December Daily - Day 10

On this day, after work, I decided to do some window shopping. We have a shopping complex very close to our place. I got myself some Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks and decided to venture into Pier 1 imports. I was blown away with all the beautiful things they have at Pier 1 imports. They had beautiful displays. I clicked some pictures of them to beautify my december daily. Here are my day 11 pages:

I loved this Christmas tree in the shopping complex. The gold stars are the printshop rub ons. In the bottom I stamped the sentiment with versamark ink and embossed it with gold glitter powder. I love this gold glitter embossing powder. Both the rubons and the stamping didn't turn out perfect but I'll roll with it.

I really loved this gift card at starbucks. I had to include one in my album. I am skipping days 11 and 12 because I don't have much to record on those days.

~Neela

December 20th Sketch Contest - SOUS

Happy Friday everyone. SO here is my second post for SOUS DT. I really really wanted to make a Christmassy layout for this week's sketch and I searched and searched for photos and believe it or not at the time of making this layout, I did not have a single Christmas tree photo. I have quite a few by the time the post goes live though as I am doing December Daily and making a special effort to capture the festive look all around me. Finally I decided to use this photo of my son painting snowmen in his art class. He has gone for about 3 of them and totally loves it. He would go everyday if he could.

Here is the sketch:

I again love the circular elements in the sketch. For the main circle, I cut it out with Silhouette and I got the cut file from a class that I took at Studio Calico. Otherwise I pretty much used the Christmas Collection from Jillibean Soup. It is an old collection and most probably not available any more. I used some sequins to enhance the snow flakes in the background. Also I painted the mat behind the photo gold. I initially started off by trying to make only the border and gold and before you know, I was painting the whole mat. The Silver thickers are from American Crafts and the little tile stickers are for Glitz designs.

Hope I have inspired you. Do join us to play along at SOUS.
Have a wonderful day and wish a Merry Christmas!
~Neela

December Daily - Day 8

On this day we went for a ballet performance of the Nutcracker. It was a beautiful performance. Arjun and I  went to see Arjun's friend Ananya perform. In the process, we realized that we knew a lot more girls performing that day. It was such a fun experience.

For my layout, I included the handout that they gave about the performance and used a star transparency by Studio calico. I used gold letter stickers and gold tape to embellish it. Again the main star is the photo of itself of Ananya in her dress that she performed in. She was an angel and looks like on in this dress too.

Here are my pages:

December Daily - Day 7

We decorated our house with lights today - for the very first time in 14 years. It looks so great. I am happy that we did it finally. I love the look. Now we are on par with our neighbors :)
I just made a single page for this day - our house with lights. I also added a photo of Arjun's friend Naveen. They play together a lot.

December Daily - Day 4

There wasn't much that happened on this day so I just made a page with Surya in Christmas jammies. The page on the left is pretty much a filler page just because of how things worked out. I liked that our elf was found on the Christmas tree that morning.
I love all the sequins and printables from the studio calico kit and 25 days class.

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 6

I kept Arjun at home today so that he doesn't strain himself in school today. I stayed back and worked from home today. I let me watch a bunch of Christmas related shows on netflix. Actually they have some really fun ones with Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar and How to train your dragon. Do watch their Christmas editions.
He had to go to Math Superbowl practice today and was up for it. He is already feeling a little better than yesterday. I wanted to record this math super bowl club and happenings in my December Daily and also wanted to highlight the diversity of the group. Actually Arjun's school has kids from so many different nationalities that it is amazing. Here are my pages for Day 6.

For this page, I just used a 6x8 photo and did my embellishments on the photo. I used the car tire as a guide for my title. The chevrons are actually cork ones from Studio Calico. I embossed them with gold zing powder. I then journaled alone one edge. I finally used the gold glitter tape and the white ribbon. After seeing so much of bandage, the white ribbon reminds me of it.

For this page, I used a page protector with two 6x4 photos. I wanted four different colored sequins to represent the 4 kids and stitched along the middle and I used Ali Edwards printable for my journaling. I blurred out the faces of the kids just in case.

And here is my complete page for Day 6.

Here are some of the other December Daily pages:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 5

Cover and Intro Page

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 5

Okay, I know that I am missing Day 4 but I still need to complete this page. I am doing Day 5 first. Even though this was a hard one to make, I got it done first. Arjun broke his collar bone while playing basketball on Dec 5th. It was very hard to see him in so much pain. The only bright side of this is that he broke his right side and he is a leftie so he can still write and eat and also apparently,  a collar bone fracture is the least painful of fractures. But it still takes 6 weeks to completely heal. So no activities for that long. We had a bunch of events planned over the weekends for him so all of those are cancelled now. Right now the most important thing is for him to be heal and become healthy soon. Here are my pages for this painful day.

To make these pages, again I used a bunch of printables from studio calico kit. I actually incorporated the T-Shirt that Arjun was wearing that day. I had to cut it to take it off and he was unhappy to see it go as it was one of his favorites so I thought I would save a piece of it this way.

Here are the other december daily pages:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Cover and Intro Page

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 2

I finally photographed my layouts for the second of December. On this day we got out our Christmas tree and decorated it. It is a very simple little artificial tree with lights. I am happy with the no fuss process with this tree. We have a few ornaments and hang them up every year. This year Arjun, Surya and Navin - Arjun's friend decorated the tree. They were so quick and done in 10 minutes but they still enjoyed the process. I love the festive look that it instantly brings to the house. Here are my pages for Day 2.

