Always in my Heart Layout – Daily December Days 18 & 19

It’s Monday already? Wow that holiday vacation just flew on by. My kiddos go back to school today. The weather here is supposed to be pretty bad starting mid-day today. They are calling for 1 foot of snow and wind chills up to -35. Brrr. The school system here doesn’t close school unless its -20 or higher. Even then it’s iffy. I wouldn’t mind them home a couple extra days.

Today I am sharing a layout as a tribute to my dad. He passed away 2 years ago January 4th 2012. I was sharing a couple layouts I created 2 years ago on Facebook and thought to myself yuck! What was I thinking?? He deserves a better tribute page then that! I am my own worst critic. I guess to put a positive spin on things is that I have evolved as a scrapper since then. I am much more a mixed media scrapper now but still like my layers. I scrapped a photo that he had as his profile picture on Facebook. He told me that I look a lot like him. I see a lot of him in my son Bret and have scrapped them together on a layout in the past.

I included many things that reminded me of my dad on it. He was a lover of music so I created a background with one of our music note stamps and also added a grungy heart stamped just because I love and miss him. I used jet black Stazon and Tim Holtz distress ink. I distressed the background myself and used some Lindy’s stamp gang mists. The altered the steampunk guitar with Maya Road mist and distressed with stazon ink. I layered some Tim Holtz gears in spots.One of the hobbies he enjoyed was playing the guitar. I added the angel wings well because he was an amazingly caring and giving man. I altered the wings with pewter distress stain and black ink. The bicycle chain (which I wanted to alter a bit differently but I didn’t have big enough brads for the idea I had) represents his love of riding his motorcycle. The clock represents the fact that it was to soon for him to leave us. It’s forever engraved in my mind his last 24 hours. To honor his wishes to take him off life support (not the easiest thing to do) and watch him to take his last breaths. It’s took about 24 long excruciating hours for his organs to give up. Unfortunately his heart was bad he was only 64..all of his other organs were still strong which I think made it harder. Even the nurses and doctors remarking how young he look (63) with his full head of hair. There are many things that contributed to him having a bad heart. Him serving in Vietnam and being exposed to agent orange. His lifestyle of smoking and not so great eating habits and I believe even a little bit of heredity played a part. The hearts on the page in both wood and chipboard are just how much he was loved. The key represents the memories we hold in our heart of him. All the chipboard was altered in the same way with mists, inks and black markers for the solid gears.

Onto to my December Daily pages. Day 18 we started our traditional goody making. Jolie made a couple rice krispie houses. They were yummy.

Jolie’s being silly in this photo.

I used distressed paint for the base of the wreath and then then splattered white paint all over the wreath. I used red acrylic paint for the bow and I applied glossy accents. For the bells I used a gold mist and for more shimmer added gold stickles.

Day 19 I created this altered Christmas project. It’s a nice addition to our holiday decor.

I simply altered the candy cane cut about border pieces with red acrylic paint. The ornaments with white and red acrylic paint. The wood snowflakes were altered with white paint as well.

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I don’t want to make this post super long with all the products I used on the pages I shared. I will share the link to categories of the products used.

You can find ALL the STEAMPUNK products HERE.