Tear it off

Hello, Eleanor here, with a reminder that it's less than 6 months until December 1st. For the first time ever I have prepared my Countdown to Christmas calendar well in advance.

I came across a great idea on Ania's blog, here, a vacation countdown tag book. It's reasonably quick to make, and a good use of small bits and pieces from various sources, unified by the recurring shipping tags (which I made from cream cardstock and red punched circles, punched again).  When using up odds and ends, I find it a good idea to have one repeated element to bring the mishmash together!

First I gathered old Christmas papers, embellishments, eyelets, paperclips, stickers, sentiments, brads, die-cuts, cardstock scraps, some small flat tree decorations, blooms, flatback pearls, anything that seemed small and vaguely Christmas / winter related. I used less than a quarter of what I fished out, but it was interesting to see what I'd forgotten I'd got, and good to use up old stash.

A few tools came in handy, namely the Bind It All, and a long forgotten perforating blade, for a trimmer which I discovered to my surprise had come with a handle to use independently of the original device, which I have replaced, after many years of great service, with a guillotine style trimmer. The ability to perforate the paper is key to the project, but you could also machine stitch a straight line, without thread, to give the same ease of tearing off each daily tag. Having cut my patterned papers to size - 6in x 3in, I perforated 1 inch from a short end, like so:

Your tags when you tear them off will therefore be 5 inches by 3 inches (ideas for the tags at the end of the post).

I then punched each page with the Bind It All, at the same end as the perforations, as it's easier to do this before the page is embellished. I found it helpful to place a foam sticky pad on either side of the aperture so that I punched each page in exactly the same place (yup, been there done that).

(oops, some strange colour going on there, lol)

Now the fun part, embellishing the pages. I made 25 in all, 24 counting down, (or rather up lol) plus a front cover, where the recurring, unifying tag makes a first appearance. If I say it again, will you believe me that the repeated tag, which I made myself ;) is an endeavour to bring some cohesion to this rather motley collection? No? Oh well, they were jolly good fun to make :D

Warning, image overload, couldn't decide which to leave out! Also, a PSA: those of a contemporary artistic disposition may wish to click away, as on some of these I have used old, no, positively vintage embellishments. No offence is intended to aesthetic sensibilities by these ancient die cuts, blooms, eyelets and other twee fancies.

  On the reverse of each I stuck a journalling spot, some small, some large, and on a few I have the end of the tag folded around, so that the pages can be written on to became a record of the season:

All done, I bound them:

Let's hope I can find where I've put it when December comes, and because it was a fun project to do, I think I'll make another later in the year when the new Christmas paper ranges appear. I can do modern, fresh and new, really I can. Sometimes.  ;)

Finally, what to do with the torn off tags? Punch holes at either side of the top of each and string them up as festive bunting, or a single hole and slip them onto a bookring as a fun mini tag book, or just use them on the pages of a December Daily type of album. Can you think of any more?

See you soon.

x

Comments

[debbie]

Oh it's too nice to tear bits off x

[Leanne]

Lovely Eleanor - but I'd become too attached to tear them off I think! xx

[Lynne]

Stunning, a brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing. x

[Erika]

Love it Eleanor. Great idea...but Christmas....NO! Lol.

[Felicia]

I love your pages for the tag book. Everyone of them is cute! I don't think I would be able to rip the pages off either. Very cute idea!