Centennial Part 5--The Convention

On Saturday we held our convention. Most of my morning was spent setting up the venue with our new banners and getting things out of the cars. We held the meeting at the Arch Street Quaker Meeting House which is an historic venue. Translate that to "no air conditioning". It was a hot day and we only had fans to cool ourselves, but it was still a great meeting.

Above shows that I inserted a portrait sleeve to add the Convention Stamp Pad. We're using this as our program now, and you'll see below why it didn't fit on the page. That is mounted on the black cardstock that comes with the sleeve which left the back available for more photos and memorabilia.

When you work with dark colored paper you have 2 choices for journaling--you can either use a separate block of paper, or you can write directly on the page with a gel marker. I recommend either white or silver though gold works well too if you are writing about a special event.

For the 2-page layout below, I was playing along with the Creative Memories Virtual Crop (Here is the challenge blog page.) They wanted to focus on photos and challenged us to use more than 12 photos on a 2-page layout. This is what that might look like! (It's actually 14 photos!)

The first thing to do when trying to put multiple photos on a page, is to start cropping! When you look at a photo you'll notice that there is probably a bit of extraneous stuff along the edges--ceilings, too much sky or grass, or even people you aren't focusing on.  Feel free to trim them off! (May I suggest the CM personal trimmer?) I also cropped a photo of a plate of cookies into a circle. It keeps the shape of the item and reduces the size of the photo. You'll notice I didn't mat any photos. If you review the blog page, that certainly isn't required but a lot of it depends on how small you make your photos. I layered photos which also helped place more photos on the paper. If you've cropped the edges but you have subjects of unequal height (like the middle photo on the left), you can probably cover that area of the photo with another.

If you are planning on putting multiple photos on a page, you can also print your photos smaller which decreases your need to crop. Whatever you do, leave some room for journaling. The mass of photos won't make much sense if you don't tell who is in the photo or why it was important to you! And don't forget that now you can use the Creative Memories Peekaboo sleeves which are an easy way to add photos on top of the photos on your page.

After the meeting ended, the president's dinner began at the Dave and Buster's nearby. We celebrated not only the 100th birthday of the National Park Service, but the 80th birthday of one of our members!

This layout is another example of splitting a kit. The left page is one of a set of 2 I purchased as a premade layout. I have no Idea what the "Q" was supposed to represent, but I left it on the page as decoration! There were just a few photos of the participants and I was able to layer them to show most of the room. On the right is a 1-page layout I made at one of the scrapbook conventions. It demonstrated the use of Washi tape. The candles are all made of colored washi tape with gems for candle flames (Yeah, I don't like using gems but hey, I paid for the class so I'm going to use the page). The middle of the page is a 10" square which has a border of the Washi tape. The flower was also made by folding tape on itself and layering to create a flower shape. The center is another gemstone which hides some of the folding.

Lastly, after dinner we got to spend some time in the arcade. Jim and I each have our own preferences for games. He is more shoot-em-up and I go for arcade games like skee ball or video dancing.

This was a fairly simple layout. I have 1 photo mat and a corner triangle to pull in the blue to the page (also used blue pen for journaling). The lower left corner are just a handful of small bits cut from various papers I have on hand. Did I mention it's "SCRAP" booking? ☺

Centennial part 4--Friday night picnic

After touring the Brearley House, we all drove over to Washington Crossing State park. Yep, the Jersey side where Washington and his troops landed for that fateful surprise attack. This state park contains another Crossroads of the American Revolution stamp and we saw the film at the visitor center, picked up the stamp and then gathered for the picnic.

The left page uses a sticker that I'd been holding onto for a LONG time. I mean, when ELSE am I going to use a Washington Crossing the Delaware sticker?!? I mounted that on a piece of blue cardstock that I tore with a rough edge ruler (this double wave tearing tool is very similar to what I used but has more rough edges). To add to the water theme I used a leftover piece from a strip where I cut out a bunch of triangles to make banners. I also had a journal box with water rushing over rocks.

For the right side, I used 1/2 of a layout kit that I made during one of my monthly trips to Enchanted Memories. Most people don't think of splitting up pages, but in this album I actually did that a couple of times. You'll see the left side of the layout in a few weeks. I just didn't want to use the left (hot dog) page with the intro being all about the Washington Crossing.

After we ate, one of the members arranged some group games and everyone had a lot of fun.

This is a layout I created at a Paper Loft class during one of the Lancaster Creating Keepsakes conventions. The classes are great because they focus on highlighting the photos, not the paper. The Fun and Games title was created through some older CM letters. The mixed colors not only worked well with the paper, but brought out the energy of the contests. This is another good example of not worrying about the photo mats already placed on the page. You can see that NOTHING fits within the original (cream) boxes. My favorite use was cropping the long photos so that they fit within 2 of the mats on the right page. Those mats become great journaling boxes. You could even layer stickers in that space. I think the paper on these pages is busy enough that stickers weren't needed though.

