It's Been Two Years Without a Philadelphia Post!

It's odd--the closer I live to Philadelphia, the less I go there! At least to the National Park area. However, I decided to attend the Independence Day Parade there in 2019 and spent the day exploring old and new elements of the city. 

Because this day produced so many photos, I'm designing an entire event album. I wanted to do a kick-off page and chose a laser-cut 12" square that had been a promotional item from Creative Memories. I layered scraps of patriotic paper on the back to highlight the stars and then added a 4x6 mat from one of the kits. The numbers are red ABC-123 stickers.

I started my day at the visitor center because that's where the stamps are! Because it was a special day, many reenactors walked around, played instruments, and made colonial-era items like shawls or doilies. But the most impressive display was that GIANT table of cupcakes! The bakery was still decorating but I could see how the final project would be impressive!

This layout, and many more from this album are from a formula Creative Memories and Noreen Smith developed. It was one of the summer 2023 classes and you can review the video recording here. I made the pages from various patriotic packs I had on hand and some border punches. During the summer of 2023, I only had these 2 pages completed. Recently, I added a few more embellishments and a journal box before declaring it "done". I rarely complete an entire album of pages before working on an album but I enjoyed having them done as I returned to working on it this spring. While I may never do the entire formula to create an album again, I have turned to the formula to get ideas for a layout and then referred to the directions for the dimensions to cut the pieces. Let me know in the comments if you would complete an album through the formula method.