Happy Holidays!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! It's hard to believe it's December already! I am running sooooooo behind with my scrapbooking, that I'm still scrapping photos from last Christmas!!!

As well as having a Christmas journal, each year I create a double page about our Christmas day. These layouts go in a separate album - it's lovely to see the changes from year to year, as the kids are growing. This month's double page layout for the Stick It Down blog tells the story of Christmas Day last year. The double page sketch was designed by the very talented Lauren Mullarkey - and what a fantastic sketch it is!

I tried to stay as true to the sketch as possible, but I had to change it slightly, as I had extra photos to add. This was a bit tricky, as two of the photos were vertical and the rest horizontal, which created a bit of a trapped space. I ended up using this space for the year.

I organised the embellishments into clusters. I created small clusters, and I only included a short journaling on this layout, for two reasons. Firstly, there photos took up quite a substantial part of the 12" x 24" space. Secondly, I wanted the Christmas tree arrangement to remain the focal point of the layout.

I used a Silhouette cut file for the Christmas trees. I cut out the pieces from a pale pink wood grain paper - my fave ever from Pink Paislee. I backed the trees with three different patterned papers; I used the same papers for the background on the other side. I used generic patterns, so that they don't interfere with the design of the cut files. I topped the trees with a red wooden star each.

I used a neutral pattern for the background, so that the layout doesn't get crazy-busy. I wanted to stick to three main colours: red, green and neutrals - as these colours symbolise Christmas for me. I chose green for the background, as there was already a lot of red going on on the photos. Since the background was green, the trees had to be red - which is quite a bizarre concept for my rather literal mind, but I embraced the idea in the end. I used shades of greens and neutrals to mat the photos on - they contrast with the red patterned papers to allow the photos to stand out, but coordinate with the green of the background.

For the embellishment I have used stickers and chipboard pieces from Echo Park Merry & Bright collection and various bits and bobs from Elle's Studio kits. The background paper and green phrase stickers are from Kaisercraft. The journaling tags with the olive green edge are from a Heidi Swapp cut-apart sheet.

You can see how this layout came together on my process video. Be sure to check back to the SID blog for more inspiration throughout the month. Thanks for visiting, and have a Merry Christmas!