Christmas Eve Traditions and a Step by Step Tutorial by Leonie Neal-Dawson

Merry Christmas Eve to all of our Scrapping Clearly family. 

Leonie Neal-Dawson with you today. 

It's Christmas Eve 2017 and I'm sharing a scrapbook layout with my 2016 Christmas Eve photo!

For many years now I have been taking a picture of my family of six on Christmas Eve.

I try to find different ways to photograph us all but it gets harder and harder each year to think of something new and with three teenagers, and a tween, cooperation as you can imagine is quite a feat!

Hence last year there were no faces just the six of us standing in our Santa Sacks. No need to worry about who is smiling, whose eyes are closed etc.

Do you take an annual Christmas photo? Or have any little Christmas traditions in your family?

I think they're fun and these are the types of memories that stick in my mind when I think of family events.

I've prepared a step-by-step showing the process involved in creating my background for you below.

I began by sketching some trees on Bazzill Marshmallow cardstock. I knew I was going to be adding ink and wet mediums to my page so I wanted a thick cardstock that would withstand lots of wet mediums

and not end up too buckled.

I started adding some colour with different shades of Distress Ink Stains.

Just tapping them inside the boundaries of the trees I had sketched. I used Peeled Paint, Bundled Sage, Shabby Shutters, and Cracked Pistachio. I wasn't too happy with the immediate result and knew that more layers were definitely needed so I added some gesso with a sponge and then some texture paste with a spatula.

I added some more colour on top of the gesso and Texture paste with Twisted Citron Distress Oxide Re-inker and some water to spread it over the trees. Finishing touch was with a Fude Ball pen to outline the trees.

This pen is fantastic to use over mediums like texture paste, ink and gesso.

My photo has been matted on papers from the Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith collection. 

More Distress stains were used to add some colour to the sky, and the tree trunks were coloured with a quick smudge of brown Gelatos.

My Christmas trees have been decorated with enamel dots from Cocoa Vanilla Studios, some sequins and wood veneer stars from my stash.

Well, that's last Christmas Eve's photo scrapped.

I wonder if I can come up with something different for todays' photo?

Wish me luck with getting those teens to cooperate!

Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year from me.

Cheers,

Leonie Neal-Dawson.