Hello, everyone, and Happy Friday! Today, we are a week away from Christmas… and there is so much going on! The festive spirit is in the air, and here at The Digital Press we haven’t slowed down in quite a while! First came Digital Scrapbooking Day (DSD) in early-November… and then came our site’s 1st birthday celebration at the end of November… which immediately morphed into our 12 Days of December blog series during the first half of this month… and now we are already thinking about what to do next year!

Our theme this month at TDP has been that of “Simplification” — which immediately made me think about ways to simplify our memory-keeping. The answer came quite easily — going back to basics! For me, that meant turning to the focal point of my memory keeping — the photos (and the story I tell via those photos). We all know that old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words.

To get going with this idea of simplifying things by focusing on my photos, I am going to share a few layouts I made to illustrate my point.

1. Go Big!  When I have good photos (oh, those rare occasions when I’m not critical of that shot I took!)… I do like to show them off. It is a simple way to simplify the page design by focusing on the gorgeous photos. Go big, and let them have the glory they deserve.

2. Go big, but don’t lose the details.  Here, I have used a big photo but also captured a bit of detail with the addition of smaller photos. It’s the best of both worlds!

3. Sequence  This is my favourite method when I like to show a bit of movement and give an inkling of what’s been going on. A series of different shots can read like a story; you can see the variations and enjoy them, whilst being fully aware of the theme. Cropping the photos cleverly can also help show movement, as shown in this layout:

4. Unique perspective  This is all about using a different angle or detail, rather than going traditional:

5. Inanimate  How about capturing the inanimate things around us? They can tell a story just as well as any portraits. Some of my favourite things to scrap are my kids’ toys. Here’s a look at a layout with shots that my daughter took of her toys:

As you can see, there is a common theme in all of these layouts: each one focuses on the photos. Embellishing is quite toned down, and instead each one is more likely to include a piece of word art or two, or a catchy title. This helps put a context to the layout, allowing the photo itself to captures the memory and tell the story.

So, that’s it…  my tuppence worth of thoughts. Hopefully it gives you some great ideas… because I have just the challenge for you! Come to the forum to check it out here; I can’t wait to see some of your own layouts based on these ideas!

And as always… enjoy scrapping, and may the creative spirit be always with you! 🙂

About the author  Shivani Sohal is a donner of many alter-egos. A finance professional by day in busy London, she morphs into a normal mum of two in the evenings and weekends. She is constantly found with her fingers in too many pies and juggling the metaphorical balls. That is living on the edge for her; aided by the two ankle biters and a darling hubby who define the warm and mushy for her. She is ferociously dedicated to memory keeping – almost immune to any nay-sayers (or equally disruptive crying children or annoying house fires!!!);keeping her head down and forging ahead at all times.

Who doesn’t love a good template? I like how they can take the design guesswork (and time) out of creating a digital scrapbook layout… while also keeping things simple!

During this busy season, I still want to record my memories but I don’t have a lot of time to do so. Luckily some of my very favorite templates are available right here at The Digital Press!

Today I have a FREE template for you to download and play with! See below on how you can use this template to earn monthly challenge points here at The Digital Press. 😉

You can download the template –> HERE.

Additionally, if you need a little inspiration… check out these gorgeous pages from our talented creative team here at TDP:

Now, I invite you to CLICK HERE and come over to the forum to join us in this week’s challenge! You can earn points toward monthly discounts in the shop if you participate (and you’ll get a page done for your album… win-win!).

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About the Author  Krista Lund is a mom of 3, married to her high school sweetheart and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of her favorite things are brownies, chips ‘n’ dip, taking pictures, and documenting her family’s story.

I have always been fascinated by Christmas stockings. I’ve seen them in TV shows and in photos by friends who live in North America. Stockings all lined up… hanging on a mantel… just beautiful. I wanted to know more about the tradition and how it all started, so I did some research.

Here is the first legend:

St. Nicholas of Myra, believed to be the inspiration for Santa Claus, was traveling through a small village when he learned of the plight of a merchant and his daughters. In one popular version of the story, the once wealthy merchant had fallen on difficult times and was worried for the future of his three beautiful daughters. He was unable to afford dowries for his daughters (money or property brought by a wife to her husband at marriage), and with no prospects for wedlock, the three young women may be subject to lives of shame.

Upon hearing of this predicament, St. Nicholas set forth to secretly help the proud merchant, knowing he would not accept an outright gift of charity. Riding his majestic white horse by the merchant’s house one night, St. Nicholas tossed three bags of gold coins down the home’s chimney. The bags were fortuitously captured in the girls’ stockings, which had been hung by the fireplace mantle to dry. When the gold coins were discovered the next morning, the merchant and his daughters rejoiced. The young women went on to become married, and all lived happily ever after. Later, after the story spread, children began hanging their stockings by the fireplace in hopes that they, too, would receive gifts from St. Nicholas.

What a wonderful story. It really warms my heart!

The second legend is a little bit closer to home for me, though:

Another explanation for the tradition of Christmas stockings may be found in Dutch lore. In Holland, ‘Sinterklaas’ arrives on a ship from Spain with his assistant ‘Piet’ (Pete). Upon disembarking, they travel the country — with Sinterklaas upon his noble white steed, and Piet riding a mule. Dutch children would leave treats of carrots and hay in their clogs (wooden shoes) for the horse and mule, and Sinterklaas would, in turn, fill the shoes with small gifts for the children after the horse and mule had enjoyed their treats.

