thinking of summer

It is insanely cold here in Chicago, and I have summer on the brain. I find myself browsing through sunny warm pictures of the fun things we did last summer and imagining myself warm and wearing sandals at the beach. (Sigh.) It was 2 degrees yesterday morning... not counting windchill. I had to put on my big ugly warm boots just to check the mail (right outside of our door).
So many of our summer pictures included our dear neighbor Elijah, Alli's best friend, that I had to do a scrapbook page celebrating their summer of fun together. I used paper from the dollar section at Target (12 sheets for $1), a Sharpie felt-tip pen, the QuicKutz Moxie Classic alphabet, and some plain cardstock from Costco.

Click on the picture for a larger, more detailed view.

I doodled and sketched on the die-cut letters and on the paper flowers to tie them together. Doodling makes a very fun, care-free, light-hearted scrapbook page. Some people are intimidated by free-hand drawing. Doodling isn't too difficult. Try this... I drew along the inside of the letters (this font works well because it is so chunky), creating a boundary for my doodling. I filled in the letters with stripes, polka dots, zig zags, etc. The lines don't have to be perfect (that is what makes them fun and innocent).

This was a temporary cure for winter chills, but a permanent preservation of sunny memories... and that warms my heart.

Fish Pinata

My daughter wanted to have a fish-princess-unicorn-themed party for her fourth birthday. (She is all about mixing and matching. Her hairstyle for the party was one French braid and one pigtail.)

Here is the pinata for the party.

It is a fish princess.

I made the body from a basic pinata (paper mache over balloon).

The pinata is covered in die-cut circles (I used the QuicKutz bagel die) to make the scales. The scales are glued on, row by row, overlapping from front to back. The fins, eyes, lips and crown are hand-cut originals. I used a bone folder to score lines on the fins for a little texture and shaping. I embellished with plastic jewels.

This was a great project to use up lots of miscellaneous paper scraps. I used patterned and solid cardstock. I even used some drawings that Alli had done.

The funny thing is, the kids at the party had never smashed a pinata before, so they were quite reluctant to hit it... until they saw the candy come out. Then it was bashed to pieces in seconds. And candy is probably still scattered throughout my living room... which is fine with my kids.