Back to 2011--Upper Delaware

In July of 2011 I decided I needed a road trip (and a few more Passport Anniversary Stamps) and took a drive to the northeast corner of Pennsylvania. One reason was that I had learned of a new stamp available at the Roebling bridge. Sadly, in the day or 2 since it was reported available it was stolen.

This layout is a set of pages from the destination album (sort of a precursor to the Fast to Fabulous pages).

After touring the bridge I drove a little further north and visited the Zane Grey museum--he of the Western Novel fame.

This page is of course wallpaper. The journal box is actually cut down from a border I owned. It originally had apples on either side, but the reddish brown tone was perfect for the western theme. I'm not sure if I wasn't allowed photos inside or if my photos were just so bad that I decided not to use them. But I always take photos of information signs just in case!

Northwest Adventure part 15--the last entry

Saturday was the final day of our trip (we left VERY early Sunday morning). The convention took up the afternoon and evening for us.

Here we are at the last page of the album. The left page is nothing special--just taking the red/white/blue theme from the cake and using the paper and journal box for the page. This is actually about the right side, which is the back cover to the album. I was working on this at a craft house (a place where we can REALLY spread out and stay overnight so our tables don't have to be packed up all the time). I got to the end and realized I didn't have a place for the convention program. I couldn't even put in an 8 1/2x11 sheet protector because I didn't have anything for the back. So I initially threw it out. I went to bed that night but woke up with an epiphany! Why NOT put something on the back cover inside? What else can you use it for? So I did, and there it is. I'm glad I threw it in a box for recycling so there was not a stain or crumple on it before I took it back out.

And there is the last entry for this adventure. Beginning next week we'll return to the chronological entries from 2011.

Northwest Adventure part 14--City walking tour

Just pointing out--the Chinatown pages as well as today are ALL the same day as the Bainbridge Island tour. It was a busy day! So after our tour in Chinatown, we walked downhill to the Klondike Visitor Center. There we were broken into several groups for tours of the city. Our guide liked architecture, so we learned a lot about the different building materials and how things were laid out in the city.

Both of these pages are from the picfolio remnant pages. I liked the layering on the brown accent piece on the left. Only 1 photo, but a tour brochure, a layered sticker and a journal box really fills the space. On the right I added another word cut from a piece of paper to link the random photos of the town.

Our tour took us through parks and down streets filled with little shops. The park on the left is dedicated to UPS workers, which I thought rather unique.

The left page is wallpaper--a page of waterfalls for a few photos of falls in the garden. The blue layered tag gave a little depth to the page. On the right, I just matted the photos and added a die-cut of a totem pole to go with the photo of the totem pole in the city. The frog and turtle stickers are from the Cabana series from Creative Memories. I thought they were cartoonish enough to mimic the totem pole images and filled up the left hand corner.

After walking all over town, we returned to the visitor center for a pizza dinner. We were to take ANOTHER tour that evening but we were so exhausted we just canceled our tickets and returned to the hotel.

Northwest Adventure part 13--Chinatown

Happy New Year!
After our return from Bainbridge, we headed in the direction of our afternoon tour--the Wing Luke museum. This is in the Chinatown area of the city and we located a restaurant. Our lunch was one price and included appetizers, entrees, soup and drinks for $10 each! Jim and I really enjoyed lunch there! We walked back to the Wing Luke museum for our guided tour. This museum commemorates the lives of those who came from all over Asia to make a new life in America.

As I worked on the layout above, I started with the right page (I do that quite a bit actually). The borders were from the Asian Miyabi paper again with one border cut to fill in the blank horizontal spaces around the page. Then looking at the left I wanted the same colors, so I used scraps from other pages to set off the title and highlight the photos a bit.

Our tour included an Asian apothecary shop which has some of the original items preserved in their original jars (EW!). From there we walked through a series of rooms that housed individuals and families in boarding room type areas.

The title on the left page is actually from a photo I took. It was the only thing of consequence in the photo so I trimmed it and mounted it on a scrap of paper. A similar scrap on the bottom with a design line from the Asian Miyabi set helped finish the page. The journal box has 3 circles cut from other green paper and those are stickers of sushi in the circles. I thought the food appropriate for the shop as it sort of was a grocery as well as apothecary. The page on the right is based on this sketch (See sketch here). It' a very literal interpretation though the stickers were again the chopped sections of design lines.

We continued through the building and I was fascinated by the kitchen area which had a projection of cooking food in the wok. Every facet of life is represented from work to play and even military service.

The left page is wall paper. I love paper that looks like wood. I often think of it more for beach photos but to me it looked much like the floor. On the right is a plain piece of paper with a border remnant at the top. Green and red were used throughout the layouts and helped to give them a sense of similarity. Also on these 2 layouts I used a hexagon punch to be the base of stickers and to help set them off from the backgrounds.

This day isn't over yet! Come back next week for the next installment!

Northwest Adventure part 12--Bainbridge Island

OK, back to something related to the National Parks! On Friday 7/18, we joined a group of NPTC folks for a tour of a new installation on Bainbridge Island. There are a couple of ways to get there, but we chose the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge.

The pages above are Fast-to-Fabulous and again, are almost opposites of each other. I think they go together quite well and all I had to do was add some journaling and label the coastlines. These pages were done in about 10 minutes!

