Elephant Walk

I knew I wanted to scrap these pics of my son & his cousin as soon as I saw the Basic Grey papers this month. Even the exotic names were inspirational: African Nectar, Orchid Oolong, & Madagascar Mint! It just made me think of these pictures from a visit to the zoo years ago.I am afraid I got carried away decorating the elephant, but the die-cut stickers from the Marrakech line made it really easy. The peacock was such a fabulous element to add to the LO - and since it was a sticker I didn't have to do any fussy cutting!
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I must say that I love having all the resources at Scrapbooks Plus at my fingertips when I scrap. The ferns on the bottom right are from an Accu-cut die in the classroom. I decided to add a little dimension by cutting them from chipboard, which is always available at the front counter. I used the Cricut Expression to super-size the elephant and I cut the palm trees using the store's Stretch Your Imagination cartridge. It was beyond easy to find the right shades of cardstock since I was right there, and running a tab on my supplies as I worked meant it was quick, too. It goes without saying that there were all kinds of creative and friendly people around when I needed input. It was just fun!

The fancy-shmancy picture frame on the 2nd page was actually from the die-cut sticker sheet. It started out life as a journaling block. I cut out the center with an exacto knife, added some bling, mounted it on the Palace Blue paper, and popped it up over a matte of African Nectar - I just love saying the name of that paper! I do plan to add journaling when I get the LO home. It will go above and below the small picture on the far right...maybe handwritten with some metallic gold ink, which I think will really "pop" off of the Green Tea paper - the shading on this stuff is awesome!

Here's a bit of trivia - you can tell what country an elephant originated from by looking at his ears. The ears on an African elephant are shaped like the continent of Africa. The ears on an Indian elephant are smaller and similar in shape to India. Interesting...