Summery summer scrappin' with JBS

Hi everyone!

This is Ashley today, with a summery layout, using my DIY summery scrappin' kit I put together earlier this season with all of my favourite Jenni Bowlin Studio and JBS Mercantile kit products that were just perfect for sunny days and warm nights. 

The photo on this page is of the Beaver River, in Clarksburg Ontario, where my wonderful and amazing Great Aunt Maggie lived. She was an inspiration -- as a person, as an artist, as a gardener, as just the kind of person I hope to one day be -- and her house was just on the other side of the river bank. I can't think of summer, or smell summer, without being reminded of the wonderful summertime vacations we stayed at her beautiful house. 

Summers at Aunt Maggie's meant tomatoes warm from  her garden, cool breezes coming in from the woodshed, many cups of teas and family games of Solitaire, naps in the big armchair by the window overlooking the riverbank bathed in warm sunlight. Everything was better there. 

Driving into the little village of Clarksburg, we could see the bride over the river before we could see her house -- and that river and bridge meant we were almost there. It was like home, or maybe just the home we all wished we could live at forever. 

Aunt Maggie was not only accomplished at being an all-around wonderful person, she was an accomplished and talented artist. The walls of that wonderful house were full, right to the ceiling in some rooms, of her paintings; acrylic, oil, and my favourite, watercolour. Every room had some remnant of art in progress or put aside; jars and jars of pens and pencils and brushes in window sills, bookcases and counter tops. Kitchen drawers with scrap papers, turned over to find a fast little sketch by her, so much more perfect than anything I could have ever slaved over or hoped to have drawn myself.

I don't know if she ever painted the Beaver River or sketched the bank. I think she must have. Perhaps I just never noticed, maybe I never took the time to look. I wish I had, because I am certain she would have captured it the way I remember it, and the way I cannot do myself.