"Santa Baby" Mixed Media layout

Hi all!

Can you believe that ever since I took up scrapping almost 12 years ago, I have never ever created a Christmas layout???? Even though I have tons of scrapping embellishments and suitable pics, I just never did a Christmas layout. They felt lame somehow.  

So... I decided to do my first one ever and make it a very non-traditional Christmas layout.

Boy, did I fail at that :P LOL! 

No matter how hard I try, I can't keep things subtle. Or clean and simple. Noooo... 

My layout captures ALL the Christmas layouts I should have made during those 12 years in ONE. Sprinkled with glitter, gold and snow. Covered in puke from Elfs that ate way too much christmas candy...

And to think it all started out with this beautiful and delicate piece of Scrapberry's paper from the Legend series. That, and the sweet picture of 11 old month Connor I took to send as our family Christmas card.

At first I stenciled some Tim holtz swirls to the left side, using modeling paste. Dried them. 

For the other stencil I cooked up a special blend of modeling paste, pearl medium and 13Arts magic powder. (Hardly visible effect afterwards with those thin lines, but the reverse stencil I used at first was too much.)

And here's where every little bit of hope for a subtle layout vanished... I used a red and olive/moss green glimmermist. Okay. Now how was I going to blend those? Connect them? Downplay them? 

By adding golden Inka Gold on all the raised areas. (That's when I got stuck using golden embellishments for the rest. Silver nor copper just didn't seem right.)

With my 'jingle bells jingle bells jingle bells' stamp, I stamped 'jingle bells jingle bells jingle bells' in black on different areas of the page.

Now my background was done, it was time to decide what to use and how to alter it.

Since I was elected the lucky winner of the entire Scrapiniec Monograce Alphabet (with the promise of scrapping a layout with every single letter...) my title would be 'Santa baby', using the 'S'. 

I sprayed it with red mist, added some golden micro beads (nail caviar) blended with Gel Medium and later on some white crackle paste (as I do not own any snow paste). Once finished I lightly painted the interior swirls silver/gold.

Obviously I altered many more items. Gave letters ink sprays and glossy coats, topped off with crackle paints, micro beads and 'snow'. 

The oval wooden frame and wooden snowflake were treated with Mega Flakes. They do lend a beautiful, rich effect, like being real precious metals. (Very messy to work with though. Even for me.)

The big flower on the bottom left was originally white, I gave that a red mist spray as well. Added a little black ink on the edges, 'snow' on the tips and gold Inka Gold on the leaves/petals as well. 

Added some ribbons to the bottom, some 13Arts glitter leaves to the left, some golden embellishments, a few ancient christmas light embellishments, frosted berries, a little Santa hat, you name it...

I'll leave you with some close-ups and the remark that I loooove comments. But I'd love it even more if you would 'like' my Facebookpage Less Is Bore! to keep up with me.

Happy scrapping!