Sunday, December 31, 2006

Christmas {A}

At Alphabet Funk, our team of designers aim to inspire you every week through tutorials and photos. As a team we all love Christmas. It is an occasion worthy of commemorating throughout the year and so we came up with the idea of the Christmas Journal. Not only fun to do, but we will have a wonderful Journal at the end..........

Be truly inspired by the wonderful variety of styles and ideas in our fortnightly A-Z Christmas Journal and, for those weeks inbetween, we will be following the alphabet with insights into crafts like quilling, jewellery making and many more over the coming weeks.

Take part in our challenges, upload to the Gallery on Bubbly Funk and share your inspiration!

Be inspired here every week, with the first post Christmas Journal 'A' showing below, and thereafter every Sunday..........



This is all about getting started on your Christmas A-Z Journal. Today I will show you an example of a cover and the first letter of the alphabet.

I have decided to do my journal 9" x 6" and will be using Basic Grey Fruitcake papers throughout. I have also used some free printable illustrations that can be found at All Things Christmas and Christmas.momsbreak.com

For {A} I have decided to base my page on Angels but there are many you could use such as: Advent, Antlers, Anticipation, Almonds, Aperitif or more humourously, Appetite, Apron, Alcohol, Armchair, Asprin, and Andrews. The choice is yours!

The slide show below shows the stages of the cover from start to finish. After covering the journal with B.G. Fruitcake Plaid I then used Fruitcake Cherry and Pine, tearing the edges of the paper and inking the edges. Gold ribbon and the illustration were mounted on top and the Li'l Davis - Peace, Hope, Joy charm was added.

The chipboard BG numbers "2006" were painted with metallic acrylics and the edges distressed with ink. A hole was punched in the top left hand corner and fibres with round metal beads were threaded through.




The end result looks like this






















The inside cover was finished off by adding a printed vellum Christmas poem to patterned paper and fixing in place like this:






















On to our first page, the letter A.

This is made up of a base sheet just under 9" x 6" and two flaps attached by hinges. If you want to follow this design there is a slide show below. It is important to remember to decorate your flaps before you contruct them so you can hide the reverse of brads, the hinges and other embellishments.

There is a tab inserted in the lower flap so a slit needs to be cut to allow for that before you piece it all together and I have used a small magnetic dot to close the lower flap.

Before you add your photos you may want to decorate embellish the tags a little more.



The end result looks like this:



Our Christmas Journal will progress fortnightly, and you will be able to sample the work of our other talented designers at Bubbly Funk who will share with you their own Christmas Journals.

Why not join us and create your own journals, post your creations to our Bubbly Funk gallery for us all to share and some will be shown here too!

Our Christmas Journal is fortnightly but check back every week for our alphabetical journey through a whole range of crafts and inspiration.

Di W's cover and Letter A



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great job Di getting us all started on our journals!!

Unknown said...

This looks like it is going to be a very useful site. I will add it to my favs and check back regularly. your journal looks fab, but am in the process of taking my tree just now- don't know if I can cope with any more christmas just now, but might take your ideas and adapt in someway- maybe an A-z of my family... good idea....mmm thinking already..

Natalie said...

Ooooh very clever Caroline, the very best of luck with your new blog, looks quite exciting! :)

Anonymous said...

Wonderful inspiration ladies, so impressed. Good luck with it and I will check back often as I have now placed a link on my blog to remind me.

Beth said...

OMG Caroline, when I read the email yesterday, straight away I thought, oooh, this sounds like a bit of fun and exciting too. I've registered on your forum, though haven't been posting or taking part, but will really make it an effort now it's a new year. You've worked very hard with your website aswell, best of luck to you, and those who contribute too. Well done. Beth (Doodlin' Daisies). XX

Linda said...

Love the idea of this and will be giving it a go once I catch my breath. Thanks for the inspiration.

Anonymous said...

Christmas is my time of year so I shall be wathcing with interest. Wonderful work so far. Congratulations! :o)

Anonymous said...

Fantastic - well done caroline - looks great - I have most definately bookmarked xxx