Stampin' at the Campgrounds

 I enjoyed a lovely day of stamping at the campgrounds on Friday.  The weather was a perfect day to sit on the porch and get creative.  We had a smoky little fire going in the yard, and I could sit in my screen porch and watch the birds all around me and the deer passing right through the yard eating the hostas, but the bugs could not get me.  Haha! 
I had a box of new stamps and paper to play with, and plenty of inspiration all around me, but I turned to a couple of challenges for inspriration, too. 
I had my new stamp set called Truly Grateful, that I wanted to play with first.  The first thing that struck me about this set was the slice of wood.  I truly wanted to play with that.  So, I opened up my supplies and much to my amazement I had forgotten to pack ink pads!!!! Oh, no!  What to do?  I had just four pads in my box, that were still packed from last Wednesday night's class.  I had a box of markers, and that was the extent of my color range.  I stepped up to the challenge, and came up with a beautiful idea to stamp the wood cuts in the two shades of brown I had, chocolate chip and baked brown sugar.  I used Pool Party for the background and stamped leaves with my new Magnificent Maple stamp.  I did a
whole page of stacked logs to play around with, staggering the colors, and stamping the Chocolate Chip twice for a lighter shade, too.  I colored the sheaves of wheat to make them look more like wild flowers, and added a happy message from Yippee-Skippee!
The layout I chose came from Technostampers Monday Lunchtime Sketch Challenge 274, and I also planned to use the cue from CAS-ology #54, but I kind of got carried away and added all the leaves to the background which meant it kind of left the CAS realm, but I am going to share it anyway, just because I wanted to share my interpretation of CAMP.  THIS is what I see at my CAMP in the woods in northern Wisconsin.  This is what surrounds me as I sit quietly and stamp. 
I thought that this would make a nice guys card, especially since my husband really loved this card when I showed it to him.  He said it really depicted our campsite so perfectly.  So The Pink Elephant Challenge 210 said give them something MASCULINE, and the Just Add Ink challenge 176 said JUST ADD BLOKES!.  And, I can never resist sharing anything when a challenge says ANYTHING GOES!, so here's one for you at Inkspirational Challenge 31.  
I am heading back to the cabin (it's a trailer really, but I can call it what I want!  We also say it's at the lake, but it's really on a little river, the Apple River, but it's near the town of Balsam Lake, so that counts as going up to the lake.  And, that's the way we do it here in Minnesota-Wisconsin.)  It is 57 miles from my driveway at home to the driveway at the campground, so I run home to work my 5 hour shift, and stopped here to pick up some ink, and share a card with you.  
Have a great weekend, and I'll come back tomorrow and share some more camp stampin' with you.  

Mary Alice  

This is a peek at my campsite.  A little campfire, a beautiful stack of wood, the flag blowing softly in the breeze, and my granddaughter roasting marshmallows.  Life is good at the DN (that stands for Do Nothing!) Campground.