Welcome to Miami

OK I cheated, I was feeling uninspired by the rest of my pics from this winter, and with the latest summery SoCal kit by Studio Calico sitting on my table, it just wasn't working for me! So I skipped a few months of pics and printed out a few pics from our trip this past April to Miami Beach, Florida and made this quick and simple layout!

This day was so crazy, it was April and after a winter of hardly any snow, it started snowing/sleeting early that morning - which made us delayed getting to ATL, which made us even more delayed getting to Miami. We were about 6 hours later than expected, but luckily for us, Miami was our final destination, unlike some people who completely missed their cruises! Bet they aren't scrapping pics from this day!

For this layout, mainly I wanted to keep it simple and just get it done! I was really inspired by Stephanie Howell's blog post here about not worrying over a layout so much! So I just started building this page and at the end, normally I would've tried to add a lot more, but instead just decided it was finished and am loving how it didn't take me days of contemplating my layout!

The majority of the time for this layout was spent on this embellishment in the lower left corner of an outline of Florida. I used the state die cuts from Studio Calico to outline the state of Florida on that graphlike paper, then outlined that and sewed on it. Then I cut out the inside and backed it with a different piece of paper. The stamped sentiment was the final touch!

HOW-TO:

• I used the "SoCal" June kit from Studio Calico
• The background yellow dot paper is the back of "Chevron" by Studio Calico
• The card stock is Fountain color by American Crafts
• The graph-looking paper is from the Follow Your Heart "Be Amazing" Best the Best Paper by My Mind's Eye
• The paper for the state backing, the speech bubble and the pinking circles were all cut or punched from the Tim and Beck exclusive paper
• I used the Martha Stewart pinking circle punch to punch the circles and hand cut the speech bubble after tracing the Studio Calico die cut that came in the kit
• The "Welcome to" stickers are Life of the Party Charmed Alphabet from My Mind's Eye
• The Miami letters are fabric Doll thickers by American Crafts
• I used Vacation sentiment from the Adventure Stamp Set by Studio Calico, as well as the letters for the "Oh Yeah" title
• I used the date stamp from the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection by American Crafts