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

It’s the tenth of December, which brings a list of ten for 10 Things! This month, I’ve gone through the archives to find ten Christmas projects here that might be useful to your holiday crafting.

First up, the cards above plus a few more in this handmade Christmas card round-up from last year.

An oldie but a goodie, this box just found its way to my kitchen again. It gets stored away with the Christmas decorations each year, and holds all sorts of Christmas recipes along with some corresponding photos and stories. This recipe box tutorial includes the simple printable recipe card too.

Super-talented Corrie Jones shared this tutorial here last year, with all the details on how to decorate a Christmas window. It’s definitely one of my very favourites!

This post (and the video) illustrates how I made my page numbers for my 2010 Christmas journal, but this technique could be useful for any sort of small layered embellishment, and could be perfect for dressing up gift tags this Christmas.

Speaking of gift tags, Mindy Miller shared this tutorial for custom snowflake gift tags last Christmas, and I love the modern look with just a touch of sparkle.

There are two editions of Sketch to Scrapbook Page (each with a video) featuring Christmas themes. This sketch features border papers and this sketch uses two 4×6 photos.

Fancy adding just a little something to your Christmas decor or table setting by just using what you have on hand? This tutorial by SJ Dowsett includes five separate ideas using your punches and whatever paper or cardstock you have on hand. It’s a perfect project for a day that’s too cold grey to get outside!

Or grab a few tags and dress up a window, mantel or frame with a Christmas garland. I love these made with the mini bingo cards from Jenni Bowlin Studio. I managed to keep the example in the video for a few Christmases as a garland, and the smaller pieces in the middle had finally had enough when I unpacked it this year, so I’ve separated the tags and hung them on the tree as ornaments. Not a bad track record for paper decorations!

If you’re feeling a little festive, let Pam Brown take you through a tutorial for Christmas cards in bright red and green tones with plenty of poinsettias!

And of course, there’s always my favourite Christmas project, Journal your Christmas! In the most recent Glitter Girl episode, you can check out one of my entries for this year’s book. It’s the third project in the video for this extended adventure! (And you can always join Journal your Christmas at any time – it’s not a project that has to be started on any certain day nor does it require daily entries. Just join in and enjoy!)

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Journal your Christmas is my favourite project of every year… and next Saturday it will start again, for my ninth year! Whether you’ve joined in this project before, seen it from afar or it’s brand new to you, you can join in!

Journal your Christmas was a journey I started nine years ago now, with the first year being just a project for myself, not thinking of taking it online at all. I’d had a rough year. I was worried about the holidays becoming more drama on top of some big events that just had me feeling lost in a very big world. I could remember being head over heels in love with Christmas growing up. It was magical as a child and still amazing when I was a teenager and moved away to college and so forth… and yet I suddenly felt like I had lost every speck of sparkle from my Christmas spirit. And I wanted it back. So I kept a little book and wrote about things every day, sometimes about my Christmas present, sometimes my memories of Christmases past and sometimes my hopes for Christmases future.

That notebook changed my life.

When that new year rolled around and we got back into the normal work schedule, friends and colleagues all commented that I seemed so different – like an improved and rejuvenated version of me. They asked what I had done over Christmas to change my attitude, and the only thing I could point to was my notebook. By thinking things through, I made a more conscious effort to enjoy the good stuff in life and minimise the drama. Sometimes they laughed at the idea, but more than one nodded and said it sounded sensible. So throughout that year, the idea of how this could continue bubbled away in my head.

Journal your Christmas became an online class in 2004, and has continued every December since. That means this is our ninth year of reclaiming Christmas on our own terms, celebrating the very best of the season and taking the time to enjoy both Christmas present and our favourite memories from many Christmases past. I am so very happy to welcome those who have been writing their Christmas memories for those past eight years right along with brand new faces and everyone who has joined us between then and now. I truly look forward to this project all year long.

What is Journal your Christmas?
Journal your Christmas is an online scrapbooking class to celebrate the holiday season. It starts on the first of December and finishes on the sixth of January, with thirty-seven daily prompts sent by email.

