Lotus Blooming Everywhere

Welcome back to my 2021 NPTC convention tour. This continues the Friday bus trip that we started in the last blog post. Our first stop on the bus trip was Kenilworth Gardens. Visiting Parks in DC is sometimes complicated. Most people think that each place they visit is a "unit". Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens is part of the Anacostia Park section of DC. But even that isn't a unit. They belong to National Capital Parks--East. And no, there is no corresponding north, south, or west designation. That is just the management office. The official unit here is simply "National Capital Parks."

I was happy to visit here as I don't often visit DC in the spring or summer, and this is when the park truly shines. After getting off the bus, we all lined up for stamps (of course). I noticed that there was an abundance of Lotus-themed items everywhere, including the bike stand you see below. Turns out Melania has a lotus tattoo as well! The only thing we missed in this visit was the visitor center, so I'll have to go back at some point and watch the movie there.

This layout was based on one of the Power Hours from Meggan and Tessa (April 2024). The paper is from Old CM — one of the pastel Spring addition packs. They have some pre-printed borders and were the precursor to the Fast to Fabulous pages, I think. I cut up the elements (stripes, blue floral, and green floral) and layered them as per the instructions. There is a lotus blossom laser-cut border in the new Serenity line, and so I moved that over to this layout. It turns out that tulip stickers also somewhat resemble the lotus blossom, and those three stickers were a great way to fill the gap after my journaling.

The People on the Bus

This post takes a look at my next adventure at the 2021 NPTC Convention. On Friday, my friend Melania joined me on one of the buses as we made a LONG tour of several park sites. There were three buses — two regular-sized and one Sprinter-sized. We wisely decided to go in the smaller van, where we had very comfortable seats. Melania had missed our Belmont Paul photo the day before, but she brought her suffragist doll with her on our excursions.

For this page, I used a sketch I had saved from CM's November 2022 Virtual Crop. The yellow vehicles could be buses or just traffic, so I used that as the background (not a CM paper, it's from a tablet in my stash that is all travel-theme papers). As I sorted through my travel stash, I came across some remnants of paper and stickers from the Gallivant collection (circa 2017 CM). The colors matched Melania's shirt, which is a good way to maintain continuity throughout the page. The bottom border is a strip of pink paper from that pack as well. The thin strip of map paper had just enough to be able to see "Washington," so I wanted that included (though I'm not entirely sure it's supposed to be Washington, DC on the map). The sticker borders around the map paper are from the Staycation pack. It looks like an unfolded paper map to me, and all the colors blend nicely.

Welcome-Bienvenido-Benvenuto-Aloha

Technically, THIS is the start of the 2021 NPTC Convention. Everything else I did in the last few posts (Eisenhower, Clara Barton, the Navy Memorial) was all a prelude to the main event. The reception was new this year and provided an opportunity for new members and first-time attendees to meet fellow club members. There were light refreshments, and we were able to pick up our bags with materials for the next few days (such as bus passes, a copy of the Stamp Pad newsletter, and some promotional materials for DC). 

This layout was made for the CM Virtual Crop in June 2025. Scroll to Challenge #1. This sketch was the perfect opportunity to highlight one of the papers from the Washington DC Scenes pack by Creative Memories. When I trimmed the paper to 11", I cut from the top and left sides to ensure the detail was intact. I also chose to NOT turn that lower right corner. It may have worked either way, but I like it better with the image intact. The top 2" is the reverse side of the paper and became the perfect place for a title. Those are the die-cut letters CM introduced a little while ago. These are in white and match the Red, White, and Blue theme perfectly. I found those 2 small star cluster stickers and thought they would accent the turned corners nicely as well.

Below are a few extra photos of my friends and me enjoying the reception.

You have to love Peekaboo pockets! It allowed me to add six photos to this one-page layout! That's an effective use of space!

Suffering Suffrage Cats!

We continue the NPTC 2021 convention in Washington, DC. After leaving the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office, I met up with several of my friends outside the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument sign. The building was closed for renovation, so we weren't able to go inside. But we came prepared with our Suffrage Cats. 

