NC Demos July Blog Hop - All Things Summer!

Frances Wagner’s blog and I’m sure you enjoyed her project. It’s great to see what each of us used as a topic for this theme. There are so many great things associated with Summer, so I knew we’d have a lot of variety.

I have many fond memories of past summers as a child. We were very fortunate to have a boat, so we spent a lot of summers on the water. Of course, being younger and not understanding how fortunate we were, my siblings and I sometimes felt annoyed that every weekend we had to go to the marina where we had our boat docked. And of course, NOW, I would love to have that opportunity again! But I can create cards and projects that remind me of those times in the past.

And for the first time since I joined this great blog hop, I am doing something other than a card! There are several stamp sets featured in my project. I used Lilypad Lake, High Tide and Colorful Seasons. I love that it’s so easy to pull images from several different sets. They all play nicely together, don’t you think? We didn’t have a sailboat, it was a powerboat but I thought this still conveyed what I remember from those days.

I tend to purchase random picture frames from thrift shops because I love the variety you can find, and I really love the prices! So, I pulled this frame from my stash, but it was navy blue and that wasn’t going to work with the color scheme I had in my mind. I found a lovely shade of green (similar to our Mint Macron) in my assortment of acrylic paints and painted the frame. After it dried I scuffed up the edges a bit with sandpaper. Then I started working on my scene.

I started by sponging So Saffron on a 4×4 piece of Whisper White cardstock, then sponged Mint Macron on the bottom. I then cut out the “waves” using the die from the Lakeside Framelits and Mint Macron cardstock. Next, I stamped the sailboats using Black Stazon on WW cardstock and colored them using our Aqua Painters and the ink from So Saffron, Bermuda Bay and Calypso Coral. They were cut out using the sailboat die. Using a piece of scrap Crumbcake cardstock, I randomly stamped the sand image from High Tide, using Soft Suede (stamped off once) and tore a rough edge around the stamped image. I used Soft Suede for the sea grass pieces and used the cute little sand dollar die from the Under The Sea framelits. The chair (Calypso Coral) and beverage (So Saffron) were cut using the Colorful Seasons dies. I used Wink of Stella on the chair to make it stand out a little more. The seagulls, from High Tide, were stamped in Soft Suede and the sun was cut out of WW cardstock and sponged with Calypso Coral. I also used dimensionals to lift the chair. And last but not least, I stamped the Just Breathe sentiment in Soft Suede. Then I assembled everything. The seagrass pieces are actually on the outside of the glass. I thought it gave a little more dimension to the picture.

I hope you enjoyed my Summer memory. I REALLY had fun putting this together! I love doing home decor pieces and hope to create a few more since I have a pretty good supply of thrift store frames in my stash Thanks for visiting me and please continue on to Tamra Davis and through the rest of the blog hop participants. Enjoy the rest of your Summer!