The Annual Christmas Pic

The kids have learned to tolerate it...the annual Christmas "photo shoot". It only takes a few minutes, but you'd think we were subjecting them to excruciating torture. All they have to do is stand there and smile, while my sisters and I snap away, hoping to get at least one photo where everyone has their eyes open. We do a photo of each family, and then gather up the cousins for one big group shot. As the kids get older, land jobs, move away, and even have families of their own, it's not so easy to have everyone in the same place at the same time. Last year was pretty successful, with all but my youngest sister's child present. 13 out of 14 is not too shabby!

The layout above was based on a sketch by Becky Fleck, and can be seen with the January PageMaps. Each member of the Scraptastic Design Team was given a different sketch to interpret and use with our kits. Here is the sketch on which I based my page:

A few changes were made and I had my page all laid out. Three photos were reduced to one, my title moved to the doily, and the tag/banner became a major design element. Here's a closeup:

I love all the gold embossed accents in Scraptastic's Home for the Holidays kit. The gold doily and gold vellum die-cuts were some of my favorites, along with the wood veneers.

Do you get many opportunities to take pictures of your extended family? I'm lucky in that most of us live in the New Orleans area. It becomes pretty special when the "outliers" return to spend Christmas with us! :)