classes: pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Here’s a little look at just three of the projects guest artists have contributed to my new online scrapbook class, Something from Almost Nothing. Any guesses on who these guests might be? You’re going to love their ideas for creating new looks from your existing collection of scrapbooking supplies. They will even hold your virtual hand when you cut into a sheet of patterned paper, if that will help!

Class starts next Wednesday, the 10th of March, and you can sign up by clicking either payment button below or check out this post for all the details about the class! You can sign up at any time. Registration may take up to 24 hours – usually much less.

xlovesx

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Sometimes I am not so sure how I amassed quite so much scrapbooking stuff. When did I go from A few buttons would be useful to I can never have too many? When did the singular ribbon jar become the plural ribbon jars, sorted by colours of the rainbow? And patterned paper? Just possibly, I have quite a bit of that indeed.

The truth is that having a great deal of supplies isn’t something to get me down. Having them and not using them is an entirely different matter. So I invite you to join me for an online class in March: Something from Almost Nothing.

Throughout this class we’ll be focusing on getting more from the stash we have already acquired, no matter what your personal product of choice may be. We’ll go through a range of products you already have on hand and put them to use in new ways. We’ll step away from just gluing or stitching on a button and build something new. Plus it’s not just buttons we’ll be moving from stash to completed pages; we’ll also put stickers, ribbons, transparencies, papers, page protectors, chipboard and other supplies to work too. You won’t need to have specific supplies to follow along: we’ll focus on what you do have and offer plenty of alternatives along the way.

During the three weeks of class prompts, you’re invited to follow along and build an album entitled Celebrate Life. You can create this book in any page size you like with supplies you have on hand, and each prompt includes a page sketch and technique to help build the page as well as photography and journaling pointers to help with the complete album. But the class doesn’t end with just this album: each prompt includes a range of other techniques to try and projects to make. You can take inspiration from these at any time, just like a book or magazine.

I’m very excited that more than a dozen of my favourite scrapbookers will be joining me as guest artists for this class, and I’ll tell you a little more about them as we get closer to the first day of class.

Something from Almost Nothing includes:
…more than 60 pages of full-colour class materials, including work from guest artists and illustrated steps for more complex techniques
…3 video tutorials
…a live chat session
…printable accents for album project (purchased separately, these come to $9.90)
…bonus journaling and photography prompts for your Celebrate Life album.

Like all online scrapbooking classes at shimelle.com, this class includes
…permanent access to all class materials
…private forum for discussion and sharing your work
…prompts delivered straight to your inbox.

Class begins Wednesday, the 10th of March, with prompts delivered by email on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays until the end of the month. You can sign up at any time. Registration may take up to 24 hours – usually much less.

To sign up, just click! You can pay by in your choice of currency: £10 pounds sterling or $15 US dollars.

You’ll find additional class information and sneak peeks posted here on shimelle.com between now and the 10th of March, so don’t be a stranger!

I hope to see you in class!

xlovesx

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My Christmas Journal currently looks something like this, a mix of the 15 pages I’ve created so far and spaces for 8×8 TTV photos on each facing page. I started printing those at home and it took a few days to make me realise just how much I was going to spend on ink and paper for those 8×8 prints when I knew I could order them all in one go, so now I am choosing one photo each day and will have them all printed together at the end of my journal in January.

I love seeing new journals come to life on the class forum and in blog posts. I always wish I had made a book just like one of those. I wish that about fifteen times a day! So it’s a good thing I can keep coming back to this project I suppose!

Here are some of my blogland favourites so far! Click each picture to see more pages.

Oooh, don’t you just wish you could flip through all those pages in a comfy chair with a gorgeous cup of hot chocolate? Love these and many more!

xlovesx

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Each prompt in Journal your Christmas includes not just my pages, but also pages participants have made during Christmases past. Part of the fun is going back through all the previously posted albums to see which pages make great examples each day. But I also wanted to share a few albums you can look through online. I love how each is unique to the style of the scrapper who created it.

