It's All There in Black and White

Lots of photos for you today! The next set of displays focused on a brilliant photographer named Ansel Adams. Known for his dramatic photos of landscapes using black and white photography, a group of designers used the black and white motif to present multiple national parks in this theme and even included large prints of Adams as backdrops. I am putting them all in this post as I think they should be seen together. 

The first park represented was one I would not think of seeing in black and white--Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Hawaii. The site is now a place of refuge but had originally been isolation for those with leprosy and other infectious diseases. It's now home to many rare plant species. The cascading flowers create a lot of movement in a still-life I think.

This layout was created for another challenge in the CM Virtual Crop in February 2021. I again turned to the mystery box papers. I thought blue was a good color to offset the black and white flowers. Two of the papers had ombre tones in them and I thought flipping the stripe ombre (dark top, light bottom) on the regular paper (light top, dark bottom) highlighted the cascades on the photos. I chose yellow stickers to accent the page as well. There are some ivory/yellow tones in some of the "white" photos--though that might be artifact from the lights in the space.

The next part of the display was the domed room of Carlsbad Caverns. I have visited this park but not been in the cave so I definitely need to go back someday. I do like going through caves, as long as there is ample room to walk. I'm not one of those who want to go on the cave tour where you have to shimmy through a box to prove you won't get stuck. Let's just admit that I'll get stuck and leave me on the regular path!

This layout is another sketch from the virtual crop. More importantly, it used a template that was included in the mystery box. Check out the blog post here to see the sketch and a photo of the template (you couldn't buy it, you could only get it in the mystery box). I will be the first to admit, I don't really like using templates. I've used them several times and I always seem to mess up the cuts and ruin the intended "symmetry". This one had a lot of straight angles so I figured I could use my trimmers to make the cuts, which helped a little. I chose papers from the O Canada pack. The darker background reminded me of stone and the yellow I chose just as an accent. The diamond-shaped pieces are from a scrap of stone paper I still had. I thought it would help fill in the page since I didn't have many photos of this section. I finished by using an icicle border maker cartridge to punch stalactites and stalagmites for the edges. That's probably the part of the layout I like best.

Next stop, the Grand Canyon! I've been here twice now and I can't say that I ever knew there were aspen groves! I focus so much on the canyon that I forget there are other things. Here they are collected and secured with flowers around the middles. 

This was one more of the challenges for the virtual crop. I changed the number of photos in the original sketch, which you can see here. I utilized paper from the Camouflage pack. The background paper is birch bark and I turned it so that there was some definition against the direction of the trees in the photo. I also used leafy paper in the middle to help the photos stand out. Two brown borders also helped define the photos. One is a leftover border and I liked that it had the hiking boots printed on it. I chose the CM Stamping set to create the title. I thought that the uneven covering of ink on the letters also represented the tree bark.

OK, we come to the last layout in the Ansel Adams collection. This one is King's Canyon--another site I've not been to. Though I found out recently that my grandparents did! I have their photo album from the 1960s when they went on several cross-country trips and my grandmother labeled many of the sites so I know where they are. Now I can recreate their photo when I visit!

One more sketch from the virtual crop (check it out here). I returned to the mystery box papers and to the use of blue to offset the black and white flowers. For one of the circular elements, I chose to create a journal box by using the custom cutting system on a piece of ruled paper. I accented with some stickers (top and bottom) from a couple of older, non-related CM packs. But I thought the colors and tones matched the layout. My favorite piece of this layout is the border at the top and bottom. I used a new border maker cartridge called "Mirrored Triangles". In addition to punching a set in white, I punched a set in black and used that to edge the white against the striped paper. It gives a great shadow effect. The title was one of our laser-cut titles. I love those packs. So much easier than splicing letters together!

50-states album part 2--Arizona

My next state to highlight is Arizona. I only chose 1 photo for this page, at least for now. I may decide to add one more photo to the bottom left corner.

This layout was scraplifted from this one. For this state, I cut the outline in black and then mounted it on a backing paper in a sunburst orange. The title was cut with the same paper as the bottom border and the blue dots and other decorative stripes are (to me) reminiscent of Native American designs. The snake and cactus provide a nice balance to the bottom page. I may add another photo in the bottom left corner someday, but I at least can say it is done at this point.

No Fooling--There's a reason they call it "Grand"

I was planning on posting this Friday night, but could not resist another April Fools Day Post. Plus it's Easter and the canyon walls are striped like Easter eggs. What a perfect fit!

Well, after the 5 HOUR bus ride (see last week's comments) we arrived at the Grand Canyon. The bus driver had said that no photo could do justice to the actual beauty of the area, and he was right. While this series of layouts commemorates the visit I made, the colors just cannot compare to seeing the canyon with your own eyes. If you haven't gone yet, please plan to do so!

The left page of this layout is actually wallpaper. I had purchased a series of papers from Ebay which you'll see in the next few layouts. The bottom 3 "photos"  are actually part of the paper, which allowed me to focus on photos of me and my family at the canyon. The right page features a detailed die cut from Paper Wizard. I purchased it at a scrapbook convention in Lancaster and the idea for the page was actually featured in their booth. I took a photo and scraplifted it as part of the kickoff for this trip.

We were given just 2 hours to walk from our drop off point on the eastern side of the south rim to the pick up spot on the western side (in the village). It made me feel rushed, but we did take time to photograph the area.

The right page was my attempt to show the distance to the north rim. I took one photo at wide angle lens and then a zoom photo of the same spot. I thought it rather clever to highlight the similarities in the photos with different sized black rings. The sticker between them is supposed to be an arrow with a right angle turn, but it was a bit too transparent and I think it gets a little lost on the page.

About halfway to our destination we came across the nature walk that describes the formation of the canyon. I do think we went backwards, but it was still interesting.

As I mentioned, all of these papers are wall paper. For the left page above I augmented the text that was pre-printed on the page. I thought adding the word "geology" would provide context for the trail. And we made it to the destination area in plenty of time!