SHOP THE ITEMS
The winter season is upon us! I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of relieved. I've been really feeling like turning into a hermit and hiding in my house and reading so I'm really looking forward to it.
Since it's the last season of the year, we're visiting the last royal court and for this one, we're visiting the mountains in the north of Bookverse! There's snow covered mountains and of course, a blizzard so we'll be hunkering down in the palace.
This theme will be in the shop on Friday 10/27 at 12PMcst and officially this challenge will last from December - February
Since this season does go across two years, a lot of people will put it in their 2023 planner and then just reference it when they need to fill in books or they'll keep it outside their planner until January, when they get their new planners.
As always, this is just the official season, but these are designed to be self-start so you can decide when you begin and end the challenge. That means you can easily do it January-March with no issues!
Unlike the fall kit, that ended up looking totally different from what I planned, the winter kit ended up looking pretty much exactly like I planned! I love the colors and all the fantasy elements!
You'll have the vertical option shown above and our new journaling format, which is perfect for a weekly layout or for spacing out in a regular or book journal. We will also have a few add ons if you use certain items more than others -- checklist boxes, reading stickers, washi type stickers, etc.
As for the challenge itself, we will have a group read for it, though if you choose not to read the group read you can count it as a free space. We will start voting on the group read in the Creating & Co Book Club starting the first week of November and we'll have it officially picked a week or so later.
There will be 11 prompts other than the group read.
In case this is your first challenge with us, here's how it works:
- Each prompt on the challenge has a number that corresponds to it. Let's say for the first book you read, you pick prompt of a book with "yellow cover".
- You can write in the title of the book you read in the challenge table
- And then pick a book sticker that looks like the one that has the 5 on it in the empty shelf. Place that book sticker over the greyed out 5th book on the shelf
- Repeat until you fill up your shelf!
Our most common size is our 4.75" x 6.75" dashboard + book stickers -- this is the one shown below! It fits perfectly in our build your own book journal too!
Each of our challenges also have a media challenge so if you love movies and tv shows too, you can do both and work towards the challenge in multiple forms of entertainment!
We will also have a couple of other sizes:
- A 7" x 9" version that you can use in most common planners--Erin Condren, Happy Planner, Yellow Paper House, Paper House Productions, etc.
- An a5 version that fits in any a5 planner but it also fits in the Always Fully Booked planner
- A "separated" version that gives you all of the elements of the dashboard on its own so you can design your own page in your planner or bullet journal.
- A "books only" option that has some book shaped labels and a header so you can arrange them however you'd like in your planner
You can also feel free to draw your own layout and join the event and chat with us!
Each of our challenges come with a badge sticker that is handy for keeping track of the challenges you've completed through the year. You can make your own layout to keep track or pick up one of our tracking dashboards and fill it in as the year goes on!
For these prompts, I also wanted to explain some of them:
- Winter Sports -- has some kind of winter sports element to it
- Happy Vibes -- a book that makes you happy for some reason
- Magic Users -- some or all of the characters use magic in some way
- Nobility -- Characters either have a royal/noble title or they are just really noble in their deeds and personality
- Outside Comfort Zone -- a book that isn’t your typical read in genre or format
- Map/Illustrations -- has a map or illustrations within the book
- Forced Proximity -- the characters are forced to be together for whatever reason
- Animal Friends -- characters have an animal they are close to
- thin Ice -- a character is risking a lot to accomplish a goal
- Low Stakes -- or a contained story - a story that isn’t about the end of the world
- Reluctant Protagonist -- the protagonist really doesn’t want to be here but they are anyway
- Group Read/Free Space -- This is TBA
I was definitely inspired by Frozen, Game of Thrones and Throne of Glass for this one but what books can you think of for these? Visit the Creating & Co Book Club to see threads on each of the prompts to see other suggestions from people in the group!
We'll also be having a planning party for the challenge in early November (before the US holidays). Though this does give you plenty of time to get your hands on the stickers, make sure you grab them as soon as you can so you can make sure they'll be at your house and ready to go!
During the week of the planning party, we'll have threads in the Creating & Co Book Club that will give you a chance to win some shop credit towards other items in the shop! This will also be when we chat about the group read and we may have some other events or threads in the group during that time as well!
As always with our seasonal challenges, we'll release some of our most popular reading stickers in the winter color scheme as well! This way you can use the colors throughout the season and play up the fall vibes for the entire quarter! We did limit the release this time to only the four most popular and these were the ones that made the cut!
You'll also be able to pick up matching washi! These are always really popular so make sure you grab them while you can!
We'll also have two new vinyl stickers that are limited stock that are perfect for putting on your kindle case or your favorite cup or anywhere else you can think of!
Since I was using this color palette and it matches so many winter kits so well, I decided to use it to make the journal sheets that I've been making for the past couple of seasons!
Finally, we'll have a few other releases that I don't think you're going to want to miss:
These two name tag vinyls are so cute and I'll also be making them in sheet form so you can use them for those days when you plan to do nothing but read!
Make sure you're in the Creating & Co Book Club to share some recommendations for each of these prompts and we'll see you here on the website on Friday when its time for everything to go live!