This lovely little stuffed animal was created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Although detractors attempted to use cats to portray women's passivity and discourage them from petitioning for the right to vote in the early 1900s, the women turned it around and made the cat their mascot. All of us had either received them as gifts or bought them outright for ourselves, and we wanted to show them off, so I arranged this photo. I sent a copy to Belmont-Paul to say, Sorry we missed you. They LOVED it! They posted it on their Facebook page, and, from what I gather, also sold a lot more cats!

I originally planned for this layout to just feature the 5x7 photo of our group. However, the Facebook memory appeared before I created this, and so I ended up downloading and printing a copy of the Facebook post that included the photo. The style is based on one of the CM Virtual Crop sketches from June 2025 (Scroll to Layout #2). The 8" square in the middle became the perfect mat for the printed post. I used some scraps of a theme pack called "Cattitude" for the top and bottom triangles. I didn't have anything in a vertical layout, so I had to root through my stash to find a matching tone. The yellow of the rough plaid does match the tiny paw prints on the first set of triangles. The purple was perfect, and because purple and gold are part of the suffragists' colors, it was serendipitous. 

The cat-themed stickers were also from the Cattitude pack. The top left and bottom right corners featured some random stickers from the Washington, D.C. stash, and they complemented the theme well. I like that the corners were 2" empty squares. While many people who put this layout together used printed paper there, I was able to fill the corners with stickers. It reminds me of the technique where you punch the border maker cartridges in all but the first and last notches of the guide. Something like this layout. That one used a "knock-out" style punch, but you can do it with any type of cartridge.

Little Things Make a Big Difference

You will recall that I've been featuring my visit to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office location. My final pages provide a closer examination of the preserved items. The most important artifact is the photo in the left-most circle. That's the infamous letter that made its way through the layers and "tapped" the workman on the shoulder. Other relics include everyday items such as salt, brushes, stationery, and the original gas lamp tubes. The socks (middle photo on the left) were collected to be given to soldiers when they were being repatriated from the prisoner-of-war camps. Clara and other ladies who assisted her would collect, clean, and darn them so that they were serviceable again. 

This layout was made for the CM Virtual Crop in June 2025. I opened my new package of Legacy of Love papers and embellishments as I knew the tone would match the historic accent of the photos (everything seems to be brown in historic context, doesn't it?) You can get a look at the sketch here: Sketch #4. The left and right edges use a ledger-like paper. I wanted to use that as a long journal box on the left side. The next set of strips is a combination of pieces punched with a border maker cartridge and 1/2" strips of paper. The scalloped edge is a laser-cut border from the embellishment pack. A few other stickers were used to create clusters around the page, and it was done. 

Missing in Action

We are continuing to review the layouts for the 2021 Washington, DC convention. My next stop on my travels was a visit to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers office. In 1865, Clara was appointed by the government to coordinate the efforts of locating prisoners of war, recovering wounded, identifying the dead, and matching them with the families who were searching. For over three years, she occupied rooms on the third floor of this building, using them as a storeroom, office, and lodging. After she left this location, most of her supplies were still stored here. Nothing was moved through the early 1900s. In 1911, the building's owners were worried about mandated updates due to safety concerns (if you haven't read about the Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, I encourage you to learn more about it). Their solution was to board over the entire set of stairs and rooms on the third floor. For 85 years, no one knew there was anything more than the first and second floors. In the 1990s, the building was slated for demolition. One of the workers felt a "tap" on his shoulder and when he turned around, an envelope was poking from the ceiling. This led to an exploration and the rediscovery of these rooms. Deterioration had occurred, so they spent several years restoring the space to its original appearance as it was when Clara Barton used it. It is now a museum, and definitely worth a visit!

This layout is one of the Paper Loft layouts I made at a class in Lancaster. The large, folder-shaped mat was initially intended to serve as the base for a mini album. I don't usually need that, so I used the base as a mat (there's a peek-a-boo pocket on top, so it could be a mini album). I added the wood-toned journal box and then used a similar paper to mat the vertical photos on the right. The title area is one of the Civil War trading cards. I mounted it with photo corners so I can look at both sides.

