But There's No Wall!

My next stop in Kansas was Fort Larned. I liked their entry sign area, which had metal silhouettes of soldiers. What is unusual about this Fort is that it never had an exterior wall. Think of it more like a base than an area for defense. The barracks here helped protect and police the traffic along the Santa Fe trail and work with the Native Americans in the area. The buildings are now made of beautiful brownstones. Originally, they were all wooden structures, but to preserve the fort, they switched to stones. The porticos came in handy as it was a bit drizzly during my visit. 

I made this layout as part of one of my Saturday morning classes. It uses a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. Unfortunately, I cannot post it here since it was part of a class I purchased. I wanted to highlight the brownstones, so I looked for a similar paper. I didn't have anything in stone or brick that I liked, but the brown and stripe paper I used was an almost perfect match. It came from the Keep the Faith pack, which is usually more appropriate for churches. The borders on the right came from the Wide Open Spaces collection, and so did the journal box. The remaining embellishments were from an older Close To My Heart kit. The stickers are foil and a little delicate. If you don't handle them right, they will tear as you try to remove them from the backing paper.

I had a few additional photos, and since I wanted to highlight the Santa Fe Trail connection, I used an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket. This is the front side. I chose a similarly toned brown paper and added it across the middle to match the 12x12 pages. I used a few random saddle and bridle stickers to represent the trail.

On the back of the pocket, I added 2 more photos of the Fort with a wide-angle look. This page has additional stickers from the CTMH pack.

A Tale of a Trail

After leaving Nicodemus, I drove to the Barton County Historical Museum. They have a passport stamp for the Santa Fe Trail. I took quite a while to explore the museum, which covers every era of this locale, from the Native Americans to the 1950s. I won't include all the pages about the museum, but they did have a display of the Santa Fe Trail, including this reproduction wagon filled with supplies. There are wagon ruts still visible in places, but I did not have time to go to each site (and not all were open due to the pandemic). I'm heading to Fort Larned next, another site along the route, but I will focus on its structures rather than the Santa Fe Trail. What you don't see on this page is the Santa Fe Trail passport book for Barton County (they have stickers, not stamps). I placed it in a pocket attached to the page. Stop by to see it for yourself!

This layout is based on one that I pinned. Take a look and realize that it is a VERY LOOSE interpretation. I was at a crop when creating this and purposefully had not brought all my cardstock. I forced myself to use scraps and other papers from my stash. The background papers are from an older Advisor-only pack called Painted Prairie. I liked the ombre effect and thought it created a sunset look. I then added some dark brown along the bottom to represent the earth and covered it with a border punch of wheat stalks. The wagon was cut on the Cricut. The sheriff is a very old item called "Paperkins." Before Cricut, die-cut machines, or fancy punches, these little kits gave us a parade of people in all sorts of costumes. This one came with a hobby horse, but I decided that would be too juvenile for the page. The final touch was the journal box. The Wide Open Places kit had this saloon door card and was a good fit.

Saving Grace

One of the buildings that the Ranger showed me was the AME church. Though built in 1885, it has undergone renovation several times, and now the park is trying to restore it to the original interior. They found a panel where people had signed the walls as they worked. They applied plexiglass over the top to preserve it so it remained visible. The other church, which I think was the Baptist church, is still in disrepair and cannot be explored. 

I made this layout as part of a Saturday morning class using a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. I cannot share the sketch with you, but it features one of my favorite tricks--fooling the eye into thinking there is more paper on the page. On the right page, you see a square of blue paper under the church photo and sunrise paper. That is a set of 1" strips carefully aligned above and below the sunrise paper! This is one way to save paper--we used just 1 sheet of double-sided paper for the layout. I used this paper from the Keeping the Faith collection. When I measured the first cut, I realized I could preserve the sunrise and cross. In the original sketch, a 4x4 photo was to be placed there. It's a great way to use the photo papers in some of our packs. My final embellishments included border stickers and stickers from the same pack.

A Tale of One City

In the morning, I made my way over to Nicodemus. I started my visit at the Town Hall, the visitor center. This ample space resembles an auditorium, with many tales of the city's inhabitants displayed around the room. There was just one ranger on duty, so I waited until he had time to give me a brief tour of the town. He highlighted 2 buildings and then had to return to the visitor center. They don't get many visitors, so I don't think I kept him from seeing anyone, though I know I wasn't the only one to visit that day. The walking tour brochure does detail the history of the buildings, and it's an easy walk around the town (though it was still chilly for early May).

If this layout looks familiar, I posted it for the Lasting Memories Challenge. For details about the construction and papers, check out this blog post.

