On the third day of Christmas...

Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 3 of the 12 Days of Christmas Waltzingmouse Style! It's my turn to share with you some ideas for holiday crafting (and beyond)!

My project is a scrapbook page. I know most of you are card makers, but I have a feeling that many of you are also scrapbookers like me. I turns out that many Waltzingmouse Stamps are perfect for scrapbooking!

My first tip is to sew on your pages, not just your cards. It really adds so much interest to your layouts, especially zig-zag stitching.

I use a Janome Sew Petite because it's small and lightweight, easy to set aside in my craft room and pull out when it's time to sew.

My next tip is actually Claire's, but it bears repeating in case you missed it. You know how it can be tough to get a clean image when stamping with solid images? Well, all you need to do is this...

First, ink up your stamp with embossing ink

Then ink the stamp with distress ink, right over the embossing ink. Don't worry, it won't hurt your distress ink pad!

Quickly sprinkle with clear embossing powder

Heat set and voila, a vibrant, clearly stamped image!

I've used the largest ornament stamp from the Vintage Ornaments stamp set, which coordinates with Spellbinders Heirloom Ornament dies. Here's a tip... once you've positioned the die over the stamped image, tape it down with some removable tape.

Your stamped image will turn a different color! LOL... not really. I just decided the Fired Brick version of my ornament didn't match the paper, so I made another one with Peeled Paint. (*grin*)

Another tip is to stamp images directly on your designer paper. You can use images or text to create more interest. Here I've used the pine branch stamp from Festive Foliage and stamped in Tim Holtz Walnut Stain distress ink.

Raise your hand if you've ever tacked things down and then decided you should have done one more thing beforehand. I do it more often than I care to admit. I should have inked the edges of all of my paper layers with Walnut Stain distress ink before stitching. But at least I was able to go back and add ink to the outside edges, which I think gives a nice effect.

Here is the final page. I also added some ribbon to the top of the ornament. I haven't put anything inside the blank space of the ornament yet because I plan to use that for journaling once I pick the pictures for this layout.

I also added a vintage tag for good measure. It's a fairly simple layout, but one I think will showcase a couple of Christmas snapshots very nicely. Note that I stamped "Photo" on my placeholders using Victorian Alphabet, which is an especially good set to have for creating titles for your scrapbook pages.

I hope you've picked up an idea or two. Do try adding some stamped images to your scrapbook pages... you will love the results!

Please be sure to join us everyday through December 17th for more tips and ideas! You'll find all the links on the Waltzingmouse Stamps blog.

Happy Holidays!