Here's a look at the upstairs rooms. They arranged the furniture much as Barton would have used it in the late 1800s.

This layout should look familiar. I posted it as a bonus post on June 14th. You can read about the layout creation here.

Water Water Everywhere

Today, we continue with my NPTC Convention Trip to Washington, DC, in 2021. The stamps for the Navy Memorial that you saw in the last blog post are inside the Navy Memorial Visitor Center. They have a small museum downstairs. I initially thought the statue represented the iconic image from Life Magazine of a World War II sailor returning home and kissing a nurse. It's not far from that, but it has a more family-friendly feel to it when seen from the correct angle. There were also a few displays of diving gear and life on some of the naval vessels.

I started creating this layout by reviewing this pin from Split Coast Stampers. If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you're likely familiar with my frequent use of sketches by Cheryl Even. I discovered that she had initially created sketches for the Split Coast Stampers group. That's a message board where scrapbookers challenge each other and display their work. I scrolled through their gallery and found all of Cheryl's early sketches, pinning them for future use. As I considered which papers to use, I realized I wanted a nautical feel, so I pulled a recent bonus pack from CM called "Boat Life." It's just 6 pieces of paper, a few mats, and some embellishments. The stormy seas background was exactly what I wanted for these photos. The paper came with the borders printed at the top. All I had to do was mat the pictures and the title card and add a little journaling.

In the Navy Memorial

Happy Independence Day, everyone! How appropriate that we are using patriotic-themed papers and photos in today's blog! This entry continues our exploration of Washington, DC for the NPTC 2021 convention. 

After leaving the National Archives, I walked back to Pennsylvania Avenue. One of the stamp locations is connected to the US Navy Memorial at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street. There is a large circle in the middle. It's tough to tell from the ground, but an aerial view would show an image of the globe. Around that circle is a bas-relief sculpture depicting historic moments in the US Navy from the Revolutionary War to the present day. There is also a Lone Seaman statue. There are several of these around the world, and I've now seen 2 of them (one in Normandy). If you've seen any, let me know in the comments below!

This layout was one of my 1-2-3-4 Pack Classes. I cannot show you the sketch, but the overall technique created the 2 banners at the bottom of the page and the 1" borders across their middles. After layering in the photos, I realized that I had some large chunks of blue at the top and bottom. I also had a scrap of paper with the 2 borders diagonally printed across the page. I cut them and rearranged them to be horizontal, layering the pieces where the pattern overlapped. (Another solution to that problem would be to use those 1" borders across the top for some extra interest.) Those gold and white borders were the best additions, though. Since the borders had some gold tones, I could add the gold anchor sticker (a recent addition to my stash from a goodie bag exchange on my latest cruise). The paper for the banners was from a CM pack specifically themed for Washington, DC trips. I love it when their paper matches my trip so perfectly! 

No Relation

We are continuing with my exploration of Washington, DC, during the 2021 convention for the National Park Travelers Club. On Thursday morning, I had scheduled a tour of the National Archives. I was awake far earlier than I needed to be, so I leisurely made my way down to the building. Along the way, I came to this statue of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock. To the best of my knowledge, he is not related to either Winfield Scott or John Hancock. At the time, I was not sure what he was known for or why there was a statue of him. My investigation later revealed an impressive resume, including a notable distinction at the Gettysburg battlefield. If you want to read more about him, start with this page from the National Park Service.

I based this layout on a Creative Memories Blog Post. I noticed that Meggan Jacks had created a video of her version of this layout, so I decided to play along. Well,  I started a bit before turning on her video. Trust me, you want to watch her video before tackling this layout. She has some great tips on avoiding my mistakes. (If you can't see them, I'm not going to point them out.) 😀 I used papers from the Bedazzled Geometrics pack. There are no embellishments for that paper, so I pulled some mats from my stash and then opened the Rainbow Binder to look for blue-ish embellishments. I thought the laser-cut remnants of the stars worked well once I covered some of the uneven edges with the title words.