December 21

CAPTURED MOMENTS
BY JASIA
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column







The Christmas and Hanukkah holidays are right around the corner. This is a great time to plan your holiday digi-scrapping projects. The key to a great scrapbooking page is the photos and elements you use. So as you go through the holiday season, be sure to take lots of pictures and collect some ephemera when you can too. Here are some tips for you to keep in mind.

• If you go out to dinner with friends/family, wear something festive and take your camera along. If the restaurant has souvenir menus, be sure to bring one home. You can scan it and include it as a page element. If they don't, snap a picture of the menu with your camera. It will work just as well and is probably less work than scanning! While you're at it, take a picture of the entrance to the place and at least 2 photos of you and your friends/family (in case someone has their eyes closed). For a really scrumptious looking scrapbook page, take pictures of the food before you dig in!



• If you go to a concert or play, take pictures of the playbill and the entrance to the theater. Some theaters will allow you to take non-flash photos of the production. If you don't know how to set your camera for use in theatrically lit settings, now is the time to pull out the instruction manual and look it up. You don't want to be fumbling with the settings on your camera in a dark theater!



• Don't forget your pets this holiday season... or the pets of friends and family you visit. Take your camera along and snap a few pictures of the furry friends. Their pictures will make a great side element to a scrapbook page about your visit or make a fun page all by themselves. You don't need to fuss with trying to make them pose in front of the Christmas tree. Just snap some candid shots and put them on a page with lots of holiday theme and you'll love the outcome!



• If you have a favorite scrapbooking kit you can adapt it for the holidays with a few branches of evergreens, some holiday treats, or some borrowed items from a holiday theme kit. Scan or photograph items you have around the house (such as a favorite ornament, candy canes, or Christmas cookies). Or, if you're pressed for time like me, buy a kit that has what you'd like to add. Jazz up your page with these festive items and it will still match any other pages you make with the kit.



• A clever way to include old photos of ancestors in your holiday scrapbook page is to put them in a snow globe or clear ornament. Here's a tutorial for creating a snow globe. You can use the same principle to create a clear ornament... just add a bow and ribbon to the top of the sphere. You can create your own in an illustration program, photograph these items and cut out the backgrounds, or if you're short on time like me you can just buy a kit that has them.



• If you have Photoshop Elements on your Christmas list and Santa doesn't bring it to you, don't despair! You can always download the free software programs, Paint.net or GIMP (open source for Windows or Mac... very cool!). They allow you to work in layers to create your digi-scrapping masterpieces. They may not be as robust as Photoshop Elements but you can still get creative with them!

Here's an example of how I used some of these tips to create a festive scrapbook page.

To start with, I used a background paper, edging, and corners, from the Golden Haze kit (freebie) which was featured in last month's article . This will insure that the page will coordinate with any others I've created with this kit (see November). I selected a Christmas photo of my kids taken back when they were little and added a festive frame. Then I used several evergreen boughs around the frame as well as a candy cane and Christmas cookie from the kit, Holiday Shimmer, to decorate it up. The kit also has the lovely gold alpha letters I used to spell "Traditions". I used an old photo of my kids' great grandparents taken the Christmas of 1951 "inside" a snow globe to bring a "then and now" sort of theme to the page. The snow globe came from a kit that was a freebie last year at Creative Victorian. Unfortunately it is no longer available. I finished it up with some journaling text and voila! I have a lovely holiday page to add to the heritage album I'm creating. I'll talk more about heritage albums next month but until then... happy holidays and happy digi-scrapping!