Traditional Christmas

 Hi everyone. 

November is wrapping up, and so it is time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday. Before I get to our newest challenge, I want to thank Cornelia for being our guest designer for our Baby It's Cold Outside challenge. And also thank you to everyone who joined the challenge also.

Now it's time to get ready for the December holidays. This time our new challenge is 

Traditional Christmas

Here's my project view.

This first photo is from the front of my page. Many of you are probably familiar with Charles Dickens' story, A Christmas Carol. That story has been around for so long that it has become part of the overall Christmas holiday tradition in many places. That's why I chose to use this page as my design over at TIOT. (Not because I feel Bah Humbug about Christmas- well at least most of the time I don't. 😀)

Now let me explain this page has such an odd shape.

I love making books, and I love when I can make them from alternative materials. Even better when I can recycle something. 

Back in the summer while helping to clean out some of my mother-in-law's "junk", this old metal cased 1950's phone  directory came out of a drawer. It was going into the trash, but I thought I could do something with it so I nabbed it.

Sadly the "latch" that held this closed no longer worked. Nor did the little letter slide on the right. I originally thought that I could make something right in this metal case. However, the case  only opened so far and when I tried to work on an attached page, I found it hard to work on. That was especially true for the back side of the cards that would have to be worked on with them flipped up and almost standing into the air.

Then I decided I would take the case apart. If it had been made recently, I could have, but in the 1950's things were built to last, and even my engineer husband said we'd either have to get a saw and cut the metal, or maybe, we could chisel out the pin that connected the 2 sides. That sounded  like it would probably destroy the paper (that I wanted to use) , so I gave up on the case and just snipped the paper slightly so I could pull the pages out.

That's the reason there is some washi tape across the top. I will be punching in a new hole so I can connect all my pages together once I finish this project.

And since these pages are alphabetical,  I decided I would make an alphabet Christmas book. This page (and the back) are about the Dickens' novel, and the B stands for Bah Humbug.

To make this page I inked the front with a few colors. I went with smokey colors because at the time of Dickens, coal was the fuel of choice. (And of course, coal leaves a lot of black dust.) I decided to leave the old phone numbers. I'm not exactly working around them. but I'm not worried if they aren't 100% covered either.  I have an older stamp set from Graphic 45 that has some phrases and images that relate to that story. I stamped the building and the door knocker directly on the page. Scrooge and the quote are stamped on white paper and fussy cut. The bells, pine branches and holly are from a Studio Light  punch out holiday image booklet that I've had for a couple of years. They are separate pieces that I layered. I also inked the bottom of my page with some black ink and I added a letter B sticker.

Here's the backside, still for the letter B.

The bow and branches at the top are from the same punch out image book. The winter scene is cut out of a sheet of paper. I stamped the quote and the small holly leaves, and then I finished my page by adding some red glitter glue "dots" as my holly berries. 

I've been working on other pages also, and you can tell the paper in this phone directory is really good quality because it is holding up really well when I add all types of media to it. It curls even less  than a lot of the new paper I have. 😀 I'll share  more in other posts.

You have the next 2 weeks to join us at TIOT with your Traditional Christmas art. Remember, we accept all types of art also. And please don't forget to check out the other designer's blogs.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to see your art over at the Try It On Tuesday  website.