Each prompt is a full-colour PDF file you can view on your screen (on your computer, iPad, smart phone or anything else that lets you view such files) or print onto paper. Each daily prompt follows a specific theme of the day, with the thirty-seven days covering all sorts of holiday aspects, from food and decorations to music and gifts. Every day there is something for you to consider and ideas to make the writing come easily. The topics can be applied to this year for documenting the current Christmas or you can get nostalgic with your Christmas memories – and most crafters write a bit about both.

The daily prompts are delivered to you at the same time each day by email, so you don’t have to spend any time logging into a website to download each day’s content. Should you have the time to chat with other participants or share your work, there is a private message board for class participants, and you can spend as much or as little time there chatting to other crafters enjoying the holiday season. Each prompt includes several examples of pages created by Journal your Christmas class participants, so you can see a range of crafting styles (including paper and digital pages) on the same theme. You can gather ideas from any of them or go in your own unique way entirely. There is zero pressure to make anything in the same style as any of the examples, including mine. Everyone and every style welcome!

How much time do I have to devote to this project?
You can devote as much or as little time as you like. Some participants create a entry or a page every day, and that’s a fab way to follow the class prompts. However it’s certainly not required, and it really wasn’t what I envisioned on day one. My original notebook was writing every day but not completing a full scrapbook page. That part came later. Since the class has permanent membership, I encourage scrappers who don’t have the time or the desire to create something every day to just choose the prompts that speak to you (or your schedule) most. You can make a few pages this year, a few pages next year and so on to fill a whole album. Or you can make a mini album every year. Or something that falls in between. You can blog your writing (either to the world or just to yourself) and choose later to add something crafty or not. You can take pictures and put together a photobook at the end of the project. We’ll cover many ways to make this work, and you can choose the options that work best for you.

What if I don’t scrapbook?
You are still very welcome to join us. Reading each day’s prompt, you might choose to respond in the form of a blog post or a plain written journal. My original book was nothing more than penned words and a tiny bit of colour here and there, so this can certainly be useful! Some participants follow the class from a photography angle, and use it as their inspiration to take a series of meaningful photos throughout the holidays. And still others read each day’s prompts just to be more mindful and aware of Christmas and use the class purely to keep them in the right mindset for enjoying the season for its real merits rather than letting commercial pressures and the stress of a busy calendar overtake their Christmas magic.
Truly, anyone is welcome.

What is included in Journal your Christmas?
Journal your Christmas includes permanent membership – so you sign up once and can join in as many years as you would like at no additional cost. That also means once you sign up, you can access the prompts and extras from earlier years at any time, via the class forum. Those extras include printable accents, digital kits and photography challenges.

For 2012, all the class materials have been completely refreshed. If you think you already have the 37 topics in order, there will be an entire holiday season of surprises for you! Plus there is some significant video content this year, when we’ve only had a bit of video here and there in the past.

For 2012, Journal your Christmas includes:
…thirty-seven daily PDF prompts for writing and crafting
…thirty-seven daily PDF prompts for holiday photography (like getting an online photography workshop as a bonus)
…videos to support the PDFs (there is not a video every single day but there are many, and they cover a variety of things, including writing, crafting and taking pictures)
…exclusive digital and printable designs for your pages
…private forum to chat and share your work
…online chat to start the project (of course your attendance is optional)
…bonus offers from some of my favourite websites
…£1 donation to The Girls’ Fund via Plan, helping provide education and well-being to girls in difficult circumstances around the world.

And I’m happy to say the class is the same price as last year and the year before that.

How do I join Journal your Christmas?
Easy! Just choose your currency and click the button below for your choice of UK pounds or US dollars. If neither of those is your currency, you can still join us! Choose either and the payment will convert automatically when you make your payment.

You can pay by credit/debit card or Paypal account. If you would like your prompts to come to a different email address than the one on your Paypal account, please be sure to leave a note in the message to seller section with the email address you would like to use. 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. This week you will receive an email with some updated info and reminders for you. The only thing you might need to do is update your email address if it has changed over the past year. By the way, if you don’t remember your username or password for the class forum, send an email here for help with that!

