Preparing for JYC

I've spent today (my day off) tidying and cleaning the house and then once I had a 'bare canvas' (ie the kitchen!!!) I moved all of my Crimbo kit into the house as it is tooooooo cold for daily scrapping in my Shed! Its a sad affair that I have to pretty much abandon my special place in the winter months (but luckily not for too long) It does get toasty in there once the heater kicks in, but for the daily scrapping I do as part of Journal Your Christmas, I just need to move in the warm!!
Here is my kit all looking lovely:






















I moved all my journaling and alphas in and made myself a kit of embellies:
























All the inks and tools I may need are in the house too:




























But I can cunningly hide it all away when I'm not scrapping and the room just looks festive!! Yay!!








         

Its sad to see my Craft room all locked up :0(

 

















But for this project its worth it!!!

I love Tuesdays!!

I think I have a lot of posts on this blog with that title but its true. I {heart} Tuesdays!! I do like my job. But I lurve my days off!! As I worked Saturday just gone I haven't scrapped alot in the last few days, so was extra fast with my cleaning today and started creating right away!
I've made this page today.  I loved the way the sunlight caught on the bark of the trees and made them look all ethereal.  The tag pulls out and contains some thoughts to that effect!

This is the last page I will make from my September GoGo kit. I have one double sided paper untouched and scraps so could probably do two more BUT that paper will be better used with loads of different embellishments so I decided to retire the kit!!!
I have just unpacked the October kit though so looking forward to scrapping that!! :0)

Here is a beautiful present that my mom bought me:

Isn't it adorable!?! It is a sewing box from Cath Kidston:

The bottom half of the house pulls out to be a decent sized drawer and the roof is on hinges and opens to reveal the inside half with the usual sewing box compartment tray etc. The chimney is a pin cushion!! Lovely!!

A closer look at my JYC album for this year

Here is my JYC album for this year.

This year I have not gone with a page protected album (as I used last year) and instead made my cover from chipboard, layers of torn paper, modge podge and crackle accents. I then used some simple chipboard letters and bound with book rings.
As you can see, the album is already VERY thick!!

The reason for this is that this year, although my album will still be a Journal Your Christmas book, I decided to completely scraplift Ali Edwards December Daily album.  This involves a transparency page with the date on for each day and a template page with the date printed on it. 
Here is one so you know what I mean:

On the template page you can add papers, photos, write journalling etc.  It has a lot of scope for simple, quick pages when I am strapped for time, but also can be expanded upon on days when I have time to spare! As the pages have two sides I effectively have 2 pages and 2 sides of transparency per day - hence the size of the album without any pretty papers, photos or embellishments!!! Its going to be a monster!! Pretty but HUGE!!!!
Although I 100% love the album so far - the transparencies are scrummy!! I am finding it a little nervewracking to see how I will fill in the template pages. I think some days I may use the templates by filling in the blank spots and leaving the date number. But on other days I will completely cover the cardstock and do a page that is (to date) more what I would call 'my' style.  Although I am hoping this format will help me to expand what I consider 'my style' to be!!!
Soooo excited to start!!!!

Just having a wander around the blogging world...

And I found something amazing in the process.

I've just bought the amazing Sketches to Scrap app which I spotted over at Jo's. I bought it straight from my iPhone and in seconds there were 0ver 100 fav sketches there on my phone to inspire me! Wooooo Hooooo!!

I'm getting excited...

Not about Christmas (unfortunately!!) but about Journal Your Christmas!!!
Last year was the first year I did this class of Shimelle's ,which you can still sign up for now!
I loved every day of it and successfully did a page a day. It kept me sane throughout December and I loved the experience.
I love my 2009 album too.
This year I am trying a different format. So far I am not 100% happy that I've decided to go this route BUT I've done the work now so I'm going to go with it!! I think once I've done a few pages it will win me over and I'll love it!!
Here is a sneak preview!



























More detailed pics to come! I can't wait for 1st December!!! Yay!!!

Today I was told I had a lovely smile!

And that made me smile even more!!!
It wasn't by a hunky man sadly but by a sweet elderly lady who was new to the library.
Its amazing how a lovely little compliment like that, totally unexpected, really perked me up and made me feel good.
Lesson from today - compliment people! :0)

A good days scrapping was had!

On Tuesday that is!! Today I was hard at work at the library :0( But Tuesday (my day off) was spent with the September GoGo kit as I worked at stretchinbg those lovely papers as far as I could!
I've been getting very brave lately and so far have twice now completed a layout using both sides of a double sided page to get the best use of the scrummy papers!!

There is what I made:

This page used one side of the paper.  It is celebrating the time my best friend and I found a geocache totally by accident (after spending hours the day before looking for one!!!)

Using the other side of this paper I celebrated two photos taken on the same walk. I thought it was nice to use photos from the same day on the same piece of paper:

I'm really happy with how both pages turned out!!

Another page using the kit:

I am really loving this kit as you can tell!! I still have enough papers and cardstock pieces left for a few more pages yet too!! And my yearbook pages of course!! Yay!!

And finally, after posting on here and asking for advice, I have made a little tweak to one layout that has made me a lot happier with it. Thanks to Kate at Liberty Cottage for the advice.



