The Holiday lens| A visit to the Military Museum

I'm way behind with my December Daily posts, I know, but I want to interject here with a trip we had today. Want to just get the words down so that I can scrapbook it when I have the time (one day...) We are currently having a little holiday in and around our own City. Yesterday, after visiting the Monkey Sanctuary (hope to write about that soon), I asked my 4 year old if he enjoyed it. The answer was something along the lines of no, boring (he actually did enjoy it, but that's beside the point). I asked him what kind of outing he would enjoy, and the reply was: an army one. So off to the Military museum we went today...

To be honest, I did not have high expectations of the visit. I envisaged a biggish hall filled with a few tanks and other Border memorabalia. Well, was I pleasantly surprised... We walked into a well organised, well kept HUGE museum. There were several halls covering a number of wars South Africa was involved in, including the Aglo Boer war, WWi, WWii, and the War in Angola. It is actually a bit too much to absorb in one visit. They had very interesting themes too, eg. how the uniforms changed over the course of a century. How prisoners of war tried to escape etc.

So many absorbing PHOTO's and STORIES. So many people that cared to document stories and keep stuff! Stories and memorabalia that was really touching. Like the lantern retrieved from the Battle at Delville wood (South Africans fought there too) in the entrance hall. It had the original candle in it that was extinguished during the battle. The quote below the list of fallen Parabats: "When you go home today, tell them about us and say, That for your tomorrow, we gave our today". Graphic poems of injuries and horror. Stories of heroes and bravery. Beautiful wooden guns and planes. Detailed old uniforms. A postcard wishing for and describing Christmas in a time of peace. So many layers to this thing called War.

So grateful that we never experienced war first hand. Grateful to all those who fought for our today. Including my own great grandfather who carved a beautiful little book out of stone while he was a POW in St Helena. And again inspired to record our stories. Especially when I see how much things changed in a mere 100 years, and how easy it can be to forget. Project Life, I'm looking forward!

December Daily | Day 5

The kids are daily unwrapping a book as a countdown to Christmas. I'll still create a page about that. But on Day Five they unwrapped a Thomas Tank Engine Letter writing kit. I asked Reuben (6) if he wanted to write a letter to Santa. He decided that he rather wanted to write us some letters. So with little help from me, he wrote me and his Dad the most wonderful letters. Then, as an added surprise, Liam (4) also volunteered to write us letters. I dotted out the words for him, and he patiently sat and traced over the dots. He did get a little tired halfway through, but that was a good enough keepsake for me!

I added text (Claire hand) onto the photo (using Microsofts digital editing program). The envelope I created using a transparent page. All their letters are placed in the envelope. I just measured it a little tight.
I photocopied Liams "letter" , cut out each word, and hand sewed it to the photo on the left before I adhered it to the cardstock. The idea was actually Ali inspired.

I was happy to find a nice train sticker in the kit with a number "Five" on it. The train border were also made with a stampset in the kit. I cut a star out of the photo on the right and added some glitter dotted paper underneath, allowing it to create a border on the other side.  Love day 5.

December Daily | Day 4

On Day Four we attended a Thanksgiving feast at church. We don't traditionally celebrate "Thanksgiving" in South Africa, it is just something our church does on a yearly basis. I just wanted to express some gratitude to God on this page. For the good He's done to us this year. And for the amazing people He's added to our lives. I couldn't nearly include all of them on this page, nor the lovely feast tables with candle lit chandliers, but I love it anyway.

I wrote out most of the words with a black gel ink pen, and painted in some with  poster paint.  The star was cut from an old canvas, and then hand sewn around the edges.

    Here they are, happy shiny people! I might still add some text (in the shape of a star) to the spot where my thumb rests. The stitching was added digitally (Designer Digitals). The word art on this page is from Ali at Designer Digitals. Oh, and I also added a little silver star to this page afterwards. Day four done...

