Studio Calico - JULY!!!

The July kit is up at Studio Calico! Did you get what you were after? Again, I got the whole kit and caboodle. I saw a balloon stamp and an add-on was catered to a zoo trip, and with both on my calendar, I couldn't hardly say NO?!

I wanted to share what I did this month. This first layout is by far my favorite. I dig, dig, DIG this color palette.


I did a layout last year with similar clouds, so I wanted to make sure these were different. I had to have clouds though, because if this awesome photo, and the balloon stamp, so to change them a little, I inked the edges but more importantly, I machine stitched a grid pattern. I really love the texture and dimension it gave.
The Sassafras flower made the perfect sun. I love the yellow chipboard. And of course, I had to add a balloon. I'm also very obsessed with the scallop sentiment punch from Fiskars, which I have mentioned before, so of course I had to use that too.




I liked the "today" sentiment in the Little Yellow Bicycle sentiment stickers, so I wanted to use that as one of my titles. I loved this Lily Bee paper as the base, and those flowers from the MM Great Escape paper were perfect together. I then used some circle punches from Fiskars for my flowers, and added some MM flowers and my trusty Heidi Swapp edge distressing tool for some texture.




When I first made this layout I was worried it was a bit too plain. I did work it out with my favorite punch to get the edges to the blue Scenic Route paper, though, and snipped some of the KI border stickers in half to use at the top. But the thing I love about this layout are the photos. Oh my word, I have a beautiful family. And Morgan looks like such a diva all wrapped up in that pink scarf with her 3D shades.

The fun part about this layout is how I did the title. If you've seen the movie, bottle caps and safety pins were some great symbolism, so while watching the movie even, I KNEW I was going to make one and use it for the title. And it just so happens I had this unopened package of charms from Making Memories that's about 6 years old that had a little safety pin. Perfect!

It would have been obvious to use the balloon stamp on this layout as well, but because I went 8.5x11 and used a 4x6 photo, combined with the title piece, it just didn't fit anywhere that made sense to me.

Speaking of the movie UP, if you did see it and are looking for some fun activities for your kids this summer, I found this site with some fun projects for kids:

UP Printables


You might recall that I went to the zoo, Payton's very first trip, and accidentally left my camera battery charging at my mama's house. So I bought a disposable camera and hoped for the best. The quality wasn't good, but I did get a few photos that told the story of our adventures that day, and I guess you can't ask for anything more than that. I got photo booth strip photos too, but didn't have enough time to do a layout with those yet. I love these train photos with Payton. She LOVED this part of the day so I'm glad these photos turned out.





This is the layout I was working on when I did my stitching tutorial. We were at the Balloon Festival in Bend and my kids just *had* to have a balloon pet. Silly Lilly was wonderful with them, very entertaining, and I'm glad I got her photo for this layout. I hear she does kid parties so I may have to look her up someday....

And that's it! No cards or project this month. I really wanted to do one of the minis but just plain ran out of time.

Have a great day! Davinie