Inspired by stamps

I hope I'm not alone when I say that I have a small collection of stamps (I don't consider myself a stamper at all really) but even then, I don't use them very often.

I think that it will take too long to get them out, pick out a colour, fish out the acrylic block, practice the stamping and then risk my whole project by getting the stamping wrong!

But it doesn't have to be that way. And every time I'm challenged or inspired to use my stamps, I remember how much fun it can be.

So the latest Counterfeit Kit Challenge mini challenge is perfect to blow the dust off your favourite stamp and get going!

"Pick ONE stamp (not the whole set) to inspire you and use on your project. You can use more than one stamp, but your inspiration one should be prominent.  You will tell me which stamp it was on your blog and how it inspired you."

With my November kit, Dempster, being such an autumn inspired kit and with my intention to capture some more of my Yukon memories, I went with a tried and tested leaf stamp to guide my design. In fact I saw the end result in my head before I even opened up my stamp drawer and knew exactly how I would use the stamp to make a leafy border.

The leaf is part of a pack of four that I picked up when I was making my monster Nova Scotia album back at the beginning of my scrapbooking adventure.

I didn't know anything about stamping back then and just picked up a set to add some detail to my pages.

In fact, the set has four leaves in it

 ... but the truth is I hardly ever use the others, reaching for the maple every time.

It's a really good quality stamp and the detail is so lovely that it's hard to go wrong with it.

The connection between the leaf, the maple, Canada, my kit and my travels all come together in this page and it turned out pretty close to the picture I had in my mind which is always a surprise and a delight.

"And to think I was worried there wouldn't be enough trees"

I used a whole range of different distress ink colours, stamping the leaf three times in each and then fussy cutting them out to form a layered and scattered border across the centre.

I tucked in a lot of pretty pearls, some funky wooden toadstools and a scatter of buttons to add some more dimension.

And of course the star of the show is the photo. I really was worried that there would be few trees on our travels through the Yukon and NWT but even though they definitely got smaller the further north we travelled, there were more than enough to keep me smiling. I might have more tree photos than anything else in fact!

Glad to have captured another little piece of the puzzle that is our adventure. One day I will bring all these pages together to see how full a story I've told!