The LAST 2011 Christmas Layout

This is it! I've officially finished all the Christmas layouts from last year, it truly is Christmas in July!

This was from our outing to the National Zoo a couple days before Christmas. In the evenings, they light up the zoo, it really looks pretty amazing, and they have some additional activities too, like ice skating (on a fake ice surface), a little train, stuff like that.

Carina's favorite thing? A guy dressed in a panda suit dancing in an air-inflated snow globe. Yup. She would have stayed there all night, but Panda Man had to take a break, and we took the opportunity to pry her away from the snow globe.

Anyway, I'm using Echo Park's Season's Greetings Collection. I used a busier paper, and to tone it down and kind of frame the photos, I used some of CTMH's Create-a-Shade Pearl Paint. I've seen people do that with regular paint, what I hadn't really figured on is how translucent the Create-a-Shade is (this was my first time using it). So it really added more shine, than toning down the paper. It's hard to see on the photo of the entire layout because of the reflection of the camera's flash, but you can get a better idea from the detailed photos.



I was going to use my sewing machine to stitch frames around the photos with black thread, but I can't for the life of me find my black thread. Plan B was to create a frame around the whole page using thin strips of DCWV Textured Adhesive cardstock. Then I used cream thread to stitch down two adjacent sides of the photos (I can't believe I finally stitched on photos....part of me finds it kind of sacriligious, but I'm glad I finally bit the bullet and did it).



Most of the embellishments came from the Season's Greeting Collection pack, although I did add some Cranberry grosgrain and Glitter Chipboard Thickers.





I do like the way it turned out, and I'm so, so, happy to have crossed Christmas 2011 off my list of things to scrapbook!

I'm going to enter this into Two Peas' Christmas in July CHA Challenge - today's the last day to enter projects, so get busy!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock: EP - Season's Greetings papers; DCWV - Textured Adhesive Cardstock
Other: EP - Season's Greetings Collection Pack stickers; CTMH - Create-a-Shade Pearl Paint, Cranberry Grosgrain Ribbon, Helmar - Quick Fix Permanent Adhesive Runner; Tombow mono adhesive runner; American Crafts - Red Reindeer Glitter Thickers; Sewing Machine; Pigma Black Micron Pen