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.

Oh Snap! Birthday Card

Hello and welcome back!  I'm sharing another recent card creation today; this time for a dear male friend whose birthday is today (Jan. 31).  As many of us will agree, somehow masculine creations can be tricky - you often don't want it too sentimental and many guys just aren't cool about 'girly' icons (hearts, butterflies, flowers, etc.), although to be fair, I wouldn't be thrilled about receiving a card with monster trucks and hunting motifs so fair enough.

However, all of that was *not* a problem with this card.  In fact, this card basically designed itself and was super quick and easy!  Don't you just love when that happens?

Oh Snap! Birthday Card

So since I haven't scrapped for a month, I decided I would look for inspiration by rooting through my scrap basket.  The "oh snap!" Simple Stories strip jumped right out at me - the humour would be a perfect start to this card.  Then the scrap of diagonal stripe paper, also by Simple Stories, which happened to be the exact size of an A6 card base - it was like these pieces were meant to make this card.  Zigzag stitched them together and I was half way home.

So I grabbed the rest of my Simple Stories leftovers from the Barcelona album I made Alice.  There is nothing birthday or celebratory related in this line of papers but I thought the month tiles and little calendars would be perfect for highlighting my friend's birthday so popped and layered them on top and circled the correct day on the calendar.  Finally, a cute red arrow clip and a few sequins later and I called this card done.  Easy peasy!

Picture Day 2011

Today I'm sharing another layout in my recent series of class photo scrapping.  I have to say, I really enjoyed making these two layouts.  I think part of the reason is because it's easy to use a simple sketch design and then just rinse and repeat, as it were; and since the photos are always a year apart, there's no real fear that anyone is going to be comparing them side-by-side (and honestly, I wouldn't really care if they did).  I also think I've enjoyed these LOs because I often like scrapping photo enlargements - they're a nice change of pace from 4x6" and they really make a great impact on a page.

So, here is my class from two years ago now...

Picture Day 2011

I really liked how the giant polka dots from the 2012 LO had a fun and colourful child-like feel and I wanted to repeat that with the background paper again.  This time I pulled out Echo Park's Here & Now collection, which I've been dipping in and out of but haven't really made a dent into - yet.  The diagonal stripes brought in a lot of colour without being too over-powering.  I also decided to work in some corrugated cardstock - the navy colour helped pull out the navy in the stripes and somehow I think corrugated card reminds me of school supplies.

I decided to go big and bold with the camera motif this time around and included this banner strip across the top.  And since I was using a lot of pink with the matting paper, it seemed fitting to pull out all the stops and go seriously pink (and glittery!) for the title, too.

All those straight horizontal were feeling very harsh by this point, however, so I added in the twirl of embroidery floss to help break up the lines and give some softness to the page.  And I'm totally loving those chunky cork arrows.  I haven't added banners to my pages recently and I love banners so popped a few of the ones from the Here & Now sticker sheet onto the top edge - staples, bling and done!

Finally, a little journaling card - this one is from the Studio Calico Sundrifter die-cut pack - with the class stats and a little hint of chalkboard with another camera, some extra bling and a fun star paper clip and I called the LO complete.

Now I'm (im)patiently awaiting this year's class photo to finally arrive - I plan to use more chalkboard themed supplies for it.  In the meantime, I still have another handful of years of class photos left to work on but I may have to put those on hold, as the photos for a very special project arrived today - expect a sneak peak soon!

Oh, and to those of you who have left comments that these pages have helped to give you some ideas and inspiration for scrapping your child(ren)'s class photos - that's great to hear and thank you for sharing that with me.  :)