design each moment

It's All About Ease

 
As our days heat up with hot summer weather, many of us seek out places to help us feel cool and peaceful. The Southeast Botanical Gardens is just the place for those of us on Okinawa to relish in that lazy and sultry summer feeling while meandering through nature trails of lush tropical scenery.

It’s impossible not to take frame after frame of photos once you find such a gorgeous place. Narrowing down my choices of pictures to scrapbook used to seem so difficult until I began using Mosaic Moments Grid Paper. This month’s featured Grid Paper, called Bamboo, is the perfect accent for summer garden shots.

Combining this pretty paper with one of Tami’s Page Patterns made the process swift and easy and allowed me to use as many of those gorgeous shots as I wanted. I’ve fit 17 photos and a journaling block on this two page spread.

The pattern I used is called Pinwheel and can be found here, or by clicking on the Page Patterns link above. You’ll not only find this 9-spot Pinwheel, but dozens of other patterns for one special photo, 5 photos, 7 photos – to Infinity and beyond! Well, OK, I get a bit carried away, but the possibilities do seem limitless as you’ll see by the samples under some of the Patterns.

Even though I love scrapbooking, I don’t want to lose a minute of my time enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Tami’s Page Patterns give me that freedom to enjoy myself outdoors knowing I still have time to make the most of my summer photos in a quick and eye-catching manner.

I hope you have a botanical gardens or similar place near you where you can enjoy the beauty of a summer landscape, and take piles of photos to scrapbook with the pretty Bamboo Grid Paper. Take a look at all the great Page Patterns and you won’t lack for inspiration!

Make a Splash!

 
  

Blue. What color could be more beautiful? It’s the peaceful, tranquil color of the sea and sky. For me, just looking at the color blue refreshes my senses like a soft breeze on a summer day.

Blue is said to represent happiness and optimism so I was delighted to see that this month’s featured Grid Paper is a lovely aqua color called Robin’s Egg. The mix of green into blue gives this color a natural, watery palette.

I have sooo many photos that I know would look just fabulous on this color, making it quite difficult to narrow down what I wanted to scrap today. I chose some precious shots of my grandson from his first (and only) visit to my home in Florida. Both my son and my husband work for the military so we are always crossing paths and have spent only a very few occasions together this way. The time together in our pool was so much fun!

Wanting  to enhance the watery feel of this page,  I used my 1-inch square punch on this Karen Foster Rippling Waves paper for the background. To get the effect I wanted, I then used a 1-inch circle punch on the same paper. The circles are folded in half and glued to the back of each square.

For extra sparkle and shine, Sticky Face ‘By the Shore’ Sticky Shapes were covered in fine glitter to make my accents. These shapes were so fun and easy to use and come in 4 different themes at SnapNCrop.com. 

Another way you can create your own water-themed page with this Robin’s Egg grid paper is by combining the paper with a neutral tan or beige for a seaside friendly color palette. Add some sparkle with a bit of glitter (there are eleven shades to choose from!) and your project is sure to shine.