Christmas Journal 2008 begins...

Having been extraordinarly unprepared for my Christmas Journal this year, not even deciding to do it till the last minute, I finally got up to date this evening with the prompts. I have to admit to not having read the prompts for day three and four - I used last year's pages as a guide! From my experience of last year, I knew I needed to keep things simpler as all the title stamping and handcutting, while it looked great, took forever and stopped me completing the journal. So I decided to stick to some simple techniques for each page which would unite the pages whilst also allowing a little bit of creativity each day.

I stocked up with various shades of Doodlebug Bazzill (which are my favourite Bazzill colours and in my opinion can be made to go with everything!) and also an 8x8 pack of the Fancy Pants Happy Holidays range. I originally intended to do my album in 8x8 again, but having seen some of my friend Laura's pages, decided to go with the slightly different 6x12 which also allowed me to be more economical on the cardstock front! I returned to my trusty Autumn Leaves Rhonna's Christmas swirls stamps from last year, but used subtle shades of ink rather than the black of last year's album. I decided to use various packs of my mounting collection of AC Thickers, as well as my ever-loved Making Memories Tiny Alpha stickers. I grabbed some Scenic Route photo mattes which came in a kit a while back. Finally, I went for a common theme of punched scalloped circles and ovals to carry through the pages.

The first page is the Christmas manifesto - what you hope to achieve in your Christmas album. I wrote my own manifesto for this. I want to make this years album a little bit more 'personal' to the year - last year's album was a more general reflection on Christmas past.


The second page, about Christmas snow, was quite timely as we had half expected to get a flurry of the white stuff today, but it never quite reached down to our part of the country. I did however include a photo that Ed took on his phone of the freak snowfall we had in October this year! There is some hidden journalling behind the photo.

On the third page, about Christmas cards, I decided to include one of the cards I have bought to send out this year. I don't make cards - its just not my forte - but I really loved these ones I spotted in Marks and Spencers a few months ago. They have a lovely contemporary style, as well as being glittery. Perfect!


Finally, my fourth page is about my perfect Christmas celebrations this year. I'm sure in years to come my idea of the perfect Christmas will change dramatically, so I wanted to write down exactly what I would choose to do right now so I can compare it with (hopefully!) future Christmas journals.

So that is me up to date - I bet you can't believe it after my complete lack of scrapping for the last couple of weeks. Lets hope I can keep up over the next few days...