Journal Your Christmas

Many years ago I signed up for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas online class but have never managed to take part due to other commitments, lack of time, etc. This year I have decided to make a concerted effort to take part by blogging daily, hopefully following the prompts and trying to take photographs daily to illustrate my posts. We'll see whether I manage to keep up!

Book Review - Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley

Its been quote a while since I last wrote a book review so I thought I would make amends and write a review of the book I've just finished - Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley. Over the last few years I have acquired quite a collection of Christmas themed books and try to read some of these in the lead up to Christmas. As I'm a relatively slow reader (I read about two books a month) I thought I would start this years Christmas reads in November LOL.

Fantastic Fiction Review: Christmas has always been a sad time for young widow Holly Brown, so when she's asked to look after a remote house on the Lancashire moors, the opportunity to hide herself away is irresistible -- the perfect excuse to forget about the festivities. Sculptor, Jude Martland, is determined that this year there will be no Christmas after his brother runs off with his fiancee and he is keen to avoid the family home. However, he will have to return by Twelfth Night, when the hamlet of Little Mumming hold their historic festivities and all of his family are required to attend. Meanwhile, Holly is finding that if she wants to avoid Christmas, she has come to the wrong place. When Jude unexpectedly returns on Christmas Eve he is far from delighted to discover that Holly seems to be holding the very family party he had hoped to avoid. Suddenly, the blizzards come out of nowhere and the whole village is snowed in. With no escape, Holly and Jude get much more than they bargained for -- it looks like the twelve days of Christmas are going to be very interesting indeed!

If you want a feel good book to put you in the Christmas mood this is just the book and I loved it right from the beginning. Trisha Ashley has a great writing style scattered with humour and wit. The main character, Holly was very likeable as were the other characters. I loved the descriptive text. I could image the rambling house in the middle of nowhere, taste the food as it was described and loved all the detail about the Christmas preparations and the quirky characters. Most of my books are quickly passed onto others to read but this one will certainly be a keeper.

I have decided to continue with the chicklit challenge during 2012 so hopefully lots my book reviews to come.

Scrapology November Card Challenge

I saw a mouse! Where? Over on Scrapology!

Over on Scrapology we have gone mouse mad this month. This months card challenge has been sponsored by Joanna Sheen who challenged the design team to create cards using the well known 'House Mouse' images.

I used an image from the 'Birthdays - Cake' rubber stamp collection.

I coloured the image with promarkers and added stickles to make the icing on the cake sparkle. I used very, very old papers from Bella Press and Rhonna Farrer (thinking of making a New Year resolution next year not to buy any more patterned papers because the amount of 12x12 sheets of paper I have is truly obscene!), some Just the Edge cardstock strips from Bazzill, some beautiful paper flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts and punched leaves. The sentiment was a good old gold peel off.

Pop over to Scrapology to see the rest of the teams cards and to also find out how you can take part in this months card challenge

Crop Day

Yesterday was crop day at Stamp Addicts.

I made three layouts.

The first layout 'Fishing with Dad' used photos taken during the summer when Wayne took fishing for an afternoon. It was a glorious hot, sunny day and she really enjoyed it.

The layout is in the style of Stephanie Klauck. I used Bazzill cardstock and patterned papers from the Echo Park Playground collection and a small piece of Scenic Route ledger paper. The 'Gone Fishing' embelishment and title were both cut on my Craft Robo (still loviong the downloads available from the Silouette online shop). I had fun putting this layout together.

The second layout used pictures taken last month when Lara was carving her Halloween pumpkin. Its based on a layout by Jana Eubank.

I used Bazzill cardstock and patterned papers from Fancy Pants Trick or Treat collection and small piece of text paper from October Afternoon. The journaling card was also from Fancy Pants and the pumpkins, bats and title were again cut on the Craft Robo. The pumpkins and bats were flocked using Queen & Co Flock and I also added a dot of stickles to the bats.

The last layout is of Lara (again!). The photo was taken October 2010 when we visited the seals at Donna Nook beach in Lincolnshire. Lara wanted to take some photos of the seals and I snapped this photo as she was getting ready to take her own photo.

I used very old patterned papers from Dream Street Papers , Crate Paper and BasicGrey. I also used scraps of ribbon, buttons and BasicGrey letter stickers.

Scrapology November Layout Challenge - F is for Fabric Flowers

I can't believe it's November already - where has the year gone?

Over on Scrapology this month the theme is 'Fabric Flowers' and the team choose a layout by Hannah Young of Handmade Hannah as inspiration.

With Halloween only a week ago, I choose to use some photos of my daughter taken on Halloween last year on my page.

I used patterned papers from Basicgrey's Eerie Collection and cardstock from Bazzill. The lettering was cut on the Craft Robo and stickled to add lots of sparkle.

The fabric Flowers were made using a tutorial from Gabrielle Pollocco's blog. The purple fabric flowers was made from ribbon saved from a box of chocolates and the black and silver flowers were made from a pair of my daughters Halloween tights! Just proves that most things can be used in scrapbooking to good effect. I punched some leaves from cardstock and stickled them and also made an extra paper from patterned paper which I cut on the Craft Robo and also stickled. Lots of sparkle on this layout which unfortunately only shows in real life.

Here is Hannah's original layout ..................

............ and the sketch prepared by Lynn.

Please pop over to Scrapology to see all the team's layouts and to join in the fun by creating your own layout using the design team's pages for inspiration and the technique of creating flowers from fabrics.