JYC 2009: Day 5

The countdown begins. Nicely aided by a daily chocolate. This is a first for me as I'm the one who usually buys the chocolate advent calendars and, don't ask me why because I couldn't give you an answer, I never feel 'right' about buying one for myself. So I inevitably end up being the only one in the family without a chocolate advent calendar. Richard is great at many things but buying advent calendars - he is not.

So this year, for the first time, I bought one for myself. Oh, the anticipation. But you'll never guess what, ok maybe you will, but a miracle happened. Richard bought me a calendar! So, I've gone from having none to having 2. Yay me!

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Changed the Ali Edwards template to fit my photos and the little embellishment in the bottom right had some green cardstock that didn't fit in with the rest of the layout so I cut it out and clipped and masked some of the dark green cardstock in it's place.

Thanks for looking.

JYC 2009: Day 4

Today marks a milestone in my JYC journey. I have never managed to get to day 4 before!

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I haven't listed the supplies, and I'm not going to in subsequent posts (unless I use anything different), as I'm pretty much sticking to the same ones in an effort to create an album that will flow. Even though the pages may look very different sometimes hopefully the fact that I'm using the same kit will help the album to look cohesive.

I love this tree. The original one in the kit is sort of a metallic green so I've changed it to blend better with my colour scheme. Got to love a bit of glitter!

Freebie Friday #3

It's Freebie Friday! This means the second part of my freebie digital kit giveaway. This week it is a glittered chipboard alpha, 3 full uppercase alphas in different colours.

I hope you like them and if you do and/or you create something with them please leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you think and see what you have done.

Hopefully I'll get my latest JYC page uploaded later today.

*** If you tried to download this earlier today and only got the preview, first of all I apologise and secondly this has now been fixed so please feel free to download it again with the correct file ***

JYC 2009: Day 3

Christmas cards. Apart from the buying of the presents this is the next thing that causes me to stress out at Christmas. Do you send a card? Or do you give to charity? Do you send to just family and close friends? What about those friends who don't get one? Will they feel snubbed? Do I make them all myself? Do I buy them? Do I make some and not others? Will those who get a shop bought card feel snubbed they didn't get a handmade one? Errmmm... I think I can stop there. I'm sure you get the picture.

Then there's the fact that for the last couple of years I've made cards but just haven't got around to posting them. I opened up my box of cards to find around 20 or so that had been written out, sealed in their envelopes and even addressed. Just not posted. Do I send those out this year instead? But what if I've written the year inside? But then I can't think why I would do that? But what if I did? Would they just assume that I've made a mistake and wrote 2008 instead of 2009? OK. Stop. We won't go down this route again in just the second paragraph!

Here's my layout. Not too happy with this one and I don't know why but it's in line with my new keep it simple philosophy so I'm saying it's done.

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Supplies:
Be Merry - TaylorMade & Ashalee Wall Collaboration
Dotted Circle Number: Andrea Victoria
Template: Ali Edwards
Glitter Styles: My own

Not much in the way of changes to any of these items except for the bird which I changed from green to blue to better match the layout.

As for the Christmas card this too is in line with my simple philosophy. I've got so much Christmas stuff it's embarrassing. So I'm using it. Quick simple cards. The card above was made using the Die Cuts With A View Christmas Glitter stack (which I bought last year if I remember correctly). One sheet of 12x12 patterned paper has 3 reindeer across it. I cut it up in to 3 pieces 4x12, trimmed it down slightly and popped it on to a plain card base. The bracket journaling block was created using Photoshop and then printed out. I then went over it with a glue pen, allowing the glue to dry tacky, and rubbed some KI glitter over it. Stamp was one I bought recently at Hobbycraft. A little bit of red ribbon and done.

Simples.

JYC 2009: Day 2

You may have noticed that the pages so far have been very simple and very different to my usual style. This was a deliberate choice. I'm hoping by going for clean, simple graphic style that I won't spend too much time deliberating of what embellishment to use. Should I use this or that? Have I layered enough? You won't believe how much time I can waste thinking about these things! And to aid in this I'm also using Ali Edwards Daily December templates.

See? I'm learning. I'm all about the story and not about the stash. I would really like to be able to actually stand a chance of finishing this year. Hopefully it's 3rd year lucky!

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Supplies:
Be Merry - TaylorMade & Ashalee Wall Collaboration
Dotted Circle Number: Andrea Victoria
Snowflake Overlay: Studio Flergs
Template: Ali Edwards
Glitter Styles: My own

As usual a little bit of tweaking to get things how I like this time mostly the snowflake overlay. Originally it the snowflakes were randomly spread all over the page but I move them to create a sort of border either side of the photos.

Thanks for looking.

Measuring À La Noah

"There's this guy in my class at school and he is so small. You wouldn't believe how small he is mum. If you chopped him off at the eyebrows and up you could use him as a metre stick!".

Need I say more?

JYC 2009: Day 1

So today is the day. Day 1 of Shim's Journal Your Christmas 2009 and I'm pleased - I've kept up! LOL. I know it's only day 1 but it's a good start.

[click image to enlarge]

Supplies:
Be Merry - TaylorMade & Ashalee Wall Collaboration
Dotted Circle Number: Andrea Victoria
Glitter Styles: My own

Background paper had some trees printed on it but I wanted to use it as a plain background so used Photoshop to get rid of them using the clone tool. Other items changed from the original include the star on the tree (green paper star changed to glitter), snowflake (glitter changed to one of mine to match the rest of the layout) and the dotted circle number (backed on to kraft paper and glitter style applied to centre of number).

I've decided to keep it simple so that I stand a chance of keeping up this year. So ready for day 2 now.