Merry & Bright

Over at Scrap Our Stash, the January challenge is to scrap something you got for Christmas or to use some of your scrappy goodies you received for Christmas. I didn't receive any scrappy goodies this year, so I just used my Cricut that I got for Christmas last year and made a layout about a special gift I was given this year from my husband.

I used my SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot) software with the Cricut Expression to create the title from a font I had on my computer. I welded the letters together and cut them from red cardstock, then glittered the letters with stickles glue. When that dried, I traced the title with a white gel pen (Ranger Inkssentials) to make it pop up off the brown paper.

 

I wanted to use some non-Christmas papers for this layout, and I used three papers from Die Cuts with a View (Eco Stack). The red frame paper with a cream center had a bunch of brown flowers on the left side which didn't work for my Christmas theme, so I cut the left side of the frame off, then cut out the red border with an exacto knife. I traced the cut out shape onto the brown paper, cut it out and placed it next to the cream pattern, then glued the red border back on top, making sure to match up the edges. You can see some of that detail here in the picture below. Once the frame was pieced back together, I placed it back onto a busier pattern paper. I did cut out a square in the middle of this background pattern so I wouldn't be wasting the paper, then glued the frame on top.

The pictures are matted onto a metallic gold paper, then the main photo is raised up with foam squares.  I stamped some labels in ColorBox brown pigment ink, then hand cut them and used them in various places on my layout. The larger lined label is where I wrote my journaling. The label stamps were all from Green Grass Stamps. On top of the labels, I added some Making Memories holly and berry buttons, then I glued some clear jewels from The Paper Studio on top of the red buttons and around the leaves. The labels are attached with brown Heidi Swapp brads and I added some Diamond Stickles glitter glue to the label edge. I was able to use some older Making Memories definition stickers from my stash and I placed these on the top label and underneath my collage of photos.

I used my Fiskars Apron Lace border punch and some more of the brown pattern paper to create a border between my photos and my journaling. Making Memories glitter number stickers were also used under the stamped journaling label to add the year to my layout.

We'd love to have you join us in our January Challenge over at Scrap Our Stash!!