First Christmas- Maddie's Baby Album

I went to a day crop last month and completed the layout I am about to show you, minus the journaling. (I struggle journaling at crops, and didn't pre-plan the journaling for this one before I left.)

I feel more accomplished and organized if there are a few layouts in my crop bag that are predesigned. Ones that don't require me to think a whole lot of where things are going to go, what I am going to use, and photo placement. 

For a year or so, I used to subscribe to the Scrapbook Generation Super Sketch Club. I had a love/hate relationship with the kits. I love the price, the products used, the sketches provided, and designs. What I didn't like was that sometimes the kits were too themed and I am still waiting for the photos to use on them.  More than anything though,  I hated having to force my photos in their design. 

Since I have been doing December Daily since 2012, I haven't made a 12x12 Christmas layout since before then. But when I was going through of layouts I wanted to add to my daughter's baby album, and saw "first Christmas layout", I knew I had a perfect Christmas kit in my stash. 

I always tend to change up the Scrapbook Generation kits a little. Usually they are a bit flat for me, only using papers. For this layout, I thought the left page was too embellishment heavy and wanted to balance it with a few more 2x2 inch photos as well as a title.

I liked the trees stacked up on the page, it took a bit of time to figure out the measurements and the logistics of cutting them up. (They gave height and width and said to find the midpoint on the top)

One thing I also learned about these kits early on is they will use every bit of a piece of paper, branding strip off cuts, etc. You have to be really careful to cut the papers correctly, or it can affect  the layout and sometimes 2 others using the same papers. Some instructions were better than others.

I used the first stamp from Ali Edwards' Story Stamp- Firsts for the title. Found I had my favorite style of Thicker also in red, which was perfect for this one.

To add some dimension, I added some red sequins to the trees, so it didn't feel so flat.

For the journaling for this layout, I created a list of details from her first Christmas. I used an Ali Edwards/Technique Tuesday stamp set for the "the details" label to start the list. 

The kit said to cut out some stars to embellish, but I either lost the template, or didn't ever have one. I was lucky that at the crop I was at, they had the set of star punches from Creative Memories which were easy to layer.

Used a red sequin for each of the details.

Glad to have a cute page with minimum prep so I could bring and create easily to a crop. 

Thanks for checking it out!