Camp Visitor

We love to camp because we feel like it's our chance to get back to nature. It's not very often that we come face to face with nature! This little guy wondered right into our site and didn't care if we were there or not. Perfect for a picture snapper like me!

I chose this paper line by October Afternoon just because of the chipboard deer that came with the collection and the background paper. Do you ever do that?

Supplies: Patterned Paper: October Afternoon - Campfire Collection, Basic Grey - Life of the Party Collection; Alphabet Stickers: American Crefts Thickers; Embellishments: October Afternoon - Campfire Chipboard Elements and My Mind's Eye - Stella Rose Label Stickers; Inks: Colorbox Inks; Sketch: ; Tools: .

The Great Outdoors

I'm loving the new trend of layering die cuts and chipboard elements.  I find it gives so much dimension to a layout and it is really easy to do.  Plus it is so easy to do.  The one tip I have is when possible, pop dot some of the die cuts if you are using a few couple (like I did with the green sleeping bag).  I find it gives them a little more depth.  I also added glossy accents to the glass shade of the lantern to give it a shiny look like glass.

Supplies: Patterned Paper:October Afternoon - Campfire Collection ; Cardstock: Bazzills;  Embellishments: October Afternoon - Campfire Chipboard and Die Cut Elements;  Tools: Dymo Label Maker.

Happy Hello

On a recent camping trip with friends, a fellow camper who came with friends of ours had a miniature schnauzer who looked almost identical to Angus except that she was girl. We kept joking that after 8 years of hard searching Angus finally found himself a girlfriend of the same breed ... and younger to boot!   The story behind this layout was about how she had a fit every time Angus had his cone (from his surgery) on.  She had never saw one before and apparently thought it was hurting him! 

I had originally cut this piece of twine to wrap around a photo but as it sat waiting in a little pile for me to use it, I found that it worked perfectly as the jumbled mess.  After all, the two dogs just kept going around in circles "saying hello" to each other, I thought it was perfect!  I just stuck my stickers right over top of it, which holds it in place and tada! I love it when things come together like that!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: October Afternoon - Campfire Collection and Basic Grey - Life of the Party Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts Thickers; Embellishments: Twine, Brads, Basic Grey - Life of the Party Decorative Clips, Authentique - Blissful Noteables; Tools: Creative Memories - Corner Rounder.

August Blog Hop Winner!

Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments this weekend on my blog hop layout!  You are all way too sweet!  I was so excited to see that I also made it to 40 followers because of the blog hop!  That is so amazing and because of that I decided that I am going to choose two winners today ... yippee!

So the first winner, chosen by Random.org, is comment #9

Congratulations blsd2scrp!  I love that a first time hopper is the winner of my blog hop giveaway!  Please send your contact info to jenniferdewolfe(at)gmail(dot)com and I will send your prize out to you!

And the second winner, chosen by Random.org, is comment #20

Congratulations GrammaChurch!  You are the winner of the 40 followers giveaway!  Please send your contact info to jenniferdewolfe(at)gmail(dot)com and I will send your prize out to you!

Thanks again for all your kind comments and look for another blog hop in October!  Have a great day!

August Blog Hop

Welcome to August Blog Hop!  I am so happy to have you stop by my hummble little blog!  If you did not arrive to my blog from the uber talented Ashley's blog please return to Amanda's blog to follow the hop in order.

Similar to June's Blog Hop, this blog hop is center around a sketch provided by the uber talented Amanda!  Here's the sketch:

This was a great sketch but I did have to make some minor changes to it in order for it to work with the patterned papers I chose.  The original dimensions covered too much of my background paper and I really wanted to see the McDonald Lodge ledger more, so everything was shrunk down just a little to work with it. 

In Amanda's sketch, she had the title situated on a cardstock/patterned paper block but once again, I didn't want to cover up that much of the star paper, so I omited the block and adhered my title directly to the square block.  I also replaced the stitches on the sketch with birds and butterflies on my layout.

Now because I had shrunk quite a bit down, it meant I didn't have as much room at the bottom for all the borders so using a border punch, I punched the starred paper with a border punch and then added some twine to give it a layer look.

I know I made a couple of changes but that is the joy of sketches! you can copy them directly, modify them slightly to fit your needs, or use them as a creative springboard to come up with something completely different. If you are not a user of sketches I highly recommend giving them a try. They are a lot of fun and you will be surprise how inspiring they can be!

So how about a little giveaway?  Leave a comment and become a follower and you will be entered to win a fun scrappy prize!  I will randomly draw a name on Monday morning so be sure to check back to see if you have won!

Now for the next stop on your blog hop, please head on over to very funny and super talented Kathy!

If you'd like to be entered in the prize for the entire hop, after you've completed a layout based off the sketch, return to Amanda's blog to add your link!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: October Afternoon - Campfire Collection; Alphabet Stickers: Basic Grey - Letter Stickers and October Afternoon - Mini Market; Embellishments: October Afternoon - Campfire Cardstock Stickers, Eyelets, and Twine; Sketch: Amanda Sherman; Tools: EK Success Binding Edge Edger Punch and Cropodile.

Stick Obsessed

I know this layout is a lot of greys but I think it works, especially with brown and teal as accents colours!  Who would of though brown and grey?  Not me, but they came together in the line so I figured I would give it a try and you know what?  I like it! Isn't that weird how you would always think that you would never mix certain colours? Even weirder is when you try it and surprise yourself!

