Three 12" x 12" scrapbook layouts for my sisters album, its her Christmas present

I have made 40th birthday albums for both my brothers and had aimed to make them for my twin little sisters for last October, but poor health put paid to that plan so instead I am finishing them for this years Christmas presents and am enjoying scrapping for the first time in a long time, I got so worried bout them being perfect that it put me off doing them, now I am just going with the flow, I know they will enjoy them as they have both loved previous albums I have made for them.

My sister Anita loves chocolate brown and cream colours the best so I am using that as the basis for my album for her, the 3 layouts I am uploading today are using photographs taken decades ago, 2 of our mum with our late dad, and 2 of us with our Scottish relatives, dad's side. One photograph is quite orange, as it was over-exposed, in the good old days you had to be so careful taking films out of cameras and you had no idea how the photographs would turn out til they came back from being developed, but I chose to use it as its the only one I own showing us with our great aunt Ella, so it has sentimental value despite being not very good quality, digital photography makes scrapbooking so much easier these days.

this page features a 7 Gypsies double sided paper, and Brenda Pinnick 'Posies' letters, a photo of my sisters with our granny and a photo of the 5 of us with our great aunt, I wrote a lot of journaling about where our grandparents lived, on the same road as granddads brother and sister, and also included their real names and what they were known as, information my sisters may not know, I am keeping the scrapbook pages fairly simple to focus on the photos rather than lots of embellishments.

this layout features Recollection Signature 'Memories Documented' backing papers and co-ordinating journaling features cut out from the same paper pad, I bought this specifically for this album at Michael's in Canada this year as I love the colour palette, the vintage style and the fact that the paper pad included so many journaling features I can cut out and use in my scrapbooking . The photo is of our parents, the matt behind the photo, the J for Journey, the large sentiment and the tall thin Happiness sentiment were from other pages in the same pad.

The 2nd page of this double layout used the same papers, and linked to this page by using  L for Love sentiment, and another matt behind the photo of our mum and dad, it is already glittered. Making these 3 pages brought back happy family memories. They were so in love and had 40 wonderful married years together before my dad died so young at just 69 years old, we miss him so much but scrapbooking photos of him and mum is easier now, its almost 9 years since we lost him and I was only able to scrapbook using a photo of him just this year. Crafting is a true therapy and so enjoyable too, thanks for any comments you may leave. I have many more pages to make in the next 2 weeks, my kitchen table is full of photographs which took ages to sort into categories.