Hello, and welcome back! Hopefully your cover is ready and you can move on to the inside pages of the album!

The pretty red that is serving as the base of the page is the reverse pattern on the “Wrapping Paper” sheet in your “Oh Joy” collection. Your 1st should be cut to fit the back of your cover, and the second page measures in at 5.5 x 4. You will want to cut yourself two mats, the one that will hold two photos should be 5.5 x 3 3/4ths. The opposite page will be slightly smaller at 5 x 3.5.

Add two smaller mats cut from the front of “Wrapping Paper” 2.5 x 3 3/8ths.

You will want to draw in some faux stitching around the edges like so:

For the decorative deer bit in the center I stamped the deer and then punched him out using my Stampin’ Up curly label punch. If you don’t have this punch or stamp, you can substitute it with a circle, or anything else that looks appropriate and doesn’t take over your photo mats. Any Christmas stamp works just fine here; I chose the reindeer because we bought new reindeer ornaments this year, so it goes well with my tree photos. And it’s cute! Be flexible- make it work for you.

Whatever you choose, double mat it with the red underneath, and add some stitch marks to tie it all together and make it pop. I looped my brown ribbon to show a bit of a loop coming from the top and bottom. This little embellishment you just made should be adhered with an adhesive that adds depth.

Adding your pictures is pretty simple- just crop them to fit your mats, and adhere them with a pop dot. You can crop them larger or smaller, depending on how much of the patterned paper you want to have showing, and how large your photos are. You will want to leave a large edge around your bigger photo so that you can journal around the edges. Or, perhaps you have a lot to say, and you would like to use that space for just journaling! It is your book, make it work for you.

My journaling for this section is about how we just moved into a new house and don’t even have curtains hung yet- but we got the tree out and even bought a few new ornaments to add to it. My photos detail that information. You may put any Christmas photos you like here- I just started where we started, with the tree going up.

This is how your cover and the second page will fit together.

There are many more pages coming, and when the book is finished the largest pages will be around 8x8. I like to mix it up; it provides opportunity for play.

Next pages will be up throughout the week!

And. . .there is still time to enter the contest to win some Cosmo Cricket!