Hi everyone, hope you’re all having a great start to the week!

Personally, I am having a good start as at last the sun is shining here again. Last week we were reversed into Winter all over again with really cold and wet weather, so strange for this time of year here in my end of the world. I have a template for you today which will hopefully brighten your week even more! For my own layout, I chose to go with some old Christmas shoot photos of my kids. I’m really starting to feel the Christmas spirit now, so please forgive me if you think this Christmas layout is a little premature, but I simply could not resist it.

I have used a ‘colour block’ style template. Colour blocking has been around in scrapbooking for ages and I feel it is a classic scrapbooking technique which won’t date. I absolutely love it! Colour blocking simply means you use blocks on your page and they get filled in with colour.

I like to interpret these blocks in various ways. For instance, if you look at the layout I did, I used photos in all the small blocks along the bottom as well as the large one. If you prefer, you could replace the top large photo with journaling, if you have a lot to say, and then only have the small photos along the bottom. You could replace the bottom photos with elements instead of photos, if you prefer. The strip where the journaling goes can be omitted (as I did). I moved my journaling onto a tag on the large photo instead.

To make it even more versatile, you can also turn the entire template on its’ side or upside down, then you have an entirely new template! My template here is symetrical, but if it wasn’t, you could even do a mirror image of it for another template. You get the idea, I’m sure, that the possibilities are virtually endless.

Remember that each ‘block’ can be replaced with patterned or solid paper and you can the place your photo on top of that. Use all sorts of elements to embellish your page. I love to use elements that say something about the photos or enhance the theme of the page. Don’t you just love the cute Santa & Snowman which I’ve used from the Jolly Holiday Collection here at W&W? In fact everything I used here is from the Jolly Holiday Collection. The font I used on the template title is called “Pea Missy” , and I used ”Dymo” font for the dymo tape wordart. Journaling is in “Century Gothic” and the quote on the photo is called “Traveling-Typewriter”. The clock is my own design.

Hope you have fun with the template. If you use the template, please leave a link here so we can see what you create! I will select a random number next week and send the lucky winner a little surprise!

DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE HERE