Out-Of-The-Box December Daily and Use of Cutfiles | Tiffany Medina

Hello everyone! Tiffany here with two unconventional projects, or out-of-the-box ways of doing my December Daily and using cut files. I may have mentioned this is one of my previous project posts, but I don’t celebrate any holidays, so December for me is just December. Yet, I wanted to give a December Daily a go, but do it more like a month in a life sort of mini album. I love that the November Kits are nontraditional in color because it gives a hand towards this type of December album. I used all of my November Kits for this one and a few things from my stash that’s mostly extras I got from the Crate Paper Snow & Cocoa line that weren’t included in the kits.

This is a peek into my album with days 1 – 9. Not only am I not doing a holiday themed album, but I decided to work with a smaller album–a mini binder I got from the Target Dollar Spot–which had me reconsider my pocket pages as the 6×8 inserts did not fit in this album. So I scaled everything down and am using smaller pocket pages and different configurations than the traditional 6×8 DD album set up. Because I’m using different sized pocket page inserts, I’m also mixing in different sized papers and tags and just fun little bits to give the entire album some neat texture.

I left my cover super simple. I layered a bunch of snowflake die cuts from the Snow & Cocoa ephemera pack and put the “December Story” flair from the kits in the center. I used the Exclusive pink alphas to write out 2016, and then I made some cute charms to dangle on the top left side of the album. My first page–my dashboard of sorts–is also really simple. I used that pretty tree paper from Crate Paper as my base, the layered a piece of gold foil vellum on top that was from my stash. I embellished the page with a few of those HKC word phrase strips and stickers and bits from the Snow & Cocoa ephemera pack. I used a gold bow clip to hold the vellum to the paper.

The next two pages are just a simple calendar of December and the introduction I wrote for my album. I don’t know about you, but I like including some sort of introduction in my mini albums, journals and mini books. So for this one, I journaled my intentions for this album. Basically what I’m hoping to do and document in this album. I mentioned how I’m doing a spin on the traditional DD and how I would hope it would come out. I used a mixture of things on these two pages. I used bits from the kits mixed with things from my stash, but I kept them both really simple. I typed up my journaling to match the HKC word strips from the exclusive ephemera pack. I used Courier New font and typed everything out in caps and printed it in black ink on white cardstock. All of my journaling in this album will be typed like this because I like the nice white, clean, simple look it gives the album and I want to keep everything cohesive.

I then get into my days. My first few days, I used pocket pages. This is what I meant when I scaled down my inserts. I’m using various small-scale inserts. For day 1 and 2, I used Simple Stories 4×6 inserts with two horizontal 3×4 slots, so that I could utilize all of the pretty HKC DD cards in my album without punching holes in them. For day 3, I trimmed down a 6×8 insert with four vertical 3×4 slots, so that I could used the vertical cards. I actually really like how this album is beginning to look with all the different sizes and mixture of pocket pages and cardstock pages. I’m terrible at taking photos of my everyday, especially when I don’t have much going on, so a lot of this album so far is me journaling my stories everyday. I think having all of the different pieces and sizes really help keep the album interesting in the absence of photos.

Day 4 and 5 were journal heavy. On day 5, I had to go to Jury Duty, so I included a pink polkadot glassine bag from my stash so that I can hold my jury summons in it. I wanted it to be hidden, so adding the bag between the two days not only adds more texture and interactiveness, but it acts as a day divider and a place to put things in that I don’t want to be seen but still want to be in the album. I embellished the bag with a doily and pieces from the Snow & Cocoa line that I had in my stash. The opposite page, I have my journalling for day 5. I kept the page really simple because the topic was so heavy. I used pieces from my stash to create a little snowflake effect down the page that I absolutely love.

For my last few days, day 7 – 8, I used a pocket page that has two 3×3 slots. I didn’t have photos for these days, so I made cards from the pattern paper and added my journaling and embellishments to it to make it interesting.

Definitely watch the flip through video below to see all of my pages from days 1 – 9.

For this little planner project, I made these cute cooky looking gingerbread men paperclips. I used one of the exclusive December Hip Kit Club cut files designed by Kim Watson in a very different way to make these. Since I don’t own a cutting machine, I never really get to use all of these magnificent cut files that are designed each month. But this post is all about the unconventional, so this is a little DIY on how to use a cut file without a cutting machine! I decided to work with these cut file tags. I loved that little gingerbread man so much, I just printed that tag out in black and white on regular printer paper. I scaled it to full size, so it printed small like it’s suppose to. I then fussy cut around the little guy and used him as my template to cut out a few more men from some of the Crate Paper Snow & Cocoa pattern paper.

I chose the kraft paper with the white dots on them to be the body of my gingerbread men because it was the closest patter I found in the papers that resembled gingerbread. You totally don’t have to use this paper a keep it traditional. If a different pattern paper calls to you, you can definitely make wacky pattern gingerbread men! I also used those Snow & Cocoa pom poms, some pieces of scrap pattern paper, and the pretty sequins that came in the kit as well. For the mint paper clip, I used the ones left over from the Snow & Cocoa clips we got. I’ve been using the rubber portion of those clips in my projects by ripping them from the clip backing, so I have a few of the mint clips lying around. I decided to remove all of the left over rubber and use them for these clips.

I show you step by step how I constructed these clips in the video below, but basically after I traced the gingerbread man from the cut file onto the kraft pattern paper, I cut him out by hand. I cut four of him out, so that I can make two clips and have a covering for the back as well. I then decorated him with the pom poms for his buttons and the sequins for his eyes. I used the scrap pieces of pattern paper to cut out his little frosting hands and the strips at his feet. I then hot glued everything down, adding the mint paperclip to the back and covering the back with the second piece I cut of the gingerbread man outline. Since I hand cut all the pieces, I just trimmed off any excess paper that was left after I glued the front to the backing and that’s it. These little guys came out so cute, I included one in my December Daily album and left the other in my planner. I can see these guys being used anywhere and they even make great little handmade gifts!