The Stones are What Color?

One of the displays at the Flower Show featured Yellowstone National Park. They focused on the way that forests recover from fires with beautiful blooms of wildflowers. They also made a model of one of the hot pools (I think Crested Pool). It didn't shoot water but the colors were pretty amazing.

This layout is based on a bonus sketch from the Creative Memories January Virtual Crop. They don't post it on their blog, just in the Virtual Crop Facebook Group. I used two sheets of Secret Garden Fast to Fabulous pages which had a beautiful watercolor design embedded in the paper as the background. It matched the colors in the hot pool. I balanced that color with some scraps of brown and wood papers. A few embellishments from Secret Garden and it was almost done. I was given a packet of scrapbooking supplies years ago from a National Park Travelers Club Member. I finally got to cut them apart and use one as a title. It meant fussy-cutting, but I think it was worth it.

Summer Fun

 Hello and welcome to a special edition of my blog. This month I'll be serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories. That blog posts a weekly challenge and then encourages others to play along with drawings at the end of each month. This month's challenges are all Title challenges. This week the challenge was to use the phrase "Summer Fun".

This layout covers the NPTC convention meeting for 2017. When looking for photos to represent Summer Fun there were few better choices! These meetings are not only informative with great speakers and games but a chance to reconnect with fellow travelers and swap stories. We get LOUD when we get together and that's what I hope you see in this layout. This will publish on Sunday 7/25 and we'll be heading to our next event in DC this week (some of my friends are there already). I hope you get a chance to join us, you will not regret it!

I loosely based this layout on a sketch from a class I took. I mixed a couple of different paper packs because I needed yellow and blue to make it work. The yellow is from a pack called "Smitten" which may have been consultant only or free with purchase. It had a close shade of yellow (I really wanted something darker but I think it works). The blue is from Picture Perfect as are the film borders, star borders, and small embellishments. The Smile circle is from Fresh Fusion. I cut the title on the Cricut with cuts from an old CM Cartridge! The hardest part was figuring out the arrangement of photos. Once I figured out meeting on the left and friends on the right, it came together quickly. 

A Night at the Flower Show

In March 2016, the Philadelphia Garden Club hosted their annual flower show with the theme of "America's National Parks" in honor of the centennial. I took a night after work to go down and visit. Because it was the evening I only spent a couple of hours there. I did get to see all of the displays but had little time for extras like vendors. The next few months will be the album pages I created for that ONE night! (Yes, there were enough that it got its own album!)

Creative Memories had created a line called "Secret Garden" about the same time as this visit. I thought that the floral theme would work perfectly with the photos. And to some extent it did, though I used quite a few other collections as well. This is the title page of the Secret Garden Fast to Fabulous pack. The matted white square is part of the paper as is the watercolor background. I used the Cricut to cut the letters. There are 2 layers--purple with the letter cut out backed by black circles. In hindsight, I think I should have just put the purple on the white. It's a little difficult to see in the photo--though in real life it isn't that bad.

The first 2 pages are broken up with the addition of the map I saved. I have it folded around a piece of cardstock so that you can see the entire floor by turning the page. 

I took several hundred photos, but even for me, it was difficult to get decent shots of everything. Even though I was touring in the evening it was still very busy and full of people. That's why I also used a few photos from the internet which were used for the promotion of the show, like the top photo on the page below.

For the left side of the layout, I used a sketch from the January 2021 Virtual Crop. I chose the Hello Autumn paper pack because the colors on display had that rich fall coloring. I cut one of the mats into a circle to add my title. I used up some more of the small letter stickers. I was able to mix and match a couple of sheets to spell out the word. Using a variety of colors not only matched my layout but also enabled me to use up stickers that were hard to use to make standard words. By this point, having any "E"s in a sticker sheet is a miracle! 

The right side of the entrance has ME. That is actually pieced together from several photos. My selfie skills were not very good so I asked someone to take the photo for me. However, they zoomed in on me getting little of the entrance! By piecing it with other photos I took, I was able to get a decent shot of myself. 

The layout here is based on another sketch in the virtual crop which you can see here. For this layout, I went far back in my stash for some "Earthy" power palette papers and stickers. This is a collection I want to finish but it seems to multiply like rabbits when I'm not looking. The CM 12" trimmer allowed me to cut smaller frames of each of the 3 papers for the outside. By cutting holes in the middle you reduce the thickness of the page and the weight of the album. I chose stickers from spring, summer, and winter (the tree) for the border across the top. The journal box is a piece of vellum. It allows the background to come through in a soft way but you can still see the writing. I don't know what made me think of that but it did work well on this page.

