Second Time at First State

 My friend Robbie planned a meetup in October at the First State National Historical Park. I had just been there in April, but it's always great to get together with friends so I planned to join them. For this trip, it was just a tour of the New Castle Courthouse. A few others went on to Dickinson Plantation and even into Baltimore after the meetup but I went back to Lancaster.

I made this layout as part of the CM Virtual Crop in October 2021. I used this sketch. The paper is from 2 similar packs: Festive Fourth and Star-Spangled. Generally, they bring out a patriotic collection each summer. And they do one for Canada as well so everyone gets represented! I was able to modify the sketch to add more photos as well as include the unigrid at the top.

Our group gathered outside and once we were all together we were greeted by our docent and taken in for the tour. Nothing had changed about the tour in the 6 months since I'd been there but since I knew what was going to be presented I was ready for photos.

This layout was based on one of the Creative Life pajama party layouts. I messed up cutting my papers though. The left page should have the lighter triangle on the top left but somehow mine didn't work out that way. Regardless, the triangles across the bottom look symmetrical so not too distracting. I used a new product on this one--the journaling under the top photo is with a Chalking Pen that CM sent us in a mystery box. It was the same item I used on the Guilford Courthouse embellishments. It does not work as well for journaling because the tip is so thick.

The visit went well and we all gathered on the staircase for a group photo. I still had the club banners so I brought one with me for this particular photo. You can see there were about 15 of us. That can get crowded as you move through the small rooms but we managed. I didn't include the photos of our lunch but it is often the case that after a meetup, there is a gathering for lunch or dinner. We went down the street to a tavern with a historic feel to it. You should have seen the size of my meatloaf dinner!

This was another layout from the pajama party. You can see that we were encouraged to use the decorative trimmer--and both the wave and swell sides! I used up some older Cottage Palette papers. I added more embellishments to this layout than any of the others. I wanted to fill that bottom on the left so I picked a laser-cut border. A few other random tags and swirls helped fill the empty spaces.