Thankful 30 Journal 2023

 Hello Creative Friends!

Do you participate in the Thankful 30 documentation practice? I have done it in the past. I do believe documenting our gratitude is extremely important to our mental and physical health. Having said that, I am not very successful in completing a 30-day documenting practice in the month of November. The traditional month for making a Thankful 30 notebook. 

I was so excited for the AUTUMN DAYS collection from Journals For Life, that I am going to give the project another try. I'm changing the "rules for myself though. I started this album in October and plan to document a few gratitudes a month through January. That gives me four months to complete the notebook. I can do that!  I am very happy with my decision to do this as I feel we should be grateful all year long and not just in November. 

Here is my title page. 

 

Here is a closer look at the title. I used the ALEX stamp set from Journals For Life. I stamped the letters on a separate piece of paper and then fussy cut out the letters. I do this often when I want to play around with the placement of an image. 

This leaf pattern may be my favorite page in this month's notebook. I did add a few die cuts, washi tape, and stamped the year to finish off the page. 

I am ready to get started! Let me know if you are doing a Thankful 30 this year. I'd love to see your pages. 

Marci

October Daily 2022, Day 18

I am over on the Citrus Twist Blog today with this Sketch-Inspired Challenge. You can check it out here. http://citrustwistkits.blogspot.com/

I'm using the Halloween collection, Mischief & Mayhem, along with this sketch. 

When I first looked at the sketch, I loved the linear square grid. I followed the sketch fairly closely this week. I did scale it to fit in a 6x8 album. I think it worked out great. 

I knew I wanted this page to be a stand-alone page vs. inside a page protector. That meant my dimensions needed to be 7in wide by 8.25in tall. The papers in the kit are only 6 in wide. To accommodate my needs, I cut a 1-inch strip of black cobweb paper and adhered it to the orange paper with washi tape. This gave me added width and a place to punch my holes. 

To ensure the black strip coordinates with the whole spread, I used the remainder of the cobweb paper to make four mats like in the sketch. 

I had a ton of fun using the Mischief and Mayhem ephemera pack to decorate my blocks. This one with the various witches' paraphernalia is my favorite! 

In the sketch, there are two squares that have word strips hanging off the edges. I first tried the labels in the kit but they were too big. Then I noticed on the 6 x 8 mischief mayhem stamp set there was a small label stamp that said "date". I didn't need the word "date" so after stamping in a coordinating orange color, I cut off the end portion to just have a blank label. I then used several of the fun Halloween sentiments to fill in my labels. 

Lastly, I used the white alphabet puffy stickers to make my title. To mimic the side embellishing on the sketch, I added some die cuts as well as some stamped images from the stamp set. I adore how this page turned out. 

I hope you are inspired to use this sketch and make something fab-BOO-lous this Sunday!

Marci

Day 13 of my 2022 October Daily

If you haven't noticed yet, I love October! I think I like making an October Daily more than a December Daily, gasp! That seems to go against the "laws" of the scappy universe. That is OK though, we all have to do whatever projects provides us with the most inspiration and joy.  For me, that is definitely Fall and October documenting. 

That doesn't always mean I finish my projects in a timely manner though. This year I will be working on my 2022 October Daily alongside my 2023 October Occasionally. In 2022 I tried doing a daily for the first time. As much as I love making the pages and using all my Fall and Halloween products, making a daily project can be challenging. 

Here is my day 13 from last year. I do love mixing product lines in my albums. It makes the project more fun for me to have the variety. 

The new Fall collection from @citrustwistkits, CHANGE IS BEAUTIFUL, is stunning. It has such a great color palette of muted greens, reds, and yellows. This page is all about my seasonal baking. I will never get enough of the fall flavors and colors. In addition to using the digital papers and cards, I used exclusive #CTK ephemera from the shop. 

My favorite element on this spread is the green pumpkins! I isolated the pumpkin images on the digital paper, enlarged them in #Photoshop, and then made my own embellishments. They added the perfect touch to my clusters.

Check out this baking rack ephemera piece. It is absolutely darling. I was so excited I had the right project to use it on. 

Once I finish this album, I promise to do a flip-through of the entire thing! 

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Marci