Happy Trails part 23--the Final Entry

 The last of my trip was a night-time visit to Carlsbad Caverns. While I can certainly count this as a unit visited I did not arrive early enough to visit the caves. I was able to tour the visitor center and then head to the Amphitheater for the Bat Flight presentation. Our club snagged several rows together and we had fun calling to the newcomers at the top of the staircase. My husband still can't believe I attended this event because I tend to freak out when a bat flies in the house. Luckily none tangled in my hair that night! There are only daytime photos because phones, cameras, and other electrical devices are prohibited once the bats start emerging from the caves.

In a rather unusual burst of enthusiasm, I completed this page a little earlier than normal. One of the Facebook pages I followed showed how to make the bats--from an Airplane Border Maker Cartridge! They are punched from black paper, turned upside down, and embellished with a white gel pen for the eyes. I knew I just HAD to make the page right then (it was October 2018 and I was still a couple of years away from completing the album). So it's been sitting in one of my pre-made page containers waiting until I got to this album. Because I made it so far in advance, I used cardstock as the base. I found 2 close shades in the yellow/orange family. Then I took one sheet of stone paper from the CM Textures pack and cut it to make the non-symmetrical layout. I made 3 12" strips of "bats" and layered them across the middle. A few bat stickers and die cuts from my Halloween collection helped create the bat flight across the page.

I was having trouble getting all the photos on the page so I used a peekaboo pocket on the photo above the park brochure. If you lift it, the journaling is underneath. Hindsight is 2020. I didn't realize when I made this that it would be the last page in the album. Had I been planning it out, I would have rearranged the layout to make 3 pages with the last of the photos as the final entry. 

And that leads us to the final page. I struggled with what to put on the page but finally found inspiration in making a closing page similar to my kick-off pages. I used the "Happy Trails" theme to say goodbye and to talk a little about the upcoming convention in Philadelphia. (That set of pages has been covered if you look back through the blog posts).

Once I decided what I was doing, this page came together quickly. I had a western themed photo page with the hat and hay bale. I used the Cricut to make the Happy Trails sign and the letters to indicate the next trip. I may use this technique again!