Studio Calico Penny Arcade sneaks

This past week has been a whirlwind of activity; lots of end of school year stuff, projects to make, guests to prep for, etc. Typical summer stuff and its great, being busy is good, being pressed for time is good. It sure helps my mojo when I have to make decisions quickly instead of linger over them.

Penny Arcade, what a great kit name right! It reminds me of the good ole days playing Skee ball at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with my brother and my cousin collecting as many tickets as we could. Its that carefree, playfulness that I tried to capture in the two spreads I made with these kits.

Here is my first spread, all with the main kit only.

this printable, so perfectly timed.

so much digital work on this spread, this is pretty much all digital and so much fun to make.

these two cards were favorites for sure.

The stamp addon this month, Funnel Cake is AMAZING! I had to use it this month and super-sized it and cut it and made an insert out of it. There just might be something on the backside of it too...

My second spread, using the main and the two addons, High Striker and Bottle Toss.

Its funny how some stamps just speak to me and Shanna Noel knows how to design stamps that do just that for me. I loved the set in Bottle Toss and when I was looking at it an idea came to me, you can see it in action above and below.

I loved playing with the washi tape this month, I have missed using it so it was fun to use.

I love when these types of embellishments are in the kits, the perfect small accent.

Silver lovers rejoice! Its a silver explosion this month.

You can see more sneaks from the team here and on Instargram #scsneaks and its not too late to start your subscription to any of the kits to get in on the action for the big reveal for subscribers at 9:00am PST on June 27th, click here and hit Subscribe on any of the kits you are interested in.

I'll see you back here this Friday for a reveal of my full spreads, its also someones last day of school so it's a really big day!

Our Summer Bucket List

Last year one of the funnest things we did was come up with a Summer Bucket List and we did a pretty good job of completing lots of the items too. When the weather started warming up again I knew we needed to start thinking of Bucket List items for this year too. Even though my daughter is still in school we consider any days between June 1st and August 31st as Summer so we can maximize our days and have lots of time to cover lots of items.  This year I kept the same basic design as last year list but changed up the fonts and added some color.  My daughter liked having a way to mark off the items so this year I used little hearts that she could fill in instead of the squares to check off.  Here is this years list;

It doesn't look like I ever posted last years list here so here it is for reference.

If you've never made a bucket list I really suggest you do, it doesn't have to be as long or as involved and it really is for all ages. In fact I loved checking off the items just as much as my daughter did. It's also the perfect thing to have on hand for those 'I'm bored' moments which always seems to happen during the summer. 

Oh and if you are looking for a list of all of the National Holidays that I have on my list you can see the full list of all of them here.  It's written by month and there are a lot of good ones.

Marking the halves

Yesterday this girl turned 6½ years old. Looking thru her photos while I was making this was so much fun, so many forgotten fun times and cute smiles.  Long gone are the curls and that crooked head tilt when she smiled for photos. In its place is a confident and happy girl that makes me smile each and every day. We don't typically make a super big deal about her half birthday even though she would love an excuse for a party. Instead we try to do a little something fun to mark the day and this year we went to a pottery painting place for the first time. We had the best time and she did the best job painting her little box to hold her new collection of earrings. While we were out two of her friends and Mom came by with a half of a cupcake for her which was just the sweetest thing ever! I so wish we had been home to catch that moment on film. Suffice it to say she loved every minute of her special day down to the last bit of frosting on that half of a cupcake.

Here's to many, many more halves my sweet girl.

June Playlist

Every Sunday Studio Calico posts three sketches to inspire their members to scrap, make a card or work on their Project Life® spreads and yesterdays post was done by me.  I had a lot of fun interpreting one of the sketches into a full size layout and you can see the blog post here.

As you can see in the blog post I ended up using only the Hello Hello Project Life® kits to complete my layout which is something some of the members over at Studio Calico have been asking to see.  It was a fun challenge and I hope this helps give them a few ideas in that direction.

When I initially started the layout I thought my lines and embellishments would be radiating out from the main photo cluster but then I had the idea to change them up to circles instead and mimic the lines of a vinyl record so hopefully that makes some sense.  I adore these little veneer sequins and loved how they looked colored in with the markers. I grabbed some colors from that amazing sheet of rainbow paper from the the 4x6 Paper Pad as my color inspiration.

I hope you play along with the sketch challenge because there's a chance to win a $5 Studio Calico gift card so make sure you get your projects posted in the Blog Comments by June 16th.