Unconventional Holiday Color Schemes

The holidays are a great time of year for scrapbookers, since they are full of ready-made events for us to chronicle. With so many get-togethers with friends and family, there are plenty of perfect moments for us to catch on film and in the pages of our scrapbooks.

It can be hard to come up with something new and unique, though, since similar events happen each and every year. A good way to put a new spin on your holiday pages is to move away from the traditional color schemes, such as red and green for Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, these alternative color schemes can work on your pages no matter the holiday.

Luckily, it seems that there are more and more options for non-traditional colors in patterned papers, embellishments, and other scrapbooking products. Here are a few ideas of alternative color schemes to use on your holiday pages.

Color Theory

Choosing the colors for your page can be a simple task but can become much more complicated. This article touches a bit on color theory, which can be intimidating at first but is easy to learn and get the hang of with some practice. There are lots of great articles about color theory here at Scrapjazz and other places on the internet, and you might want to read one of those first. But even if you're brand new to color theory, you can still use all of the ideas here.

Holiday Inspiration

It's easy to come up with your own color schemes for your holiday pages. Scrapbooking inspiration can always come from anything around you, and this is especially true during the holidays. Inspiration for unusual color schemes can come from all over. Keep an eye out for holiday ads and catalogues that inspire you. One of my favorite sources of inspiration is wrapping paper- it's colorful and can be extremely creative. Another source of inspiration are scrapbook products themselves. It seems that with each Christmas, the products available to us are even more unique, and there are many that move far away from just red and green color schemes. Basing a layout on new papers and embellishments you've bought and starting from there is a great way to begin.

Drawing on Colors in the Photo

Another source of inspiration can be in the photos you take. One of the challenges of using non-traditional color schemes on your layouts is that the photos you're working with probably contain a lot of red and green, since those colors are so predominant around this time of year. But this isn't a problem if you've got a little bit of creativity.

While you're taking pictures during the holiday season, you can keep the final page you want to make in mind. Look out for unusual photo opportunities and seize them. For instance, my hairdresser had a white-and-gold Christmas tree, and I took some photos of it to use on a page of Christmas-related journaling.

The easiest solution to making your photo work with a certain color scheme is to print it in black and white. This is another elegant solution that works very well with holiday photos and adds to the timeless quality of the season.

Another solution, if you want to keep a photograph in color, is to do a monochromatic layout with either red or green only. This can really work to bring out the color of, say, your daughter's Christmas dress, especially if it's something special you want to remember. Monochromatic layouts can have a very different tone and feel than a layout with multiple colors.

Color Scheme Ideas

Once you start to ‘think out of the box" with your holiday pages, you'll realize that there really aren't many limitations to what you can do. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Pink, Brown, Cream: Warm colors like browns can be surprisingly effective on Christmas pages and can add a sense of nostalgia. Try giving your photos a sepia tone.
  
  
• Black, White, Silver: If you're using a black-and-white photo, try extending the color scheme to the rest of the page as well. Simple but effective, a black-and-white color scheme also gives a feeling of timelessness that is appropriate around the holidays.
  
  
• Monochromatic Green or Red: As mentioned above, a monochromatic layout can have a very different feel than one with both red and green, and can be a nice twist on the traditional color scheme.
  
  
• Red or Green and Something Else: A similar option is to add an unusual color to a red or green layout. Try adding accents of gold or silver.
  
  
• Blue, White, Silver: A common color scheme on winter pages, blue and white is a unique color combination when it comes to Christmas. One of the most beautiful Christmas cards I've seen was done entirely in blue and white, which inspired one of my layouts.

The holidays are important occasions for us to capture, but it can be frustrating to find a way to make each year's pages different from the last. Finding new, unconventional color schemes for holiday pages can be a wonderful way to put a twist on an annual event.

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