I added some digital overlays - JOY and CHEERS from the Studio Calico kit and used printables from the 25 days class and Studio Calico Kit. The Christmas Tree sticker is from Jolee's Botique. The HO HO HO is just the reverse from Day 1. I stuck some fun red starbursts on it to add some interest. I wrote my journaling on Ali Edwards printables. I added some enamel dots to one of the printables on the right side and stuck a 2 gold sticker from the kit again. 

Here are links to some of  the other pages:

Day1

Day3

Cover and Intro Page

December 6th Sketch Contest for Stuck On U Sketches

Hello everyone! This is my first ever post for DT position for Stuck On U Sketches from me and I am super excited. I totally loved the cute sketch. First let us look at the sketch:

 I love any circular elements on a page. So this was the perfect sketch to start with for me. I chose a photo of my son celebrating his third birthday. Here is my layout:

I pretty much stayed true to the sketch. I used the Crate Paper Party Day collection for most of the layout and embellishments. The gold thickers are from Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Collection. The gold star rub ons and sayings are from Studio Calico Print Shop collection and the star paper clips are from Two Peas in a bucket. Before adding all the elements, I misted the background with Heidi Swapp Gold Lame'. I totally love this product.
Layering does not come naturally to me, but when I see a sketch with the layers, it seems much more easier. Isn't that the beauty of playing along with sketch contests, it pushes you to do things that you are not most comfortable with some times. Also on this layout, for the very first time, I did some machine stitching along the edges of the pennants. That was so much fun to do. I plan on doing more of this in the future. Hope I have inspired you to play along and you if you want to see more DT goodies, you can find the details here.
Here are some close ups of my layout:

Have a wonderful day!
~Neela
 

December Daily - Day 3

I didn't photograph my Day 2 spread properly so instead I am posting Day 3 first. On Day 3 we baked cookies. Arjun loves to bake and don't we don't seem to do enough of it. Surya has never really baked so he was super excited to be part of the whole thing and getting messy. I tried to find the simplest recipe out there and luckily the cookies turned out good enough. The kids enjoyed them and are still enjoying them. So that is a good thing. Surya wanted to be in complete control. He didn't want me to hold his hand or anything. He is growing up!

Here are my pages:

Our elf Criddles continues to enamour the kids.

Here are some links to my other DD pages:

• Cover and Intro Page
• Day1

Have a great day filled with cheer!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 1

It is very cool that December 1st happened to be Sunday. I took this opportunity to take the kids for a photo session with Santa. People, I think this is the first time ever that we have taken them and I am so happy that we did. Arjun warmed to Santa quickly and Surya was a little apprehensive. He stood a little away and stared for a little bit and then slowly started inching towards him with baby steps. Then he saw that Arjun was comfortable and he decided to warm up too. When Santa asked them what they wanted, Arjun said 'A Lot' and Surya said 'a soccer ball'. Luckily there wasn't a queue or anything, so they took their time and chatted with him a little bit. It was a fun encounter.

It was again a gorgeous day, the temperature was 75 F on Dec 1st. Isn't that amazing? We did a little photo session by the Christmas tree in the mall after the session with Santa.

Then later that night, the elf visited our house for the first time. I read the book that came along to the boys and Arjun was super excited. Surya is slowly understanding to look for the elf every morning now. Ajrun named him criddles.

Here are my pages:

I think I have a spelling mistake in my journaling but I let it slide. I didn't want to scratch it an make it ugly :).

I enjoyed putting together the first page. I enjoyed doing all these activities with the kids.

Check out the Cover and Intro Page of my DD here.

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily Cover and Intro Page

I have been working on my December Daily but I haven't had time to post.  Mostly it is so hard to get decent photos of the pages as it gets dark by the time I come home. Today I think I managed to get some decent photos. So I am up with my post for cover and intro page for my DD album.

I used the binder that I got in the Studio Calico. It started off as a Kraft Chipboard cover. I painted it with this shade of blue (Martha Steward All purpose paint). I matched it to some of the printables that we got in the kit. Just one coat of paint covered it pretty good. In the photo of the album, you will see that I added some washi tape on the side. But I just ripped it off later as it wouldn't stick properly. I should have known that to begin with. I then used the sequins from the 25 days class by Maggie Holmes and then made a tree and stuck some gold stickers below it. It is pretty simple. Actually I wanted to keep it even simpler and just stick the December and Twenty Thirteen sticker but couldn't hold back. I am not super thrilled by it but that's just me.

Now for the Intro page.... One of my colleagues is a very good photographer and does sessions for fun on the side. I requested her to do a session with my family. So on Nov 30th we did a session at the beach. It was an amazingly gorgeous day and unbelievable for a winter day and I love the photos from the session. So for this page, I selected one of the photos from the session. I then used digi brushes by Ali Edwards - Holiday Word Art to embellish the photos. I also stuck a thin gold washi tape along the top and the bottom of the photo. I then added three silver stars( I love these) from basic grey. It is a very simple page, but the star of this page is the photo. Now this I love... I know I will cherish looking at this photo for the years to come.