Earth Day Challenge 1 - Nature in all her Splendor

This weekend over at Scrapbook Challenges was all about Earth Day. Most of the challenges had me recycling a number of household products for LOs. This challenge had a list of 18 criteria I had to meet. Since it will be graded on a point system, I tried to double every step. I think it's kind of a mess myself, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

The criteria:

1. Include a philosophy that you live by. A philosophy that I live by is that you shouldn't take life too seriously, and it's reflected in my journaling: "While taking some family pictures, I told you guys to "Strike a Pose", and this is what you came up with. I couldn't help but laugh at your ideas of "posing", and it reminds me of a wonderful saying I heard by Reba McIntyre, sort of a philosophy of living, if you will. "To succeed in life you need three things: A wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone."
2. Craft paper - check.
3. Flowers - check. Five of them, to be exact.
4. Eyelets - check. Used in the four corners. I've never actually worked with eyelets before, but luckily my DH had a whole kit in his tool room.
5. Plain brads - nine of them, for the centres of the flowers and the ends of the tags.
6. Outdoor photos with nature in them - check.
7. Strips of patterned paper - check. I used an old batch of Creative Memories scraps for all of the patterned papers.
8. Hand journaling - check.
9. Decorative border punch - check. I don't own a border punch, but I used scalloped scissors and a hole punch with the green patterned paper.
10.An old book page - check. I even made sure it had a picture of kids playing to keep with the theme.
11. Three new embellishments - check. I added three Kurio stickers (Fun, laughter, Smile).
12. Paint - I got a little carried away with the paint, but used blue and green on the background, as well as for stamping.
13. Stamp with an item from around the house - I used paint and bubble wrap to stamp the circles, and then tried a penny (with mixed results) and a bottle cap (it's there, but you can't really notice it).
14. Fabric - I used two pieces of blue fabric, two pieces of grey denim, and three strips of faux leather.
15a. Tag - I used a small tag in the title, as well as three simple handmade tags (from the patterned strips of paper) in the corner fastened with brads.
15b. Something weird - twigs!!
16. Staples or paperclips - I used both. Three staples around the corners of the title, and three paperclips.
17. Twine or string - I used both. I used twine around the decorative borders, and string in sewing.
18. Tearing - check.
Well, that about covers it, I think. :) Here's the result: