Russian Words, American Holiday (SOC Week 5)

Journaling: "I was amused by the 'Russian Word of the Day,' пляж (beach), because we really did go to the beach the very next day."

I worked hard to learn Russian in high school and college, and I use all sorts of little tricks to keep my language skills from going stale.  One of my latest tricks is "Russian Word of the Day" e-mails, which are free from Transparent Language.  I had to smile at the word I got on July 3, which was пляж, meaning "beach."  The example sentence for the word was "She and I will go to the beach tomorrow."  It fit my life perfectly, since my family and I really did go to the beach the next day...as did millions of other people, I'm sure.  :)
 

Supplies: cardstock from Pulp; patterned paper from American Crafts; alphabet & label stickers from October Afternoon; all other stickers from Bella Blvd; stamp from Inkadinkado; pens from Zig; upcycled bubble wrap & punch card.

 
In fact, my family goes to the beach almost every Fourth of July.  That means that I end up with lots of Independence Day beach photos every year.  Sometimes it's hard to think of a new and different way to scrapbook all those photos.  But this year, I was inspired by the пляж e-mail.  I printed the message and based my layout around the printout.

This week's Summer of Color palette is red and royal blue, with a pop of light blue--perfect for this scrapbook page.  My pop of light blue comes in the form of the page title--"July."  Anchoring the title is an American flag sticker.  Regular printer paper is translucent, so I placed the flag sticker under the paper for a subtle, barely-there effect.

Beach layouts usually seem to lend themselves to the smudgy, carefree look of mixed media, so I did some stamping and stenciling along the top and bottom borders of my layout.  In addition to a regular rubber stamp, I also stamped with upcycled bubble wrap from a padded mailing envelope.  My stencil, also upcycled, is actually a frequent-buyer punch card.  I'm ending up using the card much more for paper crafting (see here and here) than for shopping.  :)

My son usually plays along with the Summer of Color, but so far this week he has not gotten around to it, even though he likes the color scheme.  If he does end up making a project before the deadline, I'll be sure to add a photo of it to this post.