Journal Your Christmas - Christmas Cards

Edward started school in September, only afternoons but he loves it.  I worried he wouldn't settle in or I'd be down there every day trying to sort him out but he's settled in perfectly and can't wait to get there every day.  He looks so cute in his little uniform and his little school shoes.  One day when I picked him up he came out with a Christmas card he had made - a blue Christmas tree.......  When I asked him why a blue tree he replied mummy I love dark blue.  The school then sell them to make money for the school and at only £5 for 10 I didn't mind buying them.   I wanted to keep one safe so I could show him in years to come what he had made.

I decided to include his card in my layout, I didn't want to mark or damage the card in any day so I have attached he envelope to the layout and the the card can sit inside nice and safely.  I also wanted to include this years Christmas stamp some where on the page so I attempted to make a cluster of embellishments with the date tag.  The background paper is the same one as my last page, Pebbles Paper,  Christmas Gift paper.  I love the journalling tags from Crate Papers Phrase stickers, problem is I'm not sure I have enough to finish the project with... I can always buy more ;-)

Journal Your Christmas - Winter Weather

I can't believe this time last year every where you looked was white.  I had to move out of my house for a while as I was running low on oil and couldn't heat the house just incase I ran out.  I had nearly forgotten about that until I had picked up my JYC 2010.  That is one of the reasons I love this project and scrapbooking .  I documented events that I will never forget but may well this were further in the past.  The morning this prompt arrived I woke up to my car glistening and the ground looking like it has a light scattering of glitter over it.  As the sun came up it shone through the trees and created a very pretty sight.

This layout was made on kraft.  I love the red spots on the white/cream background of Pebbles Papers - Christmas Gift.  My pages have taken a bit of a more traditional look this year so I needed to add some green to the layout so I cut some thin strips of one of the Crate Paper Peppermint Collection papers and inked them with my early Christmas present from Adam, a distress ink in vintage photo.  I was also lucky enough for him to buy me a EK Success Postage Stamp border punch which I used on this layout.  The pretty journal tag is also from the Crate Paper Peppermit Collection Phrase Stickers.  

Journal Your Christmas - Manifesto

I love this time of year.  The shops begin to sparkle with all the lights twinkling.  Driving home at night becomes magical to with the houses decorated with pretty lights.  Adam and I recently went to the Christmas markets in Birmingham, we ate far to much but it was lovely, especially the Baileys almonds we bought and quickly ate.

This time of year also means the start of Shimelle's class - Journal Your Christmas.  Todays prompt was the Christmas Manifesto.  I decided to use Shimelle's downloadable Manifesto.  I loved the look of last years layouts including them.  I especially love the line about the sugarplum fairies, as a child I love the idea of them dancing around.  This layout was very plain and simple.

Journal Your Christmas - Embellishments and Thickers.

As well as the border and phrase stickers in crates Peppermint collection there is also an alpha sheet of stickers.  They are made up of lovely red large letters and woodgrain little letters with a few tags and word labels.  I have also pulled put a few packets of thickers I'd like to use, they include Garden cafe, in green glitter, Delight in cherry and in Leaf.  I love the foam thickers, you get more letters for your money and they are such a cute size.

Journal Your Christmas - Paper Collection.

This year nothing really jumped out as me like it did last year.  Last year I used Snow Days from crate paper, I love their collections as they have all you need in one place.  This years collection from the entitled Peppermint is more traditional than last year.  The collection kit contains 18 double sided papers, border and phrase stickers and a die cut sheet.  The front sides of the papers are the bolder patterns while the back sides of them are smaller more basic patterns.

Here are the backs of the papers (almost nicer than the fronts).  I especially like the wood grain effect one.  Ive never used it before but always likes what Shimelle does with them.

Journal Your Christmas Date Tags.

I decided it was about time I started on my Journal Your Christmas preparation before the prompts started arriving and I fell behind even before I had started!  I decided to go along the same line as Shimelle did last year.  I loved the tags she made last year and I still love them this year when I sat and watched her video on them.  I don't quite have as many punches as Shimelle so mine are a bit more basic.  I cut the numbers out using my Xyron personal cutting system that I've had for years but very rarely use.  They are cut out of Pebbles Paper -Merry Christmas paper which introduced the green in to the tags.  The snow flakes were a lucky find from Cargo.  The started off as christmas glass coasters which contained 7 small snowflakes each which I carefully cut apart, they were on sale at 49p each so were a real bargain.  I then cut scallops out of kraft card stock and the tags out of some white bobbled card stock and inked all the edges in brown.  The ribbon I was originally using was red but I decided against that as the tags have to fit in with all the pages I do and if they were over red then I was worried they wouldn't look quite right.

And here are the finished tags!  I tried sewing them all together on the sewing machine but it didn't quite work out as I wanted them to so I gave up on that idea.  I have done some one way round and the others the other way round.