Wow, only 9 more sleeps until Christmas! Where has the time gone?! I hope you have all put aside a little time to join in with our second December challenge. Here it is:

1. It wouldn’t be right without a little bit of Christmas spirit (just a little bit!), so make a Christmas layout without using Christmas themed papers or embellishments
2. Use only 1 photo
3. You can not use alphabet stickers. (You may stamp, hand cut, etc.)

Here is some inspiration from our wonderful DT and guests!

Special Guest Ingvild Bolme

[click on picture for a larger image]

Ingvild, thank you so much for joining us this month, it’s been a pleasure working with you!

Amanda Jones

I went for a super simple colour scheme with this layout as I really wanted the red to ‘pop’ to focus on the santa picture (especially as it was the only christmassy thing I could use!) I used stamps instead of alpha stickers for my title, and punched them out using a 5/8″ circle punch so that I could add a bit of dimension to them by adhering them with foam squares - I don’t really like flat titles on my pages for some reason. I found this challenge quite easy – which was a good thing as who has time to spend hours on a layout in December?!

Laura Johnson

When my Charity:Water crop prize of the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird collection and I’d managed to stop admiring it, I knew instantly I was going to use the papers for this challenge.  A lot of the colours are traditional Christmassy ones and I used some buttons and bling to up the ‘red quota’.  I have bought so many Christmas lines in the past
and then used non-themed paper on all my Christmas projects, so I loved this challenge!

I originally chose a photo of my little girl from last year, but when we were messing around taking pictures with our new Christmas signs last weekend and I snapped this one, I couldn’t resist using it. Because it was taken on such a grey day, inside with flash, I did a bit of cheeky editing at www.picnik.com, which has all sorts of cool effects available (mostly free).

Not using alphabet letters was really, really hard.  I have a serious weakness for a good font.  After I downloaded the picture from picnik.com to my hard-drive, I opened it up in Picasa3 and added the title straight onto the photo before printing it off.  The font is called Little Days and is available free from www.dafont.com.  Where I would normally have used letter stickers too, I stamped using a mini-alphabet set from American Crafts.

This challenge was seriously fun, I loved it and can’t wait to take a peek at everyone else’s Christmas layouts!

 
Lisa Saunders

I take real pride in decorating my tree. I love to do this on my own with Christmas music playing.
So using only 1 photo for this challenge I decided to enlarge this particular photo. I love the fact that this photo fills me with such different feelings, emotions and memories. My title comes from the Bjork song ‘Oh So Quiet’. It just about sums up this LO. The peace, quiet and warmth and then moments later when the kids come in the squeals, the laughter, all the excitement : )   I love it!
I’ve used the Cocoa Daisy Nov 09 kit, no Christmas papers from me.

Andrea Tuttle

I first had to find the picture to come up with this layout . . . and then I realized that I was short on time so I tried the Sketchy Thursday Sketch from 12.10 and realized that it was meant to be!  This layout only required one picture . . . which I had and then some squares of patterned paper.  I had all of that on hand.  I misted a snowflake onto my background paper . ..  that’s the only winter embellishment on my layout! Then I adhered the patterned papers after distressing the edges with a black ink.  I then adhered the picture to the layout.  Then came the handwriting with my trusty sharpie ultra fine pt. marker!! I free hand everything . . . just using my sharpie . . . didn’t even do any pencil work with this layout! I added the stamped flourish . . . I’m not sure that I’m crazy about it . . .but it’s too late to change my layout.  My favorite part was adding the little sparkles of silver everywhere that are reminiscent of the sparkles from the Christmas tree lights! I added the crown, bling and the giant flourish! Have fun with this challenge!!

Melissa Priest

This layout comes together in a jiffy (and isn’t time short for everyone around the holidays?). Choose a base cardstock, then create a cardstock mat large enough for your photo and a journal box. I choose to use lined patterned paper  for my journaling. Place photo on thetop half of the cardstock square and secure. Then, layer a strip of pattern paper on top of the cardstock mat, securing it to the side of the base cardstock. For embellishments, I choose to crackle paint a chipboard butterfly, reinforcing the butterfly theme and then added three brads for balance. For my title, I painted basic chipboard letters, then embellished them with polka dots. To seal the letters and for some added gloss, I covered them with a clear epoxy coat.

 
Diana Daijogo

This was a great challenge. I know I often have a tough time not reaching for the themed papers for Christmas and Halloween, but challenges like this help you step out of the box. For my layout I used papers from the Basic Grey Wisteria line. I used chipboard scrolls as a mask for Shimmerz spray and added the scrolls back into my layout. A forever stamp and some hand journaling added a little extra.

Elina Koutsouradi

I knew I wanted to scrap my first Christmas tree in my first house and this challenge was the best prompt for me! Even though I did use the traditional Christmas colors (red and green) I went for the stripes and dots, papers I love using all year round!! I hand cut my 2009 title and purposely left some marker lines to be shown and hand drew the mistletoes with white marker all around. The red bracket is actually from a Jenni Bowlin package of journaling tags and after using the tag in another project I hand cut a thin stripe of the remaining sticker to create it!

Guest designer Diana Fisher

Thank you to Diana for being such a fab guest this month! Thanks babe!

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Our prize this month is a gorgeous Christmas Past paper pack by Graphic 45! Yum!

You have until 31st December to enter your layouts for a chance to win December’s prize! To enter your layout for a chance of winning the prize you need to upload a picture to your blog, gallery or the gallery here at the studio. Then post your link to Mr Linky in the sidebar! We’d love it if you came back and posted here too, but as long as Mr Linky has your link you’ll be in the running for the prizes! If you are struggling to upload for any reason then you can email me your layout and I will post it up for you.

We will also be selecting February’s guest designer from the entries to the December challenges. The rules are the same as last month:

1. Join in with both December challenges (1st and 16th of month)
2. Come and get chatting in our community
3. Drop me an email to amanda@scrapbook-101.com with a few sentences about yourself and a link to your blog

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 5:42 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.