Tropical Flavored

The Sharks' Intrasquad Swim Meet. It's more about fun and comraderie...and food! But they do swim for times, and, most importantly, compete against each other. The greater team is divided into a Black Team and a Blue Team. It's serious business, because the coach of the losing team gets "pied" in the face...with whipped cream....tee-hee!

Here they are chowing down on donuts, fruit, muffins and more:

For this page, I pulled out some tropical-flavored papers from an old Basic Grey collection, and added my favorite hibiscus flowers, created with a cut file designed by Susan Stringfellow. 

A few bits and pieces from old kits and collections round it all off.

Those cool, colorful, marquee-inspired Thickers, above, are so perfect for the start of my title.

It's fun to pull all sorts of colorful things together for a page like this. And it's bonus when I'm using up dust-gathering stash! ;)

Vacation Memories

During our week-long stay at the beach every summer, there are two things that you can count on happening. Number one, there's at least one night of epic poker, usually involving all the teen boys (and girl), sometimes lasting until the wee hours of the morning. Number two, NO ONE escapes the family picture-taking session on the beach. 

Here we are. You can see the excitement on their faces. :P

 

I love those gold-dipped popsicles from Crate Paper's Poolside sticker sheet:

The cute cluster of embellishments below includes several pieces of wood and acrylic designed especially for Scraptastic's Summertime Rolls kit. The beach ball wood veneer, which I backed with brightly colored vellum, is a favorite. 

Sigh...I sure wish we lived closer to the beach!

i Swim

Yesterday, the Elmwood Sharks swim team ended their season by taking the first place team trophy at the 8 & Under Long Course State Championship. My eldest daughter, one of their coaches, had the "honor" of being thrown into the pool following the announcement. Here she is with her happy little swimmers: 

Summer league swimming also ended this weekend, with the JCCA Meet of Champs on Saturday. So now begins a two week swimming break for the entire swim team, Kevin included. What are we, what is HE, going to do with himself???  

I scrapped this picture of him from earlier in the year (taken during warm ups) with the Summertime Rolls Scraptastic kit, highlighting the photo with a yellow polka dot transparency frame and swirly shapes underneath. 

The exclusive cut files with each kit are a treat, and in this case, that perfect something extra for my page.

Backstroke!

I think it's his best stroke. It's definitely a favorite!

Just Plain Wonderful

Uh-oh, the pickings are getting slim. I'm almost out of photos to scrap from our 2011 trip to Walt Disney World. I've been scrapping them off and on for four years now! And it's going to be a few more years until we make it back there. Sigh!

Meanwhile, here's the latest, created mostly with Crate Paper's Journey collection:

In the journaling, I describe another drawback to the long wait for the Star Tours attraction. All that time moseying though the queue gives a person too much time for thought. Reading and re-reading the many caution signs had an unintended effect on my adult daughter. She chickened out before we made it to the front of the line!

Two with Summertime Rolls

Blogging has definitely taken a backseat this summer (sorry!)...but scrapping hasn't. Here are two pages that I created with Scraptastic's Summertime Rolls kit and its add-on. Die-cuts and stickers and Thickers...oh my! So many choices for embellishing, and as you can see, I didn't limit myself one bit.

On my first page is a photo of all the colorful syrup bottles at the swim team's snoball stand, a pretty "cool" fundraiser! A plethora of die-cuts are arranged horizontally across the page and scattered around the title.

Pop dots give dimension to some of the bits and pieces. Another way to add interest is to slightly wrinkle and age some of the paper ephemera, such as the "pool pass" below: 

I sure had fun layering all that summery ephemera!

The next page recounts my version of "a DAY @ the POOL". If you're thinking sunscreen, lounge chairs and drinks with umbrellas...nope, not even close! ;)

Flair, enamel dots, stickers, labels, and die-cuts are all part of the small clustering of embellishments. 

This kit is so chock full of fun pieces, that I could probably make a dozen more pages and STILL have bits leftover. This is going to be one hard to kill kit. ;)

Stencil Challenge

Today I'm showing you my answer to this month's Scraptastic subscriber's challenge: To use those stencils that come when you buy back-to-back kits. I enjoyed the creative push, and even more importantly, I LOVE the end result!

Many of the embellishments (transparencies, chipboard, and tags) are from the Can't Go Home kit for June. Papers, however, are from the aptly named Campout collection by Bella Blvd. 

Yes, I LOVED summer camp as a child. When those two weeks were up, I would cry because I had to go home!

A star stencil from a past kit was used with modeling paste to make the textural galaxy of stars on the pocket below:

Inside the pocket are tags and an actual letter that I wrote to my grandmother. "You'd never believe how great the food is here" I wrote. :)

Three for Thursday

Today I'm sharing the rest of the projects that I created with Scraptastic's Can't Go Home kit and add-on. The first was a Pinterest-inspired page. You can check out the inspiration piece in this blog post. Can you see the details that I borrowed for my page?

This next layout takes all of those bright kit papers and combines them with a photo of my favorite "Blue Dog" painting by the late George Rodrigue. I couldn't have found better colors and patterns; they were the perfect accompaniment for this vibrant piece!

And finally, a trio of banners and splash of stars embellish this red, white, blue, (and yellow) page featuring a favorite nap-time photo of my oldest son as a baby. He was so cute...and quite attached to that binky!

For more projects using the Can't Go Home kit, check out the Scraptastic Club gallery. You might even find a travel-themed page with this travel-themed kit! ;)