Holiday

Document Your December

So, I was just waxing poetically about my aspirations for documenting my own December this year and it’s that hope for embracing the moment, the details, the imperfections and the storyMaking that inspired the creation of this week’s fresh release: Pear Tree {the album}.  It is a project that has been in the works for many days and weeks now and that the ever-so-considerate Sick derailed from my hoped-for timeline.  But it’s here.  And I’m really excited about it.  And I hope that you’ll find it’s FULLness and it’s classic and versatile pieces a wonderful stand alone project or supplement to any December storytelling project you are embarking upon this year.

It was created with a heart for giving you options, for creating the kind of pages and/or album that fits the story you will create and document this year.  It is a project full of possibilities and one that lets you embrace your own creative directions while getting to the heart of what matters most to you this time of year: the details.  I really believe that magic lives in the details.

It’s BIG and it’s versatile. It’s full of pages of various sizes, from simple to more layer-y. All with the hope of helping you easily document your December.

Meet Pear Tree {the album}:


This layered template album can be used in whole or in part, for digital or hybrid scrapping of your December stories. Includes templates in varied styles and sizes so you can pick your favorite size or mix and match to create a mixed media kind of album.

Every template design is unique while still carrying a cohesive look for an overall album and classic enough to be able to mesh well with any other projects. They are meant to be built upon with your own style and customization and can be used with any products. You can also re-use any of the design pages throughout the album, flipping and modifying to make them your own and to suit your scrapping or album needs and style.

You can mix and match the sizes with each other, you can mix and match the background paper pieces, the photo spot design layers, the overlays or trims here and there to make this album completely your own. Or you can use it in a straight-forward way too. Have fun playing with all the components to create what suits your story best!

The album contents include:

* 25 12×12 layered templates (in .psd + .tiff formats). These can be used as is or easily sized down to suit whatever album size you may be after (I’m going 8×8!)

* 15 6×8 layered templates (in .psd + .tiff formats). These can be used alone or as a supplement to the larger pages or any other pages you may be creating this holiday season.

* 10 5×7 layered templates (in .psd + .tiff formats). These too can be used alone as a mini album or as a supplement to the larger page sizes or any other pages you may be creating this holiday season.

Pear Tree also includes some additional album designing goodies:

* 10 BIG word transparency overlays (made to fit 6×8 pages or photos but can be resized to suit your needs) sentiments include: Bright, Family, Favorite, Happy, Holiday, Joy, Laugh, Love, Merry, Tradition, Tree, Wish

* 10 transparency overlays in various sizes (5×7, 6×8, 12×12) which can be used to overlay papers or photos or printed on transparencies. Patterns are classic and versatile.

* BIG number transparency overlays for the entire month (December 1 – 31)

* 12 simple frames for photos or paper/journaling spaces in various sizes (2×2 instagram size, 3×3, 5×7, 6×8, and 12×12)

* 12 word stamps for stamping photos or papers. Sentiments include: Advent, Anticipation, Deck the Halls, Fa la la, Giving, Laughter, Magic, Memories, Merry, Noel, Tradition, Twinkle

* 17 clippable trims for clipping papers or photos (in .png format and sized BIG for easy resizing)

All the transparency overlays can be used to create actual printed transparencies for hybrid or traditional paper scrapping projects or they can be used digitally in a variety of ways.

The pages and the extras are created with a heart for Documenting YOUR December. And I so hope you have fun with them!

In total, when all is said and done this is a collection of 50 templates and oodles of extra details and tools.  I can’t wait to use it myself and share the process with you!

I hope you find Pear Tree a lot of fun to work with and make your own!  And something that will help you document your stories with a boost of ease and time!

Pear Tree {the album} is available for $10 (and only $8 through Sunday 4 December!) at The Lilypad

In other news, and something that is equally special to me…this week marks the release of the final installment of the Grow With Love: Letters project.

This is Grow With Love: Letters Edition {December}:

The {December} installment is inspired by the holiday season and by the close of another year. We explore sentimental, silly and more traditional takes on documenting our stories of “reflection”, tradition, and holiday in encouraging journaling prompts.

And here’s a spot of GWL inspiration {so gorgeous}:

Pear Tree {the album} and Grow With Love: Letters Edition {December} are available in my shoppe at The Lilypad through Monday 5 September for 20% off through Sunday 4 December!

