The Golden Arches

It's the last post of 2021. I hope you all had a great year. I look forward to sharing more layouts with you in 2022! 

The next display was for Arches National Park. There were multiple arches made of stones, wood and flowers all lined up along the walkway. It's funny how an arch makes you change perspective. Do you look at the arch itself or do you look at what is revealed in the opening? Or both! I think you'll see that I took both perspectives in my photos.

This layout is based on a class I took. I used more of the paper from the Mystery Box as well as some red/orange cardstock. I had the title from a page of park names that someone gave me and it drove the rest of the colors on the page (though the display certainly matched that tone as well). You can see that the paper was cut and then folded back on itself to get the contrast in the 4 quadrants of the layout. That also means that you can tuck photos under the edges for a change. I added the arched border across the top to highlight the theme and then just a few stickers from my stash that were floral but in the same red/orange tone. 

Stop and Smell the Roses

Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I hope you have an enjoyable holiday season with friends and family. Thanks so much for adding me to your celebration! 

As I came to the end of my night at the Flower Show, the displays change from the over-the-top extravaganzas that I've been showing you, to smaller, compact, and sometimes even dainty displays. I loved this small set of flowers and a manikin from Weir Farm. The park is all about artistry and many people go there to paint landscapes. The artist who originally lived there had painted "Flora" and that photo was turned into a 3-D rendering through flowers.

This layout is based on a sketch from the February CM Virtual Crop. I used papers from the Full Bloom collection for the edges. This type of layout is a great way to use up scraps from any collection. The inner-most 3 squares are all one sheet of paper. By using the CM 12" trimmer, I can stop a cut before coming to the edge of the paper. I made several squares by trimming a block from the center of each consecutive cut. By flipping the middle square, I had a nice set of contrasting colors. The green and dot paper is not from Full Bloom, but from a "green" themed pack. CM offers those types of packs fairly often so they can coordinate with multiple other paper sets. It certainly helped pull Full Bloom into a full layout.

It's All There in Black and White

Lots of photos for you today! The next set of displays focused on a brilliant photographer named Ansel Adams. Known for his dramatic photos of landscapes using black and white photography, a group of designers used the black and white motif to present multiple national parks in this theme and even included large prints of Adams as backdrops. I am putting them all in this post as I think they should be seen together. 

The first park represented was one I would not think of seeing in black and white--Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Hawaii. The site is now a place of refuge but had originally been isolation for those with leprosy and other infectious diseases. It's now home to many rare plant species. The cascading flowers create a lot of movement in a still-life I think.

This layout was created for another challenge in the CM Virtual Crop in February 2021. I again turned to the mystery box papers. I thought blue was a good color to offset the black and white flowers. Two of the papers had ombre tones in them and I thought flipping the stripe ombre (dark top, light bottom) on the regular paper (light top, dark bottom) highlighted the cascades on the photos. I chose yellow stickers to accent the page as well. There are some ivory/yellow tones in some of the "white" photos--though that might be artifact from the lights in the space.

The next part of the display was the domed room of Carlsbad Caverns. I have visited this park but not been in the cave so I definitely need to go back someday. I do like going through caves, as long as there is ample room to walk. I'm not one of those who want to go on the cave tour where you have to shimmy through a box to prove you won't get stuck. Let's just admit that I'll get stuck and leave me on the regular path!

This layout is another sketch from the virtual crop. More importantly, it used a template that was included in the mystery box. Check out the blog post here to see the sketch and a photo of the template (you couldn't buy it, you could only get it in the mystery box). I will be the first to admit, I don't really like using templates. I've used them several times and I always seem to mess up the cuts and ruin the intended "symmetry". This one had a lot of straight angles so I figured I could use my trimmers to make the cuts, which helped a little. I chose papers from the O Canada pack. The darker background reminded me of stone and the yellow I chose just as an accent. The diamond-shaped pieces are from a scrap of stone paper I still had. I thought it would help fill in the page since I didn't have many photos of this section. I finished by using an icicle border maker cartridge to punch stalactites and stalagmites for the edges. That's probably the part of the layout I like best.

Next stop, the Grand Canyon! I've been here twice now and I can't say that I ever knew there were aspen groves! I focus so much on the canyon that I forget there are other things. Here they are collected and secured with flowers around the middles. 

This was one more of the challenges for the virtual crop. I changed the number of photos in the original sketch, which you can see here. I utilized paper from the Camouflage pack. The background paper is birch bark and I turned it so that there was some definition against the direction of the trees in the photo. I also used leafy paper in the middle to help the photos stand out. Two brown borders also helped define the photos. One is a leftover border and I liked that it had the hiking boots printed on it. I chose the CM Stamping set to create the title. I thought that the uneven covering of ink on the letters also represented the tree bark.

OK, we come to the last layout in the Ansel Adams collection. This one is King's Canyon--another site I've not been to. Though I found out recently that my grandparents did! I have their photo album from the 1960s when they went on several cross-country trips and my grandmother labeled many of the sites so I know where they are. Now I can recreate their photo when I visit!

One more sketch from the virtual crop (check it out here). I returned to the mystery box papers and to the use of blue to offset the black and white flowers. For one of the circular elements, I chose to create a journal box by using the custom cutting system on a piece of ruled paper. I accented with some stickers (top and bottom) from a couple of older, non-related CM packs. But I thought the colors and tones matched the layout. My favorite piece of this layout is the border at the top and bottom. I used a new border maker cartridge called "Mirrored Triangles". In addition to punching a set in white, I punched a set in black and used that to edge the white against the striped paper. It gives a great shadow effect. The title was one of our laser-cut titles. I love those packs. So much easier than splicing letters together!

It's BOTH

One of the more unusual designations in the National Park Service is for the Redwood Forest. It is both a National and a State park! I don't know how they separate out the duties and the funds but I'll have to explore that when I get a chance to visit the real trees. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the beautiful display from the Flower Show. We see more poetic license here, in more ways than one! First, the "Chandelier Tree" doesn't have a chandelier in it--it was named for the way the branches flow, resembling a chandelier. Second--the Chandelier tree is NOT part of the NPS unit. It's a privately owned area that charges for the privilege of driving through the tree. The National Park site has no entrance fees. Of course, there are no drive-thru trees in the park either--not since 1969. You have to admit though--the team did an EXCELLENT job on this display!

For this layout, I was participating in the February Virtual Crop with Creative Memories. You can see a copy of the sketch here. This month was one of the "Mystery Boxes" that CM has a few times a year. We buy the box and leave it sealed until the first sketch is released and we join in a virtual unboxing together. It's a lot of fun! Then we're encouraged to use that material for our layouts for the crop if it works with our photos (but it's not mandatory). It did work for my photos. The orange and green combinations highlighted the earthy tones of the photos. The one non-Creative Memories element is the large tree on the left. That's from the Eastern National Scrapbook kit. There's really no better embellishment for this display!

Not so Tiny

Last week we looked at a tiny home. This week we move to the Redwoods of Muir Woods--definitely not tiny! You can see the structure from across the entire convention center floor. It's an odd structure but is meant to represent the rings of the large trees. You can walk under it to look at it through the center (bottom photos).

This layout is based on a class sketch. I have to admit, it is not necessarily one of my favorite layouts, but it is done. I used more of the Woodland Whimsy pack for the background and the large circle. I chose a different pack for the contrasting stripe across the middle and that's the piece that I probably should have changed. The background was chosen because it matched the smaller hanging elements. The stripe was for the surrounding trees. But I think it skews a little more tropical than it should. Still, it's done!