Journal your Christmas days 5 to 8

Day 5
I decided to go a little off topic and instead of talking about written communication in the traditional sense (ie journalling about Christmas Cards) I wrote about going to Great Ormond Street with my son (and husband) and how I felt as a mother about his illness and how amazing he has been

most of the journalling is hidden away on the inside....

 Day 6

I think one of  the coziest things we do at Christmas is giving new PJ's to the children on Christmas eve.... DD loved her onesie last year, as above (and we got another one for her this year!)

Day 7

There are so many tantalising treats for the senses during the Holiday season and I described a few I was experiencing at the time

Day 8

I used the sketch and weekly challenge from UKS for todays entry about buying our Christmas tree a couple of days before.

Journal your Christmas days 1 to 4

I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas/ Happy Holiday.  We have had a great time and I am not looking forward to returning to work next week! Completing Journal Your Christmas certainly helps to keep the holiday feeling going whilst preserving all the details of the season.  I signed up for Shimelle's JYC several years ago but only completed an entire journal  (27 pages/days) for the first time last year..... I finished it in March!

I seem to have had a slower more relaxed pace this year, this may be due to in part to DS having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and us not making many plans to socialise which would tire him more. So, a quieter run up to the big day plus a bout of illness for me has meant less activities to document so I have used the prompts more this year.

Day 1

 this states my Christmas Manifest

Day 2

I had a fabulous Christmassy drink and asked for a spare cup that I made into a little festive flap.... 

Day 3

planning the lights (though I managed to hide the start of the title under my light bulbs!)

Day 4

.... telling the story of the best Secret Santa gift that I have ever had.  A gorgeous gingerbread house received last year and I don't know who it was from even now!

I have mainly been using Simple Stories Handmade Holiday with some odds and ends from the boxes of Christmas Stash I seem to have! The wonderful numbers were discovered via Pinterest and can be found here, perfect for printing off and punching out.

SJ Crafts 6 on the 6th

This has been the best idea ever for encouraging me to get on and make my Christmas cards this year.  In fact it has worked so well that I think I will end up with a few spare cards..... maybe a start for next year.

As part of the Red Ribbons Cyber Crop a few weekends ago we were asked to create a piece of mail art and send it to someone, I decided to try and make mine Christmassy themed... this was the front of the envelope ...

http://sjpapercrafts.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/decembers-six-cards-on-6th.html

all very arty for me! Thought I would try something new totally inspired by someone called Lynda who I met on a recent crop.  She was using a similar technique (bubblewrap printing then lines with a credit card) I added stamped stars and a Christmas greeting with snowflakes punched from a vintage book and lightly painted white, a quick misting and I was done.  This then lead to the creation of a set of co-ordinating Christmas cards...

and another set of 6 cards had been made!

The last 2 sets I created were from ideas I had seen on pinterest here and here and adapted to make 2 sets of cards 

As you can see I used the negative and the positive snowflake shape and tried several ideas with both...... these are my favourite cards of the 5 sets I made this year.

Thank you Sarah, Louise, Jennifer and Lisa Jane for all your Christmas card inspiration over at SJ Crafts and I am keeping my fingers crossed you do this again next year!

Story Telling Sunday my most precious

Last year I joined in each and every story telling Sunday with Sian and her following of tale tellers and I loved it.  This year, each month was about 'picking your precious'....... sadly I decided I couldn't do it........ it just felt wrong to me, to be 'picking a precious' when I knew one of the most precious people in the world was going to be taken from me.

My Dad is a survivor, after being told he had a 20% chance of surviving a year after having a heart attack over 6 years ago. My Dad is literally living on borrowed time, he was given a terrible prognosis as cancer spread from his colon to his lung and liver. I am so grateful for each and every extra minute, hour, day and month.

Life is precious, time is precious, family is precious, health is precious, having you here for another 'last Christmas' is so so precious.  

My Daddy and Me xxx

Frosty Festivities Card Inspiration

As I have previously mentioned there was a shopping trolley full of tinsel fueled inspiration over at Jennifer Grace Creates Frosty Festivities last weekend.  Today I have taken that inspiration and finally got round to making some Christmas Cards.

