Well, here we are! It’s steamy July already (110° here), which means vacation for lots of people. Whether it’s a stay-cation, vacation, or just a long weekend, I thought I would show you some ideas this week for treasuring some special moments.

I just got back from a three week adventure, so I gathered lots of pictures, pamphlets, maps and the like. I was all ready to journal those, but got distracted by a picture of my grand girls. I decided to back track to February and do that trip first.

I gathered some of the best photos and started to make a mini photo album. First I started with the cover using the Dots & Flowers stamp to make a light patterned background. Then I used the Getaway Travel set. I stamped nearly all the stamps on colored cardstock and cut them out, arranging them in a collage fashion. Using the Curly Alphabet, I added a title. For the “binding” I used a scrap of patterned letterpress paper, added a scalloped edge and found two gemstone brads to hold it together.

Supplies:

• Getaway Travel
• Curly Alphabet
• Simple & Basic Alphabet
• Dots & Flowers
• Green Apple, Baby Blue & Pool Notecards
• Memories Black Ink
• Other: white cardstock, letterpress scrap, floss, punch, brads, sewing machine

Next up I took several pieces of the cardstock and stitched a wavy green border on the sewing machine. I then chalked over it to resemble “waves”. I stamped the word on a scalloped edge and added a framed picture secured with a punched out camera image. You can add as many pages as you need.

Featured Stamps:

• Getaway Travel
• Caption Messages

To give a birthday feel to this page, I used the BACK of the camera circle stamp and stamped dots (remember, I  LOVE those) and added the grand girls wishing Grandpa a Happy 60th!

Featured Stamps:

• Getaway Travel

For my next page, I stamped the Cloud Background in Soft Pool ink and stamped the “take it easy” tag to adhere on top of the photo.

Featured Stamps:

• Getaway Travel
• Clouds

I only showed you a few pages here. I love SIMPLE scrapbooking and have many of these little books for our family vacations or events over the years. I will show you more later this week.

Using the same stamps, I made a little thank you note for the staff. You could tie it onto a gift!

For this week’s challenge, please create a new travel/vacation-related card, scrapbook page, or other project. Projects may include photos but they are not required. Please use at least one Hero Arts stamp on your entries and submit them to the Flickr group with the tag “vacation”. The deadline for the challenge is Sunday, July 12 at 11:59 pm PST. From the entries we will pick winners for these prizes:

• Fresh Face Winner (someone who has not yet won a contest): $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog
• Scrapbook Page Winner: $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog
• 1st Place: $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog
• 2nd Place: $25 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog
• 3rd Place: $15 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog

Thanks for stopping by today. Before you go, be sure to scroll down and check out the post below this one! You won’t want to miss the excitement of our “Invite a Friend” announcement — it’s BIG!!

Filed under: vacation

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 4:30 am and is filed under Motivation Mondays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.