Hello Summer

Yes, I WISH it was summer already. After a few pretty nice days, we're getting ready to have another cold snap around here. Of course "cold" is a quite relative thing. Southerners like myself shiver when it dips below 50 degrees. Bring back the hot muggy days of summer and I promise not to complain. Meanwhile I have a summer-themed scrapbook page to share, based on the following sketch by Susan Stringfellow:

Yesterday was Sketchy Thursday on the Scraptastic blog and this was my contribution to the effort:

Thanks to a loaded sticker sheet from Bo-Bunny, I was able to list all the activities that kept us most busy and amused during the summer months, in circular formation around the page. 

Scraptastic's Sweater Weather kit and add-on were used exlusively on this layout, setting aside the wintery embellishments of course. Stars take the place of snowflakes!

A thick banner was the perfect spot on which to journal about our summer activities. "There was never an 'I'm bored', just an 'I'm hungry'!" That about sums it up!

 Hello Summer...I can't wait to say those words and have you back! ;)

For more interpretations of this sketch, see this week's Sketchy Thursday blog post!

Happy Birthday *U*S*A*

Oddly enough, I've been working on a couple of summer themed scrapbook pages with a winter-themed scrapbook kit...and it works! Scraptastic always gives the choice of two kits, and I could have chosen the kit without a decidedly winter feel, but the Sweater Weather kit appealed to me in other ways. 

For one, it includes a couple of exclusive Scraptastic patterned papers, two of which have that elusive true blue in their color scheme. In fact, it's the red, white, and blue in many of the papers that gave me the idea to scrapbook this 4th of July picture with the kit:

To reinforce the theme of my page, an American flag cut file was duplicated along the bottom of the background paper and small stars were stamped along the top, along with larger punched stars. 

I love the look of kraft with red, white, and blue:

As you might have noticed, I employed pen stitching throughout this page: around the lighter punched stars, on the tags, and around each of the flag motifs:

There you have it! A kit designed for cool weather beautifully scrapped my summer photo, where the only "snow"...is in the SNOWballs. ;)

Great Minds, Right?!

It was rather freaky when I perused the Two Peas Gallery a few days ago and found this layout from Jen Gallagher:

Here's why. This page of mine was sitting on my easel. Can you see the similarities?

I have always admired Jen's style. Isn't it cool that we both created pages somewhat similar in color scheme and design, right down to the corrugated strip across our red, kraft and blue banners?! I promise you, neither of us had seen each other's page. Great minds, right?!