Each month over at SJ Crafts Blog there has been '6 cards on the 6th' and each month I mean to get on with creating cards as they are always left to the last minute each year.  So combining the inspiration from Jennifers Frosty Festivities and the encouragement from SJ and her design team here are my cards....

These are inspired by 'add a little frosting' and feature die cut glittered trees (a freebie die from a recent papercrafting magazine) and small gemstones.

Here are all 6 and you can probably just make out the back ones which had the same shape used for the red and green paper layers using my Spellbinders nesting dies.  

Unfortunately I somehow got one die stuck in the Cuttlebug and this is how it ended up.....

(not sure what I did???!!!) .....so a little sad that I can't make anything with that die again!

I then went for some 'red and blue' inspiration and made these 3 cards

and then another 3...

So I am really chuffed to have 12 Christmas Cards  (I am entereing SJ's 6 cards on the 6th twice!!)and 2 single LO's and " DLO's all inspired by Jennifer thank you xxx

Frosty Festivities Scrapping Inspiration

I was ill last weekend and feeling sorry for myself, not leaving the comfort of the sofa and/or my bed.  There was one thing that brightened my Saturday and Sunday at home and that was reading about Frosty Festivities over at Jennifer Grace Creates. Full of fabulous ideas and packed with inspiration I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the ideas.
Although all the giveaways have now ended there are a few challenges that close this evening and you know me always up for a challenge and there are 4 over at Jennifer's blog and I have taken inspiration from each of them to come up with some new scrapbook layouts.

The first challenge was to 'be inspired' well that was easy as there was so much to be inspired by!  I took last weeks UKS challenge and summoned the energy to make a page from a sketch, with some faux stitching and die cuts/punched or fussy cut paper.  I took my ideas from Jennifer's suggestions to use 3 different paper collections, use pop dots, use lime green, use tiny stars and wrap twine round something.  I had thought she talked about scraplifting yourself somewhere but may have imagined that as I did use a similar photo (shown here on my blog)  for inspiration too as wasn't up to thinking about my page!

A challenge to 'embrace the busy' made me think of some photographs taken at the Harry Potter Studio Tour, they were taken through the glass of a cabinet packed full of numerous props used in the films.  The ones I have, show lots of the items for sale at 'Weasley's Wizard Wheezes' the twins fantastic fun shop on Diagon Alley.  I also took some pictures of the sweets sold at Honeydukes. These became a double page....

'Add a little frosting' would not naturally be up my street as I don't really like sparkly or glittery things.  This weeks challenge on UKS was the Marmite Challenge you could choose to use things you loved or hated so I went for hating the sparkling and glittery blue paper (difficult to see in the photo but the large blue sheet is very glittered), but loved the photographs of the ice sculpture from the Yule Ball and I love using punches.  I added extra frosting by punching sparkling snowflakes and inking the edges of the photo-mat and journalling block (tucked under the photos with white glittery snowflakes on the edge!) in silver.

The final challenge was to 'use red and blue' and this time I decided against using more Harry Potter photos and instead created 'the story of a Snowfall' telling the tale of my excitement when the snow arrived at 10.30 pm one night!  So I got to do more snowflake punching!

So I was busy at my crop yesterday making these fab pages inspired by the fantastic Frosty Festivities by Jennifer Grace Creates.  I am looking forward to going back and re reading so many of the creative ideas and getting more inspiration.  A huge thank you to Jennifer for a really wonderful event xxx

ps excuse the dreadful photos but it has been a very damp, dark and dull day here today!

Joining in some challenges.......

Hullo poor abandoned blog and any blog followers who haven't removed me from their blog readers!!

I have completed 2 scrapbook layouts today......

The first double page layout was made for the weekly UKS challenge, using a colour palette, circles (the orange patterned paper is covered in circles) and buttons.  I took Inspiration from Jot Magazine's mini challenge 'the greatest View'..... how could I resist when I had these photo's?? I also used some gorgeous die cuts of London thanks to Julie.

This page if for the monthly house challenge on UKS, which is simply to use a chosen Dr Seuss quote and I used 'why fit in when you were born to stand out' as it suited my journalling.  The layout was based on the Sarah's Cards Sketch Challenge

Well you know I love a good challenge...... if you are thinking about joining a UKS team do get in touch as we still have room for more Chatty Scrappers!!