Getting Ready 2011-December Daily and JYC

I love the new Ali Edwards stamps from Technique Tuesday.  I am loving being in the club and automatically getting these lovely stamps in the mail every month.  The night that I got them I was playing with them and my husband asked me, “Have you used all of those stamps already?”  And I replied, “Yes…I have to try them out and see how they work .”  So this stamp is on the inside front cover of my December Daily.

I love art journaling.  And this year I am doing my Journal Your Christmas (Shimelle’s Class) album as an art journal.  And I am way excited.  I have been prepping my art journaling skills.

I have also been playing with Ali’s Designer Digital templates.  I have new ink and new photo paper.  Next was to figure out how I was going to make sure that they print correctly.  This sheet actually printed slightly smaller than the others, but that’s okay because I think I will probably be adhering the photo templates to the back of the date templates in most cases. 

I also used a bit of her “Messy Little Christmas” stamps/brushes on the photo for a finishing touch. 

The first thing I did was touch up the photo a little.  I had taken the photo at night with a flash and it was underexposed just a bit.  Really, I just made the white a little more white.  Then I dropped the photo into the template.  I recolored the .png file white and added it to the photo.  Because I really really do <3 Christmas.  And I saved it as a .jpg when it was finished.

Then-to make sure that it prints correctly, I opened a new 8.5x11 sheet and dropped the .jpg of the template onto that sheet and saved it as the “print ready” version of my template.  This keeps me from accidentally printing it out and having the whole thing print out at 8.5 x 11.  I really dislike wasting ink!

Next-I used various things laying around on my kitchen table to make an art journal page.  (Just flexing my art journaling muscles  

These trees are just triangles that I cut out and put glitter on a few years ago.  They have been moving around my studio waiting for a home…

I used LOTS of the Ali Edwards November stamps.  And I LOVE the vintage santa from Tim Holtz.  And the Martha Stewart snowflakes.  Well I just love everything that I used on this page really. 

And I’m excited about journaling on the pages once I have them created. 

Is it Dec 1st yet? 

Happy Wednesday!!