Bye Bye 2011!

Well, I must be honest and admit that I'll be glad to say farewell to 2011! There have been some good times, but it has mainly been a year of heart ache, stress and discontent. I feel I've been to some very dark places this year and have really touched rock bottom, only to fall lower time and again! I'm ready to climb back up again now! 2012 will be my year of HOPE... Happy New Year blog friends! May it be a good one for all of us! xoxo

JYC 12-14

I'm still enjoying this project which is great as usually by this time in month long project I have started to fall behind!! Although I must say I have a 100% completion rate on JYC over the 2 years I have done it. I sometimes fall a day or two back, but am always happy to catch up and keep on track!

So far I am happy with my 8x8 page format and the use of page protectors.  I am LOVING the D ring album as I can see if I was using a post bound one I woudl already be needing extender posts!

Here are my recent pages:
Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Hope you like :0)

xoxo

I've discovered Rad Lab, and guess what ...

IT'S RAD!!!!!

I haven't edited my photos for a while. I've slipped into the habit of snapping on my phone or DSLR and then just uploading to My Pictures and printing my favourites.
I've ressurected my PSE files and have downloaded the free 30 day trial from Rad Lab.

It turns this:

and this:

Into these:

{Swoon!}

JYC Days 8,9,10

I've had a bit of a catch up session with my craft pages today.  I must be honest, I'm still not feeling very Christmassy at all.  Things in our house are very strained at the moment and its not really helping my not-so-festive mood :-(
I'm hoping things will get better next week.  We have a visit to the solicitor and bank to come and then I'm hoping we will finally get some good news about the mortgage extension I need. Finger's Crossed!
Anyway, here are my pages!  (I've decorated at least now so the fairies are sadly in storage and replaced by long-legged Santa and Ruddy!!!)

Day 8:

Day 9:

Day 10:

Day 11 has been delayed by a mistimed ink disaster! (ie We've run out and i can't print out my photos!!)
Hope you like!
xoxo

JYC Days 6 and 7

Sorry to have missed a day with this.  I'm having a real problem with my page for the 6th December to be honest :0( I just can't find a tale of Xmas I want to write about at the moment. I don't know what is the matter with me. I'm not feeling at all Christmassy!  I'm hoping that when I decorate on Saturday I will feel inspired so until then will put off Day 6 and post that page when its done.
In the meantime I found day 7 useful as it spurred me on to starting my list of things to do!! The pocket on the page has strips of paper in it that break up the vague list into achievable tasks:

I took this last night so excuse the darkness of the photo.

Journal Your Christmas - Day 5

I used to always have an advent calendar as a child - one of the ones where there is a small picture hidden behind the door, never a chocolate one. I don't say that as if it was a hardship though, to be honest I never even wanted a chocolate one!
When I was a teenager I decided adcent calendar were childish and enjoyed feeling grown up when I was allowed an advent candle to burn each day! Although, to be honest it was a little stressful making sure the flame didn't burn down the next days number too!!!
As an adult I stopped the advent count down a while ago. And then in 2009 I did my first JYC album.  Without realising it the excitement of counting down the days of December returned to my life as I rushed to the Inbox each morning to check for my prompt email!
This excitement continues!! Although now I have an iphone the process of picking up the daily email is even easier!!  The extra treat that comes with the JYC prompt is flipping through it to see if any of my own pages from the previous year have made their way into it!
This excitement is what I decided to celebrate on todays page:

JYC pages so far

I've decided to photograph my pages on the shelf next to my scrap desk.  It has two fairy statues on it that I love. They aren't very festive, but they are pretty! I hope you like them as you'll be seeing them alot this month!
DAY TWO

DAY THREE

DAY FOUR

Hope you like! Night night!
xoxo

So this is how I'm going to do it...

The format of this years JYC will (as I have already mentioned) be 8x8 pages. I have a D ring Album to put the pages into. I've learned from the past two years. Year 1 was a post bound album (that required extender posts and broken nails as I tried to fit them etc!) Year 2 was held together with book rings (as I made the cover myself from chipboard). Of course the album became huge, the book rings were in time too small, so it is now held together with plaited bakers twine. Pretty but not what I visualised!
I'm hoping this year with be the  year for the correct album!!
I have already fallen out of love with my supplies (and my format) but I expected this as this is something I go through when I do a daily project like this.  I decide what I want to do, pick the supplies, love the idea in my head...and then I look at other peopkes projects! I always fall in love with other peoples formats, other peoples supplies or colour schemes and then feel let down when I look at my own!!
Because I vaguely expected this I had planned to add to my stash today ('shopping' through my own stash
for more papers), and thats what I did.
My original stash was cream, red and black cardstock.  The papers generally cream, red and green.  I added some brighter greens today and some pinks.  Just those additions added a lovely injection into my page and my working space.
I'm planning on using square photos taken on the hipstamatic app on my phone (or using the normal camera and edited using camera + or instagram).  I hope I stick to this square format of photos, but we'll see as the month progresses ;0)

I have been having issues with my blogging in 2011 and I'm hoping to use JYC to resurrect my blogging routine.  With this is mind this is how I plan to craft and blog through the project.
Each morning I will read the daily prompt on my way into work - saving the PDF into my iBooks.
                        I will blog and forum the photo of the page for the day before. (This means that unless it is the weekend or my day off my blog may well be a day behind the prompts but this is fine with me!)
During the day I will snap photos on my phone of anything in mind when I think of the prompt (and of the In Focus prompt from the day before - as they are arriving each evening )
During the evening after work I will create my page for the day and take a photo of it.

This year I finally took a bold (and distressing step) and moved out of my Craft room for the winter.Readers of this blog know that my craft room is a beautiful peppermint green shed at the bottom of my garden. Its lovely, but cold cold cold in the winter!!
So I've vacated until spring and moved my furniture and supplies into our very small living space:

The view from my scrap desk looks onto the patio and garden:

Not bad! :0)

Poor Little Blog!

I have neglected this blog so much since I bought my ipad. Its such as hassle to turn on a laptop now you know! Thats the rationale that has been in my brain. Stupid, stupid, stupid thought!!
Today I have logged in to Blogger on a computer for the first time in ages and its all so different! What once was familiar and simple looks so complicated with a new posting page etc.
I'm planning a lovely scrapping session this afternoon, and this evening.... a re-vamp of my lovely blog and a few photo heavy posts!
See you later :-)

Day one...

Phew! It's late again, and u have another late night tomorrow so just a quick post now.
Because of the format I have decided in for my pages this year I will be adding photos when I get them printed. So pages may look a little bare at first.
I'll go into detail about my format tomorrow :0)
For now here is today's page:







The page will have a photo to the right of the journaling card. This is the photo:



Yep. My plan was hipstamatic photos this year. Alllllllll of
The square. ALL! Until I spotted camera + app in the prompt! Swoon!!!!
It turns this:



Into this:



Cue dance if delight at awesomeness if photo possibilities!!!!
I'll pop by the forum ASAP and share a link to my blog as I've missed chatting to people recently. Looking forward to seeing everyone's work too!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Impatiently watching inbox...

Yes, it's officially December 1st (although I haven't been to sleep yet!) I thought I'd check my inbox a few dozen times after midnight in the hope that the first JYC prompt would be there!! Alas! Nothing yet, so to sleep I go! Is anyone else stalking their own inbox?!