Take Note of Summer Fun

Hope everyone is having a fun-filled summer! Summer can be filled with so many little adventures right in our own backyards or big ones traveling across the country. Staycations and vacations both deserve to be documented, but sometimes when we are in the midst of having fun we can forget some of the fun little details that we want to capture in our scrapbooks. I'm notorious for writing notes down an scrap pieces of paper, but after seeing so many cool products on the market like the Smash books and the journaling notepad accessories I was inspired to keep my summer notes in one place! I love having my notes in one central location that is easy to carry in my purse, camera bag, or pocket. It makes things so much easier!

I used this once dull, drab and rather depressing little promotional notepad that I received from a vendor and transformed it into a bright, fun, and convenient way to record summer stories. There are tons of cute journaling cards on the market, but with a little notepad like this you can have all your notes in one place and then just tear out the pages and add them to your scrapbook pages when you're ready. It's also a lot cheaper, too!

Here are a few tips for adding a little summer fun to your notepads:

• Use Mod Podge to seal the cover if your notebook will receive a lot of wear and tear. (I did not Mod Podge this one).
• Use stamps, stickers, or doodling to pre-decorate your pages. If you are stamping or misting on pages remember to place a piece of card stock behind your page before stamping/misting so that the ink won't bleed through to the next page. Use a heat gun to make sure your ink/mist dries before moving on to the next page
• If your notepad is spiral bound use a piece of twine to tie a pen to the spirals so you will always have a pen ready when you're ready to record a memory. (Be sure to test the pen to make sure the ink doesn't bleed through the pages). If your notepad doesn't have spirals. you can punch a hole in the cover with a Cropadile and then loop twine through the hole to tie your pen on. Use reinforcers around the hole to prevent tearing.
• If you are using a notepad that has perforated pages you can reinforce the perforations by adding a strip of scotch tape or decorative washi tape across the perforations so your pages won't accidentally fall out of the notepad.
• Dollar stores usually have these little notepads very cheap if you don't already have them lying around. Also, if you have a binding tool you could actually make your own from your scrap pieces of paper, white card stock, or even kraft paper or a mixture of different types of paper.
  
• Making summer notepads is also a fun activity to do with the kiddos especially if you are going on vacation and want the kids to record their memories too. It will be fun to look back and see what everyone records!

So, I hope you all will make some notepads to record your summer memories! Please, leave a link to your creations in the comments if you decide to make one, two, or quite a few! I would love to see how you all are recording your summer fun memories! And don't forget to read the Scraps of Color E-zine for more inspiration and tips on documenting summer fun activities!