Today I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Arizona Midday Show ! My scrapbooking theme for this segment was fun ways to scrapbook your summer. I highlighted techniques using ephemera from your summer activities as a way to make the projects fun and memorable for your kids to participate in as well. The two little frames shown here commemorate a trip to Hawaii earlier this summer as well as a favorite trip to Legoland a few years back that my son took. Creating a decorative frame is a fun and easy way to get your child involved in scrapbooking summer memories that doesn't always involve making a scrapbook page! To create the Lego frame Lego bricks were glued to a wooden frame from the dollar store using Aileene's Tacky Glue, I like this glue because it dries firm, quick and clear! The Hawaiian frame was created using another dollar store frame, some colorful brads that I snipped the legs off and the flowers from a Hawaiian Lei we got on our trip. I also used Tacky glue to adhere all the items to the frames, total production time for each frame was 30 minutes,( then another hour to allow for complete glue drying). Definitely a fun and kid-friendly project... seashells work great for this too!

Speaking of seashells, sometimes it is fun to make a bumpy lumpy layout that you can frame! Alyssa had her 19th birthday at the beach this year so I created a little photo frame around her favorite birthday photo using some little beach shells from the beach. If you don't have any shells most craft stores sell shells very inexpensively in different sizes in small bags. To create the photo frame on the layout I first mounted the photo on heavy chipboard leaving about a 1/4" free edge all the way around, then used tacky glue once more to glue the shells down. I let this frame dry over night before adhering it to the layout. I used two-sided tape to adhere to the layout since it was a little heavier than my normal page elements.Using ephemera from your summer activities can be really fun on your scrapbooking projects, consider saving menues, programs, tickets,placemats anything you can copy on to paper or use as paper on your project!

This summer Michael was in his first production with Actors Youth Theatre we cut up pieces of the program showing the production title as well as his actor bio to add to this quick and easy layout. Projects like this are once more easy for your children to create because by using the emphemera from the activity or the event you already have you layout embellishments ready to go, you just have to add pictures! I used this same technique to scrapbook Alyssa's birthday dinner in Carlsbad, California. We loved the Italian restaurant we ate at that night so I printed out a copy of the restaurants menu and insignia onto some parchment paper use as my embellishments All I had to do was add some journaling and photos and the layout was complete.

Consider using the colorful placemat from your child's favorite restaurant in the same way! One of my favorite project ideas I shared on the show today was a quick Postcard mini book idea for adults and kids alike. When I am on vacation I always buy postcards but I rarely send them out! I buy them because

I love the colorful photos of the places I am visiting. I great way to put those postcards to use is in a quick and simple mini book. Most postcards are either 4"x 6 or 6" x 8", I chose to create a simple ring binding on the side of mine using hinge rings available at most office supply stores. I punched holes and bound my book and added a few extra cardstock pages of the same dimension. Next I printed my favorite photos from this summer's beach vacation and glued them on the back of the postcards and onto the cardstock pages. All that was left to do was a some journaling on the backs of the postcards and cardstock pages. I embellished the front of the book with a label from my Dymo label make and some ribbon with a metal rimmed tag!