Does Mother Nature Check the Calendar?

My next stop was at a State Park office which is close to the official sign for the new park. I could NOT believe it. When I arrived it had started SNOWING. in APRIL! And while not a blizzard, it was heavy enough to lay on the ground and make things a bit slippery. 

So when I pulled out my winter papers, I found the mat card that said "No Winter Lasts Forever" and I used that as my jumping-off point for the layout. I chose a sketch from my year-long class with a very simple arrangement--a central square of decorative paper and a contrasting stripe at the 1/3rd mark across the page. I was using CM's "Winds of Winter" pack from a couple of years ago. A few swirly stickers to enhance the feeling of wind-whipped snow completed the page.

When I went inside the park office, I found that they had a viewing area in the back and had lots of bird feeders set up. With the snow, birds were taking advantage of the buffet and I sat for about an hour taking in their movements. There were also books and charts to help identify the birds. Most are goldfinches and their bright yellow was a nice contrast to the snowy background.

For the left side of this layout, I used sketch #1 from the CM April 2021 virtual crop. The instructions included making a "custom" peekaboo pocket--less than the 6" wide pocket you can buy. The technique is shown in the video on the link above. It was fairly simple and I was able to follow the directions, though I'm not sure how often I will use that technique. But it allowed me to add a LOT of photos of the birds. Plus the photos were 4x6 but the birds typically took up just a fraction of the photo so I could also crop them into circles for the edges. You can see the inside of the pocket below. I used the newer collection called "Winter Woods" from Creative Memories. I loved the snowy trees--so perfect for that day! The embellishments included some birds on branches so again --PERFECT FIT!

For the right hand side of the layout (the 2nd photo, not the one above here), I used sketch #6 from the April Virtual Crop. It created a nice balanced 2-page layout. Such a large amount of "real estate" meant that I could add more mats and other embellishments to my page, so it's pretty well decorated.