Merry Christmas Helmar Fans, it's Raelene with you today.
I was having some major creative block but then I got this photo I just had to scrap it, it is special as it is one of my teens with his little cousin visiting Santa at the skate rink Christmas party (we had 3 months of no community transmission of covid so were able to safely attend this party), so on Friday I got out my Christmas scrapping stash and used my favourite strategy for scrapbooking - picking supplies that enhance the story or draw your attention to the main focus of the photo.
First I matted my photo with black and red cardstock, I put the black as the first matt as both boys have black in their clothing and red for Santa. The black definitely improved how your eye is drawn to the photo.
I glued my photo down to the black with Helmar Acid Free Glue and once dry trimmed it to size, then I glued it to the red and trimmed to size.
Then I went through my papers and grabbed out 2 black based papers and some fun reds and greens to use with my photo.
I started by glueing the photo down to the 6x6 ho ho ho paper and then built my layers backwards, gluing with Helmar Acid Free Glue as I went. Once they were all glued together I added Helmar Acid Free Glue anywhere I thought needed it and glued it down to my background paper.
Now it was embellishment time. I needed to cover a parent face that was caught in the background of the photo so I went through my stickers and embellishments trying to work out the best way to do this. In the end a Jolly sticker was perfect for it and it helped with the Title as up until this point all I knew was I wanted Cousins to be in the Title but had no idea what words to put with it. Some of my alphas split so a tiny drop of Helmar Acid Free Glue got the layers back together.
I decided I wanted to use a mix of Christmas Tree stickers, die cuts and chipboard to carry forward the tree pattern in the background and enhance the bit of the tree in the photo.
I loved this cute little chipboard tree and decided to experiment with my Distress Inks and create a ombre effect. I simply dabbed 2 shades of green on my craft sheet, spritzed with water and rubbed my tree in it being careful not to get the base in the dark green. The effect is subtle, but I love it.
I finished the tree off by using a Liquitext gold pain pen to colour the baubles on it.
I splattered my background and layers with watered down paint from the gold paint pen and some green paint, to pull the colours from the little tree into the rest of the layout.
I then experimented with colouring some Christmas bauble chipboard but when playing around with my embellishments they didn't feel right so I left them off, hence the red paint and ink on my hands in the next photos.
I adhered some of my die cuts and my fussy cut tree down to my layout with Helmar Acid Free Glue.
Then I adhered my chipboard tree down with Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive and one of my die cuts with Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots
I am really happy with how my layout turned out.
Items from my stash that I used include papers, wood 3D stickers from The Reject Shop, papers and fussy cut tree from a old Scrapping Fun Kits kit, die cuts from Pretty Little Studio, chipboard from Memorymaze, jolly sticker from Echo Park. All are a few years old.
I hope this inspires you to get out your scrapping supplies after Christmas Day and get those Santa photos scrapped.
