Simple Stories - Simple Vintage Christmas Lodge - Peace & Joy

Hi Everyone! 

It's Claire with you today, and for my first layout of the year, I'll be continuing to create with the beautiful Simple Vintage Christmas Lodge collection from Simple Stories. You can find it in the shop here.

My resolution for 2023 is to minimise waste - whether that be food and cooking or indeed scrapbooking. With this in mind, I wanted to set myself a challenge this month to see just how far I could stretch my supplies, and see how versatile a Christmas collection can really be.

So for my first layout, I wanted to use up some of the leftover patterned papers. I decided to use the technique of filling shapes with paper strips, creating a fun and vibrant anchor for my photo to sit on.

Of course, I started with a sheet of 12x12 Premium White Cardstock. I used a circle cutter to cut two circles, each roughly 4" in size which I backed with 1" strips of patterned paper.

The papers I used were:

• Boughs of Holly (b side)
• 3x4 Christmas Elements (b side)
• Good Cheer

Once both circles were filled, I used a punch to create a circular photo. Unusually for me, I decided not to give it a white border or back it with any more paper as I wanted it to feel blended with the two patterned paper circles, and I thought more paper may be distracting.

I layered it on foam pads before adhering directly to the page.

Then came the embellishing! There are so many beautiful embellishment options in this range - It's quite hard to scale back and not throw everything at it as it's all so pretty.

In the end, I opted for some foliage from the Woodland Bits & Pieces Ephemera Pack (my favourite!), some puffy stickers from the Foam Stickers and some ephemera from the standard Bits & Pieces Pack.

For my title, I used the Foam Stickers - these are awesome, taking all the stress out of deciding on what to call your layout. I laid this directly on the page, overlapping the circles to ensure it 'belonged' as an integral element of the design.

When layering, I incorporated some of the ephemera from the Bits & Pieces pack to create a small cluster. Similarly, I created a cluster at thee top of the design using the tags and foliage pieces to bring it all together.

Once all the elements were in place, I added some Nuvo Glitter Drops in Golden Sunset to act as a frame for the design.

As a finishing touch, I trimmed the edges of 3 sides of the page, creating small insets for patterned paper to peek through, acting as a delicate border for the layout.

I hope you've enjoyed this page. I'll be back later this month with another layout, which sees this collection used to create a none-festive page.

See you then :)

Take care,

Claire

@scrappysoulmate