I know this is a lot of photos for one post but I decided to put all of the entrance photos in one place. Just behind the entrance shown above were these amazing sculptures of a bear and bison. 

And one more layout from the Virtual Crop. I used paper from both Rustic Manor and Woodland Whimsy here. The die-cut animals are quite old but were a good addition to the page given the topic (OK, it's a moose, not a bison--but it still works).

Love this View

 Hello and welcome to a special edition of my blog. This month I'll be serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories. That blog posts a weekly challenge and then encourages others to play along with drawings at the end of each month. This month's challenges are all Title challenges. This week the challenge was to use the phrase "Love This View"

This layout features 2 photos I took as I started exploring the Blue Ridge Parkway. On my way, I passed this overlook called "Lover's Leap". Well, who could pass up a stop there? It was a beautiful day and the view of the valley, as well as the farther mountains, was spectacular. I entered the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed to Mabry's Mill. We'll explore this quaint village a bit more later, but this is my favorite photo that I took of the eponymous Mill.

Considering this is a mountain layout, it may surprise you to hear that this is the CM paper and embellishments from "Vitamin Sea". I wanted the blues and greens and was able to find a bunch of embellishments that were generic enough to create my clusters. The bottom border is perfect to carry out the theme of "view" and I was happy to see they weren't colored in like sunglasses. I cut small slits into the border between each pair of glasses so that I could bend them slightly and form the curve. It matches the curve of the title across the top. (The title was cut on the Cricut and I chose a font that would be puffy like clouds). All I needed then was the journal box which had the matching glasses in it and I was done! It took about an hour to make from start to finish.

The Last Park Visit of the Year

My sister invited us to a New Year's Eve party at Mohegan Sun in the Poconos. We agreed and decided to head up early on the 31st, partly so that I could get in one more park visit. Steamtown was not that far away so we made a brief visit and took a ranger tour that included the workshop area. It was nice to be inside on such a cold day, though you can see we started outside at the roundhouse table.

I made the border on the top left page as part of a class I held for my CM business. The basic cuts could be morphed into a bunch of different borders but I really liked using the train version since I had this page coming up. With the border done all I needed to do was to pick 2 train pages from the CM Trains paper pack. There are some decorations/photos embedded in the papers but with enough blank space to add my photos and memorabilia.

The second layout features more of the workshop area. I loved being able to go beyond the "Unauthorized Personnel Keep Out" barrier.

The left page is a Fast-to-Fabulous page from the Gallivant collection. Since I had "wallpapered" the backside it was easy to incorporate into my album. The left border was printed on the page so I just added my photos and a few extra stickers. On the right, you can see that I added a 6x12 peekaboo pocket. In this photo it's covering up the right page, but without being too obstructive. 

Finally, you can see the right page and the inside of the peekaboo pocket.I pieced together photos to be able to show the entire engine. It was a unique experience to see it "naked". I never realized how many layers went into a structure like that.

The border on the right side was scraplifted from this Creative Memories blog post.  Because of the large photos and brochure, that's about all I needed. For the journaling box, I took a circular embellishment and cut it in half to frame the wording. I wish I had made it a little more even, but it didn't worry me at the time.

Life is Good in the 18th Century

 Hello and welcome to a special edition of my blog. This month I'll be serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories. That blog posts a weekly challenge and then encourages others to play along with drawings at the end of each month. This month's challenges are all Title challenges. This week the challenge was to use the phrase "Life is Good".

I looked through my photos and decided that I would focus on a living history display at Moore's Creek Battlefield, NC. I had stopped here during a 2016 beach trip with Jim's family and enjoyed spending the day looking at the way people dressed, cooked, worked and lived. Many more pages to be added later!

Once I figured out the last half of the title and chose the photos, my next step was the arrangement. I found the journal box. It's from the CM Enchanted line (quite a few years old). I liked the way it had a feel of nature as well as a touch of red to match the people in my photos. I tried to match the green of the journal box with the photo mats. It's a close match but not exactly the same. I wanted a dark background to make the green pop and found 2 older pieces of brown paper. This is from an older travel collection in what CM would have called "Jewel Tones". The title was cut from the Cricut with green letters and backgrounds for balance (love the new Offset feature in Cricut Design Space).

