Santa and Trains

So, I have a Dad who's been building model railroads since I was little and 2 nephews who love trains. So I thought that taking them to Steamtown would be a great getaway. Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, Steamtown has a holiday train every year and this was our destination.

The first pages in my layout were created during a Creative Memories Advisor challenge one night. It wasn't a sketch, it just asked us to use current materials. I actually hadn't bought much new paper from them but then realized that I had bought the Fast-to-Fabulous Gallivant collection. I leafed through the pages and found these 2 with red borders and a little splash of yellow. That left the middle open for me to play with. I added the photos of arriving at the park sign, the boys in their engineer hats, and the train arriving at the station. They are simply mounted on photo mats which coordinated with the Gallivant pages.

For embellishments, I did have to resort to the Adventure pack which wasn't as current. However, there was a great circle with a train as well as a die-cut train. The die-cut I mounted on a red square because it was looking odd having multiple colors behind it. The wreath on the die-cut was created through punches. CM had an outdoor theme punch with antlers. I punched those in green and added some small red flowers for holly. The last additions were a postcard journal box and our train ride tickets (added with photo corners).

The next set of pages captures the ride and our visit with Santa. There is a tunnel along the route and it became "magic" as the rangers would quickly switch to Christmas theme clothing on the way to Santa's village, and then back to ranger clothing on the return trip. We sang carols and listened to Christmas stories. It was a fun trip.

Of course this layout had to be more "Christmassy", so I used a sheet of older CM paper which has Santa's belt across the bottom. I added a piece of Holidazzle paper as a mat for the 3 photos. The Believe sticker is from a sheet of holiday words. On the right I tried to match the red background, and because of the caroling photos I chose a sheet of paper with music as a large mat for the photos.

After our train ride we continued to explore the site which has many displays of train cars. It's very educational with a cutaway of an engine to explain how steam engines work.

Both of these photos are wallpaper. The one on the left is obvious because the train pattern is so bold. The one on the right has more of a watermark train in the background and that was harder to photograph.

One of the last things we did was watch the trains used for excursions return to the "barn". This involved the center rail rotating to allow engines to go into different bays. It was great to watch the big engines so close!

On the final layout I wanted to use the train die-cut I made on the Cricut that you see on the bottom of the right page. The tracks are an old CM sticker and the die-cut fit perfectly. Because the diecut was in black and red, I chose to use those colors on the rest of the background. I cut card stock into equal widths and layered them along the page. The last item I added was our entry sticker for the day which I had preserved on a piece of paper in my National Parks Passport. We spent the entire day there and had a great time.