The album above is by Kristina Nicolai-White, who many of you will know as Pea1 — she and her husband founded Two Peas in a Bucket more than ten years ago. I’ve seen this 2008 album in person (most of it…Kristina was still working on it then) and it’s huge and tactile and amazing to read. Kristina used a ton of different products but focused on a few types to make it all work together: letter stickers, labels and patterned papers cut into circles. Plus she added lots of fun smaller-sized pages in between the big pages, which makes it more interactive with so much to see. Kristina writes a great deal as well as including photos and the end result is such a treasure. She also put in a few of her own twists, like starting the album early to coincide with her family’s Christmas schedule. I absolutely love everything about this book. Check out the entire album here.

Ali Edwards first joined the class in 2005 and I love how these pages have elements of her signature scrapbooking style blended with the freedom of art journaling. Her stamped trees are some of my favourite page numbers to date and I marvel at the way she embossed this snowflake. See more pages here.

Natalia Harandon has been journaling her Christmas for several years now and you may have seen this fab ATC spinner in the Christmas issue of Scrapbook Inspirations magazine. At first I wasn’t sure the tiny ATC format would work for this project, but Nat’s collection is absolutely fabulous and I love the idea of a journal that comes out with the Christmas decorations. The small size kept her on track with the time constraints of a busy December and it also allowed her to stretch her favourite supplies further. See the full project here.

Alissa Fast has made several journals as well and her 2008 book is in my forever favourites list. It’s a book filled with depth and texture and colour but it still looks like every single little thing was just meant to be there. The shaped pages and mix of supplies and real-life ephemera makes this album both beautiful and very ‘real’ in the way it documents each day through the season. See the full album here

Jen Geigley makes pages that are bright and bold and happy without ever crossing from cute to cutesy, a bit like how raspberries are both sweet and not sweet and that is exactly what makes them so fabulous. I love watching her little girl grow up on the pages of her Christmas journals and her 2007 album is just divine. I love, love, love it. Jen also designed the numbers I used on my pages last year, and I had a few left over so I used a big 25 on the cover of my album this year. So in general, she rocks. See the full album here.

Julie Ann Shahin has created three digital scrapbooks that she prints at the end of the project. She has used a different format each year, and each one has been a winner. In 2007, she created each page to be the size of a 4×6 landscape photo so she could print the pages and turn it into an adorable hybrid album. I’m particularly fond of her 2006 album with double page spreads and some of my favourite digital artwork. You can see all three albums on her blog — start here with 2006.

Now, I really could continue with at least fifty more but I should probably get back to work. If you have more time, you should also check out albums by Sam, Iceboxpoet and Vee to get an idea of the variety of books that are created in this class.

Alumni, if your album is online, post a link in the comments of this post to share it.

Can’t wait for tomorrow! First Journal your Christmas prompt will be sent in a matter of hours now!

xlovesx

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The giveaway prize of a place for you and a friend on Journal your Christmas goes to…

Kirsty Says:
28 November 2009, 20:08
The thing i’m most looking foward to this christmas is seeing the pure inocent joy on my childrens faces when they realise that Santa has been.I’m on borrowed time with my daughter as she is 7 years old and i can’t bear the thought of when she finds out that Santa is really mummy!.So i try to make each year a little bit better than the previous one.So that is the thing i’m most looking foward to & planning this xmas.xx

Kirsty, email me with the email address of your friend so you can both get started!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered! It’s not too late to join us, and you can find all the details here.

Check back later today for a post with some of my favourite Christmas journals from participants in past years!

Have a great week!

xlovesx

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Journal your Christmas starts next Tuesday on the first of December. This weekend you can win a place for you and a friend just by leaving a comment!

To enter, leave a comment with one thing you are looking forward to or planning this Christmas – anything! One comment per person, and comments close at 6:00am Monday morning UK time. Winner will be announced later on Monday.

If the winner has already signed up for Journal your Christmas in 2009, she’ll have the choice of a refund or a place to gift to another friend. If the winner signed up 2008 or earlier, she’ll receive places for two friends.

You can find all the class details here so go ahead and sign up!

Don’t forget to leave your comment! Good luck!

