Sometimes we look at themed products and think we can only create based on that particular theme...Christmas papers for Christmas layouts, Summer papers for summer layouts...for example, I won the fabulous SUNKISSED collection by Heidi Sonboul and in my mind, I was thinking bright and cheery 12 x12 layouts of the smiling kids in the pool...but then, in my insomnia haze, I strayed over to Pinterest and was feeding my still ongoing Dina Wakely addiction and thought, "I should mix the two!" Country meets rock-n-roll, leather meets lace, peanut butter to the jelly...you get it....plus, I am always behind the eight ball when it comes to vacation pictures; I SAY I am gonna do mini books BEFORE vacation so that all I gotta do is print em and stick em and I NEVER DO IT...Well, 2013 is the year of CHANGE and I actually did 2 minibook projects last week! 
 a thrift shop 50 cent book and some mixed media/scrappy supplies:

and junked it up...gots to gessoing (is that a word?), misting, painting and destressing....and voila! Here's some of the pages -I have little flip things in there for journaling and stuff...it's still summery but MESSY! I did remove 1/2 of the books pages to remove bulk and I thought I'd be done in an hour, but it's the small projects that take the most time with drying and all :)






but I love how it turned out and we ARE going to the ice cream place tomorrow so I can set up the perfect photos take pictures for it!  Score for me -ONE project actually ready for photos and journaling...will update this in August :):)  Hope you liked it and were inspired to use your paper collections in a different way!!