A quick Stampin' Up! and Project Life December catch up with Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning crafters.

I thought I would share a quick catch up on my Journal Your Christmas/December Album. I haven't quite managed to keep up to date with doing it every day. But I do have a catch up session planned over the weekend. And I have most of my pictures printed and ready to go.

So here is what I've done so far:

Children's medicines are sadly a daily part of life in this cold weather with both my girls being poorly so it was worthwhile capturing it. And I enjoyed creating the little shaker element to add to my page with my Shaker Frames and Star Framelits.

 I wanted to use the Cheerful Christmas stamp set to create my date feature on this page so I chose my Project Life cards (from the Hello December pack) in yellow and red and then coloured my stamp with the coordinating Daffodil Delight and Real Red Stampin' Write Markers.

I had a play with printing different sized photos for our trip to the Winchester Christmas marker. I really like the effect and with my Canon Selfy printer I can print multiple mini prints straight from my memory card. Project Life really is such a quick and easy way to capture memories. I am finding the process a lot easier this year now I have invested in one core kit and a printer I can use at home (rather than dragging to the instant printers at Boots everyday).

Here is one of my favourite pages- our Basingstoke Stampin' Up! group photo! What a lot of ladies there were that evening. Lots of faces old and new ;0) I used a swap I received as part of my page today. I loved that someone had thought to create a beautiful Project Life card as their swap! What a great idea. 

 And my final couple of pages for today use other Project Life cards I had in my stash. I used my Seasonal Snapshot cards and accessories for these couple of pages. They fitted my colours perfectly. I also added some embellishments from my (large) Christmas stash.

Thank you for popping by today. I hope you have lots of festive plans for the weekend. I will be welcoming my lovely ladies for the last of the years Card Classes. I am super excited to see them all. I just have to get myself organised to finish my prep this afternoon.

you have any questions about today's project or the products I have used, please get in touch on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249. You can order online direct through my store by clicking the product links above or the pictures below. I also have availability in the next few months for your very own crafty party so drop me a line to find out more and get your date in the diary.

Happy Crafting

-X-

Shaker Frames

£4.50

Stars Framelits Dies

£22.95

Hello December Project Life Accessory Pack

£12.95

Hello December Project Life Card Collection

£8.50

Project Life December Wonder Photopolymer Stamp Set

£13.95

Cheerful Christmas Clear-Mount Stamp Set

£15.95

Seasonal Snapshot Project Life Card Collection

£13.50

Seasonal Snapshot Project Life Accessory Pack

£8.95

Table by StampinBuddy. Try it FREE.

Journal Your Christmas Week 1

Good evening all.

A bit of a late one from me today. And not entirely Stampin' Up! either. For those that have been regular followers of my blog you will know I take part in an annual scrapbooking class called Journal Your Christmas. Each day I get sent prompts to reflect on for the days journaling or photo taking. Normally I stick quick strictly to the prompts. But this year I have decided to make a guilt free, no pressure December journal without the frills and over the top embellishments. I am just going with the flow and enjoying the prompts for a creative kick start but doing my own thing with my pictures and pages.

This year I have simplified. I purchased an album kit which I had shipped over from the US complete with album, inserts, embellishments and divided page protectors. I decided that not every day in December will be entirely journal worthy so I'll make the most of the days I do have things to share and just capture the fun of the festivities. I wanted to keep my supplies very limited so I didn't get overwhelmed with pretty sparkly things. I have been beating myself up about the simplicity a bit. But actually I am enjoying the process and know i will love the result in years to come when I reflect back on it.

So here is the album cover. I couldn't resist a bit of extra sparkle in the form of some lovely gold sequin trim. To be seen in a Stampin' Up! catalogue near you very soon!

Each December diary starts with a Day 1 Manifesto. This year I didn't really write a manifesto just more of a reflection on what I hope to achieve through the creative process. I used My Digital Studio to create my opening 8"x8" mini scrapbook page. I loved the ease of using the digital design software to put this together and get such a professional result. I simply saved it to a SD card and printed it off an instant printing machine in Boots to include in my journal on the same day!

Page 1: A simple calendar intro to my journal ;0)

Day 1:

Quick and simple pages capturing a walk on the beach last weekend to welcome in December on an unseasonably warm December 1st. I love the happy pictures we captured of Summer enjoying running around picking up stones and chasing the tide.

 Day 2:

Capturing my handmade Advent Calendar (hopefully I can add to this year on year to show my calendars development).

