August Word of the Month: Paradise

Because my brain seems to be fixated on the beach lately, I thought paradise would be a good word to explore this month.

What I love about the word paradise is that it can have a completely different meaning for each person. To one person it might be a cozy blanket and a good book and to another it might be a tropical island. We can also have multiple versions of paradise for ourselves. For me, my ultimate paradise is the beach. Give me soft white sand, some crashing waves, and beautiful water and I am in heaven. I can just sit and soak it all in for hours everyday we are there.

I've mentioned here that I recently got a Silhouette and let me tell you, I have been having too much fun playing around with it. Every time I use it I think, "Where have you been all my life? And, why have I waited so long to have you!?" Seriously. So much fun!

For this layout the inspiration started with a cute wave and a large stripe paper from Simple Stories. I loved the way the stripe coordinated with the water in my pictures. My pictures are very greenish blue heavy and the stripe had the perfect color to match. The bonus was that it also came with several other beautifully coordinated colors.

I used my Silhouette to cut out several waves on the stripe in different sizes and then I arranged the waves so that the stripe came back together as it was on the paper. Generally I will use a stripe as a small strip to help tie the colors of my layout together. It was a lot of fun and nice change of pace to instead use the stripe as almost the whole layout.

I used a few of the waves as a template to add in some stitched waves in coordinating colors. There are also a few straight line stitched swirly things I added in here and there.

I finished the layout with a sun in the top corner and some black and white banner pieces along the top and bottom edge.

I hope you play along and use the word of the month! If you do be sure to share it!

Collection used: Simple Stories "Hello Summer"