Splish Splash

This is the final week over at Dixie Pieces: the sound of summer. There are so many sounds associated with summer, but my favorite since childhood has to be the sounds of the ocean.

I came up with a neat technique of cutting angled strips of paper and sewing them together to create a background (requirement one: sewing-check). Then I cut a cute little sun from a sheet of Cosmo Snorkel paper (requirement two: handcutting-check). Then I created a stencil by cutting a Sizzix cloud from a piece of chipboard--voila a fluffy white cloud (requirement three: paint-check). The space in the sky next to the cloud looked a bit blah, so in comes some doodled wind whisps for journaling. Oh, and how about a little doodled frame to mat the whole page? (requirement four: doodling-check) And maybe a sprinkling of seashells in the sand. Yup, it's done.

Something about seeing the photo up on my computer screen helped me realize that this page was just a tad bit off. So on to take two:

This page was not an easy one for me. It took a great deal of time, and I can't say I'm thrilled with the end result. Some pages are just like that--you'll put in so much thought and energy, try out a new complicated technique, over think and over-embellish and end up with a mediocre page. And other times, you'll do a bare bones layout, with minimal effort, hardly any embellishing, and in just 20 minutes, and you'll love the results and mark it as one of your favorites.