 Simple page to include the years postage stamps. It is a bit of a tradition now to pop along to the Post Office to buy some single stamps to include in my journal. I also included a handmade card between these two pages to journal about my week as I didn't have too many photos to share. The second page captures Summer enjoying a trip to Mothercare (her own personal playground it seems).

Day 7:

Festive treats and another walk on the beach.

I love the simplicity of the divided page protectors and how easily I can put my very simple pages together. Summer doesn't allow me much free time for scrapbooking on a daily basis so its lovely still being able to produce my pages in a time efficient way.

 Thank you for popping by today and visiting Stampin' Sarah. Normal Stampin' Up! service will resume tomorrow ;0)

Please get in touch if you have any questions or queries about Stampin' Up! or My Digital Studio, I'd be only too happy to help: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy Festive Crafting ;0)
-X-

JYC Days 3, 4 and 5

Good morning JYC-ers and festive crafters.

Oh how I wish for a better camera or at least some basic knowledge on how to get the best out of the one we have already (although my partner and i have put a shared pressie of a new camera on the Christmas list this year. So hopefully we'll get a bargain in the sales after Christmas ;0) So once again, these are not the greatest pictures (largely due to being taken at 6am this morning before the sun had reared its head so I could edit, write and schedule this post before work!).

Here is a picture of my Stampin' Up! stall from this weekends craft fair (it features again on my JYC page but in a much smaller form). I was really pleased with the fair and how it went and my Snowman Soup and Reindeer Food went down a treat ;0) Thanks to Angie and Fiona for hosting the day and putting it all together. A hugely enjoyable festive afternoon (followed by a trip to the cinema to see Arthur Christmas!).

 Here is my JYC for Days 3 and 4:

Again I have used the reverse page of the pockets insert. I like this style as it has taken a lot of the 'worry' out of my creating. How can 4 rectangles of pretty paper ever look bad? And embellishing each page with an advent window makes it all the more Christmas-y.

 I am especially enjoying creating the central embellishment for each page. This one features Arthur in all his Christmas jumper glory ;0) 

 Here are my two advent windows. I am trying to keep a bit of consistency across the days by using a felt embellishment and matching papers to cover the outside of the windows.

 For my journalling for days 3 and 4 I decided not to tuck it away inside the pockets as with Days 1 and 2. As the Dec 3rd prompt was about Christmas cards I decided to make a duplicate card of one I created for my 'Due in May Facebook Group' Secret Santa. We were all tasked with finding some lovely little Mum to Be bits for our recipient. I had seen a card similar to this on the Convention inspiration boards and knew it would be a perfect Christmas card for another May Mum. So I set up making two, one for my SS and the other for my journal. I love using mixed stamp sets in unusual ways. I would never have thought to combine Polar Party with Bundle of Love. But the effect of doing so is lovely and Christmas-y ;0)

I created this with Real Red, Garden Green and Whisper White cardstock and matching Stampin' Write markers. For the icy ground I tore strips of Whisper White card and then finished with Tombow and Dazzlin Diamonds Glitter. The sentiment is stamped from Polar Party. 

And finally, as I am very conscious of my last years journal ending up too thick and straining at the rings holding it together, I decided to create a smaller Day 5 on the reverse of the Christmas card above. A simple page that speaks more about the journalling than the embellishments (and yet another example that one should not craft when exceptionally tired as you end up with a rather mish-mashy result!! Still in the spirit of keeping things simple, I wont be beating myself up over it. Today is a new day and a new page so I shall move on and create something different which may inspire me more).

So thank you for popping by for another installment of festive craftiness. I am loving looking at all your creations too and will hopefully pop by to leave comments later ;0)

-XXX-

Weekly Journal Catch Up

So I've had a major catch up with my weekly journal. I'd fallen 4 weeks behind with my pages and I'd collected together a few tickets and photos I wanted to scrapbook. So I sat down yesterday and created these pages in one go. I feel so much better for catching up and getting up to date. I had a list of things I wanted to capture in my journalling so it was important to me that I took my time to get each page just right.

Week 19: Water For Elephants

I loved the Sara Gruen book 'Water for Elephants' when I read it a few years ago. I wanted to dedicate a page in my journal to it as I finally got to the cinema to see the film. The elephant stamp is from a retired Level 1 Hostess Set 'Out of the Box'.

 Week 20: Dad's Pond
Dad's birthday pressie this year was a new pond built into Mum's old vege patch. Its taken a couple of weeks to complete but now its up and running its a lovely calming place to sit and watch the fish.

