I am taking Anna’s class, aA Project 2016. Connected to the class is a set of templates, Project Template Album No. 2. If you purchased that set by December 1, you have begun receiving daily prompts. Yesterday the first email with questions, thoughts, photo suggestions, definitions and recommendations for supplies that would work with the theme for the day arrived in my inbox. Two questions about what memories and stories came to mind when I look at my Christmas tree prompted this page. Two of the photos are very old Christmas snapshots taken with an Instamatic. Each photo tells a story about my Christmas trees over the years. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll simply print this as a page for my album or include it in the book I’m creating. However, one thing I can say for sure, I’d like to get an email like this every day of the year. What a resource for scrapbooking inspiration!

There are times when an artsy template is perfectly designed for
one of Anna’s artsy papers. That is the case this week with Artsy Layered Template No. 239 and artsy paper 3 from ArtPlay Palette Yule. After dragging the paper to a new blank 12×12 file, I reduced the opacity to 75% and placed solid paper 1 just below to lighten the color. I could already see the space where the fotoblendz mask from the template would fit. I am learning to take advantage of Anna’s templates to speed up my creative process.

I placed all the template layers just above the paper and turned them all off. As I went through, I decided which I wanted to keep, i.e. dots, textures and art strokes. To intensify the color in the paper, I added overlays 1 and 2 from the artplay palette as well as transfer 4, matched the position on the paper and changed the blend modes to soft light.

Next, I clipped my old 1969 photo to the mask. I applied a filter from Topaz’s simplify. I clipped copies to two additional stains from the template. To fade the draperies in the photo I blended out part with a layer mask attached to the fotoblendz mask from the template.

Next, I turned back on the small frames and clipped my photos to the masks after applying the same filter from Topaz Simplify to each photo.

I used the template’s placement for the title to position a wood word art file 2 from Holiday WordART Mix No. 4. To embellish the title, build a cluster around it and ground my blended photo, I added layers from file 5 of MultiMedia Holiday No. 1, using a layer mask to make it look like the string was winding around the wooden word art. I tucked in a piece of pine and a word strip from ArtPlay Palette Pinery. For just a bit more red, I placed the heart button from ArtPlay Palette Whimsy. Finally, below those layers, I stamped brush 4 from Christmas Tree Brushes No. 2.

Now that I’ve finished a page for Day 1, I’m off to see what the email for Day 2 says.