

And I’m going to repeat this to myself 8 million times a day until I believe it.

2) It’s OK if I don’t tell every story.

Right now I’m aiming for about 2 Faves a week to keep me on track, which is much more do-able than a page a day. Yes it means I can’t share every little thing that happens but I’m ok with that.

3) I really really need to practice my handwriting.

And find a pen that I like. Because my first attempts at handwriting my journaling? Not pretty.

So that’s my adventures with my Holiday Faves Album so far. Anyone else super picky about the pens they use? (Adam will tell you horror stories of me browsing the pen aisle at Office Max in college. Maybe it’s a lefty thing?)

How is your own Holiday Album going? If you’ve finished any pages be sure to link me up in the comments so I can check them out. I’d love to see them!

PS…In case you missed it, I have a FREE Holiday Album Idea Book available for download in this post. It’s a little Christmas gift from my CT and I. : )

Can I take Levitra if I am taking other remedies at the same time