Summer Fruit

Summertime and the living is easy... well at least that is the goal.  For me, the season is not complete without backyard barbeques, lazy days at the beach, tall glasses of iced tea, and snacking on fresh picked fruit.   

Using summer fruit salad as my inspiration, I created a few digital scrapbook pages to share with the SOC family.  As always, if you like them please feel free to download (right click & save) them for your personal (non-commercial) projects.  

Wishing you all a wonderfully fun, creative, safe and truly awesome summer.

Thanks for looking!

 

A Layout and a Recipe

Well, not exactly a recipe.  More like a “food hack.”  We were watching the Today show and they had a segment on grilling and featured this fun technique for making your hot dogs into spirals.  Here’s a link to a YouTube video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyieI2bxyIk

My husband decided that this is how we’d do our hot dogs and sausages for our BBQ that afternoon.  It was a huge success!  I captured some photos to mark the occasion.  He was definitely the Grill Master that day.

As for my layout, I tried a couple of new things:  I incorporated a 3x4 card from those sheets of pull-aparts that are all the rage and I used a photo overlay on the photo of my husband.  Yeah me! 

BBQ-It’s All Good by Moanica Caston.  Cardstock: American Crafts; Patterned Paper, Photo Overlay: American Crafts; Wooden veneer sun and Sun flair: Scraptastic; It’s All Good card, Simple Stories: Alphas: We R Memory Keepers.

As we close out Summer and have those last BBQs, make it special and don’t forget to take pictures! 

Happy Crafting!

Moanica

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Happy Summer, y’all!  We’re one week into the “official” summer season and I am loving it.  Everyone is enjoying the sunny (and longer!) days.  And most everyone is headed out on vacation or has something planned.  Smiles and good moods everywhere you look. 

I’ve been working on some photos from this year of events and fun with family and friends – mostly birthdays and dinners.  The layout I’m featuring today is from a fun Saturday when two of my best girlfriends came to Atlanta and we all went out to lunch and then to see the matinee performance of The Lion King.  We’d all seen it before and loved it, but my husband hadn’t.  He now loves it, too!

To highlight the fun of the day, I settled on a new kit I had with a cameras and photos theme.  The papers are very busy, but I decided to go for it.  Normally, I use photo matting to help the photos stand out, but I wanted to see if I could do something different (for me!). 

I did two things.  First, I only used two of the sheets of patterned paper and a single piece of cardstock.  And breaking up the title seemed to be the real key, for a variety of reasons:  1) it helps define the photos visually – to help see where the photos start and end, 2) it moves your eye down the page to guide you around the photos, and 3) it really reinforces the theme of the photos by describing the photos themselves. 

Good Friends, Good Food by Moanica Caston.  Cardstock: Bazzill Basics; Patterned Paper, gems, photo cutout: Imaginisce; All Smiles flair: unknown; Alphas: American Craft Thickers and Storytellers.

I hope you have a wonderful summer and “get busy” scrapping all the fun of this wonderful time of the year!

Moanica

Pinterest Inspired

As Aysha stated in her post on Saturday, "inspiration is all around us." A few days ago I was inspired while looking through quotes pins on Pinterest. I came across one that really made me smile. The quote read "I always buy another book when I still have ten to read." For me this is so true, I'd also just received a book as a birthday present from my daughter. It was a Walter Mosley novel, he's one of my all-time favorite authors. As you can tell from the photo in the layout, I still have three of his books on my summer "To Read" list.

After pinning this cute little quote, I decided that I would do a layout page of my summer reading list. I also searched for more reading quotes to go along with the first one for my layout.

Read by Tena Ellison. Supplies - Patterned Paper: Webster's Pages, Authentique; Title Letters: American Craft Thickers;

Ink: Colorbox; Twine: Doodlebug Design; Punch: EK Success; Clear Stamp: Recollections (Michaels);

Inspiration Quotes courtesy of Pinterest.



The quotes were not ready to be used "as is" for my page so I did a little editing using the Format Picture tool in MS Word. I changed the background colors, added a texture element and a shadow border to the inside of each one. I also re-sized them before printing and cutting them out. I think they turned out perfect for my page. Now all I have to do is start reading!

I hope you find time this summer for your favorite book or you can always just scrap about it, like me. LOL.

Hot Fun In the Summertime!

