What's in That Case?

Heading further south, I arrived at Petersburg. I am fond of this place since Jim wrote about the battle in his first book. I saw the new movie and walked through the visitor center but didn't have time to walk the battlefield.

The theme for these pages is Red White and Blue. I chose wallpaper for all the pages. This one came from a CM paper pack that has a bit of a denim feel to it. Red mats help to keep the black and white photo from getting lost on the page. To add some more details I used an older CM star punch which has 2 different sizes. I cut the larger in white and the smaller in red and then stacked them.

These are some of the items I thought were most interesting in the museum area. I have overall shots and then some close-ups for detail.

Thanks to Jim's book I knew that George Meade played a key role in the battle and so I chose a sheet of paper I found with his likeness and a quote. The photos have a lot of orange in them from the back of the case so I didn't need to mat them. The right page is also wallpaper. I had found some digital paper for Gettysburg and sent it to a company to print full sheets of paper, This is one of the prints and I thought the red on the right page balanced the blue from the left. These photos also didn't need matting because their backgrounds were pale white.

The Outskirts of Richmond

June is the annual trip to the beach with Jim's family and my time to visit parks on my way there (North Carolina). In 2013, I returned to the Richmond area but traveled the battlefields just outside of the city. They were involved in several different campaigns but proved a bloody field no matter when fought.

This layout was inspired by a Pinterest idea which I turned into a 2-page layout. The bottom half of the page uses up some paper that isn't a full 12" wide so I cut two pages to 6" (and will use the rest on other pages down the road). The top half is one full 12" sheet cut in half (I believe from the Stone paper pack). The middle is a strip of pine from the very old Evergreen pack which nicely hides the seam. The stickers are from Reminisce Civil War.

There were several other smaller sites to visit but the one that stood out was this large field which was the scene of several suicidal charges reminiscent of the gory Picket's charge at Gettysburg.

This page is wallpaper. I liked the photographic image of the canon because it matched the photos I had on hand but gives more detail. Red cardstock mats help to prevent the photos from getting lost on the page.

Philly Philly

Once more to the City of Brotherly Love! On this trip my only foray into NPS territory was my lunch at City Tavern. But I was able to obtain several pieces of memorabilia to commemorate my visit. If you come to see the album you'll learn about Dr. Physick and his home which is a historic site of an 18th century physician.

This layout is one side of a purchased kit from Club Scrap (scroll down to layouts 5 and 6). I bought the kit because I knew that I would have some gastropub photos, but when I realized this was a non-photo layout, I thought it would be perfect. On the bottom left are 2 coasters (never used) that came with the kit. It's not really what I would have put there, but of all the non-paper pieces sent with the kit, they were the least objectionable. It took me about 3 hours to put all the layouts together so the other 7 are ready for my next adventure!

The Spoils of War

My visit to Arlington Cemetery was to visit a new NPS unit for me. Arlington House was the family home of Robert E. Lee. Because he chose to fight for the Confederacy during the civil war, the government confiscated his property and began burying Union soldiers in the yard (the start of the National Cemetery). Eventually the house was restored to its 18th/19th century form and outfitted with family pieces. Robert E. Lee's wife was a descendant of George Washington's wife Martha Custis and so there are quite a few nods to the Washington line in the house as well.

This is another example of making the right side first. I scraplifted the right side from this page which features the Archivers paper and borders from CM (now retired). I thought the roses were a good fit for the home and so on the left I chose the rose paper borders for the top and bottom with the same background paper. The die cut on the left is from the Eastern national DC scrapbook kit

Even though a government shutdown was happening I could still tour just about the entire house and so I made my way down to the basement kitchen. I also toured the slave quarters behind the house.

This is wallpaper with a wood paper from the CM Timber pack. I matted the photos  with a piece of brown burlap from the Cloth pack (both now retired). The kitchen tools across the top is from a previous release of an 8x8 recipe book. I use the papers and elements on my 12x12 pages.

After leaving Arlington I took the bus back to the Mall area and stopped at the largest cache of passport stampers in the city--the bookstore near the Washington monument.

This ended my tour in DC for this trip. I chose to use a wallpaper page featuring cherry blossoms as that was the original purpose of my trip, even though I never saw any. I did grab a quick photo of the Washington Monument still under renovation from the earthquake.