December Daily | Day 3

Life feels really hectic here right now. I've had a few of moments where I wanted to press the escape button on this December Daily project. Choose more sleep instead of a family heirloom! I'm just not used to paperscrapping anymore I guess. I've relaxed a lot about the whole thing now, and the fact that I'm not able to stay up to date. And I am enjoying my pages as imperfect as they may be. So,without much further ado, here's Day 3:

I've since upgraded to a smaller on the outside, thicker on the inside file. It still needs to be spray painted etc.

Day Three tells the story of what December in South Africa feels like. Summer & swimming. I especially wanted to capture all the sparkle on the water. And I love that I got a photo of my youngest doing a "whale" with his pool noodle. I included some art that I downloaded for free one December from Wilna Furstenburg's blog ( she is origanally from South Africa). The Protea is our national flower, so I included it on my photo page on top of some sparkling paper. I again played a little with glitter glue and coloured pens on the printed images and journaling.

It is not very clear on the photo's, but the transparency had a strip of Worldmap printed on it. I placed a little blue blinker on the spot where we live.

And that was day three...

December Daily | Day two

Day two records two little friends sleeping over at our house. A first for my kids. They had an awesome time making their own pizzas, swimming, making icecream snowmen, swimming... Unfortunately the text I added got trimmed off a little at the photoplace I'm printing at. The transparancy is "Travel Ledger, Travel clocks" by Teresa Collins. The stick on tape, not sure, I discarded the packaging. I print all my photo's in the template frames, and then cut them out and adhere them to a cardboard copy of the template. Here I also cut out the photopaper "2" and adhered it over the cardstock "2" with little foam squares.

For the word strip next to the "2" I used some "Tiny Text" stickers from Cosmo Cricket. I just cut out a block full , removed the backing and stuck them in place. The snowflakes and wordstrips are from Designer Digitals., as is the December Daily Template by Ali Edwards. I also again added some glitter glue to the snowflakes. The days of the week were typed in (before printing) using a free font called "Claire Hand".

I am so admiring the albums of Ali Edwards and Wilna Furstenburg. Will still go have a look on Flickr at the rest.

December Daily | Day One.

Hello December, and hello December Daily!

I decided rather last minute to do a paper December Daily this year (iso the Digital albums I've done for the last two years). Being a digital scrapper, I wasn't in touch with the scrapbooking industry in South Africa. So then followed a saga of first trying to get stuff on-line from Capetown, and there-after physically in Jo'burg.
I was amazed that there's apparently no big scrapbooking supplier in my half of the city. Things like printed transparancies and divided page protectors doesn't seem to be of much use for scrapbookers around here either. Rather essential if you're following an Ali DD!

Anyway.. long story short, this (picture above) is what my album looked liked as of 1 December. Pause and take a deep breath...Some stuff were found at a fabric shop, others at a large plastic shop...On top of that it was also basically impossible for me to do the on-line transaction to purchase the latest DD templates from Designer Digitals (I've never had that porblem before). In the end I had to adjust the square templates from last year to use for this year. I further realized that printing my photo's A4 size was just going to work out too expensive, so decided on a somewhat small album, each page being half an A4. A lot of perseverance and counting the cost alas!

That all said, my album is finally (still coverless) underway, and I'm really enjoying working with paper again. I love the freedom to apply things like glitterglue (loving glitter glue right now) and raised areas etc. right onto the page.

SO..Here is DAY ONE:

I'll probably have the file it's in cut down and sprayed silver or something (loving Wilna Furstenburg's album). I applied some glitter glue inside the "one". The photo printed much lighter than the one I originally printed on A4, so the "Hello December" title, in white, wasn't really visible. I went over the words with glitter glue. It doesn't really show up in the photo's, but looks quite nice in real life.

I apologise for the photo quality not being great. My DSLR's lense is too long to take close-ups, and I just used my smaller camera for these. Day one celebrates the fact that my husband started at a new company (on December 1st), and because of a much shorter traveling distance, and finishing earlier, has more family time. This is him relaxing at home at a time when he previously still would have been at work.

My album is far from perfect, but I'm already glad I joined in the fun and documenting!