Grateful – Woodgrain Cut File

I have a confession to make. I have a thing for wood. I loved my children having wooden toys, I love being in the copse in our garden, I love chopping wood for the fire, and I especially love woodgrain as a pattern on anything. So of course, it was only right that I create a woodgrain cut file (pre-cut here, downloadable here).

During the Lottie Loves Paper cyber crop I came across the perfect opportunity to use it for the Wild Boys a challenge, creating a masculine layout.

A few years ago we went for a walk in the New Forest with our little dashie house guest, Arthur (because he’s arf-a dog…) and I took loads of photos, including some of my boy whittling a stick with his pen knife. And his tongue out in concentration… Because he is my son…

I cut the woodgrain cut file on some Simple Stories woodgrain paper and used the positive and negative on two separate layouts (you’ll see the other one in a few days). Here I backed it with some more Simple Stories paper, this time a generic yellow gingham.

This created a really great background and the rest of the layout came together really easily, once I’d fussy cut some of the flowers from the gorgeous Jen Hadfield paper. I have no aversion whatsoever, to using flowers on masculine layouts, especially when they relevant to the story and in such gorgeous colours as these.

The Jen Hadfield Simple Life collection was perfect for this layout with the blue in the paper picking up on the blue in his clothing and providing some lovely contrast. I finished off with some little wood veneer stars and a puffy title from Paige Evans Truly Grateful (which was the collection I had intended to use for all of this event but…erm… too many photos… Does that ever happen to you?!