Jacquie Lawson Releases New 2012 Advent Calendar

LURGASHALL, England, Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Counting down the days to Christmas brings joy to children and adults of all ages. Since its launch in 2010, the annual Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar has become a Christmas institution for thousands of families across the world, with 2011 sales of just under a million copies. All year long, fans look forward to learning the theme of the new calendar, anticipating the joy and excitement of watching the story unfold one day at a time. This year, the popular holiday calendar is also available for iPad and Android tablets so families can enjoy and share in its delight anytime and anyplace.

The new 2012 calendar takes on an Alpine theme, featuring a pretty mountain village. Each day beginning on December 1^st and ending on December 25^th, users search for a red tree ornament within the scene and click it to reveal a new animation. Some are interactive games, such as a Snowman Maker; and others are delightful seasonal animations along the lines of the beautiful e-cards for which the company is famous. As the month progresses, the village comes alive, with every day's animation being reflected in the Alpine scene in some way. Users also have their own cottage, with a tree to decorate and a puzzle to play, not to mention a music player loaded with a choice of Christmas music.

Each of the 25 animations is accompanied by original Christmas music, specially written and arranged by Mike Hughes-Chamberlain who is as passionate about the quality of the music as Jacquie and her team is about the artwork.

"We were delighted by the response to last year's calendar," said Mike Hughes-Chamberlain, co-founder and in-house composer/arranger of the successful e-card company. "We heard hundreds of stories of families for whom the daily ritual of opening the Advent Calendar became almost as important a part of Christmas as Santa Claus and Christmas pudding!"

The Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar makes a wonderful early Christmas gift for friends and family, and at just $2.00 a copy for orders of five or more, is a tremendous value and a great way to share a common experience with friends and loved ones throughout the Christmas season. This year, the Alpine and London Advent Calendars are available for PC (Windows) and Apple OSX. Past versions of the calendar, like last year's popular London theme and the original Village calendar from 2010 have been re-released in iPad format, and versions of the Village calendar for various Android platforms are also expected to be available in time for December 1^st, 2012.

Click here for full details of all the versions available.

About Jacquie Lawson

Jacquie Lawson lives in the small English village of Lurgashall, in West Sussex. She trained as an illustrator at St. Martin's School of Art, and has more than 20 years' experience in many areas of drawing, painting and design, including architectural perspectives, book illustration and cartoons.  She began working on e-cards in 2000, and by the following year her animations were becoming so popular that she teamed up with Mike Hughes-Chamberlain to meet the demand by creating the jacquielawson.com website.  Over the years, a select few additional artists have joined the team, and the collection of e-cards has grown to its current total of well over 200, each one showing a degree of artistry and attention to detail rarely seen in this medium.  For more information, and to see all of the available e-cards, visit www.jacquielawson.com.

SOURCE jacquielawson.com