I do so appreciate a good Christmas in July challenge. For some reason, I don’t like to scrap Christmas layouts in the winter. Let the temperature hit 90 degrees, and suddenly I am in the mood for the green and red of the holidays. Fa la la la…
In this case, I was challenged to work from a sketch that was a bit unlike my normal layout. The photo placement is not something I would have considered on my own. I don’t think I have ever scrapped photos on a diagonal like this. Sometimes it pays to stretch yourself. Honestly, I very much like the final result.
Most of you know that I tend to use a lot of scraps on my layouts. This time, I pulled mostly uncut papers. I just didn’t have scraps in the colors I wanted for this page. I was going for the greens and brick red that are found in the photos. So I went through a stack of older papers, and found what I needed for the background along with the two large blocks in the middle. The photo mats were cut from Photo Play’s Luke 2 6×6 pad. I added one more tiny layer behind each mat from my scraps. (You know I had to fit a scrap in there somewhere!)
Finding embellishments was a challenge as well. Again, most of my embellishments were not the correct color. Luckily, I had the reindeer diecut in my stash. It did a nice job of filling space and connecting the photos. I couldn’t find anything else that would work well, so I decided to pull some neutral pieces. Wood veneers, gold sequins, and some naked chipboard snowflakes fit the bill quite well.
The naked chipboard snowflakes didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted. I planned on coloring the chipboard with Tim Holtz’s Bundled Sage distress inks. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find that pad anywhere in all of my mess supplies. Instead, I used Peeled Paint. It was a bit darker than I was going for, but I thought it would be fine. Then I used some clear thick embossing powder to make the snowflakes shiny. Somehow that made the snowflakes look black. If I ever use this technique again, I will make sure my ink is lighter than what I want as my final result.
There’s still a week left in July! Anyone else want to get into the Christmas spirit? Why not make a holiday layout or some cards? Oh, I think cards are next!