Embellishing your Chistmas!

If you're as unorganised as me, it's that time of year when any spare cash is being plunged into (starting!!) your Christmas shopping, and the odd festive scrapbooking treat for yourself may well be pushed to the back burner. With that in mind, I decided this month to choose just a few brand new select seasonal embellishments that I could easily mix in with paper and other bits already in my stash, so as not to break my budget and to help me feel good with a bit of stash busting.

I plumped for the gorgeous Sleigh Ride vellum embellishments from Crate, a star mask and some tin badges from Studio Calico....and then, as you can see from the picture below, ever a slave to my patterned paper addiction, I crumbled when I saw the sweet "Rudolph" paper in the Crate collection!

The first page I made with my goodies records a recent "Santa Jog" my fiance and I took part in for the British Heart Foundation. I started my love-hate relationship with running earlier this year when I embarked on the C25k programme, and although I still can't profess to being able to run 5k yet, I really have developed by running ability more than I thought I ever would and it has helped me to loose 24lbs so far. My commitment to the programme does dip when I find it challenging - so my "darling" other half entered my into the Santa Jog without me knowing as a way to step up training efforts!

Click on the picture for a larger image

I began by using the rear of the Rudolph paper as my base - I loved the geometric tree pattern in pale ice blue. Wanting to get those cute deers in on the action - I popped a slice along the bottom of my page. I love that scrapping in A4 allows me to use a patterned paper as my base sheet and still have some left over - especially when they are gorgeous double sided designs like this.

I layered lots of the vellum tags on top of each other to create an area where my title would go - I loved that their translucent nature allowed the patterns to still subtly show through. The map tag was a must for my running themed page! For my title itself, I used some of the lovely letter stickers from the Echo Park Photo Freedom sticker sheet I used last month (read the blog post here). I created the date using a December sticker from the same sheet, and the one of the vellum numbers that are in the pack from Crate. 

You may notice a little silver star peeping out from behind the photo. I had a go at using the star mask and sweeping some Liquid Pearls through it. It was a little hit and miss; if you pulled the mask of too soon the pearls would pool into a blob, and if you left it on too long, the pearls would pull away with the mask and take a little of the paper with it too. But it was fun to try something a little different. I simply taped the mask into place, squeezed a little Liquid Pearls through each hole, and then swiped over it with an old store card.

 I topped each up as needed until the Liquid Pearls was flush with the top of the mask.

Underneath my picture I popped a row of punched hearts to represent the charity that organised the event. I punched them from some Kraft, but felt they needed something a little extra. So I took a scrap of card, and covered it with some washi tape. I added the strips at an angle as I wanted the striped to be reminiscent of candy canes.

After trimming the rough edge so it would fit, I popped it through the same heart punch.

This gave me a strip of candy-cane striped hearts. I cut a few free from the chain with a small scissorsand added them at random to my original strip of Kraft hearts.

 

The final touch to the page was adding some more of the badges to the corner of the page. I used some of the vellum numbers as decorative frames for them - they were the perfect size for the job!

For my second page, I managed to avoid patterned paper completely - a rare thing for me! I decided to use a piece of the delicious new dark Kraft for my base, and the star mask with some white Mister Hueys to create a background. I absolutely love filling the house with candles at this time of year, and wanted to record some of those little pockets of glowing light.

With this in mind, and looking at the "fading" pattern on the mask, where there is a heavy concentration of stars at the bottom and then fading away towards the top; I decided that I would pivot the mask around a point at the centre of the page, to create a pattern that appeared to be "glowing" right from the middle:

I wasn't too concerned about the overlapping marks you can see in the middle - I had three photos and I knew I was going to put them in a triangle formation (like a Christmas tree!) right in the middle so this would be covered. The important thing for me was to create an effect of the stars radiating towards the four corners.

Similarly, I wasn't worried about the untidy misting at edges where the mask hadn't covered (or the punched "nibble" out of the top left corner!), I always have a border to my pages and knew I could cover this up with that. However, this time, rather than mounting my page onto a sheet of card stock for this, I decided to make a border with some lovely wide washi tape. I created neat mitred edges by folding back the tape as you can see in the picture below, making a firm crease as a cutting guide, and then trimming the excess away with a scissors.