Can I gift Journal your Christmas to a friend?
Yes, of course! Just use the same button to join, and leave the email address of the friend in the notes field of the payment. Or if you miss that step, send me an email. If you would like me to send a personal email to the gift recipient to reveal your gift (or keep your Secret Santa identity a secret), I am happy to do either. Just let me know.

Do I need to prepare in advance?
You don’t need to, no. Some crafters really like to prepare a book in advance. Some don’t. There are many participants already discussing this sort of thing on the forum and once you sign up you can see all sorts of completed Christmas Journals to get an idea of what style you would like best.

There are also a few archive posts here you might find useful: Preparing Christmas page numbers with a video, and a second look at JYC page numbers from a different book, and preparing pocket pages ready to keep all sorts of Christmas ephemera.

Any other questions?
If you have a question I haven’t answered, feel free to ask in the comments or send me an email.

I very much hope you’ll join me and journal your most magical Christmas yet!

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On the twenty-second of every month, we bring you Gardeners’ Digest – a blog hop of scrapbooking news from the Garden Girls at Two Peas in a Bucket! Except the twenty-second of November is a big holiday for many of you, so we’ve altered the schedule a bit. The Gardeners’ Digest comes a little early!

Since the last Digest, Glitter Girl has been up to several adventures, of course! She’s tackled masculine scrapbook pages, scrapbooking with ribbons, layering vellum, and finding traditional Christmas papers amongst your supplies from the rest of the year. Any guesses what question she might be answering tomorrow from that little sneak peek above?

Instead of picking just one project this month, I thought I’d pick one from each of the Garden Girls! All the pictures are clickable, so just click through to bookmark anything you like (and see the project in full, of course).

Two Peas has run a few fabulous sales recently, so I may have taken that opportunity to go shopping! Just maybe! Five of my favourite products right now include Seen & Noted papers by Pebbles, Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic papers in 6×6, translucent letter stickers by Amy Tangerine, colourful mini letter stickers from Simple Stories Sn@p and the perfect set of little badges for any Instagram fan. What are your favourites lately? Did you pick up anything special in the sale?

How about a shopping spree? This month’s Gardeners’ Digest giveaway is Two Peas shopping money! For every hundred comments, the prize goes up by $10. Ten bucks for the first hundred comments… then twenty, thirty, forty. You can only comment once and you have until the end of next Thursday, the 29th of November. If there are lots and lots of comments, that prize pot might make it up to a $100 shopping spree perhaps! You might want to tell a friend.

Now, once you’ve left that comment, remember to click on over to the next Garden Girl. Your next stop is the fabulous Marcy Penner, who also has a range of delightful printable journaling cards available at Two Peas. And enjoy the digest posts from all the Garden Girls! You can also catch up with the Two Peas blog for everything happening in Pealand!

Gardeners’ Digest is a monthly update from the Garden Girls, the design team at Two Peas in a Bucket. To keep up with the Garden Girls throughout the month, check out the garden gallery, find us on Twitter or subscribe to all our blogs with just a couple clicks.

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As promised, there are a very limited number of kits for UK addresses on offer today. These are £44, which includes first class post to a UK address.

-Once the available kits are sold, the button should not allow you to purchase one – you’ll just be sent back here to the blog without completing your payment. – Kits are now sold out – thank you! There is a possibility a few more kits will be available at the end of this week, and if so I will post the details here.

Thanks so much!

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The past few weeks I have been surrounded by Christmas scrapbooking supplies and I wasn’t allowed to cut and paste any of them! I’ve been preparing the preordered Christmas in a Box kits for UK addresses, and they’ve started posting and yesterday I had an email from one scrapper who had unpacked her kit – that always makes it feel quite real! Today I can share details about that kit and it is now available for purchase in the US and worldwide, complete with a discount code!

