Christmas

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday; celebrating the birth of Christ by exchanging gifts, decorating a tree, dinner with family, the music and the lights. As a child I remember a tree appearing on Christmas morning decorated with lights and strings of silver tinsel, but when I was older my dad would bring home a tree on Christmas Eve for us to decorate.

On our first Christmas, Bill and I decorated a tree with lights, round balls Bill’s mother gave us and silver tinsel. On the top we placed a little red angel, thinking that we’d have a collection of ornaments some day.

For these two layouts, I began by placing templates from Project Album Template No. 4 above solid paper 3 from ArtPlay Palette Rejoice that I had clipped to the masks from Heritage Live template. On the left I placed the layers from template 15 and on the right I placed the layers of template 5. I turned off all but the fotoblendz masks from both templates.

I clipped my photos to the large fotoblendz masks but gave them each a sepia look with a Hue and Saturation layer. The color in my photos didn’t work well together.

Note: On the left I used the basic arrangement of the fotoblendz mask and text boxes, but on the right, I moved the mask to accommodate my overall page design.

Before deciding how to arrange the small photos that I wanted to include, I worked with layers from transfers 2, 4 and 5 of Artsy Transfers Rejoice. I placed all the layers for each psd file and began to turn off layers and move some around. On the right I used a combination of layers from psd files 4 and 5. On the left, I combined layers from psd files 2 and 4.

Next, I turned back on the frames on the left and deleted all but two square frames to accommodate the photo format of a Kodak Instamatic camera. On the right, I selected similar frames from those included in the template but moved them down below the fotoblendz mask. I clipped my photos to the small frames and added adjustment layers.

Note: I toned down the color in the two photos on the right by adding a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer for a sepia tone but reduced the opacity to 50%.

I filled the area to the left of the small frames on the right with two layers from transfer 4 of Artsy Transfers Rejoice.

To finish my layout I opened frame 3 from MultiMedia Frames No. 5 and placed only the deer included in the file on my layout. On the right, I used the heart, word art and branch from file 1 of MultiMedia Frames No. 5. I added the red and green paint from file 4. I completed my journaling, changing the size of one of the text boxes included with the template. With a title and a little more of the red and green paint, I finished my layout.

You may not be old enough to remember 1968, but gold was a very popular color. Anna’s new palette, ArtPlay Palette Rejoice, was perfect for remembering our first Christmas.