Road trip to Calgary

Can't believe the summer is almost over, but at least we had a chance to go on a super vacation! This year we decided to stay somewhat local and do a good old-fashioned roadtrip through BC and into Alberta. The kids were remarkably good about all the driving but then we made sure to finish up each day with something fun:

• 1st stop was Kamloops with its wonderful Riverside Park (swimming in the river, absolutely huge spray-park and a death-defying playground).
• 2nd stop was Golden which was pretty dull but we had the hotel swimming pool & hot tub all to ourselves!
• 3rd stop was Drumheller (or Dinosaur Central as the locals think of it) where we camped, visited the world's best dinosaur museum (the Royal Tyrrell) and explored the local Hoodoos (more on that when I get the scrapbook pages done).
• 4th stop was Calgary, where we met my parents, my sister and her 2 girls for 2 days at the Calgary Zoo.
• The final stop was Edmonton where we enjoyed the farm life at my sister's place

Today's layout if for the Calgary Zoo portion of the trip. This zoo is just fantastic! I took way too many pictures (what a surprise!) but managed to cut it down to a 3-page scrapbook layout.

I'm pretty proud of these pages because I came up with the layout design myself and I also put a lot of work into the first page header. The layout is pretty simple, using kraft paper as the background, with an orange scalloped paper used to provide continuity on the pages. All of the matting is done with cream and kraft cardstock as well as a monkey-themed green patterned paper.

The title and the 2 animals were cut with my Cricut (Animal Kingdom cartridge). I then ran the title through the Cuttlebug using a Zebra embossing folder from Sizzix. The animals were pieced together and then I used a dark brown marker to add some details. The other titles (the ones in cream paper) were cut using SCAL software and the Cricut. I outlined the words with brown ink to make them stand out. The final touch was all the tropical foliage which was stamped, coloured, then hand-cut (ouch!!!). The stamp is from Stampadoodle and is a real favourite of mine.

Page 2 is simple with just the addition of some cut-out monkeys from the patterned paper. I like how they seem to be crawling all over the picture of Gramma & Grampa with all the unruly grand-kids. I used the same orange scalloped paper to provide continuity over all 3 pages.

Page 3 has all of the journalling on it, as well as a few hand-cut leaves tucked in to tie the pages together. The journalling was done on my computer using Comic Sans font.

I hope to have more layouts from the holiday soon, just need my hands to recover from all the fussy cutting!

Challenges:
One Stop Craft Challenge - not a card
Stamp, Scrap & Doodle - use kraft
Papertake Weekly - 3-2-1; 3 pages, 2 journalling spots, 1 patterned paper
By the Cute & Girly - animal antics