Long Ago Christmas

Hello, and welcome back to my blog! It's the second Monday of the month, which means that it's the single page team's reveal day on the Stick It Down blog! Here is this month's single page sketch:

And here is my interpretation of the sketch:

The triangles on the sketch reminded me of Christmas trees for some weird and wonderful reason. Just as well, as it is 'scrappy Christmas in July' in the scrapbooking world - the month in which scrapbookers try to catch up with all the unfinished layouts from last Christmas, while clearing out their old Christmas stash, making room for the new releases. Both an unaccomplishable task in my case, but at least I do give it a try each year!

This layout was quite a challenge for me for two reasons: it has no traditional embellishment clusters, and it suggests the use of mixed media. I am no great watercolourist by any means, but I have been inclined to give the packaging technique another try... and this time I was quite pleased with the result! I used a softer type of cellophane instead of the standard scrapbooking packaging, and I found the process much more manageable.

I really wanted to recreate the negative images on the sketch, so I cut some snowflake shapes from white card stock and adhered these to the patterned paper before applying the paint. It's difficult to explain the whole process in writing, but I made a process video, which can be found here.

I just couldn't resist adding two teeny-tiny embellishment clusters to the photos - they just looked so lonely and bare without them! The patterned paper I used is from Simple Stories - one of my stashed away papers for pretty special occasions. But the story i'm documenting is a pretty special one, and the people on those photos are pretty special people!

I do hope you like my layout - it is as good as I get with wet media, I'm afraid! You can find my YouTube process video here. Don't forget to check back to the SID blog for more inspiration from out talented design team and guest designers throughout the month! Thanks for visiting!