Scrapbooking Challenge

I originally got into craft after my mum started scrapbooking a few years ago. I got into scrapbooking and found it alot of fun but my pages were very basic. I started buying stuff with the intent of scrapbooking but never had photo's printed (I'm sure others can also share a simular predicament) so moved onto card making. My card making started off again very basic and still wasn't all that spectacular until I found Stampin' Up! Since then though I haven't really continued doing much scrapbooking because I still feel my skills are quite basic and can never really come up with any new layouts. I find my pages also take me a very long time to complete because I can't just get an idea and sort of run with it like cardmaking I have to explore absolutly every possibility and then give up after 2 hours and just end up doing something very basic.

The other day when we were given challenges by the lovely Kylie. She set us a challenge to use traditional Christmas colours (Red, Green, Gold (if embossing) and White) to create a card or scrapbook. Usually I would just go the easy option and make a card. I decided that I have heaps of photo's I've been meaning to scrap as a Christmas Pressie to my Boyfriends Brother of his beautiful daughter, Asha, so I should get a headstart on that. This page took me a very long time but I am so happy with how it turned out and it is very different to anything I'd normally do. I got some inspiration for the page from looking at some of the gorgeous pages by Beth Stewart. She has some great work if you ever have time to check her blog out.

Behind the First Picture there is a pullout for some journalling which I haven't written on yet as I want to make sure I put something special on there that really tells the story of the photo's and I think my boyfriend should help with that.

I used flowers from the pretties kit which I coloured in with real red ink and a sponge Dauber. They are so nice and the first time I've used them! I think I'll be using them again!

Stamp Sets: Season of Joy, Many Merry Messages, Big Deal Alphabet

Card Stock: Real Red, Whisper White, Certainly Celery, Certainly Celery Prints DSP

Ink: Real Red, Wild Wasabi

Accessories: Real Red Marker, Summer Sun Marker, Real Red Eyelets, Crop-a-dile, Round Tab Punch, Pretties Kit, Ice Rhinestone Brads, Dimensionals, Mat Pack, White Gel Pen, Stapler, Hemp Twine, Spounge Dauber

Thanks for looking!

Cheers Big Ears!

Dani