But enough about me, let's talk about my trip to Portsmouth Island. And my poor husband who got dragged along and was SUCH a good sport about it. In order to collect some rather rare National Parks Passport Stamps, I arranged a boat ride out to the island. It's a primitive island meaning you pack what you need and pack it out. There are luckily regular bathrooms on the island. So, in the backpack I'm wearing are several bottles of water, mosquito repellent and a large bag of a homemade trail mix. I knew there were going to be bugs. I had read about the island. But trust me, nothing prepares you for the onslaught of insects flying at you. With the repellent, we were protected from bites, but they still flew near enough that you worried they would fly in your mouth! And Jim even put a mosquito repellent wipe on his head under his hat!
So in the photo below, I'm smiling. We haven't hit the buggy part of the island yet. Interestingly, inside the buildings there isn't a bug in sight so we were able to explore indoors with no problem. The problem is moving from building to building. This is an old village so the buildings have quite a bit of space between them.
This is the simplest of scrapbook layouts. There is nothing on the page other than the photos/memorabilia and a few accents. I used every flying insect sticker I could find to illustrate our adventure and I think I just about nailed it. The "Bug Spray Required" sign and the actual bug spray can in the bottom right are both cuts I made with Cricut. I also cut the title "Mosquito Island" on the cricut with a somewhat wacky font I found. I was using a scrap of paper and got too close to the edge on a few of the letters so they have a bit of a scalloped look. With the way the letters are cut, it's really almost too difficult to tell, even up close.
The island looks like everyone just disappeared and could return at any moment. There are stores, a post office, homes, and a life saving station (like a coast guard). Lots of interesting items on display.
This layout was created at a local scrapbook shop called Enchanted memories. I would take a class there about once a month and we would get the layout as well as a sketch in case we wanted to recreate it with other papers. I thought the nautical and somewhat aged look of the accents matched the location and so I just had to apply the photos.
After exploring the life saving station, we sat inside and ate the ENTIRE bag of trail mix I made (and it was about a gallon) then had to make what turned out to be a prolonged hike to the other side of the island for pick up. While being attacked by mosquitoes. We had not brought beach gear with us thinking we would get picked up from the same dock where we were dropped off, so we had to sit in the sun, back to back and await the return boat. On the plus side, our ride back took us past an island full of pelicans, some newly hatched. As you can see from the photo, we lived to tell our story!
This page started with the border on the bottom left page. I made this at a class many years ago and had nearly forgotten about it. The boat that we rode in was sort of small, so this captured the essence for me. On the right page, I made the journaling box from an idea posted on the old Creative Memories website. I had saved the instructions in the comments. If anyone is interested in recreating it, check here. Both the border and journal card had the same color palate, so I looked for more scraps of paper in the same shades and found the 2 long borders at the top as well as enough blue and yellow to throw some mats and some vertical strips on the pages. It was completely random, but I really like the way the pages came together.
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