July's Memory Book Page

I am sharing July's flip-flap memory book pages for our Dreamees monthly group swap and I have gone for a beach summer vibe on these.

For my first page, I created a pocket for my 2 beach hut tags using their shed stamp which converted nicely into a beach hut, and on the adjacent side a seaside theme canvas with a porthole view onto the beach.

I created an inky background using distress oxide inks and gave my beach huts a slightly distressed finish using my chalk dinky inkies. I found a few beach themed embellishments that I had in my stash from Tattered Lace which worked really well and added a few pieces of clip art that I found online.

I used a piece of fine sandpaper that I had leftover from another project to cover the front of the pocket to mimic a sandy beach and add a little texture too along with the teeny shells. The crab was one of my Tattered Lace die cuts which I also inked to sit on the backing paper that has some background stamping, a little hard to capture in the photo.

For my second page, I cut the driftwood backing paper up into slats, inked, and backed it onto foam tape before sticking it down, leaving a slight gap between each slat.

To make the porthole, I just used varied sizes of my nested circle dies using kraft card and some bronze enamel embellishments to finish it off.

I still wanted the porthole to look a bit more rustic so I added some barnacles which I adapted using polystyrene balls, ink & glue. These had fallen out of my son's lap tray that I had glued back together and the darn things get everywhere.  You think you have got rid of the ones you don't need and they come back! So I used some.  The fruit bag netting always comes in handy for this sort of crafting too.

Sometimes you need a particular embellishment for a project and you can't find one the right size to fit so I went online and found a free clip art, printed it out and then traced it onto cardboard twice (the grey cardboard from the back of notepads).  Once gessoed, I added a little paint and wax and it looked just as good as a metal embellishment.

On the flip side of the pages, the beach theme continues, and I decided to recreate on one of these pages, a summer vibe card that I had made for my friend using the mdf camper van from the Dreamees mdf embellishment sheets.  On the adjacent page, I have created another pocket with some mini tags and the ATC card that I normally make and add to my swap partner's pages.

For these 6x6 inch flip flap memory book pages, I find it easier to create each page and then stick them into the kraft card base once they are finished.

For the background, I used my all-time favourite stencil,  Daisy by Visible Image with distress oxide inks. I also used a mix of my smallest Dreamees flower dies and the Summer Breeze paper pad to decorate the camper van. I love this paper pad and have used this throughout this project as the colourways fit perfectly. The lustre reinker dinky inky by the Dreamees is perfect for getting that chrome finish on your mdf.

A little glossy accent in the middle of the daisy is all that's needed, such a lush stencil and distress oxides are my favourite go to ink.

For these flip flap book pages, I use a lot of digi images from past Dreamees CD roms. They are easy to resize and print onto their design papers which also come with sentiments too.

I created the background for my page using distress oxide inks and then added some stamping 

The little double sided seahorse has been heat embossed with clear embossing powder for a smoother texture and the jar of cookies has an acetate front. The caravan has been decopatched and decorated with stickles glitter glue and the postcard has a stamped image of cute giraffes on the reverse.

Another ATC to add to this project before sending it off to my swap partner. These Kokeshi dolls are really cute by Vera Lance Studios. I love her digi stamps. Well, that's another set of flip flap pages complete for this month.

It's certainly been a hot summer so far and by the look of it there is still more summer sun to come our way.

Have a fab day whatever you have planned for yourself.

Happy crafting