Clean-Up Day

This was so out of my comfort zone! But, it seemed like the perfect sketch for these pictures from the great day we spent cleaning-up around Anchorage. This was Sketch #21 from the Inspired Blueprints blog. I love their sketches, but all of them are a little outside my box and truly cause me to strain to be creative! ;o)

For those of you that don't live in snowy climates and haven't experienced a clean-up day, I'll explain. Typical garbage that comes out of the back of pick-ups or that's thrown out by litter bugs continues to happen all year long despite the weather. However, in the winter, nobody is out picking up trash because its too cold and the snow is usually pretty deep so it ends up getting buried by the next snowfall. Come spring time, our roadsides and parks are a total disaster. It seems like its getting worse and worse as more people move up here that have no respect for the state and as our homeless population continues to grow. But, it might also be because this was the first winter that the snow stuck on the ground the entire time (October through April) for a whole lot of years! I love real winters and was glad to see a real one back in Alaska despite the mess that comes along with spring!
Anyway, on to my layout. I had so much fun with this one, but love the paper so much, I could barely bring myself to cut it up! Ever have that problem? ;o) Its from the Paper Loft's Slug Bug line, so cute and such great earthy colors! I also used CTMH Cocoa, Sweet Leaf, and Daisy White cardstock. The title and circles were done with my Cricut, but I still managed to fit in lots of other stamps!!!

The only non-CTMH stamp was the fox. He's from Imaginisce's Twitterpated line, how cute is he!! The owl is from You're a Hoot, the fish is from World's Best Dad, and the Bear is from Wild Thing. I used my cricut to cut the circles and then stamped them with Intrinsic Backgrounds for a little extra texture.

Hope you are all enjoying a great weekend!! Ours will hopefully be a little slow this week.