Centennial Part 3--The Brearley House

On Friday, we arranged a tour of the Brearley House in Lawrenceville, NJ. It is not normally open on Fridays, but they were happy to arrange 3 separate tours to accommodate all of the members who wanted to go. There are some stamps there that are hard to obtain, so this was a very popular opportunity. Although we had people sign up for the 3 different start times, few actually showed at their appointed hour. But between those showing up early for one and late for another, the tours were still the right size!

This layout was created during a virtual crop from Creative Memories. To get people ready, there was a "preview" sketch challenge on Friday night that you can see here. For once, I followed the sketch almost exactly! I chose an older piece of CM with red tones to match the brick work. Then I accented with yellow to match the other predominant color in the paper. I ended up going back after the challenge and replacing the original sticker letters (much manipulated due to shortages of the required letters) with Cricut cut ones. If anything looks slightly ripped, it's from where the original sticker letters were. But that just matches the antique feeling of the page! 😀

I took the tour with the first group so that I was prepared to help the subsequent groups along. There are a number of time-period correct antiques in the home, though not necessarily from the original family holdings. It's amazing how some parts of the house are still in great shape hundreds of years later, including the floors.

The left page uses an idea I saw to create flames. The story is about a  burning log on the wood floor. The flames are actually red and yellow paper cut with the Creative Memories Border Maker system using the grass cartridge (now discontinued). I also found a piece of paper with a design that sort of reminded me of flames, so I fussy cut 2 of them out to fill the corners. The right page was copied off an idea sheet I have in my stash (I want to say it was a page formula, but I'm not positive). I did get the idea somewhere. I just supplemented with what I had in my stash.

As the rest of the tour groups formed I could jump in and out to take photos inside and outside. Have to love the orderly line of club members waiting on their stamps!

I think I created this on my own, not a sketch or idea sheet, but I honestly can't remember (and I only created it about 18 months ago). I went fairly simple using the pale blue to match everyone's t-shirts and then contrasting with yellow (another favorite color combo). The embellishments are few but helps to create an X on the page for flow. The bear head is a VERY old paper piecing kit that I had. I just like the way he's peeking over the paper.

Centennial Part 2--Boat House Row

This post marks my 100th post! (Now that includes a couple of recipes and my intent to change directions, but still, not a bad start!)

This week I focus on the photos I took during a photography class. My first evening in Philly I joined a tour to learn how best to use my camera. I turned out to be the only participant! So the guide and I walked through the Boat House Row area as well as the hills surrounding the area and he taught me settings, composition, and lighting considerations. If you have an interest in scrapbooking, improving your camera skills may improve your pages. I think it has improved mine!

The 5 layouts in this post are ALL fast-to-fabulous pages. On the left page above, the F2F page is covered with wallpaper. If you remember last week's post, the front of that page is the Traveler series and the back just didn't mesh with what I was working on here. I used pieces from the Tangerine, Plum and Then Some line (discontinued) and matching elements from the Vintage paper pack (also discontinued) which matched very closely. Because the pages are pre-decorated, they were done in minutes. Note that on the right page above, I put 2 photos in the horizontal box and used the other for journaling. You don't HAVE to use the page in any particular way. Don't feel constrained.

In the photos above we had walked up the hill to Lemon House and as we walked back down the Museum of Art came into view. I didn't really like the skyline photos he had me shoot but I'm glad the museum was included. You can see this is a sunset walk and that became important for learning how the gold light in the afternoon could be used to highlight elements of the photos.

As above, I used one of the photo boxes for a journal box. Because I still had room, I added a die cut of a camera (above as well but 2 very different vintages of die cuts). As nice as F2F pages are, sometimes it's nice to add a little embellishment. In fact, if I ever re-visit these pages I may add a border across the top of the pages for more visual interest.


What I like about the layout below is that I got to show how the class improved my photos. Because I used a digital camera the guide would let me take a photo and then show me how to stand or change settings and improve it. It's all about what I wanted to shoot. A good example are the waterfall photos below. Left was what I shot. Right was the improvements.

The orange tones worked well with the setting sun photos . And as it got darker, the plums matched the deepening shadows as well. It's good to keep an open mind. I had these pages pegged for heritage photos (like touring old homes) in my head.

Because we are near the water, we got to play a bit with reflection as well. With luck, several rowing teams were practicing and I was able to get them in the photo to provide depth.

The journal boxes above are tags from the Vintage collection. There wasn't much to journal so it was nice to have a small area to fill.

The last pages again show the range of options I found on my camera. To honor this, I found 2 borders that talked about camera settings and added them to the bottom. The colors were a decent match for the pages even though they came from a different line.