Merry Christmas everyone!

I just wanted to take 5 minutes out of the preparations for the big day to wish everyone a happy and peaceful Christmas. We are fortunate to have a house full of family tomorrow and are really looking forward to a day of fun and laughter. The festivities start with Midnight Mass tonight which is a tradition in our family and then we have a quiet drink together to celebrate. Tomorrow is all about cooking together and exchanging gifts - it'll be bedlam but its OUR bedlam which is what makes it special!
I hope your Christmas Day is everything you wish it to be and that your own version of bedlam is fun!!

December Daily - days 11 to 20

For the first time ever, I've kept up to date with a long term project and am still working on my December Daily album. I am so pleased with how the album is coming together and the kinds of things that are being recorded in it. It will be a lovely book of memories of this month, it has everything from favourite telly programs to special days out, ordinary day-to-day activities such as designing and going for a coffee! Take a peek.....

Having the pages ready to go means I only need to print off the photos for the day, stick them in, add a title and journal - its super easy! I'm so excited that my sister and brother-in-law are coming over and will be a part of this album, we are counting down the days and are in single figures now! I hope that your preparation for Christmas is going well and that the snow isn't causing too many problems, its the perfect excuse to do some crafting though!!

Handmade gift idea

I came across this gorgeously elegant handmade gift idea today at www.passionatelyartistic.com as part of their 12 Days of Handcraft Christmas. Its a stunning calendar made from cardstock and grunge paper designed by Melissa Samuels. She has included a download for the internal pages which have space for birthdays and notes as well as a month on a page.

If you are looking for a gift for someone that will have a huge impact but won't take you long to create then this is well worth a look - its right up my street!!

My December Daily album - so far!

I have been asked to upload some pictures of my December Daily album so I can share what I have created to date. For those of you who are not aware, December Daily is a project inspired by Ali Edwards and each year she creates her own album with daily photos of life during the lead up to Christmas. I loved the idea of focussing on a whole month and December has such great opportunities for capturing memories that this year I decided to take the plunge and create my own album.

As I knew this would be a big undertaking, I decided against making the actual album - life really is too short when there are perfectly acceptable A5 lever arch folders available for just over £1 at my local stationers! I made each page 6" x 8" and then changed up some days with envelope pages, pocket pages and tags. I spent a few evenings putting together all of the base pages for the whole month so now all I have to do is print off a few photos and journal for each day. I won't lie, it did take quite some time to put the pages together and I totally get why Ali encourages everyone to start their albums early!! But once I was on a roll I was loving it and now the album is done doing the daily update is a piece of cake. I'm 1/3rd of the way through the album already and it is bulging (which is totally fine by me as I'm a 'more is more' kind of scrapbooker!!), I think I'll just have to look out for a cool vintage belt I can cut apart to create a closure!

If you want to learn a bit more about Ali Edwards' December Daily then check out her blog at www.aliedwards.com where you'll find her daily albumpics and more. Anyways, I'm off to take more pics......!!

Ideas for Scrapbookers blog

I am really pleased and proud to be the featured artist today at http://www.ideasforscrapbookers.blogspot.com/ !! I am a regular visitor to this blog which has daily posts with a huge range of different ideas for both scrapbooking and cards, you will be blown away by the ideas you will find on Pam's fab blog. My article shows you step by step how to use a retro flower punch to create poinsettia flowers, who would have thought that this punch could be so versatile and its now one of my all-time favourites.
I used the poinsettia technique to embellish one of my scrapbook pages from the December kit and I have also added one to my December Daily album (I'll be posting photos over the weekend of my album so far). They are so quick and easy to make, not to mention super cheap! I hope you have a go and enjoy making these seasonal embellishments.

Its a small world!