ETA: comments now closed and the winner is posted.

xlovesx

Since the winner gets a place for herself AND a friend, why not tell all your friends? Click to share via Facebook and elsewhere.

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With the calendar turned over to November, it’s going to get more and more difficult to ignore that the holidays will be upon us…so perhaps it’s best to stop ignoring and start embracing the Christmas season! After all, the shops already have aisles filled with Christmas chocolates and stocking stuffers, so it must nearly be time to celebrate!

It’s something that started small. One year it was just me and my pen and my book, trying to take back Christmas and rediscover my love of the holiday after a few years when Christmas lacked a certain sparkle. The second Christmas, I shared the idea with a small group of crafty friends, just to see if this reclaiming idea was something that made sense outside of my head. It did. And from there, Journal your Christmas became an online class that I shared with the rest of the world. And by ‘rest of the world’, I mean if we just found an Antarctic explorer who fancied taking part, we would have Christmas journallers from every continent.

This is the most magical time of the year, and Journal your Christmas lets you keep that magic for years to come.

Every year, Journal your Christmas includes daily prompts from the 1st of December to the 6th of January, the twelfth day of Christmas. The 37 illustrated PDF files are delivered straight to your inbox so you can read them over your first cup of coffee and mull over each topic for a full day. There’s also an archive of the class materials online in case you can’t get to your email or in case something dreadful happens to your computer. And like every year, you can go it alone or be as social as you like, with a private discussion forum where you’ll find other Christmas journallers who will cheer you on and share your excitement, but if you prefer to stick to the prompts only, that’s completely fine too. And like every year, if you’re participated once, you can join us every Christmas for as long as you like at no extra cost.

In addition to ideas for writing topics and styles and notes on photos not to miss, the 37 prompts include more than 300 scrapbook pages to inspire your crafting creativity.

Of course, every Christmas needs a little something new, so this year’s additions include:
…a guide to preparing your album this month so you can scrap through the busy schedule of December
…a printable Christmas planner to help keep things from getting crazy in the countdown to the big day
…new printable accents for paper scrappers
…a digital kit absolutely crammed full of papers, templates, overlays, lettering and embellishments designed just for the class
…a bonus workbook on getting the best photographs possible this Christmas, with advice and examples from dozens of professional photographers.
so there is plenty to keep things exciting whether this is your first Christmas journal or your fifth.

Like all online scrapbooking classes at shimelle.com, Journal your Christmas includes
…permanent access to all class materials
…private forum for discussion and sharing your work
…prompts delivered straight to your inbox
…ongoing membership — pay just once and participate as many years as you would like at no additional cost.

Sign up now or gift a place to a friend as an early Christmas gift! You can pay in your choice of US Dollars or UK Pounds.

You can pay by credit/debit card (click on the left of the payment screen) or Paypal account (log in on the right of the payment screen). Please be sure to enter a valid email address as part of your payment so your prompts can be delivered to your inbox. Orders can take up to 24 hours to process, though we are usually quicker. If you haven’t received your class registration after 24 hours, just email me and we’ll make sure your registration is completed and ready for you to get started!

If you participated last year, you don’t need to do anything to join us again. In about a week you will receive an email with some updated info and reminders for you.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few more sneaky looks at what you can expect this year, so keep your eyes open throughout November. (That’s this year’s cover in the first and last images.) Any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments and I’ll get right back to you with an answer! I can’t wait to get into the holiday spirit with new faces and alumni in this year’s class!

xlovesx

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Oh goodness, thanks so much for your enthusiasm in the comments!

Here’s our lucky commenter…

Sharon Brown Says:
I really like the sound of this, I’ve been longing to have a go at blogging but don’t really know where to start

Sharon, I’m emailing you now to get you all set to go!

If you’ve signed up, you should now have received this morning’s email. If it didn’t arrive, you can download it from the class forum but also send me an email so I can make sure your emails don’t disappear into the ether.

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late. We’re just getting started! Find all the details here and join us!

More news about a class later today…maybe a class involving a certain holiday that will be here before we know it? Check back this afternoon for all the details!

xlovesx

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