Well, in this layout I faced two major problems:1) I had only one photo of my niece (don't know how that happened!)
2) I didn't have any christmas cardstock, not even a scrap!
So, I took a white cardstock and made a christmas one! This is how:
I colored it with Ranger's Worn Lipstick distress ink varying the density of color.
Then I stamped it with stamps from an old Fiskars christmas set (can't remember the name), starting with the christmas tree, from the center of the page and moving diagonally towards the four corners of the page. Then I used the little gift stamp and stamped in parallel, along the lines of stamped trees. Finally I stamped the bottom of the page with the "Merry Christmas" stamps.
Then:
I made a mat for the photo and placed it in the center of the page.
I stamped the little images (Dovecraft "Victorian Christmas", lovely set), colored them, cut and embossed them with nestabillities, then I used light blue chalk to color the backround of each image, after that I used versamark and utee to create a shine and finally I adhered them on green paper that was cut one size larger than the image.
Next, I added the letters (american crafts white thickers), but before that I colored them in a funny way: I place them on a paper towel, folded the paper towel over them and then pressed a light pink inkpad over the paper towel. The results were really interesting and will be more so next time, I plan to use a more intense color so as to create more contrast wth the white thickers.
On the right and on the left I adhered the larger green trees, they were leftovers from last year (and they came handy, that's why I don't throw away the scraps!)
Oh, it was fun fun fun making something from scratch!
