An Elf's Work is NEVER Easy

I have a second LO I worked on the other day during my crop with Anya.  I decided to knuckle down and tackle my Christmas photos again.  Before we get to the LO goodies, I do have a little review of my thoughts on this year's collection choice.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was struggling with using the Reflections Christmas collection I bought for my 2013 Christmas series.  A large part of this difficulty I realised, was due to the majority of the papers either being very bold text prints or dark/busy patterns that don't work well with journaling directly onto the background papers.  As a result, I've had to mix in a lot more patterned paper from other collections, which is fine but I really enjoyed just sticking to the one collection last year.

I've also noticed that the Reflections Christmas has two different values of red, which don't really go well together - especially the red letter stickers with the crimson patterned paper.  That's been a bit disappointing so I've been resorting to other letter stickers and Thickers, which again is fine but shouldn't have to be the case and using just those that typically come with the collection helps retain unity across different pages in a series.

My final critique of Reflections Christmas is that the sticker sheet isn't as versatile as last year's.  There are a lot of repetitive tags/banners that say 'Christmas'; more than necessary, IMO - and yet not enough shaped element stickers.  There also seem to be significantly more large stickers (again, large tags or banners), so that overall there are fewer stickers on the sheet.  I find myself looking over the options feeling like I'm missing something when I get to embellishing.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love Echo Park collections and Lori Whitlock's in particular!  But I don't feel that this specific collection was thought through thoroughly enough in these regards.  It's still a beautiful collection, but it needs a little tweeking.

An Elf's Work is NEVER Easy

Okay, on to the LO!  This is a little story about the balancing act that is being the Christmas Elf who hands out the gifts on Christmas Day.  I added in a 6x6 paper from Dear Lizzy's Lucky Charm for the journaling block.

Most of the embellishments are from the sticker sheet, although I also worked in an OA label sticker, Crate Paper border sticker (The Pier browns work really nicely with Reflections Christmas) and some Fancy Pants cork embellishments.  I also used some pretty red rhinestones I picked up from the local craft shop - I had been thinking of using enamel dots but Christmas requires some special sparkle.

For the title, I opted for Crate Paper's Funkydori Thickers.  Even though the word 'never' is all in captials, I wanted it to stand out a little more and have some extra special treatment so I used my brown distress ink and applicator to give it an ombre effect.

And here you can see those luscious red rhinestones and some of the fun twine twisted around the corner.  I also wanted to add in some wax seals.  I used to seal all of my handmade Christmas card envelopes with wax seals a number of years ago, but it takes a long time when you're doing 50 or so cards so I sort of slowly stopped doing it but I love the look and thought it would be a nice addition to my LOs.

Christmas 2013 Portrait

Hello, hello and welcome back!

Okay, so I finally got started on scrapbooking my Christmas 2013 photos.  I don't know about you but I seem to need a little breathing time between returning from Christmas and scrapping Christmas photos and memories.  And if I'm being entirely honest with you, I've also felt a bit intimidated about starting on my Christmas LOs because last year's turned out such a wild success, I think there's been a part of me that wonders how I'll ever recreate just how pleased I was with their results.  Does that sound completely ridiculous?  Well, either way, I finally broke the ice.

Christmas 2013 Family Portrait

There were a number of elements about last year's Christmas LOs that I felt really worked well.  The black and white photos really added a nice elegance and removed the issue of colour clashing between my mother's dark rose and mauve interior design and the typical Christmas red of paper and embellishments.  I also really like using 20x30cm photo enlargements for chapter LOs in my albums so I thought I would repeat that again this year.  In fact, I used the exact same sketch, as it worked so well with this gorgeous framed ledger paper with the pretty Merry Christmas corner design.

This year's supplies will include red/white twine, gold accents (gold lame mist, resin flowers, Thickers, etc.), doilies, enamel dots, probably sequins again and I've also pulled out my wax seals, which I had planned to work into this cluster but the spacing and balance just weren't right for it.

Here's a close-up of that pretty pre-printed corner detail.  I added in some gold lame mist, a tiny bit of stamping and then the embellishments and date number stickers.

And now I'm stuck.  I pulled out the next Christmas photo I wanted to scrap and I just haven't been able to get anything to work with it the way I like.  In reflecting on why this is, I've realised the difference between this year's and last year's collections is that nearly all of this year's papers are very busy and often text-based and therefore not good for writing directly onto.  I'm going to have to add in some additional papers for journaling on (and I don't feel I have much that co-ordinates well), work in journaling cards & tags or try painting over spots to compensate for this.  I'm sure I'll work it out, it's just going to take a bit more playing with than I had expected.  Wish me luck!