Aloha everyone! Heather Leopard here today to talk to you about journaling but first, I just have to say—I love working with the Sunshiny Days collection! They are perfect for all the fun summer activities we’ve been doing as a family. From the pool to the beach (and all the sweet treats in-between), it seems to cover the full spectrum. Naturally, it was my go-to for documenting my sweet daughter practicing her hula dancing on the beach. Take a look below at the hula girl scrapbook layout I created and then I’ll walk you through a step-by-step tutorial.
Hula Girl scrapbook layout
Hula Girl scrapbook supplies
This layout can be used for any type of tropical, summertime activity. To re-create this layout, you’ll need to gather a few supplies…
- patterned paper for palm leaves
- my free palm leaves cut file for Silhouette
- ephemera
- stickers
- Thickers
- adhesive
A perfect cut
Print a photo that’s approximately 7″ w x 9″ h and place it in the upper right corner of the page.
Then cut a 9 1/2″ circle template out of scrap paper to use as a photo template. You can also cut the photo using your die cut machine—I’m not brave enough, so I went with this method to make sure I cut it exactly where I wanted. To use my method, I’ve found a super cool trick to finding the perfect placement. First, take the leftover paper from the circle you cut out and place it over your photo until you see exactly what you want to show (see example above).
Next, without moving anything, place the circle back inside the cut out, over your photo, as shown above.
Remove the outer circle piece so that just the circle remains over the photo, like you see in the photo above.
Then carefully pick it up and cut your photo using the circle as your guide. Now you have your photo cut exactly how you want.
Palm Tree Leaf Border
Download my free palm leaves cut file for Silhouette and cut different sized leaves from 2 – 3 patterned papers. The photo above includes leaves I cut using my file as well as ephemera from the Sunshiny Days collection.
Adhere the leaves around the circular part of your photo, creating a border of leaves and flowers. Place a few more in the opposite bottom corner (I also added a couple at the top corner of my photo).
Journaling tips
Since this week is focusing on journaling, I decided to tackle this 2 ways. First, this layout will coordinate with a 2nd layout telling the story of how my daughter learned hula, I thought I’d make this the “hero” or title page of the album and use the 2nd page to tell the longer story. With that in mind, I wanted to use a big title. How does this relate to journaling? Well, the 2nd way I decided to approach this was to use hula blessing as my title. Since it was too long for an actual title, I hand wrote part of it (journaling) and then put the key part of the quote in Thickers to highlight them.
I enjoy using quotes, song lyrics, things my children say, etc. as my title. It’s also super fun to mix them in with the journaling. You can easily tell your story instead of a quote (like I did) and then choose key words or phrases in your journaling and highlight them within your story.
Supplies:
Sunshiny Days Paradise (733596)
Sunshiny Days Puffy Stickers (733611)
Sunshiny Days Chipboard Stickers (733610)
Sunshiny Days Ephemera Die cuts (733609)
Sunshiny Days Cardstock Stickers (733608)
Heart of Home Thickers Words / Pink Foil (733767)
Heart of Home Thickers Letterboard White Foiled (733767)
Tealightful Bouquet (733527)
There are so many great pink patterned papers in the collection. I picked two of them to create these cards. Let’s start with the bicycle card. 
The Stitch Happy sewing machine from We R Memory Keepers is one of my very favorite tools. I used this machine to stitch around the edge of the pink gingham patterned paper. I adhered the paper so the corner was in the middle of the card and trimmed off the excess with my paper trimmer. 
Putting stickers onto foam adhesive dots is one of my favorite ways to give stickers a little extra dimension. That’s what I did with the bicycle sticker. That cute sticker needs to pop off the background.
At the top of the card, I added a “you’re great” sticker. Once again, I used pop dots to give the sticker some dimension. I cut the flower cluster sticker in half and tucked it under the pink patterned paper. The entire sticker was too overwhelming for a small card.
This taco truck card is a personal favorite of mine. It makes me smile whenever I see it. I combined a few different patterned papers to create the background of the card. I did keep the majority of the background pink though—I love pink!
I kept the design of these two cards very similar. By keeping the design similar, I was able to create these two cards very quickly. Along the bottom of the card I added the taco truck sticker (on pop dots). 
My favorite part of this card is the black “taco Tuesday” puffy sticker that I added in the window of the taco truck. How cute is that sticker?!?!? 
Along the top of the card, I added a sunshine/cloud sticker. I used pop dots to adhere both of these stickers as well. 
To give both of these cards a little bit of shimmer, I sprinkled some Heidi Swapp color shine on them. I LOVE the finishing touch that the color shine gives to these cards.
Thank you for stopping by the Pebbles blog today. Hurry, start creating your Girl Squad Summer cards! You’ll love playing with this fabulous collection. I’ll see you again soon!