Bonus Post--What Lies Beneath

Hello and welcome to another bonus post as I play along with Lasting Memories Challenges. I'm using this month's sketch challenge to finish off some pages of a visit to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in 2018. You'll see more of this visit soon. In the meantime, here are the photos. 

I wanted to make this as surprising for my reader as it was for me, so I put the outside of the lovely little shed first. Underneath, you can see that I walked into a dirty, dusty tool shed!

Here is a photo of the sketch they posted.

I chose Paper Loft papers for this sketch. I had a remnant with a large striped pattern at the bottom reminiscent of the pattern in the sketch so that saved a bit of time putting it all together. I added just a hint of red since there is red in the shed's roof and trim. Mostly I stuck to the greens and browns. Another scrap I had included those medallions. I used a circle punch to make individual elements and sprinkled them across the page. The title is also from Paper Loft's quote pages.

Here you can see the lifted flap. I do love using Peekaboo Pockets from Creative Memories.

Outside Mill City

 These photos are from the top viewing platform of the Mill City museum. Again, you can see the scorch marks from previous fires and the remnants of the original building walls. Nearby is the St. Anthony's Lock and Dam. I took photos from here but it's closed in the winter (April is still winter--see previous posts) so I didn't bother going to the visitor center.

This layout was made for the CM virtual Crop in June 2023. Look at this page and scroll to layout #4. I liked this layout because the wavy papers in the middle reminded me of the river. that's why I chose a peach color for the edges and blue in the middle (look closely, that blue paper ALSO has a wavy pattern running through it! I added a few stickers from the Travel Log collection and a couple from a very OLD CM travel pack. I used up a couple of photo corners as well to highlight a few photos (2 corners each).

Inside Mill City

My next visit in Minneapolis was to the Mill City Museum. This location hosts a Mississippi NRRA stamp as it backs up to St. Anthony Lock and Dam. For a long time, this area had been THE center for flour milling in the US, partly because of the massive water power coming off the river. For that reason, I'm including a tour of the inside of the building. There is an interesting movie about the area which feels sort of like you are in an elevator and you move floor to floor. In reality, I think the dioramas and movie screens move up and down. On the main floor are some excellent exhibits about flour from harvesting to processing to baking. Love the giant box of Bisquick!

This layout is based on a CM Virtual Crop from October 2021. I used a paper pack called Baked with Love which was free to my customers if they spent $250 with me. CM now includes some sort of embellishment--either tags, stickers or die-cuts--with the free packs. They change each quarter. I made this while away at my weekend crop and it was a good thing I had these on hand as I had forgotten to bring my folder of food scrapbook items. 

This is part of the exhibit focused on the milling process. You can see one of the grinding heads on the right page as well as grain elevators. 

This layout is somewhat based on the May 2023 CM Virtual Crop sketch #4. This month CM focused on Fast-to-Fabulous pages so all 4 sketches were double-page layouts. Again, I was at the crop house so I needed to use what I brought and the best choice turned out to be papers from 2 different kits. On the left, I had previously cut a circle from the Picture Perfect travel kit (a special kit from a few years ago). I backed that with some paper scraps. On the right is a SUPER old CM page from when they first introduced the concept of pre-printed layouts. However, there was a strip of foreign clocks. So turning to the sketch, I Covered those and any gaps on the far left with 2 strips of coordinating paper (also scraps). I did twist a photo as suggested in the sketch on the left. I replaced 2 photos with larger embellishments on the right (camera die-cut and an arrow tag). Using the title die-cut completed my paper pack! Feels so good to use up stock!

The most interesting part of the tour was finding out that one problem with milling flour is that it is flammable! And there were many fires over the years. One in particular burned not only its own mill but 3 or 4 nearby ones. You can still see the scorch marks on the walls!

This is a layout I made for a class I took and I cannot show you the sketch. The left side was to be a flower so I tried to take the technique and make it look like the explosion described above (and on the layout). The small "v" looking bits are remnants of a punch (punch poop as some say) and I was trying to make it look like flour was flying through the air. I had some paper from the fireman kit so I was able to introduce flames and the fireman's helmet and badge. It's not my best work but I think it is effective in telling the story.

Let's Just Go To The Lobby

Another stamping stop is the Mississippi River Visitor Center which is inside a museum in Minneapolis. Luckily you do not need to buy admission to the museum to get to the visitor center. It's a small space with a little bit of information about the river. There is a cool green screen to create a postcard image of yourself at the visitor center where you can choose the background. Given the snow of this week, I chose the winter photo. Outside the museum you can see a bit of the river but there are more interesting views to come!

This layout is based on the August 2022 Power Hour layout from Meggan and Tessa. I used the Ice Blue tonal pack from Creative Memories. They issue a new Tonal collection each quarter and they are quite handy for completing pages that don't necessarily have an obvious theme. The pack had a print that reminded me of a river and the river border punch helped carry that theme across the pages. The matching stickers for the tonal collections are somewhat generic but I was able to find several word stickers that matched the layout. I used one photo spot for a journaling box pulled from a winter collection with the same tones. The other benefit of the tonal collection is that it matches our design papers so you can extend the use of those kits!

Oh the Things I Will do for a Stamp--Part 3

My next trip was in April 2018 to the HPN conference in Minnesota. After I was done with the conference I stayed and saw a little of Minneapolis. My first stop was Fort Snelling but just for a stamp. I drove up the river to Coldwater Spring. I did not walk out to the spring house as it was a cold day (if you see the full album you'll know that even in April it can snow in Minnesota!) I was quite interested to see the stamp that is accessed from behind the sign and only by entering the secret code! (found on the NPTC database of course). It took me a while to find the appropriate sign but I did, and I entered the code and got the stamp! I didn't have ink (if you try this you really should bring your own) so I used some snow to wet the bottom of the stamper and got enough residual ink to stamp my book!

I based this layout on a pinned sketch. I used more papers from the Outdoor packs but while I like this overall, there are a few changes I would make. First, the title at the bottom right should have been trimmed from both the top and bottom so it didn't look like it was falling off the page. Next, I would have done a little something else with the border that runs through the middle. It's mostly covered up. I probably could have made it go OVER the photo on the bottom left. I do like that I cut a ring from white cardstock to highlight where the lock box is on the photo--a great way to draw the eye. And I like my use of a few random stickers and embellishments from Gallivant (a collection that is almost used up).