Instagram

Wow! What a cooool app! It's like twitter but for photos only and has groovy filters you can add to photos too!!
Is anyone on there? Please follow me if you are and I will do the same to share lovely pics!
My username there is Stryx



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Celebrating Blog Friendships!

Hi to everyone who has arrived here as part of the I {heart} Blogging blog hop, and to my regular readers :0)

Nearly a year ago I joined a class over at Shimelle's which really changed me! I was already a scrapbooker when I joined Blogging for Scrapbookers. But I had never owned a blog, blog hopped, subscribed to a blog etc. I used the prompts provided by Shimelle to create this blog that you are reading now and life was never the same again!! That may sound a little over dramatic but it really is true!! As a direct result of that class I entered a whole new online world! New inspirations opened up to me, I met new people, I made new friends! It was wonderful!

I am now a complete blog-aholic! I love my blog and I love reading the blogs I subscribe to everyday. I get slightly panicked if I miss a day of reading my blog subscriptions!!!
The world is full of wonderfully talented people out there and reading their blogs is a great way of getting to know them more and to feel inspired to try new things, to feel like you belong to a huge community. (Ahhhhh, I feel all warm and fuzzy!!)
The Blogging for Scrapbookers course is still availale over at Shimelle's and I would recommend it to anyone who is a scrapper and a blogger! It isn't just for people creating new blogs, the prompts are relevant to those who have been blogging for ages!
I'm sure you will have realised by now that there are LOADS of prizes to be won along the hop.  There are also two grand prizes. For these you need to collect the letters from each blog as you hop. These will make a word or phrase. You will find details for entering this draw at the last blog of the hop which is Jo's.
In order to get this phrase you need to hop in the right order.

The letter I have for you all is D

The next blog in the hop is Sian's and you can get straight there by CLICKING HERE!!!

If you have come here without being a part of the hop but would now like to join it, you will find the correct order of links below. Big thanks to Lizzie and Jo for hosting this bloghop!!

Enjoy!!


Lizzie Made
Jennifer's Jumbles
I Speak Melsh
Over at Our Place
Creating Paper Dreams
Gall Organico
Liberty Cottage
Scrap Adventure
Chatty Crafty Arty Pig
My Paperview
Life Behind the Purple Door
HERE! Clearing the Brambles
From High in the Sky
Rachel Bs World
Sunlight Simplicity
Curious and Curiouser
Enjoy the Ride Today
Embrace Life
Living Artfully
Paper Turtle
Amy Soto
Snaps and Snippets
Scrappy Jedi
Maya Dahan
K B Walker
Melissa Gross
XNomads
Debs
Curly Scrapbooker

You are invited to...

The I {heart} blogging celebration blog hop!
Come back today at 8pm to join in the fun!

Todays layout

Today was my final day off work. However ill I feel tomorrow I have to go to work :0(
I made this layout today but I'm not that happy with it. Its from (yes you guessed it) the September GoGo kit. But I added the peacock feather as I've been keeping it to add when I scrapped these photos. I'm not sure the page works though so I feel abit hmph! about it :0(

Celebrating Hatton!

We discovered Hatton Shopping Village in Warwickshire this summer and enjoyed a few lazy Sundays there wandering around and treating ourselves to pretty things!
As I was fixated by hipstamatic photos this summer (ahem, I'm still fixated to be honest!!!) alot of my photos are hipstamatic.
I did this layout yesterday using the September GoGo kit.
I spray inked the cardstock and am pleased with how it turned out.

Making the most of being ill!!

Well, I have tonsillitis now and some tablets to help with the infection. I was off work again yesterday and feeling rather rough. I went down to my scrap shed after a while, determined to create something. I really couldn't be bothered to run the electic cable down there though and so had no heat. It was cold and I got a little upset and ranty (why is my beautiful craft room at the bottom of the garden and so cold - although I love it in the summer!!!) Anyway thats another story and all about me being to lazy to organise the extension again this year (LEARN FROM THIS CAL!!!! )
So I grabbed my unopened September GoGo kit, by photobox, my cutting mat and tool bag and headed to the kitchen.
I lit the poor already failing pumpkin lantern and created! Here is what I made. These photos are from 2008 and I never had the right papers for them. The kit was perfect!

Project catchup!

Be warned - this post is VERY photo heavy!!

Right, I have finally caught up with both my Document 2010 project and my GoGo Yearbook (although this one still needs September to be done, but as I haven't started the September kit yet I count as up to date :0)

Here are Document 2010 pages for the past few months:

And here are my GoGo Yearbook pages! Next year I will definately only do ONE yearbook!! Although I do love the way these two projects are very very different and tell different stories from each month :0)

I hope you like them!

What a wonderful day!

I've had a fantastic Samhain today (apart from still suffering with my throat). I dressed all festively (even though I was staying at home) in black leggings, denim skirt (not festive I know, but comfy!!!) and a cobweb top :0)
I completely reorganised my craft room (which I hadn't planned but was wonderful to do as it just didn't feel 'right' in there. Then I set to catching up with my projects - which I did (yay me!!!! Photos to follow in another post later today)
Next I carved the pumpkin and as the sun set lit candles.
Then I couldn't resist a few pics!!