"Them summer days, those summer days...." Nobody does it like Sly and the Family Stone! You really can't help but feel good when you hear that song.

Whenever I hear it, the soothing melody reminds me to slow down and savor "them summer days" because "those summer days" seem to go by faster and faster the older I get.

Happy Independence Day! I hope it finds you and yours having a blast! There are so many ways to celebrate -- family reunions, block parties, cookouts, watching fireworks, lighting sparklers, and the list goes on. Whatever it is that you do, have fun doing it!

Although I enjoy celebrating just like everyone else, July 4th always reminds me that we're halfway through summer. Not like a sad thing, just a reminder to slow down and savor "them summer days, those summer days."

Last month, I shared a tropical travel themed album with you. This month, I thought I'd share a beach album that I made using Mud Puddles and the On the Boardwalk collection from one of my favorite paper craft companies, Graphic45. I hope you like it!

I added sea shells and glass elements to the cover to give it depth and add to the texture that the Mud Puddles gives. I used Glossy Accents on the swirls near the Glimmer Glass palm tree by Tattered Angels, which I heated with a heat tool to make it pliable.

The lace was sprayed with Glimmer Mist, the backs of the Glimmer Glass elements were colored with Copic Markers, and I added a crumpled ticket to add to the boardwalk theme.

I used a nautical mask with Glimmer Mist to create the effect above, prior to placing the Glimmer Glass on the paper with a brad.

I applied Peal Ex to the back of the seahorse prior to heating. And of course, there always has to be a little bling!

For a little something different, I sprayed the paper with water, crumpled it, opened and inked it with Distress Ink, and then sprayed it with Glimmer Mist.

Now that you're done looking, take a moment and listen to Sly and the Family Stone singing "Hot Fun in the Summertime."  Remember to slow down and savor "them summer days, those summer days."

Enjoy,

Hello Sunshine

Hello My lovely crafty friends.. Sharette here with you again.. Wow it just seemed like a few days ago, that I posted my last post! And I just have to say this has been one "roller coaster of a month for me and my family.. We celebrate 2 birthday's this month my son and my husband... "did I mention that they are 2 days a part. This year is extra special for my son as it is his 18th birthday and well as it is the month that he graduates from "High School".. With all of that I had little time to work on my project or any thing else..But I knew that I still had something that I wanted to share with you all. 

Last Friday was the official start of Summer.. I love summer with it's warm weather, gorgeous weather and of course eating Popsicle and ice cream. I actually made this a few months ago, for a magazine, but it was discounted. I really liked how it turned out and because it was for a summer issue, I thought it was great for my post, since again it goes very will with my "Summer Theme"

Card Stock from PTI. DP "Echo Park", I added some "glossy accent to her glasses and Popsicle. 

For my image I used "Popsicle" from La La Land.. She is a perfect image for your summer card; just look at her holding her little Popsicle..  I colored her with my prisma colored pencils and oms.

I hope that your summer is off to a great start and that it is filled with ice cream and sweet treats.. As always please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question, and if you have started your summer layouts or projects, we would love to see them..

Happy Crafting

Sharette

Create a Vacation Mini Album

WOW! I can’t believe it’s June already. It’s so hard to believe that we are midway through 2013. Time sure does fly.

June means graduations, weddings and what we all long for – the beginning of summer.  Barbeques, days at the pool, family reunions and summer vacations, all of which means lots of fun and pictures, lots of pictures.

I must admit that I don’t really go on vacation during the summer, but just about all of my friends do and no matter where they go, they all take lots and lots of pictures. And, like many of us that go on vacation, they are all so eager to come home and show everyone their pictures…one painstaking picture and story at a time.

So, why not make a mini album to put vacation pictures in?  Whether it’s for your own vacation pictures or as a gift for someone you know that’s going on vacation, a mini album will make viewing the photos a much more pleasurable experience.

Here’s a mini album that I made to teach as a class.  I can’t wait to see what it looks like when one of my friends fills it with vacation pictures.

Supplies: Graphic 45 Tropical Travelogue Collection; Basically Bare Funky Findings Album; Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist and Mask; Embellishments: Glossy Accents, Burlap, Ribbon, Pearls.

I even had enough scraps left over to make this little album that can be used for additional photos or as a journal.

Amazing what you can do with scraps! 

Wouldn't you rather view your friends vacation photos, or show off your own, in a fun mini album, rather than in a stack -- on picture at a time?