Whenever I am concentrating most of my scrapbooking time on one subject—something I think of as “one topic scrapbooking” –I like to go through all the supplies I have that go along with it. So a couple of nights ago, I pulled out my two drawers of Christmas supplies. Honest: I didn’t think I had very much. I’m pretty good at purging the stuff that doesn’t work for me anymore.

But holy cow.

One two-inch-tall drawer filled with Christmas paper.

One drawer filled with Christmas embellishments.

I think I could not buy Christmas supplies for ten years without any troubles.

So I went through my drawers, and I realized that I don’t have anything I don’t love or can’t imagine using. It’s all good stuff.

So then, to see how I’ve been using my supplies, I looked through some of my previous years’ Christmas layouts. I realized that what I mostly use is patterned paper (which is good, considering all that I have!), alphabet stickers, and some embellishments.

But not a ton.

I also realized that I use a lot of regular (non-Christmas) supplies on my Christmas layouts. Probably to get some of that Christmas stash out of my supply drawers and onto layouts, I should actually use my Christmas stuff. And I’m totally going to do that—tomorrow.

But today I want to share a layout that is Christmasy but doesn’t use a whole lot of Christmas supplies…and what is Christmasy is in non-traditional colors.

I think I get a little bit burned out by only using red and green. That was the other thing I noticed in perusing my older Christmas layouts. Plenty of them use traditional Christmas colors, but quite a few don’t. I even have a couple of purple Christmas layouts. For this layout, I used pink and teal as my main colors, with grey and gold as a starting spot and as accents, respectively.

The trick to making it still feel like a Christmas layout is using some Christmas-themed shapes (here, the snowflakes on the pink strip and the "ho ho ho" tag) and cooler tones in the colors you choose. I chose a floral pattern instead of a Christmas theme because it felt like something I’d find at my mom’s house, pretty and elegant. I guess in some sense, pink and teal are sort-of Christmas colors, since they are each shades of red and green. At any rate, I don’t care at all, because this layout makes me happy. Besides, gold is a Christmas color. And a supply out of any drawer is a supply used, right?

Scrapbook challenge: make a Christmas layout that doesn’t use traditional Christmas colors.

Photo note: I knew when I took this photo that it wouldn’t turn out well. Mostly because of the obnoxious chandelier in my mom’s front room, the one that my two sons are now taller than, but always insist on standing behind (and thus casting themselves in a yellow light, while the rest of the people are normal colors). Plus the baby was starting to cry. I was fairly frustrated but then I just converted it to black and white. Black and white can solve almost any weird lighting issue, I’ve found. And since most Christmas photos are taken inside, I can’t be alone in weird light issues. So if you’re struggling with getting an image to look right, try a black and white conversion.

Journaling approach: I wrote about how for every year of her life, my daughter has been in a Christmas photo with her cousins and her grandma. This was our last Christmas going to that house, though (the house I grew up in), since my mom just moved, and while we’ll certainly take a similar picture at her new house next Christmas, it won’t be the same. If you’re stumped for a journaling topic, consider your traditions. What is the longest one you’ve done? How or why did it start? How has it changed? What does it mean to you? How does it reflect or build on your family values?

So tell me: do you ever make scrapbook layouts with non-traditional Christmas colors?