It's that time of year again.

I have finally started on making the Christmas cards for friends and family, and have found I am tending towards vintage styles in my cards this year.

The card above started with the lovely Santa and Snowman topper from hunky dory, Night Before Christmas range, I aged it by rubbing the edge with scissors and inking it using Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Ink in tea stain to colour the edges. The striped, dotted and music score papers are Hot of the Press Forever Christmas Card designs and these were torn and inked with the same ink to give an aged effect. The small square, and border of Merry Christmas Paper is from the Vivigade Stockholm selection which again was torn and inked and the border strip was given the lace effect using a Martha Stewart Border punch.

The doily is from Wild Orchid Crafts and this was rubbed with the tea stain ink and copper ink from stamp it up to give the effect. The floral arrangement is made up of holly leaves that I cut done from some old silk flower leaves I had in my stash and these have been given three coats of glossy accents to give them the texture of real holly leaves. The Poinsettia came out of my stash, the roses and rose leaves are from Wild Orchid Crafts and these were aged slightly using the tea stain dye and then had a very light frosting of glitter added. The Pearls were left overs from another card I have made recently, and the pine branches are from Craft Planet children's crafting. The greeting is again from hunky dory and the ribbon is from cART.

Having made this card I have decided to enter it into the following Challenges.

http://movingalongwiththetimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/challenge-119-vintage.html
http://wildorchidchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/10/week-35-santa-claus-is-coming-to-town.html

Mum and Dad

About a year ago my dad gave me a bag of old photographs that he had come across when he was sorting through my mum's clothes after she had passed away. In amongst the photographs was one of  Mum and Dad's wedding photo's that really was crying out to become part of a scrapbook layout. I was really wary of using the original photograph as it is 60 years old and had been hand coloured so I scanned the image into my computer and printed another copy off on ilford pearl photo paper. 

Then I did nothing with it until I went shopping and came across a pack of 'Bobunny' 12x12 papers in their 'Timepiece' collection range. I loved the vintage feel of the papers and thought the colour would provide a perfect background for the wedding photograph. One of the stickers in the pack also struck a chord with me as it said 'Bound by Love' and having seen how devastated my dad was when mum passed away suddenly 2 years ago after their being married for 58 years it really did ring true. 

Below is the layout I created using the photograph and the Bobunny paper as a base.

The dark brown paper came from a papermania stack I have had in my stash so long that the front cover with the design name on it has become separated from the pad so I have no idea what the design is, another sheet from the same pad was used to make the flower which was finished with a papermania pearlised brad.

I added a border strip along the top of the page made by wrapping cotton lace around the off cut of matt gold card, which had been trimmed from around the photograph.

Once I had positioned the backing paper I used a paper doily heart from 'Wild Orchid crafts' on the top right before placing the photograph on the page.

Once I was happy with the layout I added a spray of pearls to the flower embellishment the colour of which picks out the pale pink from mum's bouquet. I added an embroidered motif of flowers down the side to mirror the embroidery at the bottom of Mum's veil - the photograph doesn't do this justice I remember as a child seeing the veil for real when mum leant it to a cousin to wear at her wedding, sadly it got damaged beyond repair so I was not able to use it for my own wedding. 

I then added the title using the sticker from the bobunny pack.

I was going to leave it there but once the layout was dry I noticed that the glue on the doily had showed through so I searched through my stash of stickers and found the Shakespeare quote 'I love thee with a love that shall not die 'til the sun grows cold and the stars grow old' which really does sum up how Mum and Dad felt about each other, and used this to cover the glue stain. 

I also found two net butterflies in my stash which I added at either end of the top border, it reminds me of when I first started making cards - in an attempt to make something really special for mum when I could find nothing in the shops. I used embellishments similar to these on that card and Mum loved it.

All in all I am reasonable happy with the layout but am always looking to improve, I would be interested in reading your comments particularly in relation to the suitability of the papers/colours used on this layout, and if you could change or add one thing what would it be?