The July 4th holiday is always a great mid-summer excuse to get together with friends and family.  I love grilling out, yard games, fireworks and all of the pageantry of the holiday.  Last year, we celebrated on our new boat with good friends.

I used the new Americana Paper pack from Creative Memories to scrapbook our memories of the day.  Although there are no stickers or embellishments to accompany this paper pack, I was able to create some great layouts using a variety of our tools.

To create this layout, cut a 5″ x 8″ piece of dot paper in half diagonally using the 12″-Inch Straight Trimmer.  Use the Original Border Maker with Star Cartridge to punch two borders from cranberry cardstock.  Arrange and adhere the pieces on a sheet of navy cardstock as shown.  Repeat for the second page.

Use the CM Shooting Star Punch and a Silver Metallic Pen to create firework embellishments for the pages.  Adhere the stars with Foam Squares for extra pop.  Create a variety of waving stripes for embellishments and journaling boxes using the 12″-Inch Decorative Trimmer.  Add a title with Navy ABC/123 Stickers.

The Americana Paper and a few tools proved perfect for my fireworks photos.  Cut the starburst sheet of paper in half to get two pieces that measure 12″ x 6″ each.  Cut two sheets of the blue stripe paper to 12″ x 7″ each.  Use the Original Border Maker with Midnight Star Cartridge to punch two borders from cranberry cardstock.  Adhere all of the pieces together to get two 12″ x 12″ pages.

To create the diagonal photo mat, cut a piece of cranberry cardstock to 3-3/4″ x 12″ and crop three photos and a piece of beige word patterned paper to fit.  Adhere to page, and cut off the overhang.

Add additional photos matted with cranberry cardstock.  I used a 7″ x 5″ photo cut in two pieces on the page above and two 4″ x 6″ photos on the first page.  Add titles with Navy ABC/123 Stickers and additional stars punched with the Shooting Star Punch.

My last layout is yet another version of my jumbo heart pages.  (Please see my blog post from February and my guest post on the CM Blog for other versions.)  This version of a waving flag was created with the 12″-Inch Decorative Trimmer.

Create a heart template by folding a piece of 12″ x 12″ cardstock in half. (The paper insert in our paper packs works great for this.)  Draw half of a heart shape and cut out with scissors.  From blue print and red striped papers, cut 1″ wide strips using the “swell” side of the 12″ Decorative Trimmer.  Use a small amount of CM’s Re-Positional Tape Runner to lightly adhere the strips to your template leaving 1/8″ in-between each strip.  Turn over your heart and cut off the over-hang.  Carefully remove each strip taking care not to bend the paper (CM’s Multi-Purpose Tool is great for this!).  Add more adhesive to each piece and re-adhere on a piece of beige word print paper to reassemble your heart.  Start with your bottom piece and work your way up.  As you may need to “tinker” with your pieces to get the shape right, just lightly lay the pieces down at first and move slightly as needed.  When you’re happy with your shape, rub on the pieces to more tightly adhere them.  The Re-Positional Tape will be very handy.  It’s supposed to look like a waving flag, so your shape doesn’t need to be perfect.

Create a banner for the top of the page with blue hearts punched and trimmed from CM’s Shooting Star Punch and smaller stars punched from the Original Border Maker System with Star Cartridge.  Adhere the banner pieces with Foam Squares.

Add a title using Denim ABC/123 Stickers and more stars adhered with Foam Squares to the bottom of your page.  Use a Black Dual-Tip Pen to finish your page with details.

You may purchase the Americana Paper and any of the tools that I used on my CM website.

Thanks much for visiting with me today!  Happy Scrapping!