HAPPY SUMMER

Our creative Claire has the floor this week in our Paper Players Theme Challenge #PP652 "Hot Fun in the Summertime". This is her photo inspiration board:

The Paper Players: PP652 - A Theme Challenge from Claire

I have an older stamp set with rows of watermelons, flip-flops, ice cream cones, and pineapples, and I decided on the pineapples. I've been fooling around this week with a rubber Unity Stamps "Bubbles Border" and had some left-over scraps that I didn't use, so I die cut a small rectangle from one of the experimental scraps I had created on polka-dot paper (you'll probably see more of this at a later date, since I still have scraps left). 

The scraps have the bubble border white heat embossed with some PTI "Ocean Tides" sponged at the bottom. I mounted the small rectangle to a white panel and then glued this to the card base that I had background stamped with pale blue ink and black sentiment. I stamped and colored the pineapples on white cardstock, fussy cut them, and glued them on the face. One of the pineapples was then given black embossed shades and a bow and glued over the top with dimensional foam. She ended up with a bit of attitude, which had been my intention!

Well, your turn! But first, go over and see what the rest of our talented designers has offered up as their "hot fun".

On a personal note: The front yard landscape project is finally completed until next spring! Here's what we started with:

This was all lawn that we have hand-watered for many years. When we started this whole thing, we had no idea it would be a full year to get the first phase in. This was last year when we had just had most of the old plants removed and the lawn scraped and turned.

Here we are today:

The light beige color in the back toward the patio area is decomposed granite and there will be mostly grasses and rocks put in there in the spring. The mulched area around the red bud tree will have native plants, grasses, and rocks in the spring. It feels really good to now have an irrigation system of lawn sprinklers and drip lines for the full area. I'm creating some steppingstones in the decomposed granite area using recycled metal hoops from old wine half-barrels, bricks, and rocks from the yard. Three down and three to go!