Wild Flowers

In today's post, we continue our exploration of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens at the 2021 NPTC Convention. In addition to the numerous lotus plants, there is a rich assortment of hibiscus and other plants. (And look at the size of that leaf! It's as large as my head!) The brown "thing" is a dried lotus pod, so I suppose that should have been included in the previous layout.

I created this layout based on the CM Project Recipe, 'Bottanical Burst'. I used two sheets of Sweet Blossom paper, which is in the Fast-to-Fabulous style (meaning the borders are pre-printed). I turned the borders to the middle of both pages, so I got a bonus change of color there. I used a piece of white cardstock to create the circle, cut it in half, and layered a tonal paper between the edge of the border and the circle. I punched a leaf border from that same tonal paper and made minor cuts so that it would flow around the circle. It took 3 strips of border to complete the page. The title and sticker flowers were from the same kit, and I finished the page quickly.

Pretty in Pink

Welcome back to Kenilworth Gardens! Our NPTC 2021 Convention Bus trip left us off here for about an hour and a half, and my friend Melania and I did a lot of walking. In this layout, you'll see the lotus blossoms for which the park is best known. There are a series of pools, and each one is bursting with color. I tried to capture a few of the best blooms for posterity.

This layout is another that I created for the Creative Memories Virtual Crop in June 2025. Scroll to Layout #3. The advisor who created this sketch provided an introductory video to talk about how she made her cuts. I followed her advice closely and chose the Jazzberry and Lime Tart papers from the Vivid Melodies collection. (There is a bit of this left if you want to check the store.) Those 2 colors best matched the blooms in my photos. The vertical photo mats were created by punching one of the sheets with an older border punch featuring tulips (as I mentioned in the last blog — tulips somewhat resemble lotus blossoms). Even if they didn't, a floral punch of any shape would work well here. I trimmed the photos to the correct dimensions and layered them according to the sketch. I knew that with a sketch featuring smaller photo sizes, my florals would be perfect. I tend to center them but leave a LOT of landscape, which eventually gets cut away. There are a few additional photos in a sleeve made for the Happy Album. It provides room for 4 horizontal pictures and a bit of journaling in the middle (that's why you don't see journaling on this layout). A few bits of greenery embellishments completed the page.

Lotus Blooming Everywhere

Welcome back to my 2021 NPTC convention tour. This continues the Friday bus trip that we started in the last blog post. Our first stop on the bus trip was Kenilworth Gardens. Visiting Parks in DC is sometimes complicated. Most people think that each place they visit is a "unit". Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens is part of the Anacostia Park section of DC. But even that isn't a unit. They belong to National Capital Parks--East. And no, there is no corresponding north, south, or west designation. That is just the management office. The official unit here is simply "National Capital Parks."

I was happy to visit here as I don't often visit DC in the spring or summer, and this is when the park truly shines. After getting off the bus, we all lined up for stamps (of course). I noticed that there was an abundance of Lotus-themed items everywhere, including the bike stand you see below. Turns out Melania has a lotus tattoo as well! The only thing we missed in this visit was the visitor center, so I'll have to go back at some point and watch the movie there.

This layout was based on one of the Power Hours from Meggan and Tessa (April 2024). The paper is from Old CM — one of the pastel Spring addition packs. They have some pre-printed borders and were the precursor to the Fast to Fabulous pages, I think. I cut up the elements (stripes, blue floral, and green floral) and layered them as per the instructions. There is a lotus blossom laser-cut border in the new Serenity line, and so I moved that over to this layout. It turns out that tulip stickers also somewhat resemble the lotus blossom, and those three stickers were a great way to fill the gap after my journaling.

The People on the Bus

This post takes a look at my next adventure at the 2021 NPTC Convention. On Friday, my friend Melania joined me on one of the buses as we made a LONG tour of several park sites. There were three buses — two regular-sized and one Sprinter-sized. We wisely decided to go in the smaller van, where we had very comfortable seats. Melania had missed our Belmont Paul photo the day before, but she brought her suffragist doll with her on our excursions.

For this page, I used a sketch I had saved from CM's November 2022 Virtual Crop. The yellow vehicles could be buses or just traffic, so I used that as the background (not a CM paper, it's from a tablet in my stash that is all travel-theme papers). As I sorted through my travel stash, I came across some remnants of paper and stickers from the Gallivant collection (circa 2017 CM). The colors matched Melania's shirt, which is a good way to maintain continuity throughout the page. The bottom border is a strip of pink paper from that pack as well. The thin strip of map paper had just enough to be able to see "Washington," so I wanted that included (though I'm not entirely sure it's supposed to be Washington, DC on the map). The sticker borders around the map paper are from the Staycation pack. It looks like an unfolded paper map to me, and all the colors blend nicely.