Once we got on the island we drove to the memorial. It is an affiliated site of the Minidoka National Historic Site which remembers the Japanese-American Internment during WWII. We had a local guide who described the building of the memorial as well as the lives of the people memorialized there.

It's hard to believe that something so sweet would work on such a sad remembrance, but I actually really like how this layout came together. The papers are part of the Creative memories "Fabulous" power palette. The backgrounds are actually "wallpaper" but with enough space at the top and bottom to be able to add a border. The paper lanterns are made using the Creative Memories tag punch. You can find directions here: lanterns. I had the journal box from a scrapbooking yard sale so I'm not sure where it came from, but they look like cherry blossoms to me and so I thought it would match the pages.

As we walked through the memorial we saw the beautiful carved plaques that reflected the lives of the people before, during and after internment. If you get to the area, I highly recommend visiting.

I took my cue from the school girls on the bottom. I used the Creative Memories Asian Miyabi paper and stickers. There are ideas on the back of the paper and sticker inserts and I modified one for this layout. I thought the backpacks looked like they would be used to go to school. I used the contrast of red and green but it doesn't even remotely look like Christmas.

After we finished the tour we drove to the Historical Society which is where the stamp is located. We took a few minutes to look through the outside displays but needed to catch the ferry back to Seattle.

Because the themes of the 2 layouts were different but connected, I used a double border on the left page to box that page in so that it looked separate. I also ensured the backgrounds were different colors so that there was a contrast--your eye isn't looking to continue the story on the right. The left page borders use some older Creative Memories short cuts called "rick rack". I layered stickers from the Asian Miyabi pack over top so it was almost a vine. The 2 fans at the top filled in a little dead space. On the right is one of the pre-designed picfolio inserts. The vertical line helped set off the brochure.

Well, that ends my first year of the blog for National Park Scrapbooks! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have and will come back next year for more!

Northwest Adventure part 11--Around town in Seattle

After our Boeing tour, we drove downtown to look around a bit. Jim had been to the city before so he became my guide. Being thrifty though we actually just looked at the sights and didn't purchase admission to anything. Still, looking at the Space Needle or the Chihuly glass exhibits from afar did nothing to detract from the experience. We used the monorail system to get from one part of the city to the other. (OK, that we did purchase!)

So, I had a piece of paper with a cityscape on it, and a border sticker with a cityscape. Pair them up and you have a 2-page layout that matches! The journal boxes got a few decorative touches but there was no need to decorate the pages further. The monorail tickets are in a protective pouch.

We did a LOT of walking. I was surprised at how hilly the city was given that it is right next to the ocean. I was expecting the land to be more like the east coast beaches. On the right page below is my attempt to show a moving sculpture outside the art museum. If you look at the hammer you'll see I chose a sequence of photos as it moved up and down.

On the left page is another set of Creative Memories borders I made. These had a good sight-seeing feel to them with the camera and maps. On the right is just wallpaper over (what turns out to be) a Fast to Fabulous page. If you find that the layout on one side doesn't work for you, feel free to cover it up! The other side will work fine for the next page.

So you can't go to Seattle and not see Pike Place Market. I did get to see them throwing fish, but couldn't quite catch them on film. We had dinner at one of the local restaurants as well to finish our evening.


As I mentioned, these were fast-to-fabulous pages. I do wish the photo boxes were a LITTLE more to the right so my brochure fit a little better. But on the right, the Good Eats & Treats page was custom made to highlight all the great food of the markets and restaurants. (Remember that page from the cruise? It fits a multitude of situations!)

Northwest Adventure part 10--A Day for Jim

Since so much of the trip was my visits to national parks, I wanted to ensure Jim had a day to do what he wanted. His choice was to tour the Boeing plant just north of Seattle. Have to admit, I ended up getting a bonus stamp!

We took a scheduled tour of the plant which included watching planes in production. The photo of us in the plant, however, is actually a green screen picture. There are absolutely no photos allowed on the tour. In fact, you can't even carry a purse or any type of bag.

The left page above is just wallpaper, but the right page is a Fast to Fabulous page. If you remember, I used the same page to describe a day of flying to Alaska. Here it's used to highlight the Boeing plant. On the bottom left is a pocket to hold our tour tickets. Since the tickets were a little shorter, I threw a plane sticker on the pocket to add to the decoration. Similarly I added a vellum sticker to the journal box. I like to use decorated journal boxes when I can but usually I can't figure out what to put on them.

After the plant tour we walked through their museum. The size of the plane parts is unbelievable! There was also a place to design your own plane.

On the left is the back of the Fast to Fabulous page, which I kept. I added a few stickers as a pseudo-border and a piece of paper that had "flight" printed on it to decorate the page a little further. On the right is the last of the double matted pages from the vacation kit someone purchased for me. This time I used the blue underneath to match the tan on the left. Stickers and a vellum quote helped fill in the gaps I didn't have photos for.

Finally, we went outside to the roof of the museum where we could watch planes taking off and landing. It's not a true airport, it's the testing grounds before the planes leave for their final destination. The plane highlighted below is a supersized cargo plane called a DreamLifter.

The borders on these pages are old Creative Memories stickers from the Cabana collection. I had 2 packs of them so I could mimic the pages left and right. I wish I had been able to reverse one of the clouds though. Because the photos have beautiful blue sky, they are set off without matting. I liked that the airplane stickers were cartoonish as they really resembled the plane we saw!