Making charcoal

 The reason for our meetup was the demonstration of making charcoal. This process was done on a much larger scale, and every day, when the site functioned as a furnace. Now they have special demonstrations twice a year. The people who work the site in period clothing attended (I realized later who they were) and gave an element of reality to the event. The sign about fire being hot made me chuckle though.

I follow several other scrapbooking blogs and this one had a page I wanted to try. I didn't sign up for the boot camp, but this layout follows the half-page technique displayed. It is 1 piece of decorative paper cut in half and spread on 2 pages, then one piece of cardstock cut into specific strips. I did have to use another piece of cardstock to punch the rustic fence border across the bottom but all of the mats and the 2 thin strips along the paper are from one sheet of cardstock. The CM 12" trimmer has a measurement line on the side of the cutting blade and that helps to be able to make the cuts to get four 4.25x6.25 inch mats.