Christmas Memories - Layout

I have been working on this layout for the last few days and most of the time layouts don't take me this long but this one did! I think it was all the detail in the Christmas tree that was the hold up.

For holiday layouts I usually always like to do two pages so I can get more bang for my buck, or in other words, more pictures in the layout.  I could have used smaller pictures and used more but how many pictures do I need of the kids opening gifts?

In choosing the pictures I tried to get them opening their favorite or meaningful gifts and then of them with their gift from Santa. I am glad I got a good picture of Chuck and Shiane in front of the Christmas tree. I did choose to double mat that picture and pop dot it. I know it's hard to tell in the pictures sometimes how much dimension there is on some of my stuff but most of ya'll know I love dimension!










I was very lucky this year and the kids did the cooking and cleaning up, best Christmas present EVER! My daughter's friend Alicia came over to open her gifts and to have dinner with us so I made sure to get pictures of her for the layout as well.

It made sense to me for me to use a picture of the kids at the dinner table for the big picture. I think in the future sometime Shiane can always look and remember how they cooked Christmas dinner. Dinner was very good by the way!

A lot of Mica and Bling cardstock was used in the layout and I usually don't use so much in one layout but it needed to be festive and special for Christmas. I used various embossing folders to add some interest to the gifts. I was going to use patterned paper but then thought I would like the embossing better.

I did use a few regular rectangles for gifts so I could fill in an area or two without having to make all special cuts. The stack of presents was one from a file from Miss Kates Cuttables, can't remember which one right off hand.

On the title I used Script MT Bold, one of my favorite fonts for welding and cutting. I cut the capital letters in red and the rest in an olive green. On the C and M I used the Divine Swirls embossing folder and for the rest of the word I used Swiss Dots. I added Stickles to the embossed areas. For the date I used Stampin Up Modern Label and Word Window punches.





 
Now for the tree...oh that tree! I found the tree image on the internet and did a pixel trace in MTC. I cut it out of a shade of olive Coredinations and then sanded the "branch" ends for a distressed look. I added pop dots under the branch areas as well.

The pearl garland was totally made by me. I used a curve shape and then added small circles to the curve and then welded. To get the garland to fit right I copy and pasted the first string and placed them where I thought it looked okay. I then welded several sections together at a time so the garland is in about 4 pieces. I was afraid the machine wouldn't want to read all the nodes well if I did it as a single piece. I only glued the main ends down and then a spot or two in the middle so the garland would have a swaggy, loopy look.

The ornaments on the tree are from a Stampin Up Digital Download file called Ornament Keepsakes Kit. I imported the SVG file into MTC and then resized them to fit for the Christmas tree. I could have made the ornaments just solid but I remember my mom having some very old ornaments where the middle "sunk" in and was more decorative than the rest of the bulb so for the ornaments cut shapes out of the middle of the larger ornaments.

To decorate the ornaments I used Liquid Pearls which worked out nicely. I used a silver gel pen to add the "cap" to the ornament. I pop dotted most of the ormanets and placed some where they looked like they were hanging off the branches.

I am making the file available for download but the ornament images will not be included in the file since they came from Stampin Up. The rest of the images are there available to cut.

To download the file for use with MAKE THE CUT click below:
CHRISTMAS MEMORIES LAYOUT