Memories of Christmas Past

This weeks assignment for my Big Picture Scrapbooking class was to make a mini album about a holiday but to journal from a different view point than you would normally. I have to admit I'm not really into mini albums because I like all my layouts in one place. The only reason I can see for them is gifts so I passed on the mini album idea and just did a layout.

The holiday I chose was Christmas 2008. We didn't have very many good pictures from this Christmas. I'm not sure what happened but when I looked at what we had I saw all these pictures of the crazy present opening that goes in our house and it made me think of the Christmases I used to have we were growing up. They were the complete opposite. You had to wait patiently for the time to come to open gifts. When my Granny came we even had to wait until after the Queens Christmas message which was about 3pm in the afternoon. Very English I know watching the Queen give her yearly message. It even got me to thinking about how my grandma would make us open the presents very carefully to preserve the paper - she would carefully go through it all and fold it ready for next year. I'm sure we had pieces which had been used for 5 years at least. I guess it was from living through the war that she was very concerned about conserving things.

For the layout I found some cute Christmas paper in Michaels which I wanted to work with. It had the tradition reds and greens but also some blue tonnes which I was able to match with juniper and crystal blue from the CTMH palette. The red glittery letters matched some of the red glittery writing in the paper so I had to have that as well, good job I had my coupon for those. I don't know how they justify charging me $6 for some sticker letters. At least at 50% there were a little less. I made the white glittery letters. They are CTMH chipboard letters. I covered them in liquid glass (CTMH liquid glue) and sprinkled with prisma glitter. The white letters on the paper were also glittery so these match well even though you may not be able to see the glitter in the paper. If you do this just remember to be patient and letters the glue dry for several hours. You can also color the letters before you do the glue and glitter to make colored glitter chipboard letters. Much cheaper than how much they charge in Michaels and such. Plus you only do the letters your using so the other letters can be saved for another project and made to match that layout. Ways to color chipboard letters include :-
- direct ink to paper technique
- paint
- re-inkers
- stamp them (I love to do this after I have done a base color to give some texture)
- stickles
plus I also have some creme rub on stuff which I've had for ages. It doesn't have a name or anything on it. All I know is I paid $4 for it. But it works really well.