Hello, again!   This is Amber, founder and creative director of Simple Stories.  I'm here for another installment of my monthly Document IT blog feature; however, this month I'm taking a break from my regular series to talk about documenting life in a different way based on a recent experience that deeply affected our family, and particularly our teenage daughter.

At Simple Stories, we produce product that help you capture your story.  Sometimes our stories are full of love, happiness and goodness – but sometimes there’s loss, heartache and sadness.   It’s important we document ALL of our stories from the happiness to the heartache, as evidenced earlier this month.  

On Monday, June 1 our 13 year old daughter received a message that 4 of her friends were missing.  They were part of a group of 7 that were boating in a local lake when a sudden storm hit the area and they were thrown into the cold waters when their boat capsized.  Although everyone inside the boat was wearing a life jacket, the water temperature was 53 degrees.

I can’t put into words how devastating this news was, especially for our daughter.  These were our friends and neighbors; girls our daughter went to school with, hung out with and were just at our house for an end-of-year school party.   We stayed up late with her that night to wait for news.  Tuesday morning the final report was heartbreaking - 4 of the 7 boaters did not survive, including two of her friends, as well as the father and sister of one of the girls.  One of the hardest things was telling our daughter the news that her friends were gone.

Our hearts were broken and we couldn’t imagine what their families were going through.  As a mother, my heart ached for these families that had lost their girls.  I thought a lot about what I could do to help. I knew others felt the same way, especially the girls' group of friends that were struggling with the news as well.

As a memory keeper,  I know two of the most precious gifts can be memories and photos.  I felt it was important for us to share this with the families that had lost so much. We wanted to do something special to remember these special girls, so we gathered our daughter's friends together to create a keepsake album for each family.   I had the kids send me photos of the girls that they'd like to share in the album.  

This gave our daughter and her friends a chance to talk about their feelings and unite together to support and share their love for the girls that had died - an extremely therapeutic process for these teenagers.

This grew from having a group of teenagers in our family room sharing their memories and writing special messages for the girls to having the albums available at the candlelight vigil for the community to also write messages to put in the albums.

It was a very humbling experience for me to put together the final albums, combining photographs of the girls along with messages from their friends and members of the community.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to give something to the girls' families to help remember their daugthers and to know just how much they are loved and will be missed.  

We created some special sentiments specifically for these albums that I wanted to share with you this month for the free printables.  As I mentioned earlier, It’s important we document ALL of our stories from the happiness to the heartache.  It is my hope that these printables may help you document any heartache in your life that you may have experienced.

Click here to download June's Free Life Documented Printables.

Hey everyone, Amy here to share 2 layouts I created with the some of the new lines Simple Stories has just released.  I'm sure you've already checked them out, but if you haven't, head on over to the website to see them.

First, I grabbed the Summer Vibes line to work with. Oh my word, I adore this line.  The papers, the embellishments, they are all fabulous!  I couldn't wait to use it on this layout of my daughter and her brother. Here's the layout I created.

Here are some closeups.  The photo sticker was the perfect addition to the picture.

If you've followed my work, you know I usually use the frames for my journaling, but this time I cut out the cute geo tag from one of the sn@p! cards to put inside.

I mean, it this not the cutest line ever?  

Hello Simple Stories fans! Nancy here with a colorful and happy layout using the Summer Vibes collection. My favorite season to scrapbook is summer and this collection does not disappoint. I love the playful icons and pretty patterns.

I started with a list in mind about all the things we love to do (big and small) during the summer.

A few swipes of acrylic paint in an ombre shade created a shelf to ground the rows and rows of die cuts, chipboard and enamel dots from the Summer Vibes collection.

The title is completed neutral and almost fades into the background. I added a row of machine stitching and a date stamp to call just a little bit of attention to it.

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​Have you tried using leftover bits and pieces from your Simple Stories collections to decorate your planner? That’s just what I did with what was left on my desk after completing this layout.

I got a head start with my August calendar this month. I kept the decoration simple on the calendar with just a few stickers and grey number stickers in random days. 

I added most of my décor in the center of the calendar with a large flag die cut from the Summer Vibes Journal Pages pack.

I trimmed down another of the Journal Pages with a favorite poem and added to the banner with some machine stitching to highlight the words.

The pockets are filled with a summer photo and pretty patterns.

​The opposite side includes a picture from last summer and a fun confetti pocket and chipboard camera.

I’d rather add the décor in pocket pages than right on to the calendar – I need that space for writing and planning!

Hi Simple Stories fans!  It's Ashley Horton and I'm stopping in today, to share two new layouts with you for June!  How is it June already??!!  Time flies when you're having fun!  And I must admit, that I am having tons of fun with the new collections from Simple Stories.  On today's layouts, I worked with the Summer Vibes collection and the So Fancy collection.  
 

I'll start off with my layout, using Summer Vibes, since summer is now upon us!  There is a little touch of a vintage vibe to this collection and I really love it!  I started my layout by choosing one of my favorite patterns to work with...wood grain!  The wood grain paper from the Summer Vibes Simple Basics Kit made a perfect background for my layout, and worked great with the large title I had in mind.
 

 

I chose the "You Can Never Have Too Much Happy" phrase from the Simple Stories images in the Silhouette Store.  Before cutting the phrase, I created an offset image in Silhouette Studio and used a Black sketch pen to draw out the phrase on my paper.  Then I deleted the offset lines and went back and cut the phrase by placing my blade back in the machine.  Once the cutting finished, I backed each of the words with a different patterned paper from the Summer Vibes 6x6 Patterned Paper Pad.
 

 

I enlarged the title to fill up my background, but created a space in between the last two lines of the phrase.  This gave me the perfect spot for adding my photos and a mix of embellishments from the Summer Vibes collection.  I created dimension by layering the Chipboard Frames, Chipboard Stickers, Bradz, Bits & Pieces and stickers.
 

 

If you're looking for fun ways to incorporate cut files and large titles in your layouts, then make sure you check out the Simple Stories portfolio in the Silhouette Store.  There are tons of great cut files that coordinate with each of the Simple Stories collections!
 

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Now, it's time to go girly with the new So Fancy collection!  I have two daughters and the So Fancy papers and embellishments are perfect for your girly layouts.  I snapped a photo of our oldest daughter on a recent family vacation, and I wanted to pair it with this collection.
 

 

The idea for the design of this layout, started with the cards from the So Fancy SN@P pack.  I chose three that I wanted to use to create a grid design on my layout, along with my photo.  Before I placed the cards and photo on the background paper, I added a messy stitched circle with my sewing machine.  Then I started layering the cards and my photo.
 

 

I also did something on this layout that's a little different for me.  I didn't create a separate title for the layout.  A lot of the cards in the SN@P packs have great phrases on them, so I decided to use "You Make My World Sparkle" from the top card, as the title for my layout.  And the bottom two cards worked great as supporting sentiments for the layout.
 

 

Since I had the stitched circle in the background, I thought it would be fun to contrast the grid shape, by adding my embellishments in a circle around the grid.  I went through the Bits & Pieces pack, stickers, enamel dots and Bradz to pull out embellishments that would work well around the circle.  And I even pulled out a couple of wood veneer pieces from the I AM collection, to add a different texture to the layout!
 

So next time you're looking for a different design element on your layout, take out your SN@P! pack and build your page off of some of your favorite cards from the pack!