Scrapbooking inspiration and a quick tip

As most of you who have followed me over the years knows, I'm part of Designs by Connie Prince's creative team.  I got lucky in 2013 and joined her blog team.  I say lucky because I love promoting her products and I horde her templates and kits.  I say horde because my stash of her products is enormous.  Many of the layouts I've shared on this blog and on previous blogs I have had over the years have been made with her kits and templates.  Connie is amazingly kind and supportive and I'm so happy that I'm part of her scrapbooking family.  

I've had short periods of time where I've been on other creative teams, some of those designers have retired from designing because like me their lives went off in a different direction and some of the teams I walked away from when life got to be too overwhelming for me to keep up with scrapping on a regular basis.  This summer I've found a desire to scrap more consistently and a ton of "new to me" designers have caught my interest.  One of them had a Creative Team Call going on so I applied not sure if my long absence would keep me from being considered.  I'm excited to say, I was accepted to be a part of Wetfish Designs' CT!  

One of the side benefits of all this is I'll get to share some inspiration with anyone who stumbles by my blog.  Another benefit is my photos will get posted more often instead of sitting on my external hard drive.  After all, photos should be shared!

Here are a few of the layouts I've made this month.  There are more to come but hopefully these will inspire you to explore your creativity today.

July WAS Styles by Wetfish Designs

Kit: Cape Cod Summer by Wetfish Designs

CU: Junk Edges1 by Wetfish Designs, Old Paper Template 1 by Wetfish Designs, Grunge Textures from my stash

Font: Beauty Nature

Kit: Cape Cod Summer by Wetfish Designs

Kit: #2026 July by Connie Prince

Template: Only One Volume 12 by Connie Prince

Kit: Simple Things by Aimee Harrison

Kit: Rainbow Bridge by Wetfish Designs

I know my scrapping will slow down over the next few weeks because I'm headed back to my full-time teaching job but it has been a blast getting to scrap memories and photos that I've taken over the years.  I have also been enjoying playing around more with different things within Photoshop and Lightroom.

Quick Scrapbooking tip:  Blend your text into your background papers.  

I want my text to look worn into the background paper.  I use a technique on nearly every layout that I learned years ago to make the text look like it is written on the paper, not "floating" above the paper.  I use a small tweak in FX (styles) in the blending option to help the text set into the texture of the paper it's sitting on.  I learned this years ago but the website I bookmarked with the tutorial no longer exists.  However, I found this one: Friends Don't Let Fonts Float by Polly Anne on the Lily Pad Blog that explains it perfectly.

I hope something I shared today inspires you to explore your creative side.  Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you on the flip side!

Author Recommendation: Ginny Sterling

 I have no idea how we got through nearly the first half of the year without me blogging.  Actually, I do know.  Life got exceptionally busy with the job I was doing and when I had some "down" time, my husband and I hit the hiking/walking trails to help me with my mental and emotional health.  Those times were priceless and necessary so I could meet the everyday demands.  The good news is my job situation has resolved where I should only be on one campus this upcoming year.  That does come with a pay cut but it will be less stress which is 100% worth it.

So with that behind me, for the past month I've been in recovery mode. After one last week of school related professional development, I've spent time doing some things that fed my artistic and nature loving soul.  I love being able to go sit outside in our shade garden in the morning before everyone gets up (or it gets unbearably hot) with a book (or Kindle), a crocheting project, and soak in time surrounded by nature.  

That brings me around to what I wanted to share with you today.  I'm a pretty eclectic reader, tending to stay on the fiction side of literature but I jump around from one genre to another.  Recently I've been catching up with some of my favorite Christian Romance, clean romance, cozy mystery/romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and paramilitary/military romance/suspense authors which also usually populates suggestions into my Kindle as I finish another book.  I thought I would start sharing some of the authors/books that I've discovered and enjoyed for those of you who are bookworms like me.

One of my current favorite authors in the clean, closed door romance genre is Ginny Sterling.

Ginny writes stories that take you on a roller coaster ride of emotions.  One minute you are laughing, the next you are secretly wanting to hug and kick the main characters, and then you find yourself crying and hoping for the HEA (which there's plenty of that to go around).  I discovered this author several years ago with her Healing Hearts series and Flyboys series.  Both of these are military pen pal based but connect to each other as both of the series unfolds. Another thing that pulled me in was that she put the USA setting in Texas and included towns within driving distance of where I live.  Matter of fact the town I live in made an appearance in one of the books!  I've since then read her Flirt's Battalion, Reserve Ranch, and Baird Farm series.  There are more of her books on my TBR list and I haven't found one that I didn't like.

This is a layout that I did as part of a challenge at Ginger Scraps about meeting someone real or fiction on our "bucket list."  I would love to meet Ginny Sterling at some point and I was close when she was at a book convention in Dallas but the tickets for that convention sell out super fast!

Layout credits: 

Template: The Jive Five Vol 13 by Connie Prince

Kits: Reading List, Paint Chips Hot Purple, Paint Chips Resolution Blue, and Paint Chips Blush Pink by Connie Prince

The photo on the layout is one from one of our May hikes/walks.  This was up at Farmersville, Texas and is part of the Northeast Texas Trail.  The Northeast Texas Trail is a 130 mile rail to trail conversion project that runs from Texarkana to East Dallas.  There is currently a study underway to get the trail designated as the state's first linear State Park.  

I'll have another author to share with you next week. Happy reading!

First photo 2026

It's currently only 17 degrees outside and I am not ashamed to admit that I'm not a fan of this type of bitter cold.  However, I braved it just a bit to get a few photos to document the 1st ice storm of 2026 and to try to get a macro photo or two.

Did you take any photos today?  Have you made any photography goals for 2026?  

My goal this year is to enjoy the process of taking photos.  To see the world from different perspectives.  

Wishing all of you warmth and safety this week!