Scrapbooking tip: making your own woodgrain letters (featuring a layout!)

I quite like the look of woodgrain lettering but haven't come across any in my scrapbook shopping travels (perhaps this means it's totally out of trend now and I've missed the boat?! Oh well...!) so I decided to have a go at making my own!

On a recent walk I found a very cool tree trunk and took some photos of the gorgeous bark 

(yes, my husband looked at me like I was crazy taking pictures of tree trunks until I explained I was trying to save money from not buying fancy lettering!).

When I got home I picked the one I liked best and got a few copies printed at the photo place in matte style.

Then I drew the letters I wanted back-to-front (i.e. mirror image) on the back side - I just hand drew them for speed because I was a little excited but I did think later that I could either draw around existing lettering in a shape I like or print out a bold font and then draw round those letters.

And then I carefully cut around them and laid them out on my desk. They didn't look quite 'finished' so I chose to draw round the edges with a black slick writer (special pen for writing on photos). I also found a scrap of a pink/green photo and cute out a heart.

Here's how my lovely woodgrain lettering come out....cool huh?

And here's a better look at the whole layout. It's quite sparse for me but I didn't want to overdo the embellishments and detract from the homemade lettering! 

The photo is of me, my mum and baby at the park during her holiday here and we used the self timer on Mum's camera to get the shot.