Post Christmas Regroup

Whew, the rush to get too many things done before Christmas is over. Now it's time to access the damage to my craft room and what is still on 'The List' to finish or forget. But my fingers have been very busy and this is what I've done in the past two weeks. 

These are what I call mini memento journals. They are the same size and design as the other mini journals I've been making recently but they have some preprinted pages inside with vintage family photos. 

I carefully formatted a file with these little photos in a grid based on the cut page size for these journals . That was the hard part. Printing out the pages and putting together the journal was easy after that. These were all bound with a cross-stitch pattern and the paper was tea stained and torn to give it a soft aged look.

I also made a couple more mini journals and some little journals that are not as tiny as the mini's.

These Mini's (above) are 2" x 2" but the Little's (below) are 3.5" x 3".  These were all bound with a simple long-stitch because they have more than 3 signatures each.

After finishing the journals I made a couple more earth power bead strands. There are 36 different gemstone beads in each strand with pyrite, quartz and amazonite anchoring the ends. I also put the beads on in alphabetical order beginning with Aventurine and ending with Unakite.

There are still a couple unfinished projects on the work table that I do plan to finish over the holidays. Then I have to back up to whatever I was into back in September before the "holidays" started directing my efforts.  

Thanks for reading. Have a Happy New Year!
Aileen

Beaded Snowflake Ornaments and Mini Gifts

Thanksgiving is over, the house is decorated for Christmas, most of the Christmas shopping is done, even some cookies have been made. That means it must be time to make some new ornaments and gifts. Nothing like getting motivated at the last minute to do projects I'd been planning for 12 months. 

I bought the wire snowflake forms these ornaments were made with last year! I did make one of the ornaments last year AFTER Christmas then moved on to do other things the rest of the year. This project has been waiting for me to get back to it for 12 months. These ornaments are a combination of 1950's vintage blown glass beads and new glass beads. 

And I'm still working on mini leather journals. This is the 5th one I've made and I went with fat and chunky and a simple long stitch binding this time. It also has tea stained hand torn pages of drawing paper. I learn something every time I make one of these.