While out for the day at the Christmas Dickens Festival in Rochester today, who should we bump into but one of our kit subscribers from waaaay up North in Stockton (thats nearly Scotland! LOL!!!). It just goes to show how very small the world of scrapbooking is proving to be. We took a pic of the whole family because shock, horror, they didn't have a camera with them!! Hope you like the photo Sandra and that you all had a great time!
If you've never been to the Dickens Festival we can highly recommend it, the High St, the cathedral and castle were full of stalls but the highlight was the cast of characters in Victorian costume. We took masses of photos and sampled our first mince pies and mulled wine of the season (well there was still snow on the ground!). Its officially Christmas now......

More inspiration

Have you managed to get inspired yet? It seems there are so many really great online classes available this month it's hard to resist signing up for everything! Today I found www.reverb10.com - a great site that offers daily prompts throughout December to encourage you to reflect on this past year and think about what you would like out of the year to come and it's totally free! I think this would combine really well with the Jessica Sprague art journal or Ali Edwards' December Daily mini album, that way you'd never be stuck for something to write about!!
It looks like December is going to be a very creative month!

Inspiration Everywhere!

The snowy weather has brought everything to a screeching halt as nothing is coming in or out here! I am taking the opportunity to catch up with a few things, one of these being an online class I promised myself. Every 6 months or so Jessica Sprague offers a free online class that is open to anyone and I have really enjoyed taking part in them as she encourages me to think a bit more about my craft and the meaning behind it. Her current class is 'Inspiration Everywhere' and its a bit different as it is exploring all sorts of different inspirational media. The downloads for each assignment make the class super easy - you can just click, print and glue. The forum and gallery for the class are full of ideas from everyone else taking the class - some go all out while others use just the downloads, all are lovely!

I took some time while snowed in today to catch up with the first 3 days of assignments and am now the proud owner of an Art journal with some fab pages including a mix cd of music that inspires me. I've had great fun reliving memories of creating mix tapes back in the day - its a lost art!! I can highly recommend this class and its not too late to sign up if you fancy joining me - just drop by http://www.jessicasprague.com/ to register for 'Inspiration Everywhere'!

I've also been inspired by this year's 12 Tags of Christmas from Tim Holtz and its only day 2!! Check out his blog for fab ideas using a host of Ranger products - way more than I have but I have a feeling I can find something that will do!

And now I've just found Ali Edwards' December Daily posts and I'm tempted to create a mini album documenting everything we do this month. Her album looks do-able with its selection of pre-designed page layouts that can be used over again with a block of photos. I'd really love to be able to do this one, I'll need to crack on quickly though as I've already missed 2 days of the month - here's hoping the snow hangs around so I get some time!

Essex club cancelled tonight due to snow

While the snow is great for pics, its not a good idea to venture out on the roads unless you really need to so we have taken the decision to cancel club this evening. We would rather be sure that everyone is safe and warm.

Last batch of December layouts

Here we go with the last batch of designs using the December bumper kit. To be honest there is still loads of this left over so you can explore your own creativity or create some complementary pages to the single page layouts to make them double pages - go for it!! We have had great fun with the kit and rummaging through our stash, we found embellishments that we've had for quite literally years - it goes to show that Christmas never goes out of style!

This Winter themed page uses two 4" x 4" photos together with an inked and shimmer sprayed paper doily which was great fun and very messy to create! You'll also need a border punch, a snowflake punch, thin strands of pearl trim in grey and green, adhesive gems, snowflake charms, a few Websters bloomer fabric flowers and an adhesive alphabet for the title.

Get all Christmassy with this single page design that uses a single 6" x 4" portrait photo. The instructions include details of how to create poinsettia flowers using a retro flower punch. You'll also need string, small word charms, flower stamens, an alphabet for the title and star and bauble charms were also added but are not essential.

Show off a series of four 6" x 4" portrait photos on this double page Christmas themed design, three portrait and one landscape. Add a dark brown inkpad, some star charms, adhesive gems, a 2" scallop circle punch and some glittered letters for the title and you are good to go!

We hope you are as excited and inspired as we are by all of the layouts we have for you this month, there is sure to be something here for eveyone and we will get the kits out to you as soon as we possibly can - in plenty of time for Christmas!!