Mini Album Makers November challenge (plus some freebies)

Hello friends, can you believe it is actually November already? Where has the year gone....?
Well, it's the first of the month and that means there is a new challenge starting over at the Mini Album Makers challengge blog.
So here is my contribution for this month's challenge:

Whether we like it or not,  Christmas is only a few weeks away. We all know what a busy time of year lies ahead, and so I thought I would make myself a littlle Christmas planner. I am including some freebie pages in this post, so if you want to, you can download those to make your own. But first let me tell you how I made mine.

I'll start with the cover: I used the Eileen Hull Mini Album Die and cut the cover from white mount board to which I had added some scrapbook paper. Next I coloured both sides using a mix of Archival and Distress inks, did some spritzing and flicking and finally added a little gold foiling, using a gluestick and some Ranger foil.

On the back I added a little angel left over from another project. It was cut with a Tim Holtz Movers and Shapers die. The nodges you see on the top and bottom were cut by me. Eileen's Passport die has nodges like that, which I like because it makes adding inserts easier, so if I want I can print more of the inside pages and add them later.

I added some Tim Holtz charms to the spine and my inside pages are attached using an elasticated ribbon glued and twisted around some black elastic. I'll show you more in a minute, but first the embellishments:

I made the poinsettia using the Tim Holtz Poinsettia die cut from some Wendy Vecchi Clearly for Art and coloured it with alcohol ink. I glued a brad in the centre and added some little berries around (making a bit of a mess). Next I added some cheesecloth with gel medium, having coloured it with Distress sprays to match the rest of my cover first. I then arranged some metal branches, berries and leaves round about my poinsettia and glued everything to the cover with hot glue. A light coat of gesso was added to it all to give it a bit of a frosty look.

Finally I added the title with little stickers, but as I had no numbers left I had no choice but to add the year with a black and white pen, not too happy with that, but too late to do anything about it.

The album closes using the tab that comes with the die and a little magnet.
Alright onto the inside: I designed some papers in Photoshop Elements, printed them and then cut them with the die. HERE is a link to a video where Eileen shows exactly how to do that.

And here a few more of the pages:

I darkened the edges with some Vintage Photo DI, and put a little key in the centre attached to the end bit of the ribbon, so it can act like a little bookmark.

Well, that is pretty much it. Below you will find the freebies for the inside pages, for those of you who want to have a go yourself.

If you don't have the die, you can of course still use the papers, just print, cut with a trimmer, round the corners if you want and fold in half. In any case make sure to print them two sided, otherwise you land up with every other page being white once you have folded them, you may want that of course, and add your own notes or whatever you want.

Well, that's it for now, - sorry for this very long post, but please make sure to check out our challenge and see the wonderful books and albums my talented teamies have created. And if you decide to play along again, you could win a $25 voucher from Lindy's Stampgang!!!

    Have a good month of November, - happy crafting and creating and thank you so much for your visit here today!

xxxxx