Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! I know I am always a little bit late, but I thought I would share our family's neighbor gift adventure with you. We made these fun composition notebooks into Christmas journals for neighbors, teachers, coworkers, etc. It was a really fun project to do as a family. All of my children helped ink, watercolor, cut, glue and my husband even applied glitter glue to most of the pinecones. If you get a chance to find some paper for a good deal these are really cheap to make especially if you look for the notebooks when it comes time for the back to school sales around August. We used the Three Bugs in a Rug Deck the Halls collection for our paper. I love these papers especially the red and creme holly background paper. We cut these papers by measuring the notebook and adding just a bit for trimming when finished. We used Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Seasons Silhouettes stamp for the words. We used Jet Black Archival ink and stamped on some creme cardstock from Archivers that is a bit bumpy and then sprinkled with embossing powder and embossed. We then trimmed the cardstock to desired size and rubbed frayed burlap distress ink across the entire stamped image with a bit more around the edges. We then sprayed with some perfect pearls mist we made from some gold perfect pearls and some water in a mini mister. Then my children did the watercolor over the words and left the 25 without any color. Once the watercolor dried they applied some green stickles glitter glue on the JOY. We backed this on a piece of black cardstock and then onto the Three Bugs in a Rug bluish-gray paper. We used a scallop punch to make a border strip in creme and then the yellow polka cut to size for the bottom of the book. We had a lot of fun making pinecones using the Sizzix Vagabond cutting the tattered pinecone die which we used for the pinecones and the pine sprigs. We used some stickles crystal glitter glue to apply glitter to the pinecones and the sprigs. We finished it off with a piece of glittery tulle with a bell hanging from the middle and a red jewel on the center of the pinecone to fill in the little gap between the two. I thought they turned out really pretty. We made 30 of these notebooks and as my husband says you better get started on next years project in January (I am thinking not quite so soon). Hope you all have a Happy New Year!!