PCP 3D Challenge

It's been an exciting weekend for us here in North Florida...late Sunday evening the winds of TS Beryl snapped a big hickory tree at the edge of our driveway.  I was up in my craft room gathering supplies for a Copic class that I was scheduled to teach the next morning, when I heard the tree trunk begin to crack.  Since I have prior experience with big trees, instinct immediately sent me FLYing down the stairs...I think it took me less than three seconds to make it from top to bottom!  I hit the landing about the time the tree trunk thundered to the ground.  It literally shook the earth...neighbors on both sides felt it!  Here's what we saw when daylight finally dawned after a stressful, blustery night:

Thankfully, this monstrous tree missed our house by about 20 feet!  Once again I am telling stories of angels' protection in the face of a storm!  I am so grateful no one was hurt and that our home was not damaged.    The beautiful oak tree that overhangs our front lawn has a few battle scars, but hopefully will be just fine in the long run!  (More pictures on FB!)

Today we are still experiencing some wind and rain, but slowly things are settling back to normal!  The tree guys are here to start the removal process as I type! Yay!  As relieved as I am to get the mess out of our front lawn, I feel so sorry for the guys working on it...there is a steady drizzle that sometimes turns into a real downpour.  I will keep 'em in coffee and cold drinks to let them know we're very grateful!  Because of the rain, it will likely be a two-day clean-up.

I'm happy to be hosting the Paper Craft Planet 3D challenge!  Our son, Matthew, is scheduled for a church youth group hiking trip in a few weeks, so when I came across this cute backpack album and tutorial, I decided to make one.  I combined several Paper Smooches stamp sets to celebrate forest friends, s'mores and spooky stories by the campfire!  It was so fun to put this little album together using stamps and sentiments in unusual combinations that worked great for this theme!  All of the images were stamped with Memento ink, and colored with Copic markers.  The edges of all the Simple Stories designer paper and card stock were distressed with tea-dye distress ink.

The cover, with Label 3 dies for the flaps.

Page 1: Boot prints from Happy Camper with a sentiment from Get Outta Town.

 Pages 2 and 3:  images and sentiments from Happy Camper.

 Pages 4 and 5:  More images from Happy Camper along with the moon and stars from Metropolis and "steam" from Surf and Turf.

 Pages 6 and 7:  Spooky eyes from Alfresco, "bats" from Get Outta Town, and the owl from Chubby Chums.  For the branch, I stamped the branch from Happy Camper, omitting the marshmallows and sketching in more leaves.

Page 8:  An ant "Conga Line" from Alfresco, with a sentiment from Metropolis.

The back...here you can see the brads for the straps, and the contours of the Labels 3 flap closure.

I hope you will join me in the challenge...it is a fast, really fun project!