As always I looove to see your stories and art too, so please feel free to share with me anytime.  Really!  Just shoot me a mail or share them on my facebook page.  And if you haven’t signed up the newsletter yet you may want to do that so you can be the first to hear the latest news and get the latest exclusive savings.
Happy December!  Happy Scrapping!!!

{grow with love: holiday} day ten

Happy Tuesday and Happy Day Ten of Grow With Love: Holiday!!  I feel as though I’ve time warped from the beginning of December to this moment because a good ten days in between was spent in complete sick-haze-couch-land and doesn’t count.  I have to be honest, those days when I was feeling really terrible were a challenge for me.  I LOVE this time of year.  And I felt so discouraged and spent and completely devoid of the holiday spirit.  So it was definitely an exercise in deliberate focus for me to stay focused on the positives…like the sound of my Bugga’s voice each morning (even when she herself was feeling yucky) discovered our little elf Rachel and her elf-y mischief or the sound of holiday tunes or lounging and watching my favorite holiday movies.  We had to forgoe a lot of what we were looking forward to, but the important thing was we had each other and the whole point of this season was still there.  We just had to work a wee bit harder to feel it.

We are nearing the end of Grow With Love: Holiday and despite all the busy (or all the sick) I hope that feeling of magic and warm is filling you up now!  These prompts will remain up indefinitely and you can find any and all of them (as well as other Grow With Love projects): {HERE}.  Feel free to dive in at any time!

Today’s prompt is another that has us considering a specific aspect of the holidays and one that can be deeply infused with meaning…music:


Even though there may be moments when I feel “tired” of hearing all the musical holiday notes everywhere we go this time of year, mostly I just love it all to bits.  I looove holiday music!  I am working on a page now that showcases my favorite holiday songs in a “playlist”.  And it includes some that make me giggle and warm my heart (like I Want a Hippopatomus for Christmas):

a totally random pairing but song I just can’t get enough of in Bing Crosby singing with David Bowie (ummm..huh? lol!) Little Drummer Boy:

Oodles of other favorites from the Bing and Sinatra and Ella era, plus many traditional hymns and choral pieces and of course my most favorite (as in gives me the chills every single time I hear it), O Holy Night …really any version amazes me but I loove Josh Groban’s version:

ANYhoo…I could do this all night. I love love holiday music.  So I’m excited to finish scrapping my music-y page while listening to some of these tunes.  You can choose many to showcase, or one that is extra special to you.  One that annoys you, one that uplifts you, one that takes you back to a special Christmas moment.  Whatever you scrap I hope that you have fun reflecting on the sounds of the season.

Tomorrow the family and I head to the Polar Express train ride (the Grand Canyon Railroad) and I can’t wait!  It will be just what we all need to get us feeling better and FULL of happy holiday spirit.  I hope you and yours have beautiful days and moments leading up to Christmas!!  ♥

{grow with love: holiday} day five

Happy Friday!  I hope that everyone has been enjoying this the second week of December!  I know it is a time that is extra full for everyone…with all kinds of busy.  I know that I’m already feeling as though I could slow time a little bit to really relish all the moments and have a bit more time for the to do lists. And now that we are battling the sick in our house I feel that more than ever.  Here’s to staying focused on what really matters and taking time to pause.

All that said, I was really excited to take a pause from the hub-bub yesterday to scrap today’s Grow With Love: Holiday post.  And so without further ado here is our prompt for Day Five.


I’m really loving these “in their own words” prompts and pages lately and I love the idea of infusing MORE of my loved ones into my pages..not just me scrapping *about* them or speaking *to* them, but sharing more from their perspective in a real way.  Getting them engaged in the memory keeping.  So I had fun asking Bugga about her impressions of Christmastime.  So here we have Christmastime with 4 year old goggles.  What fun it will be to look back at this.  And in fact I’m feeling inspired to revisit this very page each year to see the changes over time.

Here’s where this prompt took me:

And here’s Crystal’s page:

How sweet are they?!  I just know your own pages will have you smiling too!  We can’t wait to see them!