Because everything was tone on tone grey I found some of the patterns melded together so to provide some depth and definition I inked all the edges with a charcoal ink.  Definitely makes things pop better!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts Thickers; Embellishments: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Chipboard Elements, Staples, Ribbon, Nikto Gummy Tags, Daily Dose Metal Signs, and We R Memory Keepers Large Brads; Inks: Colorbox; Sketch: Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 1; Tools: EK Sucess Dotted Wave Edge Border Punch and Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.

Fireban

Club CK had their annual Summer Camp this past week and there was all kinds of neat activities and challenges going on. Unfortunately, I did not finish the challenges in time to submit for the prizes but I finished them non the less! This layout I did is actually for two challenges ... I love it when I can multitask!

On of the challenges was to use spray inks or paint.  Spray Ink and me do not get along!  I'm not sure why?  It's not like I don't try but for some reason they don't like to co-operate.  It could be too that I am too much of a perfectionist for spray inks and I to get along.  Paint on the other hand is more controllable, hence why we get along!  I found that my embellishments were lost in all the patterned paper so I used the paint to create backdrop for them and hence draw more attention to them.

The second challenge was to use woodgrains on a layout.  I used them in 3 places!  Can you see them?  First one is the matting for my photos, the second is the title, and third is the woodgrain sticky back canvas ribbon.  Pretty sneaky eh! 

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Collection; Alphabet Stickers: Jolees; Embellishments: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Chipboard Elements, Buttons, Twine, Studio Callico - Sticky Back Canvas, and Glass Beads; Inks: Colorbox Chalk Ink, Distress Crackle Paint; Sketch: Sketches for Scrapbooking volume 5; Tools: Typewriter.

Good Times

Isn't this a fun looking layout!  That's what I was going for.  I wanted to portray how much fun we always have when we camp with our friends and family.  I really wanted something different for the border and the sketch had flowers which was too girlie for my layout so I decided to do buttons with brads in the holes.  I think it adds to the fun of the layout!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studio - The Great Outdoors Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Alphabet Stickers: Thickers; Embellishments: Buttons, Brads, Basic Grey Dollies Ribbon; Sketch: Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 8; Tools: Cuttlebug and Nestabilities Scalloped Circles.

Out and About

I did this layout for My Mind's Eye monthly blog challenge.  You can see details about the challenge here.    I loved the softness of paper, which worked perfectly with my photo and the memory I wanted to remember.   Plus the collection name, A Good Day, was perfect for my memory.

I really like my mock sun and clouds I did on this layout!  It was simple to make by layering a fabric flower, die cut flower, and three buttons.  I created the clouds by cutting them out of felt.  It looks so cute!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye - Good Day Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Embellishments: Fabric Flower, Buttons, Felt, My Mind's Eye Die Cut Sheet and My Mind's Eye Penny Lane Journalling Spot; Inks: ColorBox; Sketch: My Mind's Eye Blog Challenge 26 Sketch.

Now Known As Gopher Mountain

This layout is based on a sketch from one of my Sketches for Scrapbooking books. It originally was a two page sketch that I manipulated into a one page layout. Two page sketches, if you look at it, can actually be used as a single page design as well. You can play with the scale a bit and fit both pages on one page or you can do what I did and pick one page of a two page layout to use as a single page layout.

Mixed lettering is a great trend that allows you to use up more of your left over letter stickers and gives a great graphic look to the title. I also used some white stitching rub-ons underneath the title which I think ties it all together perfectly!

And isn't that Chipmunk from the Cricut Create a Critter cartridge the absolute cutest!  I was so excited that I finally got to use this cartridge.  I've had it for a little while but hadn't found a layout I wanted to use it on until this one.  I might have to find more layouts to do with little critters so I can play more!

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Collection; Alphabet Stickers: American Crafts Thickers, October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers, and Basic Grey Alpha Stickers ; Embellishments: Stitching Rub-0ns, Reminisce Camping Stickers, Paper Leaf ; Sketch: Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 4 ; Tools: Cricut and Create a Critter Cartridge.

Life Should Be An Adventure

I used a sketch from Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 8 which arrived in the mail last week and  I was excited to sit down and start playing.  It was a little difficult at first because I had printed a large photo (12x8) and most of the sketches use multiple 4x6 photos, which is one of the reason I love them!  I found a sketch that a collage of photos groupd in the middle so I thought why not replace them with my one large photo.  Worked like a charm!  It's amazing how flexible sketches can be if you just put your mind to it!  Once I settled on the sketch, it was a quick go from there.

I have a nifty little tip for you that will save you money!  See my journalling spot?  It's actually the package backing to chipboard elements from this collection.  I find that more and more manufactures are putting some cool designs on their packaging so why no use it!  I simply cut a square and then punches the corners and tada my very own journalling spot that matches the layout perfectly.  Next time you use pre-bought embellishments look at the packaging ... you never know ... it might be useful.

Supplies: Patterned Paper: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Collection; Cardstock: Bazzills; Embellishments: GCD Studios - The Great Outdoors Chipboard Sticckers and Layered Chipboard Stickers; Sketch: Sketches for Scrapbooking Volume 8; Tools: Dymo Label Makers and Stamping Up Reverse Corner Rounder.