Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas

We were just talking about this course the other night and I wanted to make sure I signed up before I became distracted.  I love all of Shimelle's courses and have always wanted to tackle a Christmas project like this.   And I've got my album ready to go ... the Bazzill Likety Slip Album with lots of cool page inserts.  I can't wait to dig into my Christmas stash that goes back several years but it just as gorgeous as it was when I first bought it all.  Go here to check it out.  Once you've signed up, you have access to previous years and will get any future years as well.  Fantastic deal :)

Another fantastic Shimelle experience ...

I recently undertook Shimelle's "Explore" class, and although I haven't quite finished up, couldn't wait for her new "Learn Something New Every Day" to start. 

It covers the whole month of September and I'm hoping I can keep up.

My problem as of right now is that I've closed the store for the week so that we could take a little mini vacation and get ready for school.  So I have no scrapbook supplies at home!  I may have to take a quick trip into town today to put together a little kit for myself.  Even if I don't, I think from the looks of it that I can just try to keep up with the journaling and put together my book when I go back in next Tuesday.  I recently purchased the Cinch for the crop area at the store and am thinking that a 6x12 coil-bound album might be a fun way to go. 

Let me know if you're participating too :)

shimelle.com Hot Pink Hoopla

This is the last of Shimelle's challenges that I had time for this week.  I used a few major elements from Shimelle's inspiration page. 

I replicated the layout's composition pretty closely but substituted two portrait photos for one landscape.

Also, as Cosmo Cricket is sponsoring this challenge, I decided to dig out some of the older lines.  I am always amazed at how well their lines mix together.  I've got papers from Nutmeg, Boyfriend, Campy Trails (I think) and stickers from Nutmeg and Social Club.

The woodgrain papers from the Nutmeg collection are some of my favorite and after rooting around in my old stash, have realized that I have a whole set that have never been touched!  Like buried treasure ;)

Thanks for a PILE of wonderful challenges Shimelle.  It was a great push to get a few extra layouts done and a fantastic opportunity to use up some of the goodies I've been hoarding :)

shimelle.com Half Page Challenge

I loved this challenge to create a layout using only half of your page.  I was also challenging myself this week to dig through old stash to mix with new.  I found this gorgeous Lily Bee paper to use for my background and a Webster's Pages alpha that I'd tucked away and forgot I had.  Just perfect.

 The colours are a little off in the photos here.  The background is a little more creamy.

shimelle.com 3 is a Magic Number Challenge

For this challenge, I managed to sneak in a few different groupings of 3's in this layout. 

3 photos ...

An image stamped 3 times across the top of the photos

(each stamped image contains a repeating pattern of 3 accents) ... 

The title consists of 3 tags die cut from Creative Imaginations Real Wood, topped with 3 punched pinked circles with each boy's stamped initial.

One of my favorite things about this layout is that I was able to pull out a lot of old supplies and use some new stamps in the process :)

shimelle.com Starting Point Challenge

Next up ... I tackled the Starting Point Challenge using this as my starting point ...

I went with a much more muted colour palette than Shimelle had started with and going with smaller photos running up the left-hand side rather than one photo in the obvious spot for a photo.

 I haven't hand stamped my journaling in a while ... must do that more often :)

shimelle.com Sketch of the Week

Shimelle had the most wonderful online crop last weekend and I've spent the week working on layouts for a number of her challenges.

So excuse the posts, but there will be a bunch coming with one layout per post :)

The first challenge I worked on was just the weekly sketch challenge based on this sketch ...

It isn't done.  I don't know what else it needs.  Definately journaling. 

But I was stuck so I'll go back to it another time.

I used the August "Bookworm" kit from Up The Street ...