Summer is in full swing! I saw a cute summer sampler with peaches and decided that I wanted to try something with the Mediterranean Blooms suite. I’m really happy with how this came out. It’s bright, fun, and unlike the other samplers that I’ve made. I thought it would remind me of Italy but it mostly reminds me of Florida, which is very Summer.

I made this design from scratch based on the leafy die cut frame. I knew I wanted that to be the center and so I had to measure everything to make sense around it. This meant I had to do math. Lots of math. Which was fine, but I wasn’t doing it in an organized way and I had to keep trying to find where I had written measurements down.

Tip: If you design your own sampler, don’t glue ANYTHING until you are sure you like how everything is placed. It means there are a lot of pieces of paper that are going to get a bit jumbled, but it means you won’t have to cut out an entirely new piece if you realize you need something to be smaller. I ended up shaving the sides off of my squares a few times in order to create more white space, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I had glued the DSP to the mats, even though it would have been nicer to work with that way.

Figuring out the background was a little tricky. Without the oranges and lemons combo paper, the cut out images didn’t make sense on the sampler, but having the entire as the background was too much. I decided to cut a square out of the inside using Stampin’ Up!’s trimmer (which has a rule on the blade section, how cool is that?), leaving a 1″ border. I think it came out really nicely.

If you’d like to try making this sampler, here are the measurements I ended up with:

• Middle Square: Base – 5 5/16″ x 3 7/8″; DSP – 5 1/16″ x 3 5/8″
• Middle Row Rectangles: Base – 1 7/8″ x 3 7/8″; DSP – 1 5/8″ x 3 5/8″
• Top & Bottom Row Rectangles: Base – 3″ x 2 3/8″; DSP – 2 3/4″ x 2 1/8″

Have you ever tried making a sampler from scratch? How did it turn out?

Next, please check out a card made by Mary Lou Green! She always has such neat designs and I’m excited to see what Summer Fun she creates.

Happy crafting!