For pre-ordered kits in the UK
If you pre-ordered in July you were sent a click-to-pay invoice email for the balance of the kit and these started shipping last week. All remaining boxes here that have been paid will be posted tomorrow (Monday, 12th November). I even have a car for the day to make that happen – how fancy! If you haven’t paid your invoice, your box won’t ship until that’s paid of course.
Also, there is a little something extra coming to each of you in a separate little delivery that will arrive right around the first of December. It’s just a little bit of Christmas happiness from me to you and I hope it brings you some Christmas cheer!

For those in the UK who did not pre-order
There are a very limited number of extra kits available here. These will go on sale here Tuesday morning at 6am, and they will be shipped straight away. Kits are £44, which includes postage. There may also be a few later on if some pre-ordered kits are not paid for by mid-November, but please don’t bank on getting a kit that way as you know there are not many scrappers out there who don’t like a box of new crafting stash!

For those anywhere in the world
The kit is available from today from Two Peas in a Bucket, who will ship to anywhere in the world. You can find my kit list here, and just add one of each to your bucket to order your kit. There are just a few small differences between that kit and what I’ve boxed up here: sadly there are no more of the Jenni Bowlin rhinestone stars (unless you find them in a store that still has stock) as they were a limited edition item, so I’ve suggested enamel dots as a replacement as they are also red and can be used in the same way. There are two sheets of paper different, plus I’ve added a set of Thickers and the Two Peas exclusive Christmas stamp set. The list lets you pick and choose what you would like so you can make any changes you fancy and you can stick to whatever budget you would like. But there is a great reason to add the stamp set to your kit: if you spend at least $50 with your purchase and use code DDKP25, you’ll receive 25% off your items! That’s $12.50 off a $50 purchase, so that’s almost enough to cover the fab stamp set! But it doesn’t have to just be things from my list, so if you wanted to add an album or more shopping, go for it as the 25% discount will cover that too. (It cannot be combined with a free shipping code, but it can be used for any amount of shopping past $50, so it’s quite likely your savings will be much greater than the shipping discount – plus it can be used for international orders and those usually only get a $5 discount on the shipping.)

Please don’t wait to order as the discount code expires on the 16th of November and items may sell out, so go ahead and go shopping now to get everything you want, including the discount.

What about an album?
The kits do not include an album so you are free to choose whatever album style you would like! This year I am using the Studio Calico Handbook album with the coordinating page protectors. It comes in a few different cover styles (all the same size but different patterns embossed on the cover) and is a neutral cover designed to be customised however you would like. You can find the albums and the page protectors here, and if you’re spending more than $50 at Two Peas then use that DDKP25 discount code to get the 25% off these too. If you’re in the UK and looking to source these albums, they are available locally from Sarah’s Cards. (I will not be stocking these albums.)

If you would like some other album types to consider, check out this list of those available at Two Peas and see if something suits your style. You might also want to make your own album and not need a formal book at all – that works too and can help keep the cost down if that’s a priority for you this year.

Do I have to have a kit?
There is no requirement to use any certain supplies for Journal your Christmas, of course! You can use any supplies you would like! But it can be fun to treat yourself to a lovely box of new goodies to enjoy throughout the holiday season, and these are the supplies I will be using throughout my 2012-2013 album, which means you’ll see them in the prompts and videos of this year’s class. Having some or all of the same supplies can make it super easy to follow along if time is limited throughout the holidays, but you are always, always welcome to use your own supplies and scrap in your own style, so please don’t feel it’s a requirement in the slightest.

Thanks so much, and if there are any questions just let me know!

xlovesx

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I’m not sure I can top last year’s November edition of 10 Things: ten favourite Christmas journal entries, so I’m not even going to try. I’m going super-simple this month: ten photos I want to scrapbook soon. Starting with a little snapshot of what life looks like right now. or at least, ‘right now’ a month ago, but also including…

a little fanciness from Rachel and Rob’s wedding…

a bit of complete chaos from the joy that was being able to bake again…

a birthday treat of queueing for London’s best toasted cheese sandwich with Jen at Borough Market…

a lovely adventure at a WI birthday party talking up scrapbooking as a fabulous craft, of course…

just, you know, an ordinary day with a colourful Red Arrows flyover…

possibly the craziest photo booth set-up I’ve ever seen (at the V&A)…

some pretty equestrian pictures snapped in the 3.4 minutes in which it was not bucketing down with rain…

the fancy lights on the Thames, which I had somehow entirely forgot to print…

and a somewhat hilarious group photo I completely forgot we snapped at Legoland earlier this year!

