The Christmas Money Shot Layout

Happy Holidays fellow scrappers & bloggers! Tis the season right? Tis the season for stressing, Christmas pictures, Christmas cards, Christmas music, gift shopping & oh yes--stressing!

This layout is about one of my Christmas traditions which is the annual picture my husband, myself & Toby take in front of the Christmas tree for the holiday cards. As always it took about 24 tries in order to get that perfect shot. Basically the perfect shot is when all three of us are actually looking at the camera. Getting Toby to stare at the camera at the right moment is a task in itself. The three pictures in a row are just a few of the many 'no good' shots taken. The full colored picture is the Christmas Money Shot & it's the actual photo I used for this year's Christmas cards. The journaling tag is behind the title & the poinsettia embellishments. Journaling reads as follows: Every Christmas it's the same routine--two dozen or more pictures taken by the tree. An endless quest, a serach for the Holy Grail, hoping & dreaming that Toby will actually look at the camera at that exact moment the picture is taken. It's like winning the lotto when we finally get the perfect Christmas money shot!
I did a sort of 'staggered' lacing & once again have used eyelets on my page! Thank you Natasha for having me discover the wonderful world of eyelets *wink*. I distressed half of my page & then tucked a thin layer of multi-colored tinsel under the distressed border. This tinsel was from my own stash.

I mainly used the Swirlydoos December kit for this page. Only a few handmade embellishments are from my own stash.
An example of this are the transparent holiday ornaments seen on this page. For a tutorial on how these ornaments were made please go here.
Behind the ornaments I did some masking. I used a flourish mask from Layers of Color & used Forest Moss distress ink. The soft script print you see here was actually a stamp. I used gray ink instead of black because I wanted a subtle script displaying behind the masking & the ornaments.
The tinseled snowy frame seen in this closeup is also something new I tried in order to give my picture a unique holiday frame. If interested on a tutorial on this tinseled snowy frame please go here.

The Christmas butterflies are embellishments from my Etsy shop. If you like them, I made a few extra sets & are currently found in my shop. Feel free to drop by if interested!

Finally here's a closeup of the faux metal & acrylic poinsettia embellishment. I made a brief tutorial for this as well. If interested, please go here. I tucked both the journaling & my title behind this embellishment.
Thank you for stopping by & for visiting! I'm just so very happy that I was able to make a Christmas page in December & not in July which is how it usually works for me!
Stay warm...till my next post...