Camp Kaboodles

Hello, guys! Michelle Alynn, here, with a little inspirational post including fun little bits that will help you scrapbook one of my (and hopefully one of your…) favorite summer activities – camping! Not only is camping super-fun to document in photos, but the adventure of it all – exploring new parks, roasting marshmallows, being so close to nature and all of it’s lovely summer colors, and just being a little more carefree gives it such a timeless, year-after-year appeal! If you can brave the forest, all the fun stuff like toasty marshmallows, wildlife sightings, and the road trip there make it a summer staple.

I found some amazingly bright and inspiring camping photos while digging around for the ideal camp spots – they may spark a little grab-some-patterned-paper-and-go feelings on their own, here, but if they don’t right away, look closely at the colors combination, design sensibilities, and general mood of the photos and try to help channel that into inspiration for a page or two. Whether you get carefree and use paint sloppily for the first time, let these images float in the back of your mind while staging your own camping shots, or try a new mix of fun colors you haven’t before, they’re sure to get your scrap-mojo going! Soak all the camping goodness in:

photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/altus/2871882031/

photo source: http://www.countryliving.com/cm/countryliving/images/CLX0607Butler013-de.jpg

photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ssdd4u/2610351142/

photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/guacheegrafite/65610418/

Now that you’re a little color and mood inspired, time for the fun stuff: goodies to use on your pages! They can be as fun to find as the camping, sometimes, no? So gather those photos and start to accumulate some woodgrain, a few nature-inspired items (think deer, owls, leaves…), fun summer-colored patterned papers, and retro trailer or marshmallow printed items. If you need more ideas for embellishments, check out these fun handmade finds, too:

To start your camping documentation, why stick to a regular page in an album? Wouldn’t it be fun to use a cute little lined, printed notebook as a camping journal? You could jot down thoughts on camping while there and add embellishments and photos once you’re home. These ones are cute:

This cute little trailer mini album would do the trick, by the aptly named Campfire Designs. (Click on photo for link)

And this Volkswagen letterpress journal by Old School Stationers would be perfect as a camping travel journal, too!

Here are a few cute handmade embellishment choices to paste in alongside your camping photos, they’ll coordinate with the cute camping-themed sets and kits you can usually find this time of year from most manufacturers at your local scrapbook store, too! Check out these lovelies:

This adorable retro trailer stamp by Corrabelle would be such a cute addition to any camping page!

These cute woodgrain gift tags by Cutie Pie Company would be super-cute tied to the side of a mini album or used to journal on.

These bright woodsman paper tags, doodled by my own company Bubbly Shnooks, would add a great splash of color to those in-the-forest tent pages.

These lovely woodgrain tags by The Living Room Floor would be sweet hiding behind photos, peeking out with a little journalling on them.

These fun, bright 365 mini tags by Elles Studio may not be camp-themed specifically, but they’d be a fun way to document the dates your trip started/ended on, and would also add that touch of bright summer color, too.

And these cute camping paper tags by Shabby Chic Crafts have lots of space for jotting your camp hijinx down!

You could also cut apart camp-themed greeting cards to add to your pages as embellishments or patterned paper, too, like this cute smore card by Frannies Cards:

Or these lovely woodgrain cards by Reuse First (they would make lovely background paper!).

And, last but not least, if you’re so inclined while camping, press leaves or little found flowers between the pages of your travel journal or a sturdy book to keep as momentos. Collect twigs, nuts, or other little found goodies while there to add to your journal or pages, or to make a shadow box with a favorite camping photo from a trip. And don’t forget to scour flea markets and vintage shops for old postcards – possibly even of the national park you visit to camp in – as there are a lot of great old camping manuals, postcards, even vintage photos out there that would make your pages unique.

I’m going camping this summer, too, so please feel free to hop by my daily blog for some camping scrapbook pages and tales this summer, at www.michelleclement.typepad.com/blog.

Happy camping!

 

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Don’t forget the JULY Challenge: Come Together! Enter your page(s) in our Forum’s Contests & Challenges section for a chance to win these fabulous embellishments from Russian Forest!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Guest Posters, Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.