Hello Sunshine!

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Hello Sunshine – I love the name for this collection by Cosmo Cricket because it is my greeting each morning to our 5 yr. old daughter. She inevitably wakes up before I do every morning, because I am scrapping into the wee hours until I force myself to quit. My day begins with hearing pitter patter of bare feet on the hardwood floor…then the bedroom door carefully opens and I hear, “Mom, is it morning yet?” Or lately, she has been crawling into bed beside me with a laugh and says, “I just want to snuggle with you mom.” Her smile is wide and her dimples are twinkling along with the sparkle in her eyes – she is my sunshine every morning.

I love this photo taken early one morning. It was her turn to be the “weather person” at pre-school, and she was looking out the window to see if it was sunny, cloudy or rainy. It was sunny! I just thought it was so cute how she took her job so seriously.

Cosmo Crickets awesome journaling cards were a true inspiration for the direction of this layout. When I laid eyes on the card with clouds, sky and grass it immediately made me think of what one sees out the window. I was also drawn to my quilting days and one of my favorite quilt designs called “Attic Windows”. I decided to replicate the idea behind an attic windows quilt, by framing in a window around the journaling card. BUT, I also could not dismiss my former career days working as a graphic artist for a window treatment manufacturer. Another journaling card, when hand-cut to create an arch from the design, made a perfect arch window to be built into the frame as well. Once I created my window, using strips of black cardstock and foam adhesive for dimension – I realized it needed a window treatment! The Fiskars Threading Water punch created a perfect window valance. I admit, I was working into the wee hours on this layout because the mojo was just coming and coming and I could not stop!

Birds also greet our morning with song, and I love my birdie stamps. This layout features bird stamps by Inkadinkado, Autumn Leaves, and Heidi Grace Designs. I also used a Cloud 9 dotted line stamp to create some journaling lines that bleed off the left edge of the page.

I hope you enjoy this layout as I did while creating it. When you get your own Cosmo Cricket “Hello Sunshine” journaling cards, go through your stash and find that photo of a favorite subject at the window – and feel free to scraplift this idea. It really adds a fun, whimsical element to your page.


Don't forget to leave a comment in the post PRIOR to this one to get in a drawing for an awesome Memory Makers autographed book! Thanks for joining me for this little snippet of my creative journey!