Hope everyone has a beautiful weekend!  Happy Scrapping and Happy Growing with Love! ♥

{grow with love: holiday} day two

So remember when, at the close of yesterday’s Grow With Love: Holiday post, I told you to hop over to Crystal’s blog today for Day Two?  Yeah well, the Technology Gremlins had other plans and our sweet Crystal’s internet has been very uncooperative today, to say the least.  So I’m here to happily share {Day Two} of the Holiday Edition with you!

Now that we’ve set the foundation for our attitudes and our perspective in our scrapping for the rest of the project, let’s let ourselves do a little dreaming with the prompt for today:

I have to confess the song that kept floating into my head when conceiving of this prompt was this one by Amy Grant, wherein she sings about her hopes, her BIG hopes her IDEAL hopes for Christmastime.  (incidentally, there have been other versions of this song, including a most fabulous one by Michael Buble but this is the one that I remember from my childhood and so its nostalgia really brought on the extra holiday-y inspiration for me).

Cheesy? Perhaps Completely.  But also warm and fuzzy and full of heart and hope, in an earnest kind of way.  Which is just the recipe for a touching and amazing scrapbook page.  So let your “heart dream” and scrap your Grown Up Christmas List.  It could be on a personal scale..the kind of rarely spoken whispers of your heart: wishes for you and your loved ones.  It could be about your hopes for the world in which we live.  It is where-ever your own heart leads you.  And I have a feeling, in the spirit of this beautiful season, it will lead you somewhere really special, really meaningful.

Here is where it lead Crystal’s:

We hope you feel inspired to share your heartfelt lists…can’t wait to see your beautiful pages!

And with that I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!  Don’t forget to swing by again on Monday for the next Grow With Love: Kids prompt…♥

 

{grow with love: holiday} day one

Happy Friday!  And welcome to the first post of our Grow With Love: Holiday Edition. Crystal and I are really happy to be walking along side you in storytelling as we navigate this very special time of year!  We hope that you are enjoying the moments of anticipation and preparation and advent and all things holiday-y so far and that you’re not feeling as though the month is getting away from you yet.  I always end up feeling that way at some point during this season (usually when I’m contemplating my to-do lists).  It is my hope that this project will help me to slow a bit, to pause a bit, to go with the flow a bit more, to smile a bit more and to just soak everything up.

We’ve mapped out the schedule for our blogging {here}…and let’s not get caught up in the word “schedule” or the whole idea of it really.  This project doesn’t need to be another item on your to-do list..in fact we hope, rather, that it will be something you can unwind with as you reflect and as you walk through these holly jolly days.  Remember, this is (as are all the Grow With Love projects) a self-paced workshop.  We will blog (and hopefully inspire) and you check in when at your own pace.  The prompts can be your jumping off point for documenting your holiday in and of itself or in conjunction with any other holiday project.  We can’t wait to see your pages and process as we go along!  So..let’s get started!

Here’s our prompt for {Day One}:

This is a lay-the-groundwork kind of prompt.  It may, at first glance, seem an almost obvious or “easy” something to scrap about…like “well of course THIS is why the holiday is important to me” because the meaning we each find in the holidays is something that is so within us and so a part of our history that we don’t often give it second thoughts.  It’s just a given.

But we really want you to give this a good think.  We really want to get you thinking about what you love about the holidays.  And more importantly, why.  Because it will be the why that will help you stay focused on what you love most and really enjoy everything all the more.  This kind of foundation building can really be a game-changer.  It can turn something “unpleasant” into something appreciated for its blessing.  It can change the way you consider others’ actions and intentions.  It can change the way you consider your own.  It can help give you a fresh perspective on the “old”. It can help you re-focus throughout the busy.  It can really transform and enrich your holidays.

So..whatever it is that you think of, whatever it is that you feel when you consider the holidays, scrap about it.  Get to the meat of it.  For a lot of us, it could be our faith that guides our attitudes and actions and traditions and everything about this time of year.  For others it could be family.  It could be a whole mosaic of things that really give the holidays meaning for you.  Whatever it is, map that out.

Here’s where this prompt lead me:

And Crystal:

We hope that you let yourself get a little lost in the reflecting and have fun scrapping your own “why” and then let it guide you through the holidays..and the next prompts.  The very next of which will be coming tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see your pages!

Hope you have a beautiful weekend!  Happy Scrapping!