A Scrapbook Layout: First Christmas

This was a really enjoyable layout to assemble. The original design was Cheryl's and looked like this:

I made it at one of her Stamp Classes - so much fun!  Some of the white pieces are smooth and some are textured.  The pearlescent pieces are resist-printed paper that we got to ink with Smooch inks to create this richly colored, shimmery look.  I chose a different pattern of resist-paper than in Cheryl's example and you can see the difference created in the final look.  I also intentionally left more color variation when I did the inking, liking the more artsy look.

I was really excited to find that the red and brown went perfectly with my pictures from Sammy's first Christmas.  I love using a little spin on traditional color schemes to freshen up the effect.  But when I went to add my photos, I had to make some adjustments. Although there was plenty of room in the original design for multiple pictures, I wanted a certain number of photos with a certain combination of horizontal and vertical alignment.

I also found that my own photos were so visually busy that I needed to free up a little whitespace (well, redspace and brownspace) in the layout to give the eye a little room to rest.  The difference in the pattern of the resist-paper and the variation in ink color only increased the need for open space.  When I thought the layout was finished, those open spaces were totally blank.  The effect was too stark in comparison to the visual intensity of the rest of the layout.  At the advice of my favorite scrapbook consultant, my sister, I added those tone-on-tone leaves (cut with my Big Shot) to the brown side and just a little accent to the red side.  I love the whole sparkly result!