Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Cardmaking & Scrapbook Layout Contributor, Peg from the blog Peg’s Crafting Corner.

I have always enjoyed the nature.  We used to live just four blocks from the Mississippi River so we would always see the wildlife running around including some such as snakes that I’d rather not see.  When we moved several years ago, it was to a larger city so I didn’t think we’d be seeing as much wildlife.  I was sure wrong!  We continue to see a lot of animals so taking photos of them has become a hobby of mine and sometimes even a challenge.  There are several animals that still elude my camera such as the large owl that lives in the trees outside of our house and the red fox that we have now seen roaming the area.  There are others who I have easily gotten their pictures such as the deer in this layout that walked up our sidewalk as my son and I were standing at the corner of our house or the wild canary who was looking in the window at me.  The Peregrine Falcon in the picture decided to sit one day in our gazebo.  As scrapbookers every photo deserves a place in our books and the layouts deserve special embellishments to bring interest to the photo.  Here is an interesting way to add nature to those embellishments. 

Begin by cutting a piece of kraft cardstock a little larger than your photos to create a mat to attach behind the picture.  Give it a wood grained look by using a light brown colored ink pad (Tea Dye Distress Ink Pad used here) and starting at the edge of the paper run the ink pad flat from the top to bottom of the paper.  Move over to the next space and continue to repeat this step until you have reached the opposite side of the paper.  Now, using a dark brown ink pad (Vintage Photo Distress Ink Pad used here) start running the ink pad down the paper in between where you had run the light ink color as shown in the above picture. 

Use the Woodgrain Embossing Folder and a die cutting/embossing machine run the mat through the machine to give it a woodgrain texture. 

Sometimes you need a bigger mat size than what the embossing folder is so depending on the pattern of the folder that is easy to fix.  Turn the paper so that the end of it that didn’t emboss is in the folder matching up as closely as possible the pattern where it stopped to where it needs to begin.  Run it through the embossing machine again to finish off the edge of the paper.  You can see in the picture above where there’s a little difference, but that is ok because the picture will cover that little area where the pattern is off.

You can see in this picture how that little area that is off has been covered.  Adhere the picture (or pictures if using more than one) to the photo mat using a tape runner and adhere it or them to the patterned paper (The brown patterned paper is from the Lost & Found Paper Pad by Tim Holtz). 

Create an interesting title for the layout by using one letter that is in all of the words for your title and play off it by arranging all the words to come from the one letter such as I did with the letter “i” in the words “city” and “wildlife”.  Here I used the Splendid White Thickers by American Crafts.

Stamp a fun stamp such as the camera stamp from the American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan Collection  on the layout using a black ink pad and an acrylic block (Black Soot Distress Ink Pad and Inkadinkado Stamp Block used) to create more fun behind the story of the layout and how you captured that challenge photo. 

Whether your hobby is taking pictures of wildlife or such things as the trees right outside of your window or something you consider a hobby; be sure to capture those moments and then preserve them by creating a layout to share them with others.