One year for Christmas, my husband wanted to give me cash. (I REALLY wanted cash because I'd lost weight and all my clothes were too big, but I didn't trust him to pick out my clothes for me, truth be told...)
But he prides himself on clever and unusual gifting. His dilemma was around how to present cash in a way that I wouldn't be expecting it... and as usual, he managed to totally surprise me.
So not only did I have a fun story to tell for this scrapbook page, I actually had some decent pictures of myself to put on the page. Since I am the family photographer, this is unusual for me. (Can anyone relate?) But my husband wanted my reaction to my gift, so he handed the camera to my son - and I ended up with cash in my pocket and some photos of myself! Bonus!
For this page, I decided to use the Rhubarb Tart Trellis paper. I get tired of doing Christmas pages in traditional colors and motifs - so while the Trellis paper has reds and greens, it's predominantly a floral that certainly doesn't scream Christmas. For heaven's sake - it doesn't even whisperChristmas! But I knew it would be a great fit for this layout. It will look great in my album next to more traditional Christmas papers without being all covered with candy canes and santas.
I wanted to use the Trellis paper both as a background and as the paper for my hand-cut title. In order to get the most out of my paper (who else hates waste?) I decided to cut the center out of my paper. This way I can use the outside edges as the background and the middle for the letters and once the page is assembled, no one will know!
I wanted a nice 2" frame to work with as my background. To achieve this, I laid the 12 x 12 paper in my trimmer with the left corner lined up at the 10" measurement on the trimmer's ruler. Then, I placed the blade at the 2" measurement on the ruler it slides along.

Then I slid the blade, cutting the paper until I got to the 10" mark, then stopping. Then, I took the paper out and turned it 45 degrees and repeating the same cut on every side. When you've done this four times, the center 8" of the paper will come out and you're left with a perfect 2" frame!

I set the frame aside to use later and took the center. Using a .08 fine tip black marker, I wrote out nice big block letters on the Trellis paper.

I purposefully went over my lines a couple of times. This gives a sketchy, hand-drawn look and makes it clear that I'm not going for perfection here... I want it to look a tad elementary.
I cut out what I could with my detail scissors...

Then pulled out the cutting mat and exacto blade for the centers.

Now it's time to lay my photos out on the page and play with the overall design.
Here's where I pulled the 2" frame back out. I cut a piece of Hillary Bazzill into a 10 3/4" square and laid that on top of the frame. See how it looks just like there's a whole sheet of Trellis back there behind the Bazzill? It's our secret that the whole inside chunk of that paper just became my letters and my journaling block!

Once all the photos, letters and jounaling block were adhered, I embellished the page with some ribbon and a strip of Rhubarb Tart 'Sugar Rush' paper. I love detail cutting around circle designs to get a scalloped border...

Here's my journaling:

See how I added some sketchy lines around the journaling block and the edge of the Bazzill? It carries that hand-drawn theme through the whole design...
And the completed page...
