A Poet's House

My next stop in Dayton is the Dunbar House. This house is run by the NPS but has nothing to do with the Wright Brothers or aviation (well, he did go to school with Orville and Wilbur but that's as close as it comes). He is known as one of the first African-American poets and is highly regarded for his ability to understand the lived experience of African-Americans and express them in prose. The tour starts in the visitor center but quickly traverses the distance to the house next door. One of the most striking features of the house is the use of wallpaper EVERYWHERE--even on the ceilings. 

This layout is based on a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. I taught the class where we put a bunch of these together. Let me know if you want to join us for the next one! The background is just Spargo CM pages. The paper is a sheet from the Literary Romance pack--appropriate since he's a poet, right? I thought the floral side matched the wallpaper of the parlor and the wood side gave it an "anchor" for the pages. The stickers are from a pack I bought years ago at a Current outlet center. Not sure Current even sells scrapbook items any longer but these definitely worked with the era of this house.

The tour continued into the dining room. We could peek into the pantry from the dining room but we got a better view from the kitchen. There are areas where you cannot walk so that they can preserve the original floors so getting the right angles is tricky. Notice there is more wallpaper here!

This layout is based on a sketch I saved to Pinterest. I wanted to use up scraps from my Earthy papers (and yet there are still MORE in the package!) All of those are 1" x 11" strips and then the ends are covered with a punched border. I think the black paper really sets off the edges. It also sort of matches one of the wallpapers in the photos! I did use a few embellishments from the Earthy line to finish up the page.