A quick scraplift

In an attempt to work through all my old Christmas photos I am taking some shortcuts, and this layout is an almost total and unabashed scraplift of Glitter Girl's latest page. I even had the same Echo Park sheet of borders with bunting which Shimelle used.

The photo's from 2008, coincidentally the last time we hosted Christmas here, and we have planned an almost identical menu for this year. My Mum and Dad were on a cruise over Christmas that year, but this year's guests will be the same, with the exception of my brother who is in Australia and the addition of my parents, who are only in the country because they are babysitting his dog. For which I thank God, actually, having seen the recent news aboard the Oriana!

The journalling was our festive menu, which I'd recorded in my JYC 2008 album. So that's another one done and dusted. It will be interesting to snap a photo from the same angle this Christmas Day.

Scrapbooking Starting Points - double Book Day layout

I always admire Shimelle's 'Starting Points' and I often save them and use them for inspiration, but rarely close enough to their publication to link in. This time I managed it, and a double layout to boot.

You'll remember that last week both my children had to dress up for World Book Week. Our original plan was for M to be Hermione Grainger, but I couldn't find R's Harry Potter wand so she went as Dora the Explorer. Well, as so often happens, I found the wand the day after, but M was perfectly happy as Dora. A number of you suggested that I use the HP embellishments I'd been saving on a 'Why She Couldn't be Hermione' LO.  This is a great idea, but in the end I decided to keep them for a later page about our family love of the HP books because I wanted to make this double page spread reasonably symmetrical.

This was the Starting Point; 4 quadrants of patterned paper and 3 ribbons. I used green tones for my son's page and pink scraps for my daughter's, both on a white background.

 I inked the edges of the 4 squares and used green Glimmer Mist and Worn Lipstick Distress Ink to give a border using a shaped template. I positioned the photos symmetrically and used the same alphabet stickers from Kraft Kuts, which I had in two colourways.

The journalling was printed with an image of the character, and I did include the story of Not Being Hermione here.



 I didn't want both pages to be identical as my children' have very different characters, so on M's Dora page I used a fairy print paper which I embellished with a tulle skirt and tiara.

My son's chosen character is a 9-year old Secret Agent, but I struggled to find suitable embellishments. I started with some rub-on stars, but there were the most obsinate rub-ons I've ever use and they looked awful so I took them off. If anyone knows a good source / idea for boy embellishments, please let me know. The smiley face brads and buttons are OK, but don't really suit the theme, and I've still used some flowers!

I'm happy to have scrapped these photos, as I like all 4 pictures, and a double layout makes a change in my albums.

Last year's Christmas project

I don't think I ever shared my finished Journal Your Christmas album from last year, so this challenge from Shimelle is the ideal opportunity to do so. I think this one, made with a gorgeous book from Mel,  is my favourite JYC book so far, although I've completed the last 3 years'.
I really, really enjoy this annual project - it's my version of an Advent Calendar, which exciting prompts to open in my Inbox each morning, but it lasts much longer than a chocolate Santa. Jit is also my motivation to get my Christmas cards made by the end of November so I can focus my crafting on my album.
 Here are my pages from JYC 2010.

Roll on December 2011!