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Photo Opportunites and Ideas for the Holiday Season

The holiday season is upon us once again! Think of all the photo opportunities that will present themselves over the next several weeks! All those pictures of rosy-faced, bright-eyed children tearing into their presents are dancing in our heads. We’re seeing visions of beautiful photos of all the holiday light displays in our neighborhoods. The question is what should we do with all these treasures?

I’ve been thinking of what I’d like to do with my holiday pictures, and I’ve come up with several ideas that take us from the same “kids smiling in front of the tree” pictures and layouts that we do every year. I hope you like them.

1. Share your childhood holiday memories. One of my uncles gave me a CD of pictures from when I was a child. I found the most wonderful treasure on that disk!! There was just one picture of me with all my cousins, my Grammy (she’s one of Santa’s elves…for real!!!J), and Santa.

Winter Collage Background, Worn French Paper embellishment,
Fonts: Mary Helen JF and LD Remington Portable. Created in Paint
Shop Pro 8, with Eye Candy 4000 Shadowlab.

2. The art of unwrapping: Set your camera to take continuous shots of the kids (or even the adults) unwrapping presents. I found that each person has their own method, some of which can be pretty hilarious!

Snowfall 12 background from Simply Papers, Frames from
Simply Embellished, Fonts: LD Letterpress and Century Gothic.

3. The holidays wear me out, especially Christmas morning. Try catching someone cat-napping. I snapped these pictures of Andrew and our then 6 week old son, Devin, Christmas afternoon. Not only do they show the exhaustion caused by all our activity, they show the start of an amazing father-son relationship.

Winter Dreams Dark background: Simply Papers, Snowflake
Embellishments: Simply Shabby. Font: Ace Bingham SH.
Created in Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photo Impact XL.

4. Trade pictures with a friend. I love to scrap for my friends, especially those with little girls. I do so many boy pages that it’s nice to do a girl page, and the holidays are a perfect opportunity!

Crackle Stripe Denim background; Simply Elegant. Scroll
Solder Photo Corners: Simply Elegant. Font: Yves Script.
Created in Paint Shop Pro 8 Eye Candy 4000 Chrome on Text

Whatever the theme, digital scrapbooking allows you to create one layout to print multiple times in a multitude of sizes. Print the 12" formats at a mini size of 8" or 6" for the new gift-sized albums. I just love giving these to the grandparents! Mrs. Grossman has a beautiful 8" album that comes standard with 20 sleeves (holds 40 pages), with the ability to add more sleeves. With digital, there is no bulk so you can fit more pages in your albums.

Enjoy, and let your creativity flow!

Leila