With my base completed, I was ready to start on the pretty bits! Here's my finished page:

 For my title, I altered the "Let it Snow"vellum tag to "Glow" using some of the stickers on the second Echo Park Photo Freedom stickers sheet I used in November. I kept the embellishment simple, allowing the photos and the misted background to be the focal point.

A few dotted pearls and wooden stars added a small, festive finishing touch.

Finally, for a very quick make, I whipped up a tag for a special friend:

I misted a scrap of kraft card using the star mask. The concentrated band of colour at the bottom of the tag was card below the edge of the mask that wasn't covered - I loved the contrast between the block of colour and the star pattern so decided to include it when I cut my tag shape, rather than trim it away. A quick strip of washi tape, a tin badge and wooden stars, and hey presto - a hand made tag in minutes.

 

As mentioned by Jen in her post, we can't at present share direct product links with you like we usually do due to the exciting happenings over at the shop! If you haven't already checked out the brand new and totally revamped website at its temporary address - go now!!!

That just leaves me to wish you a very merry Christmas from me, and a happy New Year!

See you in January 2013 xxx

An October Afternoon Scrapping....

Yes...I actually spent an afternoon, in October, scrapbooking with papers and embellishments from October Afternoon. Fancy that!! The lovely new Midway line to be precise, and the bright, happy hues and geometric patterns were just what I needed to inject some colour into a dull Autumn day. As always, direct links to the products I have used can be found at the end of the post.

My first page uses pictures actually taken just this weekend - Mr T and I attended a children's rollerblading party where towards the end the adults were all getting in on the action too. I must admit, I wasn't keen and was somewhat harassed into having a go, but I did manage a length of the sports hall and back without breaking any bones! It was good fun :) The round designs on the papers were perfect for recording our "wheely" fun adventure (see what I did there?!!) *ahem*...moving sharply on to the layout then.....

I'm totally in love with the new washi tapes that match the Midway range -  you can see a strip of the "Word Bubbles" across the photo of Mr T, and the "Photo Log" one along the bottom of the page. They are so usable - it is going to be ridiculously hard not to pop these on every page I make!

I had a pack of Pink Paislee "Artisan Words" to play with, and loved the puffy, rubbery texture they added to my page - and how they made incredibly light work of adding a title to my page.

 

The Artisan Words also contain elements other than text, and the Travel pack contains lots of fun stars and arrows. They can be used in their natural state as I did with my title, or customized using many mediums- inks, stains, markers, paint....... I chose to colour some of the stars for this page using mists (spraying liberally and mopping up any excess with a tissue).

I made little flag embellishments by wrapping strips of washi around decorative pins - you can layer up as many different tapes as you like, here I used two:

I then added a word sticker from the October Afternoon sheet, and popped the finished flag onto my page:

My second page utilised the funfair theme of the range to document a recent visit to the fair - and my niece and stepdaughter's first ever ride on a "roller coaster" - it was only a small one for children but I think it's fair to say they both loved it and will be raring to have a go on proper ones when they are big enough.

I wanted the page to be really busy with lots of movement to reflect the chaos of fair rides, and created this by adding lots of layers of elements and using them to move the eye around the page. The long vertical strip on the right takes your eyes down the picture to the title; next the horizontal strip runs your attention from the title across the page, and finally the arrows on the left return your gaze to the photo.

I created the assortment of arrows by beginning with a misted pattern using the arrows from the Artisan shapes as masks - the rubbery texture allowed me to pop them down, mist my paper, and peel them away easily to leave a negative shape. Plus, as they wiped clean, I could return them to the pack to use on another page. I mixed these with arrows hand-cut from one of the strips on the Duck Pond paper.

And now for something completely different.....my third page is very unlike my usual style but I'm pleased with it. It sort of made itself - I kept trying to add little things which I think are my "signature touches" to it, but it kept looking overdone. So I left it as it was - and it is the perfect addition to my pages about our short camping trip during the summer. It just goes to show that sometimes just a few basic elements are all you need to create a page - here I used one sheet of paper, some of the Studio Calico Ephemera, Pink Paislee Artisan Words, mist and a single strip of the Photo Log washi tape, and I was done.

Thanks as always for joining us at the Sarah's Cards Blog!

My Supplies included:

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