When Dutch settlers immigrated to America, they brought many of their traditions with them. Over time, Sinterklaas came to be known as Santa Claus, and it is quite possible that wooden clogs were eventually replaced by stockings.

We celebrate Sinterklaas every year, and still place a shoe in front of the fireplace (or for those who don’t have a fireplace, shoes in front of the back door do nicely, as well). In the shoes we place carrots & treats for Sinterklaas and his horse, and the next morning children find small gifts in their shoes, in return.

I’ve used stockings as decoration in our house during Christmas… but I never filled them with gifts. I just didn’t know. The first time my son received gifts in a stocking was when he got his yearly Christmas gifts from my husband’s boss (how awesome is that?!). The stocking was filled with lots of treats; the marshmallows were his favorite, but a small truck was a close runner-up. 🙂

I created a layout using Woodsy Winter (the December 2015 shop collab by the TDP design team), as well as Templated Duo #2 by Mommyish featuring Alina, and The Original Torn Bits No. 06 by creashens. Here’s a look:

Now it’s your turn to tell me… what is the best gift you’ve found in your stocking? Was it a small gift with an emotional story… or a “big” gift that from your wish list? For those of you who don’t use stockings… what other traditions do you love? And what was your all-time favorite Christmas present? I would love to hear all about it, so leave me a comment. Additionall, if you made a layout, link me up and I’ll leave you some love.

Happy Holidays!

About the Author Biancka is a creative team member here at The Digital Press. She is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM), a wife to Edwin, and mom to Jasper. She lives in the east of The Netherlands (about 30 minutes from the German border). She is addicted to scrapping, but also enjoys baking, reading books (mostly thrillers), watching her favorite TV shows, and photography.

Hello and Happy Friday,  scrappers!

If you are anything like me, you are probably feeling the crunch that the last few weeks leading up to the holidays can bring. I am so caught up in planning and shopping that I sometime forget to take a step back and enjoy the moment. This year, I promised myself that I would simplify things. I tend to go overboard if I don’t plan well… leading to too much food, too many gifts for the kids, and just “too much everything.”

I’m a planner at heart, so one way to simplify (and keep things from getting out of control) is to make a list. I make lists for everything: cookies to bake, cards to send, gifts to buy, food to shop for, menus to prepare, and more. Without my lists, my holidays would go from simple and organized to hectic and stressful.

This year, I wanted to capture memories of some of the little details about our holiday season, in addition to the typical scrapbook layouts I create to document things like opening gifts, visiting Santa, etc. Thus, I decided to scrap some of my lists. I feel like the lists give a perfect freeze-frame of what our life is like at the moment.

Here’s a look at a page I created to capture these sorts of moments/memories…

And, for today’s challenge… I want you to do the same thing! Head on over to the challenge forum at The Digital Press to share a layout in which you scrap one of your lists. It can be any type of list: a shopping list, a menu, a to-do list, or whatever other kind of list will help you plan your holiday season. I can’t wait to see what you come up with! 😉

About the Author Katie is a member of the creative team here at The Digital Press. She lives in Central Florida with her husband and their four sweet-but-crazy boys. When she’s not dodging Nerf bullets or trying to dig out from under a never-ending pile of laundry, she enjoys photography, cooking, going to Disney World with her family… and, of course, digital scrapbooking.

I hope you’re all ahead of me on your Christmas preparations! I have a grand total of one single present bought so far… and that’s socks! Luckily, online shopping will probably save the day. And because I’d much rather be playing in Photoshop than going anywhere near actual brick-and-mortar stores… I have used that time to make some fun gift tags, instead!

For the samples you see below, I have used the gorgeous Dear Santa kit by Anita Designs and Elif Sahin… which goes wonderfully with my wrapping paper and Christmas decor (even though both the paper and decor are still firmly inside their boxes!).

I’m absolutely in awe of the hybrid creations that I see popping up on the blog and around the site, but I’m pretty sure I would literally glue my hands to something if I tried to replicate these things… and let’s be realistic: it’s Christmas and sometimes things need to be easy. Therefore, all I’ve done is create the tags digitally and then print them. I don’t actually have a colour printer, so I used a 4 x 6 (photo paper) sized document to make it nice and easy to print the tags at a local store. One thing I would recommend if you’re used to working on 12 x 12 canvas is to keep your shadows small so they don’t look weird. Or, you can also work at your normal size and crop later.

Once I had the actual physical print in hand… I simply cut the tags down to size, added a hole, and threaded some bakers twine through. And, voila — fun tags for the kids to discover on the gifts under the tree!

Give it a try and then come show-off your creations in the TDP gallery! I’d love to see the end result if you make something similar… even if you out-hybrid me and stick on some more layers!

About the Author Jude is part of the creative team here at The Digital Press. She lives in the UK with her husband and two fantastic girls. She loves traveling, and would be off in her campervan every weekend if she could get away with it. She loves time spent exploring new places and trying new experiences (and photographing them!). She also spends too much time on the computer, and still doesn’t go running as often as she says she’s going to.