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.