Greetings Cocoa Daisy Fans, Summer is in full swing here in the Northern Hempisphere and we thought it would be a great time to share some of our ideas for documenting warm weather stories with our To the Sea collection. DT member Odessa will be starting us off with a bright and colorful pocket page layout. "Summer stories are my favourite stories! I was so excited when I opened up my To the Sea kits because they are just what I need to document some summer fun. Today I’m sharing a quick pocket page I made using the kits." "The bold journal cards add some bright colours and fun phrases to my page. I love them! I went with three of them in summery colours to go with my photos and tell my stories. I’m don’t do a ton of journalling and instead use cards and stickers and of course photos to tell my stories more often." "To the Sea made this so easy! There’s lots of word strips and alpha stickers and tabs to sprinkle in my pockets!" "The glitter enamel dots are another fav! I’m always excited to see them in a kit. It’s like glittery confetti for my page without all the mess." "Pocket pages are so much fun and a great way to capture summer memories! The To the Sea Kit made it so easy to put the page together." We love Odessa's eye for color and her bold color palettes. Her project life pages tell stories in their most basic form but with a lot of pop! Next we have a memory planner layout with a video walkthrough from Casie. "Hi Daisy Fans! Casie here to share a summer story documented in my big Happy Planner." "I love all the patterned paper and am always searching for creative ways to use it within my memory keeping. For this layout, I used the ombre pink to yellow floral pattern as the main background. I then laid down the two photos at the bottom corner, attaching them with a tiny staple. To anchor the photos better, I added two layers of circle embellishments between the photos." "The top left sentiment and ombre rainbow are both the super fun rub on items from the kit. I used those as a title and color pop element. Since this is a summer layout, I was not afraid to use all the colors from the To The Sea kit!" "Please join me on my YouTube Channel for a walkthrough of how this layout was created." Those punched circle dates Casie made are super cute as is her entire layout! Our final layout is a pocket page by me that tells a story from our time stationed on Okinawa. It's no secret that stories are the most important component of memory keeping for me and sometimes that can be intimidating when we are documenting the past, especially when its a time we weren't creating layouts or writing down our daily stories. I used the To the Sea kits to document one of our many beach day memories at the Kadena Marina which is about a mile from Kadena Air Force Base where we were stationed at the time. I used pocket cards, stickers from the memory keeping sticker kit, enamel dots, and die cut ephemera to tell this story. My photos were reprinted from negatives several years ago and so I chose a few colors from the kit I thought would compliment them and added a bit of stitching and texture paste in white. I truly love the end result and it made my husband smile big when he saw the finished design and read my simple journaling. Memory keeping has taught me that you can go back and document different times in your life. The trick is not to set huge expectations and to study the photos you took for details that may not be in the forefront of your memories. Most importantly, keep it simple! Trust me when I say that taking a walk down memory lane is something you can do and as I've often noted, your heart will thank you! We invite you to share your memories with us by tagging @cocoa_daisy on social media or posting in our private Cocoa Daisy Fans facebook group. Stay safe friends! ~Robin