JYC Days 5 to 13

Well I have spent the weekend catching up on my JYC LOs and apart from yesterday and today's entries I'm now up to-date. So here are the last 9 days.

If you click on the picture it will enlarge enough for you to read the journaling.

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Inside the parcel of day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

I haven't given up JYC

Just a quick note to say I haven't given up on JYC and I will post the pics this weekend. I am playing catch up as I got two days behind last weekend as I was at my Mum's. So by Saturday I will be up to date again and will have time to photo this weeks LOs.

As I'm here I thought you may like to see My Christmas tree. (sorry about the photo quality.)

JYC Day 4

The prompt for to day was perfect What is your perfect Christmas?
This Lo was done on the PC as I was going for the perfect magazine look to go with the title. I added a few little extras when I put into the album. The photo isn't very clear so I have also added the pic of the of it before a glued it into my album.

The words on it say...

Perfect
As long as I can spend my Christmas with my Mum and with close friends it will be perfect, but a few other little things can add that extra special perfection. Like a lovely tree, beautiful decorations, roast chestnuts, a Starbucks gingerbread latté and snow would be nice.

JYC Day 3

Here is my LO for JYC 3rd of December. Today's prompt was about Christmas cards. Inside the card I have written...

I don’t send a lot of cards and none of them have to be posted. I have a couple of friends that live away off, but we send each other E-cards.
For the last two years I have made an effect to make my own Christmas cards. I really enjoy doing this and love seeing friends and families faces when they see my creations. I was very organised this year and all my cards where done my the end of November although I still need to print out all the inserts with a Christmas greeting on. This makes writing them easy as the laborious bit is done on the PC and I just have to do the To and From bit not forgetting the XXXX.

JYC days 1 and 2 and advent box

Yesterday was the 1st December which meant the start of Shimelle's journal your Christmas (JYC). The 1st was my manifesto of why I'm doing this and what I hope to achieve by doing it. I wonted to take some snaps of Christmas decs to go with the journaling but thought I was out of luck until in the afternoon work put up a few real trees around the building so managed to get some close ups of the bubbles. Today was to do with the weather over the holiday period. My page is about snow as it is my wish for snow over Christmas, I know not likely, but as we have had some small snow flurries other the last few day I live in hope. This page isn't finished as I still need a pic and my journaling will be hidden under the pic.

Here is the yesterdays entries

Today's entry

And Finaly before I go here is the last of the Advent boxs I made this for a friend at work.

Getting in the mood

One of the girls on the JYC forum found this and posted a link, so of course I just had to have a go....Go on you know you want a go as well. and if you do they dance for you aswell http://www.elfyourself.com/ haha

Its nearly time to start

As I have already told you all I'm about to set off on what I hope will be a wonderful and rewarding journey with lots of other peeps and Shimelle, journaling our Christmas. As I have said before I have never attempted anything like this and I'm not a confident writer, but after seeing the wonderful Journals that people have done over the past years I feel just so inspired and can't wait to start. I have decided to do a mix of hand and computer journaling...So watch this space from the 1st Dec and I will post the pages as I do them.

If you fancy joining us then please come on over to Shimelle's "Journal your Christmas" and join the fun.

Here's the last lot

Of Christmas cards, yes they are all finished apart from printing out the inserts and sending them. I am more of a scrapbooker then a card maker I don't know why but I always seem to find making cards hard and struggle for inspiration, but I have to say I have really enjoyed making my Christmas card this year. So I thought I would share the last five cards I have made with you.

As promised

The other week, here is the other advent box I have made for my Mum. As you probably can see it still needs numbers on the draws. I went for a classy approach with this one so I didn't use Christmas papers, but went for green and cream with a creamy poinsettia on the top and a small amount of stickles glitter glue to add some sparkle.

Now for those of you who are not to sure whether your allowed to be Christmasy yet...

I took a group of students to the Trafford Centre this morning to go bowling and on the big screen they showed the Coke cola advert so that means that YES you are allowed to be Christmasy...lol

Whats your Christmas advert?

I'm on a roll at the moment,

Which is just so good. Instead of sitting there thinking about doing something craft I have had another productive weekend. I have finished making my album for the Shimelles Journal your Christmas class its 12x6 which is a size I have never done before, but I'm really liking it. I just wont the class to start now.