I added an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket page between the main pages of the layout. I placed the walking tour brochure and a photo of the crumbling infrastructure on the front. I used a piece of paper from the same pack to create a feeling of continuity as you look at the pages.

On the back side of the pocket, I added 2 more photos of the town (same building but one zoomed in). And to emphasize the forlornness of the site, I added a die cut of a crooked house. It's supposed to be on a Halloween page as a haunted house, but scrapbooking has no rules. I also found an old CM die cut that had some embossing. I used a black marker to ink the embossed areas to make them more visible.

Cover Story

Welcome to Kansas! In the next few weeks, we'll review my trip from May 2021. I had been vaccinated and felt like I needed another getaway (it had been more than 6 months since my last national park trip--that's unheard of for me). However, I still didn't want to go where there were too many people. Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas posted on their Facebook Page that they would soon be opening, which seemed remote enough to match my goals. While today's post won't directly include anything from Nicodemus, I wanted to show you the kick-off to the album. 

This is the album's cover page, but I did something more unique. I used 2 of the 6x12 peekaboo pockets for the top. Looking closely, a tab under the barn door latch says "Lift." When you lift that tab, you will see the layout below. The 12x12 base and the 2 peekaboo extensions on either side create a complete 2-page layout! The idea started with that barn door paper. I'd always wanted to incorporate it into a design, but you can't tell what it is if you cover it in photos. I only added the Kansas title I purchased from Paper Wizard for this page. Cutting it in the middle was tricky as it is about 7 layers of different colors. But I managed the feat and was able to attach the 2 sides so that they met evenly on the papers.

The trip started with a flight to Wichita, and I drove to the Schweizer Hotel in Hill City, KS. There are not many hotels in Nicodemus, and this one was inexpensive. I was a little leery over what I would find, but it was similar to staying in my grandmother's house! The furnishings are all vintage but sturdy enough to be livable, not a museum. Indeed, they encouraged me to sit in the front area as if it were my living room. There will be additional pages in the album, but I'm limiting myself to showing these 2 pages since it doesn't really have anything to do with the National Park site. If you are ever in the area, I encourage you to visit and stay the night.

I didn't follow a sketch per se, but I've created pages like this before. The difference is that instead of splitting the middle page across 2 backgrounds, it is solid with 2 wings. The back of the barn door paper (Rustic Manor collection) has a marble look, and I thought that worked with the photos. In contrast, the main page is a light wood tone. I added some rustic rose paper cutouts from a very old tablet. I found a few journal boxes in my stash and 2 matching laser-cut borders for the edges. In the next blog, we'll look at Nicodemus.

A Taste of West Virginia

We decided to have lunch at the lodge. Initially, we sat on the patio, but those pesky wind bursts blew our umbrella (and nearly our food) all over, so we asked to be moved indoors. (Remember, this is still pre-vaccine Covid, so it was not a decision we took lightly). We enjoyed our appetizer of brisket dip, and then each of us ordered sandwiches. The bonus to eating lunch here was that they "validated" our sky ride, so we did not have to pay! 

I made this layout during the Tammy McEwen end-of-2024 challenge. It's based on the March 2024 Virtual Crop Sketch #4. I chose papers from the Backyard BBQ pack from Creative Memories. I liked the red gingham paper and added some red cardstock to punch the dinner plates and silverware for the bottom borders. I didn't want to use many of the stickers from the BBQ pack since this was a restaurant, so I dug through my stash and found all of those corn-on-the-cob stickers, so I threw one on each of the plates. A few full plates and napkin packs helped round out the layout. This also ended the album, so we'll visit a new park next time!

Autumn is in the Air

After our hike, we relaxed at the resort's outdoor features. Though the fire pit had no fire, the swings were pretty comfy. We also found some Adirondack chairs overlooking the river. We enjoyed that, except when the wind created microbursts around us, and the leaves and dirt flew. You can see Kris protecting herself during one of them! 

I made this layout during Tammy McEwen's end-of-year challenge. She brings back sketches from the CM blog over the year, and we are to create additional layouts to help finish our albums quickly. The sketch had originally been shared during the summer in a weekly challenge. I chose Shades of Golden Harvest for my layout and used orange shimmer cardstock for the base. Instead of pockets, I trimmed the foliage photos to 3x4. I love how trimming my horizontal images makes it look like they are matted when they are simply attached to the orange base. The large blue mat on the left is a piece of vellum that had been issued with the papers. I didn't have any stickers left from that pack, but I found some in my stash that worked well, including a thin title sticker border that I cut and layered on the right side.