Welcome-Bienvenido-Benvenuto-Aloha

Technically, THIS is the start of the 2021 NPTC Convention. Everything else I did in the last few posts (Eisenhower, Clara Barton, the Navy Memorial) was all a prelude to the main event. The reception was new this year and provided an opportunity for new members and first-time attendees to meet fellow club members. There were light refreshments, and we were able to pick up our bags with materials for the next few days (such as bus passes, a copy of the Stamp Pad newsletter, and some promotional materials for DC). 

This layout was made for the CM Virtual Crop in June 2025. Scroll to Challenge #1. This sketch was the perfect opportunity to highlight one of the papers from the Washington DC Scenes pack by Creative Memories. When I trimmed the paper to 11", I cut from the top and left sides to ensure the detail was intact. I also chose to NOT turn that lower right corner. It may have worked either way, but I like it better with the image intact. The top 2" is the reverse side of the paper and became the perfect place for a title. Those are the die-cut letters CM introduced a little while ago. These are in white and match the Red, White, and Blue theme perfectly. I found those 2 small star cluster stickers and thought they would accent the turned corners nicely as well.

Below are a few extra photos of my friends and me enjoying the reception.

You have to love Peekaboo pockets! It allowed me to add six photos to this one-page layout! That's an effective use of space!

Suffering Suffrage Cats!

We continue the NPTC 2021 convention in Washington, DC. After leaving the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office, I met up with several of my friends outside the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument sign. The building was closed for renovation, so we weren't able to go inside. But we came prepared with our Suffrage Cats. 

This lovely little stuffed animal was created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Although detractors attempted to use cats to portray women's passivity and discourage them from petitioning for the right to vote in the early 1900s, the women turned it around and made the cat their mascot. All of us had either received them as gifts or bought them outright for ourselves, and we wanted to show them off, so I arranged this photo. I sent a copy to Belmont-Paul to say, Sorry we missed you. They LOVED it! They posted it on their Facebook page, and, from what I gather, also sold a lot more cats!

I originally planned for this layout to just feature the 5x7 photo of our group. However, the Facebook memory appeared before I created this, and so I ended up downloading and printing a copy of the Facebook post that included the photo. The style is based on one of the CM Virtual Crop sketches from June 2025 (Scroll to Layout #2). The 8" square in the middle became the perfect mat for the printed post. I used some scraps of a theme pack called "Cattitude" for the top and bottom triangles. I didn't have anything in a vertical layout, so I had to root through my stash to find a matching tone. The yellow of the rough plaid does match the tiny paw prints on the first set of triangles. The purple was perfect, and because purple and gold are part of the suffragists' colors, it was serendipitous. 

The cat-themed stickers were also from the Cattitude pack. The top left and bottom right corners featured some random stickers from the Washington, D.C. stash, and they complemented the theme well. I like that the corners were 2" empty squares. While many people who put this layout together used printed paper there, I was able to fill the corners with stickers. It reminds me of the technique where you punch the border maker cartridges in all but the first and last notches of the guide. Something like this layout. That one used a "knock-out" style punch, but you can do it with any type of cartridge.

Little Things Make a Big Difference

You will recall that I've been featuring my visit to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office location. My final pages provide a closer examination of the preserved items. The most important artifact is the photo in the left-most circle. That's the infamous letter that made its way through the layers and "tapped" the workman on the shoulder. Other relics include everyday items such as salt, brushes, stationery, and the original gas lamp tubes. The socks (middle photo on the left) were collected to be given to soldiers when they were being repatriated from the prisoner-of-war camps. Clara and other ladies who assisted her would collect, clean, and darn them so that they were serviceable again. 

This layout was made for the CM Virtual Crop in June 2025. I opened my new package of Legacy of Love papers and embellishments as I knew the tone would match the historic accent of the photos (everything seems to be brown in historic context, doesn't it?) You can get a look at the sketch here: Sketch #4. The left and right edges use a ledger-like paper. I wanted to use that as a long journal box on the left side. The next set of strips is a combination of pieces punched with a border maker cartridge and 1/2" strips of paper. The scalloped edge is a laser-cut border from the embellishment pack. A few other stickers were used to create clusters around the page, and it was done.