Retreat - Christmas Layouts

The Retreat this year was brilliant. I only went from Saturday morning until Wednesday morning, couldn't stay away from Adam and John for any longer than that. I managed to get 26 layouts scrapped and it turns out the worst part of that is getting all their photos taken, edited and uploaded. So I've decided to do a bit at a time, in themes and not bother with all of them. There were a handful that I really didn't like. Mainly ones from about 9pm onwards!

All my Christmas layouts this year match. I'm using Christmas Wishes by Bella Blvd. This layout is being used for the March Monthly Challenge on UKS.


Adam unwrapping his very first Christmas pressie. This is also March Week One Challenge on UKS.

Shimelle's Starting Points

Before Christmas I decided I would make a whole bunch of Xmas layouts all made from the same paper collection so that they'd all tie together and look good in my album. I chose Christmas Wishes by Bella Blvd.

Then I thought I'd get a head start on the layouts by using some of Shimelle's Starting Points. Unfortunately, by the time Christmas was over I realised that I hadn't taken many photos - well, heaps and heaps of Adam, but hardly any of anything else (like me and the rest of the family). The ones I did take really didn't match the papers AND the Starting Points weren't inspiring me.

Well, I didn't want to waste the papers or The Points, so here's what I came up with.

From this Starting Point. I GA'd all the chipboard pieces to make them shinier and more Christmassy.

From this Starting Point. I shouldn't have used the strip of penguins, they were awfully hard to work with and I don't know why I inked the edges in green. What was I thinking?!

From this Starting Point. This one is beginning to grow on me. The envelope is from my Valentine this year! Recycle recycle! I joined up a series of Adam-Unwrapping-Huge-Present and tucked them into the envelope. GA'd all the chipboard again - needs to be shinier.

I've printed off some black and white / sepia Christmas photos to make the scrapping of them a lot easier.

Twisted Sketches #54

This week, the Twist is "Bold". I chose to interpret that as Bold colours, and here it is:


I took the photo at the Camera Obscura, Edinburgh, in their World of Illusions. They have a Tunnel of Stars and if you play with your camera exposure settings you can get some fun results.





I could have spent hours in there just playing with the settings and the lights!