After trimming the photos and arranging them I chose the ones that would get a mat (one short of course). For the unmatted photo, I found another journal box in the same Enchanted line. I fussy cut that small border from it and that balanced the last photo. The round circle on the bottom right is from a pack of laser-cut embellishments. It's green on the other side but not quite a match for the layout. The dark gray/black worked just as well given the frame in the journal box. I added 2 18th century stickers from my Eastern National scrapbook kit.

Picking up on the dark gray/black circle and frame led me to the Infinity Chain border maker cartridge on the bottom left. That is one 12" strip cut in half. The 6" piece is horizontally on the bottom of the page. Then I cut the other side into individual links and mounted them vertically on top. Final embellishments were more fussy cut leaves and branches from another journal box.

I'm creating these layouts while on vacation so I have a portion of my usual stash. It's really making me use up what I have--embellishments, papers, even scraps. Probably a good thing so that I get more room for new products!

On the Trail

Near the Quinault ranger station (which was closed during my visit) was a nature trail--two actually. One takes you to the Kestner homestead and the other is a nature trail. But if you go to the Kestner Homestead you can take part of the nature trail back, so I did both! The Kestner homestead only had outdoor exhibits of historic farm life. I'm not sure if they ever open the house but I don't think so as there wasn't a path to get to it easily.

This layout is a set of pages from a camping class I took with Paper Loft. I thought that the lantern decorations went well with the old-time farm look. Had I used this for camping there would have been more sayings and stickers put on the page but I left it undecorated purposefully.

My final layout for Olympic National Park features the trees seen along the nature trail. Many of them were marked with signs. Their height is impressive and difficult to demonstrate in photos. I thought the hanging moss a romantic touch to the vista as well.

You can tell I was getting to the end of a long scrapping session as the final pages didn't have as much work on them. These pages were purchased from Scrapbook.com, but are from the Scrapbook Customs line. I have purchased quite a few national park sets so you'll see more of these in the future. The only thing I had to add was a mat under one photo to keep it from blending in too much. 

Celebrate with the Eisenhowers

Hello and welcome to a special edition of my blog. This month I'll be serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories. That blog posts a weekly challenge and then encourages others to play along with drawings at the end of each month. This month's challenges are all Title challenges. This week the challenge was to use the word "Celebrate" as the title. So I chose some photos of a visit to the Eisenhower Ranch. These were taken as part of a National Park Travelers Club Meetup that I sponsored in December 2016. The Eisenhower home was transformed to celebrate the holiday season. That particular weekend featured cocoa and cookies in the visitor center as well. More of that visit will be forthcoming I assure you.

The page I created was based on a sketch from my year-long class (so I cannot post the sketch). Suffice it to say that I had to turn it sideways to accommodate my photos. The background page is a Fast-to-Fabulous page from Creative Memories. All of the items come from an older line called "Season's Greetings". I like the vintage feel to the papers and knew it would work well with the home decor based on the 1960s lifestyle.

Big Trees

As hinted at previously, this part of the world is responsible for most of the world records for big trees. One of the biggest is the Quinault Big Cedar. It truly is massive and I'm not sure my photos gave a grand scale of how big it is. But I could stand up inside the opening at the base if I could get into it! The path up was a bit more rigorous than I had hoped for but it was well worth the effort. Truly my fear was falling on the way back down because it is a rather steep trail.

I continued my work with the CM Virtual crop. This is my take on Sketch #2. You'll notice I don't do all the sketches in order. I don't always have time to start the crop in the workweek so by the time I get to Saturday I have a build-up of sketches to choose from. I like that as I can match the photos to the sketch without "forcing" it too often. I used paper from the S'Mores pack--a newer pack from CM but one that I loved. I had only a partial 2nd page of the boot prints, so I filled in the gap on the left with one of the tall trees from the Eastern National Scrapbook kit. While I'm fairly sure that die cut is supposed to be redwood or sequoia, it gave a little authenticity to this layout. The CM tree border maker cartridge is an old one, but the perfect addition to the layout. The green helps break up the brown tones.

Two other "Big" trees to highlight are the large Sitka Spruce and the Big Leaf Maple. If you look on the right page you'll see that I tried to give a perspective of that maple leaf by photographing it next to my foot. These trees are plentiful in the area and my rental was awash in giant leaves.

Sketch #4 was the basis for this layout. This time I got to use the brand new Hello Autumn collection. The photo of the maple leaf really set off the design. I love the paper in this pack that is a jumble of autumn leaves. It's not quite textured paper that looks like another photograph but the colors are quite vibrant.