So now it’s your turn! On the tenth of each month, we share 10 things. It can be anything as long as it’s ten! Link up your post to share it this month and mark your calendar for the tenth of December!

PS: Christmas kits for the US and the rest of the world? They go on sale TOMORROW and I’ll have a special discount code here for you!

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This weekend, one commenter will win a place on Amy Heller’s new Two Peas in a Bucket class Seasonal Storytelling

Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. Each season brings about its own wonderful and memorable moments for us all.

Perhaps Winter, when celebrating Christmas or Hannukah and the New Year, is your most memorable time of the year. Or maybe it is Spring when your family celebrates a number of birthdays, or you love preparing your garden and celebrating Easter. Then there is Summer – full of outdoor activities, 4th of July, camping and family vacations. And of course, Autumn with the beginning of school, the glorious changing of nature’s color, bountiful harvests, Halloween and Thanksgiving. When you break the year up into seasons, there certainly are plenty of stories worth telling!

In Seasonal Storytelling: Mini Books for Sharing Each Season’s Special Memories, we break down the year into the four seasons. This provides a naturally broadened perspective through which to document your special memories. Because of this broadened view, we introduce you to four different approaches to creating seasonal mini albums – Events & Traditions, Timeframes, On-the-Go and Reflections. With each chapter, we will focus on a different season and share two of these four approaches for tackling that season to create a mini book filled with a memories that fits your lifestyle, your scrapping habits and your style of creating.

Showcasing eight different and unique mini albums filled with over 100 pages of ideas, Seasonal Storytelling covers each of the seasons, throughout four chapters. Every chapter contains a printable PDF containing two beautifully crafted mini albums along with a coordinating video. Also included are two exclusive printable journaling cards used as the base for one of the mini albums featured in the workshop.

If you like the look of this class – then you are bound to love Through the Kaleidoscope Workshop. A wonderful class on colour schemes, very inspirational.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling us your favourite season, and why. Please leave your 2peas username with your comment.

Entries close at midnight Thursday UK time and the winner will be posted Friday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!

Good luck!

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We have two winners this week.
First up is kikik who wins the place for the new SCRAPBOOK REMIX class

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And the winner for the Two Peas in a Bucket shopping spree is Julie!

Ladies, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your details.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment.

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This week Glitter Girl takes on an older product that is back on the scene: she’s scrapbooking with vellum! Inspired by this discussion on the message board at Two Peas, she has a few suggestions for product choices and benefits, then a new layout to share in this week’s adventure.

There are plenty of vellum options available at Two Peas and now and many of them are on sale this week. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and you’ll find all sorts of goodies related to this week’s adventure, but be quick if you want to grab the discounts as the hot products sale ends on Friday.

And yes, that is a school photo from my early teaching years! We had to have a staff photo taken each year and once the school had taken the necessary number for bulletin boards and so forth, the remaining prints would appear in our pigeon holes in the staff room, and ever since I’ve had this small collection of grown-up school portraits. I am pretty sure this is the first time I’ve put any of them on a page. I also have yearly class portraits of my tutor group – that’s basically like homeroom for those of you stateside. I had the same group for four years, so those class pictures show them starting as teeny kids and growing up one year at a time, all in school uniform of course. Some day I will figure out the best way to scrapbook that entire experience too… but this is a start. Interestingly, the top I am wearing in this photo caused me no end of trouble in my first teaching job (I missed the memo that red did not meet the dress code there) but that is a different story for a different day and a different page entirely.

This week, Glitter Girl challenges you to scrapbook with vellum and share the results! You can link to them in the comments here too if you like.

The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.

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