 Week 21: Pirates
There is a lot more to this page but I had to crop the photo to hide the jornalling. This page used a lot of old scraps of cardstock up. I used mainly: Tempting Turquoise, Elegant Eggplant and Night of Navy. I was trying to tie the colours into the Pirates of the Caribbean photo (and ticket colour). This week was also my May summary page.

This month I have been:
Listening to: Lady Gaga
Watching: Lady Gaga performing at Radio One's Big Weekend (spotting a theme here this month)
Reading: Angeology (cannot spell this title at all)
Visiting: The cinema

 Week 22: Lily's Christening
I have another page to post tomorrow for Week 22. But I also created this page as I thought it was a perfect opportunity to use the Nursery Suite Speciality Papers from Stampin' Up! I cut one of the die cut sheets in half and cut it again to to fit my journal page. I then created a pocket with a sheet of the rabbit covered paper in which to keep the service sheet and to layer a photo on top of. This wasnt the best photo and it was a bit blurry but I wanted a pic to capture the afternoon. I embellished with a butterfly which had been stood on the edge of the wine glasses at the post-Baptism celebration and a few pieces of the table confetti (a perfect match to the rabbits on the DSP). A simple but effective page.

Happy Crafting

-XX-

Week Four 2011 Journal

Here is my week 4 page for my 'summary of 2011 journal' (I think I might need to come up with a catchier name for it than that! ;0). I tried to use my tickets and bits and bobs from the week as the scrapbooking elements instead of all the beautiful papers (I did sneak in a bit of In Colour DSP) I would use in my 12x12 main LOs. I'm not 100% sure I like the effect (I have very little control over the fact that the orange of a rail ticket does NOT tonally match the pale blue of a Cineworld ticket!). But it still captures exactly what I want from the week. And I am trying to use different ideas and techniques on each page so that its a creative journey as well as a recap of my year ;0)

I also had a go at creating my own Crumb Cake journalling card. I have printed one for each month of the year. So the last LO of each month I will include one which summarises the following:

This month I've been:

Listening to.... Raise Your Glass (Pink) & Forget You (Cee Lo Green)

Watching.... Glee Season 2

Reading.... The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers (Paul  Torday)

Visiting.... The cinema

Until next weeks summary (and lots of exciting photos of Iceland hopefully!!!! So excited about my belated 30th birthday trip!),

Happy Crafting.

-XX-

My new weekly project

My Mum gave me this lovely Paperchase Kraft 10x10 album a few months ago. I decided to save it to start a weekly 2011 journal. I loved Journal Your Christmas so much and knew I'd miss the routine of regular journalling. Plus when it came to journalling about 2010 I found my memory failed me so I wanted to keep a regular picture and word journal of this year. And the bonus of it will be that it'll remind me to take more photos. I am going to keep my embellishments simple and try to create more one layer pages so as to not overload the binding (and hopefully it'll sit nicely on my bookcase).

So here it is. I inserted an acetate page in first for my title page. I used the Stampin' Up! Sweet & Sour Papers for my title pages (I so love this colour combo! I would never have put Rose Red and Pumpkin Pie together). I punched a circle from the lower right of the acetate and created a window for the '2011' of the title. You can also see I'm getting to grips with my new Cricut ;0)

 I backed the title page acetate with another layer of Sweet & Sour DSP and inserted a recent photo (Christmas Day) of me. I dont usually like to scrapbook photos of just me. But I wanted to use a recent image of myself just so I have a point of comparison for when I look back at the end of the year. This is me playing with my Christmas Cricut on Christmas Day. Please note how I tried to colour match my top with the scrapbook page *lol*. 

 This is my intro page and my plans for the journal.

And here is my first photo page (using the retired Night and Day SU DSP). This reflects how my family and I welcomed in the New Year sending our 2011 wishes into the sky on Chinese Lanterns. I used this sketch on Shimelle's website as the inspiration for this LO. Using the sketch really got me into a scrapbooking frame of mind again. I did use quite a few layers of paper for this LO (and i would have LOVED to have used some of my new chipboard shapes but could not layer it up too much! I definitely learned that lesson with my JYC! I have 50 more weeks to scrapbook so I cannot afford to overfill the album). I wanted splashes of colour to reflect the flames of the lanterns. I didnt use all the elements of the sketch. But enough to make me happy with my LO.

I did create another page which was solely journalling (I spiralled my journalling out from the centre of the page). However, it was all a bit personal for photographing. Its so therapeutic writing it all down and putting it out there. Fingers crossed for 50 more pages of excitement and a great year ahead......

Happy crafting all

-XX-