31 Spooky Stories Collab with Notebook of Ghosts

I am super stoked and excited to share these spooky story record sheets with you as part of a collaboration with Ash from Notebook of Ghosts!

I first took part in one of her Spooky Stories reading challenges last year when she ran her #25spookystories festive reading challenge. Now we all know how much I love a Ghost Story at Christmas and last year I read 25 under the challenge and got myself into a suitably spooky Christmas mood! So much so that I started buying more festive collections in January, ready for this year!

This October launches the #31spookystories challenge where participants can read 13 or 31 short stories during the month of October. If you head over to https://notebookofghosts.com you can find info on the background to the challenge and a whole host of free resources to find your spooky reads without spending a penny. Plus lots of amazing ghostly tales on the blog too!

I’ve downloaded these progress sheets as an accompaniment to the challenge. Just pick whether you’d like the 13 stories or 31 stories sheet and use them as a place to jot down each spooky story you read so that you can see your challenge progress and revisit the stories at a future date. Last year I tracked my progress on the notes app on my phone, but I couldn’t help but think that there must be a much funner way to do it, and so the progress sheets were born!


You can download copies here as well as on the https://notebookofghosts.com website. And remember to use the #31spookystories to share your Halloween reads! I’ll be sharing mine too over at https://instagram.com/thisissianellis so head over and give me and @notebookofghosts a follow to follow the challenge.

Drawlloween 2019 and other Drawing Challenges

It’s that time of year again! Last year was my first drawlloween and boy did I love it. I am super busy but I need to make time for it. I rarely draw anything for the sake these days. I am Commission after commission at the moment and I want to break free for a bit of growth drawing. Plus it’s all spooky themed so OF COURSE I am all about it. 

How to pick your challenges 

In last year’s review I crowned Mab Graves’ drawlloween my favourite. I will be doing Mab’s again this year for sure. She has released her prompts and I have been collecting inspiration already. I want to do more challenges but I need to be sensible of my time. So I will do alternate days on drawing challenges  as opposed to more than one daily challenge.

This year feels like approximately one billion new challenges have sprung up. It makes choosing harder, and also feels a bit of a shame that people seem to be splintering off? I haven’t decided which I will do yet, but odds are that I will foot between. There is no shame in doing one for a day or two and moving on to another. Letting a prompt inspire you is perhaps the most important thing. Well, to me it is anyway!

A bonus challenge that isn’t drawing

I will also be doing Notebook of Ghost’s ‘31 Spooky Stories’ challenge. The challenge is to read a spooky short story a day. It’s nothing to do with drawing but it sounds fun. As well as making more time for aimless drawing, making more time for other hobbies is in my priority list too. Finding time and love for reading is important o me in addressing the right balance in life alongside running my own business. The short story angle means that when I am really hard up on time it’s not something that will take over my evening to do. 

As always, follow along my Instagram @thisissianellis to see what I come up with for each challenge, and check out my stories for details on the short stories I will read. 

Hashtags to check out 

#31spookystories

#drawlloween

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2019

#inktober