#Challenge52Kits SoCal - June 2012

Hello SoCal, sunshine state/area in a kit from June 2012!

ABOUT SOCAL | What's not to love about this kit? The fresh orange shades, the pinks that somehow don't look awful against the orange, the sky blues… Loved this kit and still do!

SoCal main kit leftover
Santa Monica leftover	Venice Beach leftover

PICKING PHOTOS | I had these pics of me and my daughter but our shirts clashed, and even her outfit that she ended up in after her 2nd day of school didn't seem like it would translate well to a color photograph and layout. But then SoCal comes along and captures the feel of that afternoon last month! We were having fun playing outside, just being silly, talking and giggling together. She was in a good mood despite having spilled water on herself at school and not liking to be wet, she asked her teacher to change her outfit. So 2nd day of school, and the extra change of clothes I packed into her bookbag already got utilized haha! They really know what they're talking about when the school lists what to pack in the bookbags!

A LAYOUT | I started with the 2nd paper from the bottom, orange with the pink hearts and thought that would go perfectly with the pictures. Then I started grabbing a few more sheets of paper, and suddenly I had 5 sheets in my hand… and it looked so pretty in my hand I thought I would use them as strips just like that for my layout! But wasn't sure what else beyond that. I ended up grabbing a piece of grid card stock from my stash for the background, then to add some interest to the paper strips I was planning, I used my Silhouette to cut out some wonky hearts on each piece of paper. After that, I decided to fill in the hearts with a bit of light watercolor paint and then embellish on top!

BONUS PROJECT | I knew I should definitely find a way to use up the heart cut outs from the strips of paper, so I made this simple card base and sewed some lines on top with some gold thread. I'll try to remember to come back and update this post when I finish it up and use it!

NEXT UP | Elmwood Park from July 2012, lots of red, blue, orange, green, and yellow - sort of reminds me of a paint palette with all the basic colors!

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

Pizza Party!

Chris and I took a Wednesday this past February off from work to go to a Syracuse basketball game (and this time not get stuck in rush hour traffic) and be able to leave early for it. But we still had time to kill before heading out so he suggested we head to the Pizza Stop over on State St. in downtown Rochester and since it was a normal workday for everyone else, we should be able to hit them at their peak of the day and get some hot, fresh pizza! It was so amazing, and made me feel like I was right back in NYC!

OK, onto the layout itself! Take a look at the "Water Wars" layout by Summer Fullerton seen here and you will see my main inspiration!

Originally I was going to use a journal box or tag of some sort in the upper left corner, but ended up cutting out some pizza from one of the photos! I stamped the "Love You" bubble onto the pre-cut diecut that came in the SoCal kit from Studio Calico, originally stamped in Wet Cement, but ended up feeling it was too light so stamped over the gray with my new Versafine in Onyx Black stamp pad! With the gray underneath it stamped really well so it was a "lucky" mistake!

The lower right corner was the same idea, stamped the "This was a great idea" sentiment. I also stamped the pinking circle onto letter paper around a "P" for pizza, and hand cut it out using my awesome Fiskars fingertip craft knife.

For the main space where the title is, I added some subtle lines of washi tape to close it in and some hand stitching on top of the letters. My husband came up with the "New York Style" subtitle after I had tried adding "It's a" before the "pizza party" portion of the title in small gray letters that ended up disappearing into the background. Def liked this better and loved how this layout came out!


HOW-TO:

• Almost everything I used was from the new June "SoCal" kit by Studio Calico! Def loving this kit so far!
• The background paper (top and bottom) is exclusive Tim and Beck for Studio Calico and the orange paper with circles is called "Nice to meet you" from the Konnichiwa collection by BasicGrey
• The pinking circles in the upper left and colorful tabbed box in the lower right are exclusive from Studio Calico, as well as the Love You bubble stamp, and the "This was a great idea" stamp being from the Adventure Stamp Set
• The "like" on the tab is a rub-on from the Vintage Instaframes from the Heidi Swapp collection by Pink Paislee, as were the New York Style subtitle letters called bitty blocks from the Prairie Hill collection
• The Pizza Party cardboard letter stickers are from Pebbles
• I pulled the buttons from the Follow Your Heart collection by My Mind's Eye, as well as the "no. 1" paper clip
• I used washi tape from American Crafts as well as Freckled Fawn