December Countdown Calendar

Hello friends! December starts tomorrow, and today I am sharing the inside tags for my December Daily journal. The tags also double as a countdown calendar for December. 

In 2015, I made a countdown calendar using a burlap panel as a base. It has a hook where all my December tags fit perfectly. Every evening, I remove the day's tag and write the journaling for the day on it. Then it goes right into a tag pocket in the journal. I used the same colors as on the snowy mountain cover, but in Distress Ink instead of Distress Paint.

Start by die cutting tags. I used watercolor paper, but you can also use other papers, or use premade tags. I die cut 27 tags, since my December journal reaches until Family Day, and I added an additional tag, for extras.

Smear Distress Inks on a craft sheet, mist with water and press the tags into the ink, on both sides. I let them to dry at least partly on one side before doing the other.

Stamp dates with a number stamp from Tim's Tall Text and Manganese Blue ink.

Stamp the ledger stamp from Tim's School Desk on the tags with Garden Patina ink, on both sides. I have used this stamp in all my December Daily journals. It is one of my all time favorite stamps.

Now comes the really fun part. Surround yourself with Christmas stamps and stamp and stamp. I added stamps on both sides, some sentiment stamps, some image stamps, and some stamps for texture. I used the coordinating Archival Inks for the stamps where I wanted more details, and the Distress Inks for the rest of the stamps. Some of the Distress Ink impressions were misted with water after they were inked, for a watercolor effect.

It's a lot of fun and very relaxing to just sit and stamp. Don't worry about getting each tag perfect, the final result with all the tags together look great even if you might not be as happy with a few of the tags.

I love these animals from Into The Woods. It was stamped with Manganese Archival Ink to get a nice solid impression.

All the tags are different, since both the inky backgrounds are different and the stamping.

The trees were stamped with Lucky Clover, after misting the stamp with water before stamping.

I like the mix of watercolor stamping (the snowflake) and the Archival Ink Impressions (the Modern Christmas sentiment).

Many of the tags have an outdoor theme, with trees, plants and wildlife, which fit with the mountain cover of the journal.

I love the font used for the sentiments in the new Scenic Holiday set.

Santa always comes on the 24th in Sweden, so he is featured on that tag. The tag in the middle is the back of the 25th.

Here's Santa on the way to the next house.

My countdown calendar and December Daily tags are now ready for tomorrow.

Here are the previous countdown calendars:

2015 Christmas Countdown Calendar (the first calendar with a tutorial for the burlap base)
2016 Christmas Countdown Calendar (with a video for how I made the tags)
2018 Christmas Countdown Calendar

Thank you so much for looking!

Happy Christmas crafting!!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

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