Motivation on Monday

I went to a crop on Friday and created five pages.  Going to a crop always makes me want to keep cropping when I get home.  Now if I came home to an empty house, that might be possible.  But.  .

If you weren't able to crop this weekend and need a little push to work on something during the week, then here's your ticket.

I would be remiss if I didn't use this color combo, if for no other reason than to point out it can be used for layouts other than the 4th of July:  attending baseball games, summer picnics, water parks and even winter themed layouts.  Check the "B Side" of your papers for more generic designs to work with outside of July 4th fireworks and parades.

Besides this month's kits, this color pallet is in July, 2014's Bigger kit in Pebble's Americana line.  And if you're looking for a winter example, check out January, 2015's Bigger kit and the Echo Park Winter Park line.

Grab some final inspiration, before getting your hands dirty, but pulling from the color combo photo.  There's the obvious use of stars - buttons, brads, sequins.  And, of course, the stripes:  striped ribbon, stripped patterned paper, cut strips of patterned papers or use strip-style journaling.  The flag in the photo is antiqued, take that cue to ink the edges of paper, or rough up straight-cut edges.  Even the fabric itself - look for canvas embellishments, pleat your ribbon or crumple some blocks of paper (and flatten them out) and apply the blocks to add textrue.

Finally, a sketch, because sketches bring it all together.

Happy Monday,