Tackling Christmases Past: Holly Jolly Christmas & Merry Christmas

I'm back with a few more Christmas layouts, from my "Tackling Christmases Past" project. I shared my first two completed layouts HERE, and finally finished up a few more, after taking a small break for some fall themed projects. This first layout documents our family get-together, with my side of the family, from Christmas 2008.

I used the same collage template for both sides of the spread, but just flipped the template for the second page to mirror the template on the first page. This template is from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard #6 kit, and it's one that I have used many, many times.

I'm not one that feels locked into using typical holiday colors when it comes to scrapping holiday photos. Which is a good thing, since my family doesn't always dress in typical holiday colors. I let the colors in my photos guide me and ended up with a navy blue, red, an aqua color scheme.

My patterned papers are all from My Mind's Eye, both old and new. I've been pulling out my two favorite border punches quite a bit lately, one a basic scalloped border punch from Stampin Up, and one a fun scalloped border punch (seen here) from Fiskars. I punched my border strips on this layout from the same patterned paper as I was adhereing them to, which added a small subtle touch of interest.

I die cut my title using my Silhouette Cameo again, along with a few stars to add some simple embellishing to the pages. I actually went searching for some buttons or brads to add to the die cut stars, but the enamel dots were sitting there and were so quick and easy to add, so I used those.

An embellishment that I have a HUGE supply of, but don't use hardly at all lately is ribbon. Not sure why I never turn to it, but I decided to pull some out for this layout. It's just two simple pieces of navy blue polka dotted ribbon, but on a layout that is pretty much all photos and paper, it adds a little texture.

I really need to go back and add the years to these layouts, since I didn't do that on the first three. I stuck a post it note on this one, so I would know what album to put it in when I get around to putting layouts away in albums.

And here we have a layout documenting our family get-together, with my side of the family, from Christmas 2009. We almost always celebrate my side of the family at my parents house. However, they have a dog and Alyssa is highly allergic to dogs. So whenever we're over there, she usually feels pretty miserable. This was the one year that we celebrated at our house. I hardly took any photos, mostly because we were all so crowded in our small family room.

I used two different collage templates from Kerri Bradford's Picture That [Go Long] kit for this layout. They were both the same size, which made them easy to line up side by side, on the two pages of the spread.

All of the patterned papers, including the red glittered die cut paper, are from Little Yellow Bicycle. I was doing a purge of my patterned papers recently, and I almost got rid of these papers. I'm glad I didn't, since a lot of the ones I was going to get rid of, I've been using.

I die cut my title, along with a Christmas tree, using my Silhouette Cameo. And I pulled out my scalloped border punch, adding border strips to break up the photos and patterned paper on the pages.

I picked out a photo of each of the girls, and printed them as 3"x5" photos, so I could tuck them above the photo collage on the second page.

So, looking back at my original post on this project, I had photos and collages printed to complete 6 two page layouts and 3 single page layouts. I now have 4 of those two page layouts done, so I'm doing good so far.

I almost got hung on these layouts, when I realized how similiar to the first two layouts they looked. Paper strips on the bottom and sides, photo collages going across the two pages, title on top, etc. But then I remembered what I said about how I'm totally fine with these layouts looking similiar in design. That's the beauty of not feeling like I have to re-invent the wheel on all of these Christmas layouts. The entire point was to take something that I don't necessarily enjoy scrapping, and get-it-done. And that's exactly what I'm doing.

Comments

[isbaha]

Really love your layouts, your color choice and the design is just perfectly effective, love it!

[Tracey]

I love these!! I love that you included so many pictures! And I agree - not much you can do about the similar designs when you have so many pictures. It's a great design though so why change it!!

[Julie Tucker-Wolek]

Love these!! LOVING how many photos you incorporated on these!!!!!

[Leslee]

I love these too. With so many photos on the page!

[Sharee]

Great Christmas pages Laura! Will you share the fonts you used for the second "Merry Christmas" page? Did you make the titles or purchase them? Thanks