Also if you are interested inspirational craft blog are looking for new team members just click on the link and if you are interested you just have to leave a comment and a link to your blog and the winners will be announced on the 30th Nov.

Up to my armpits in Bl**dy matches!!

I'm now in the middle of making another advent box and then went and got some more boxes of matches again today. I am surprised that Asda haven't reported me as a potential pyromaniac. When you go through the self check out at Asda it asks for a supervisor to check the purchase on items not to be sold to anyone under 18 and not once have they asked me my age I just don't think its right I could be an older looking 12 year old...lol.
As soon as they are done I will post some pics.

Below is a picture of the Christmas card I have made for my Mum. I really hope she likes it.

A Crafty Weekend

Yes I have been crafting away this weekend, there is nothing like getting covered in paint and glue to get the old inspiration going. Having seen all those lovely advent boxes about especial the ones on Ladybird Ladybird's Blog and Misteejay's Blog I thought I would have a go. Not having checked out the pics of them first mine turned out a little different as I did four rows of six boxes instead of eight groups of three (if you check out the above blogs you will see what I mean) But I'm still very pleased with the out come. I also had a little trouble with some of my draws sticking so after a little contemplation I came up with the idea to rub a candle long the sides and bottom of each draw, this worked perfectly. I just need to find some more match boxes preferable the wider boxes so I can make one for my Mum. Oh and what do you do with all the matches??? haha

I have also joined Shimelles Journal your Christmas class which I'm itching to start. I have never done anything like this before the only online classes I have done have been cyber crops on UKS. The fact that its a journal is daunting and a little scary. As I told you all when I started this blog writing is not my strong point as Im dyslexic. writing on the PC isn't to bad, but by hand...argggggg, Oh well in for a penny in for a pound!

Here is a pic of the lovely Christmasy stash I have bought to do the journal with.

24hr pink booby crop

At the beginning of October I attended the Goldbourn 24hr pink booby crop and although I ended up not staying for the full 24hrs I had a great time. I managed to do some digi scraping and also making the the album below to hold the DVD of all the digi pages I have done of Katie and Damian's wedding which hopefully will make a lovely gift for them.

The gorges stash I used was from one of Sarah's Cards kits which are just fabulous and well worth every penny. If you are looking to subscribe to a kit then over all the kits out there I heartily recommend you check out Sarah's kits.

I'm spending the 1/2 term hols staying at my Mums till Friday we have had a day out to a lovely garden center near where she lives. It was full of the most lush Christmas stuff it made me wont to come back and put up the tree! No I didn't do it I know it's still October lol
Still on the subject of Christmas as promised here is a small collection of some of the Christmas cards I have made to date. I'm still in the middle of doing them so more to follow.

Its half term holidays

At last!!
last week on the Thursday before I broke up for a very long awaited holiday I did a craft day with a group of the college students. I was teaching them how to make memory (exploding) boxes, which as you can imagine is not easy working in inches with a group of teenagers who think inches are something that cave men used...lol. Anyway I decided I would have to change the measurements to cm. So after some experiments I did it and it is so much easier then working in inches. I can now make boxes in a variety of sizes.
Bellow is a box I made from A4 card to use as an example for the student.

Here are the instructions and measurements for a box using A4 and 12x12 card stock. From these measurements you can see just how easy it is to scale it down more.

Big Box

You will need 4 sheets of 12inch x 12inch card stock 3 sheets for the box and one for the lid. First sheet measures 30cm x 30cm then divide into 3 x 10cms vertically and horizontally.
Then cut the 4 corner squares away. Second sheet measures 28.5 x 28.5 then divide into 3 x 9.5cms vertically and horizontally. Then cut the 4 corner squares away. Third sheet measures 27 x27cms then divide into 3 x 9 cms vertically and horizontally. Then cut the 4 corner squares away. Fourth sheet is the lid measure 17.5 x17.5 square.
Then score all 4 sides in 3.5cm in. TURN YOUR CARD OVER and score from the tip of each corner, diagonally, until you meet your scored “corner” lines. You can decorate as you wish.

Smaller Box (INSTRUCTIONS SAME AS ABOVE)

First sheet measures 21cm x 21cm then divide into 3 x 7cms.
Second sheet measures 19.5 x 19.5 then divide into 3 x 6.5cms. Third sheet measures 18 x 18cms then divide into 3 x 6 cms. Fourth sheet is the lid measure 15 x 15 square. Then score all 4 sides 3.5cm in.