As June begins, so does Pride month, and I don’t know about you, but the song I most closely associate with Pride is Born This Way by Lady Gaga! For the June theme, I wanted to use “Born This Way” as a theme, but not necessarily limit it to just LGBTQIA+ issues, and boy did Trish, Heather, and Becky come through with some gorgeous projects for this theme!

Trish - Hocus Pocus

When I saw the June theme of “Born This Way,” I knew exactly the page that I had in mind for it. For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with thinking of my brain as broken for its struggles with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I embraced the difference, but it was never a positive thing, just a way to acknowledge its limitations.

As more and more of my children were also diagnosed with these issues, I felt a bit like a failure as a mother for having passed on to them my broken brain. Once one of the younger ones was diagnosed with even more of the same issues as me I admitted to his doctor how awful I felt about having done this to him.

She sat me down and explained that our brains aren’t broken, there isn’t anything wrong with them, they are just different, and different isn’t bad. I had been saying this to my children for years, but it took someone else to say it to me for me to finally believe it about myself.

Heather - Time to Thrive

When I signed up for this month’s Born This Way Theme, I really thought I was going to do a layout about myself. Then I saw a post on pinterest that became the focus for the layout. It was a home/office decor piece that simply said, “The World Needs Who You Were Meant To Be.” I could certainly have used that on a page about myself, but it resonated more with thoughts about my daughters who are in a stage of life where they are really trying to figure out how to traverse life as young adults. I know that whatever they do will be purposeful and a reflection of the people they are. I often do journaling on the back of the layout when I have lots to say, and I will be adding the journaling later, but for now the words on the layout say enough to get a general point across.

As I started creating the layout, I thought I was going to cut the title out of the patterned papers in the Time to Thrive collection. I cut it out of a sheet of cardstock so that I could get the papers the right size for each word. However, I quickly decided that it might be easier to just back the cardstock title with the patterned papers. I really love how that turned out and can see using that technique again and again.

I then added a statement from the Time to Thrive cards, and the gorgeous florals from the collection. They are so beautiful. I’ve printed them several times, because I love them so. The best thing about printable collections is that you never run out.

Becky - Sunkissed

I loved the June theme of ‘Born this Way’ and knew that I wanted to do something about my daughter. I chose the Sunkissed collection as it has such beautiful colours in and includes rainbows which my daughter loves.

The first thing I did was to choose one of the rainbow cut files and drop a different paper into each of the segments. I then printed it and used my Silhouette to cut it out. Once I’d cut it out I added texture to it by stitching on the top of each rainbow stripe and all around the heart in the centre.

As I had decided to use this on a memdex card everything had to be fairly small so I printed out various embellishments from the sticker pack and the digital pack, sizing them appropriately and layered up! At the very back of my clusters is a tag with my journalling on. I chose some multicoloured alpha stickers from my stash to pop on a title and then it was ready to go into my memdex box.