Jolly as F*ck | Scrap the Girls December Challenge

Ho, ho...no!

Can you believe we are on the final countdown to Christmas?! If you are one of those people I affectionately refer to as "Christmas freaks" then you have probably been ready for the big day since mid-June and have had your tree up for at least a month already. (You are probably also the sort of person that thinks hot cross buns DO belong on the supermarket shelves at the beginning of January?!) *mumble, mumble*

If you are more like me however, then Christmas always seems to creep up waaaaay too quickly every year, you've only just put your tree up, and at some stage next week you will start preparing everything else. (Look away now Christmas freaks! hehe)

So all this Christmas talk has led me to the latest design team project that I have to share. This page was created for Scrap the Girls for the "No Traditions Here" challenge this month. This is the image inspiration we were provided with the instructions "could be colour, what you see or what you read".

I bowed to the Christmas theme, and in keeping with the challenge title, there was nothing traditional about my page...

I used the gorgeous Cocoa Vanilla Studio 'Happiness' collection for this page, which I combined with my own watercolour background.

I started by fussy cutting the beautiful wreath from the So Fresh paper, which I backed with some scrap cardboard to help pop it up from the page, and then set it aside to create the background.

I used a Colour Blast 'Deep Water' Shimmer Cube (unfortunately these are no longer available, but you could substitute any watercolour paint) to create a ring on my cardstock where my wreath was going to sit. Next, I added some small splatters of gold, green and pink inks before sticking my wreath down over the top.

I then added my photos, tucking them under the edge of the wreath on the left side of the page.

For my title, I used the Jolly as Fuck Christmas ornament (with gum leaves - also available in a bottle brush version) from Kinder Kreations. These ornaments have a hole so you can add string or ribbon to hang them, but I couldn't resist giving this one a starring role on my layout instead. I painted it with a metallic gold acrylic paint to give it a festive feel and added some twine to the top of it.

To compliment my gold title, I grabbed a few cut file leaves I had left over from a previous project and painted them to match. I then tucked them in under the edge of the wreath, leaving some of them white as well. (This leaf design is from the Cocoa Vanilla Studio 'Colour Me Happy' cut file set.) To help blend my title with my page I stuck a small flower and butterfly from the 'Happiness' Die Cut Ephemera pack onto it.

 To finish off the page I added two flair buttons to my wreath from the 'Happiness' flair button set and some handwritten journalling with a felt pen.

I hope you will join in with our challenge this month - you can make your layout as Christmas-sy as you like (or not), just be inspired by the image! Make sure you visit the Scrap the Girls blog for all the details of this month's Australian and International sponsors and to see what the rest of the design team created.

Until next time, happy scrapping! X