Christmas Photo Shoots

Summer is only a few days away & so are lots of photo oppotunities with Christmas, holidays & celebrations. Try a few different sorts of shots this year as well as the usual posed ones. If you like to take a family shot for your Christmas cards & letters give the kids a pile of Christmas decorations & dress up bits & pieces & see what they come up with. Sometimes the spontaneous photos are the best ones-not always perfectly posed but lots of fun! I took the Christmas tree outside one year when my boys were teenagers & then the the camera up on the tripod with the automatic setting on. It took us about 20 shots before we took one with us all looking at the camera. All of the other shots had us tallking, laughing & being silly. It turned out to be a fun afternoon & we eneded up with some great photos & good memories. I don't worry too much if I don't get the "perfect" photo... if that is all I have I scrapbook it anyway & tell the story behind it.
This layout has photos of my son & grandson at the beach. I was sitting a little way up the shore & zoomed in on them . My grandson wasn't too sure about going in the water & as soon as he had a splash & a play, he was out of there. The photos were nice natural shots & I really like the photo of them walking down to the water, hand in hand. It is a different angle where you can't see there faces but it still shows emotion. The layout is quite simple with a plain backing & the patterned sheet is distressed & inked. A few readymade embellishments finishes it off nicely.

 These flowers are off a layout I made but their colours weren't quite right. I used mist sprays to change the colour of the paper flowers to help them match in better with the colours of the layout. The smaller ones were a light lilac colour & I gave them a light spray with a silvery black colour to darken them slightly. Just because some embelllishments don't suit what you want still take a second look at them & see if they can be altered to fit in. Flat flowers can be inked, stamped & rubons used on them. Other flowers can be scrunched, layered, pulled apart or flattened. Flowers aren't the only embellishments that you can alter. Take a look at some of your older embellishments that have been sitting around for awhile & see what you can do to revamp them..just have a play.

Christmas Bits

Here is a  Christmas cluster as an embellishment on a Christmas layout. The rosette is made from a strip of paper with one edge punched. It was then folded back & forward concentina style  & then had the ends taped together to form a circle. It was then "squshed"(squuezed & pushed!) into a flat circle. Cut out a circle of scrap card a bit smaller than the rosette & glue the rosette onto it. I used a hot glue gun because it is instant but you can use a good strong glue & put something on the top to hold it down until it dries. The other pieces in the cluster are from old Christmas decoration picks that I pulled apart. A good hint is to wait until the after Christmas sales & pick up little bits & pieces really cheap.

 I am looking forward to making more tags for this Christmas. There is a bit of work in them but they are lots of fun & they make good embellisments for cards & scrapbooking as well as being a little gift all on their own! I am taking orders from the ones I have already done & the colours can be altered to suit what you want. (look at the "KIT" page for what I have) You can contact me by email or leave a comment.

 This is an old Christmas graphic that I found and is wonderful for scrapbooking with all the older photos of Christmas' gone by. There are many graphic sites that have free downloads-just Google them & a list comes up.

 Getting ready for all those Christmas photos. This is a ready made layout but I can also make it up as a kit so you can add your own touch to it.

Not So White

Believe it or not, these pages started off white! It's amazing what some mists, masks, mediums, stamps, inks & embossing powders can do. The holly in the corners of the background page below were drawn on freehand with "Smooch". The fine tip brush makes it easy to paint on/draw designs. You can always lightly draw or trace a design in pencil first before going over it.

 Layers of masked mists, texture paint, more mists & embossing powder.

 Masks, mists, reverse masks, inks & embossing powder.

You can do similar  technique on plain card/paper & cut it down to make cards with.

It's fun to have a play & experiment with the products & tools that you have...you never know what you might come up with!