Holidays are coming...

As the chill creeps into the air and t.shirts are replaced by jumpers, flip flops by boots (who am I kidding? I only wore my flip flops in Spain!) my birthday is in a week, Halloween looms and then its Christmas. So I thought now might be a good time to share a couple of layouts I created using last years Christmas pics.
We spent Christmas eve and Christmas day in Belgium with his family and so it was a different kind of Christmas. My camera skills failed me greatly and a lot of the pictures were saturated as mostly I took them inside or in the evening and so I had to use photoshop and looking at it now the colour is a bit lurid - the other picture of his sister making her gingerbread house I changed to black and white so that there was a contrast.
I used my fiskars circle to create this border and then backed with a range of Christmas papers and even some wrapping paper - which I think looks like candy canes. Very yule tide! The glittery thickers finish off this festive page and I like the simplicity of it and love that when you get a border on the pictures you don't need to mat them. I rarely make a layout only using cardstock and not layering so this was a bit of a departure. Bunting was all the rage when I made this layout, quite some time ago now, but I believe its still going strong!

 

The above layout is just one explosion of colour and patterns and I really love it. I think I saw the idea of using cupcake cases as a title mat on pinterest and thought I'd give it a try and I love it and think it would work for all kinds of 'themed' layouts. I tried to capture some of the moments of my families delayed Christmas (when we all arrived at Lindisfarne)  like present opening and eating lots of sweet treats - like smurf marshmallows brought over especially for Gems!
The picture with the bows is a family tradition - well more like a Mel tradition- I always tie bows onto my head and see how many I can fit on, then I wear them for the whole day. My mom is really into wrapping pressies up beautifully and so there is always an abundance of pretty ribbons and sparkly bows for me to adorn my hair with. In fact I often wonder if our love of pretty paper and sparkle comes from her love for gift wrapping and stationary too.
Hope you don't feel like I am jumping the gun. A bit like when you see advent calendars in shops in October. Or Christmas tunes are playing in clothes shops from September onwards. I just wanted to share these layouts today. Just because...