SU Scrap Map Challenge

We are notorious in our family for keeping our house pretty cold in the winter.  But, it works for us and we don't tend to be sick very much.  When I am in a place that is too hot, my nose and throat get so dried out so in the winter, we keep our thermostat around 70 and just put an extra layer.  So far we have not turned on our heater even though the nights have been dipping down in the 40s and the days are hovering around 70ish.  Actually, our house is so well insulated that it is colder inside than outside!  Last night we had our first fire.  Sammie did not know what to make of the flames in the fireplace and kept her distance curled up on my lap.  Since it has been colder, she has been sleeping in our bed but makes sure she stays on my side!  Yesterday morning she even snuggled down under the covers with me and Sonny captured our picture.

So with the cooler weather, I can get more in the mood for making Christmas cards!  They have all the decorations out in the stores so I guess we better get ready!!  I am going to have a Stamp a Stack for Christmas cards in November and I am trying out different cards for it.   I really got on a roll yesterday and made 4-5 cards.

Stampin' Up also has been having a contest on the MDS site each week with different challenges.  I have entered it a couple of times with no luck but I will keep trying.  This week it is to design a card or scrapbook page using their scrap map featured below.

Here is the page I created using some of my pictures from our London trip.  I used a lot of overlays from Hip and Handsome to make the background paper look grungy.  I used the new Ripped Pages technique for the background papers.  On most of the elements on the page, I used the Color Picker technique where I matched papers and elements to my pictures.  You can just hover over a color in a picture and match to a color.  I tried to do that with the purple paper to the purple in the flowers.  The text around the page was matched to the cream color in the paper also.  I used the new Freeform tool to "square" my text.  The word "london" is an alphabet punch filled with bits of the photos!  Such fun to create this while watching tv last night.