Lasting Memories Guest Designer week 1 (Night tour golf carts)

Hello everyone! I'm guest designing for Lasting Memories throughout September! I'll be sharing an extra layout every Sunday at noon for the next 4 weeks. Each one follows the weekly challenge posted at Lasting Memories, and I encourage you to join the challenge! Post your version using the link at the bottom of their post.

For today's post, we are going to jump ahead in the 2021 NPTC convention. On my last night (Monday evening), I took part in a Night-time Monuments tour. We were escorted around via these extended golf carts. I'm glad I didn't have to sit backwards on the end, otherwise the carts were GREAT! They could take us right onto the monument areas, which saved us some steps and time. I highly recommend this tour if you head to DC.

Each week, Lasting Memories challenges us to incorporate a specific design on our papers. This week, the theme is Polka Dot paper. The challenge I had was FINDING polka dot paper! I finally located the yellow with white dots in my Birthday stash. The rest of the papers and embellishments come from the CM Imagine and Magic Awaits packs. I knew that the colors in those packs would match the carts perfectly. For the design, I turned to Cheryl Even's sketch #12. You'll see that it originally was a single-page sketch. I just took the sketch and mirrored it to create the double-page layout.

Sounds of Freedom

As I promised in the last post, here is the Fort Washington Cannon Firing event. I always enjoy seeing these, and by now, I understand the various steps. You can see from my photos how far away the reenactors were from the crowd. These photos were taken with Zoom to allow me to see more details. You can also see in the top horizontal photo that there is a small box well behind the cannon. This is where the ordinance is kept, and there is quite a production of someone being told to fetch it, taking it out of the box and putting it in a satchel, and then walking the few feet to the cannon, where it is removed from the satchel and fired. The boom is always a loud shock for me, even though I know it's coming.

For this layout, I wanted to utilize the black shadow border and die cut I bought for Civil War pages. The border includes horses pulling the cannon, and the die cut is the rammer. Again, brick paper would work against the photos, but a dark red paper (I think this is called cinnamon, and it's the last 2 pages I have of this color) gives the impression of brick without the distracting detail. To add a little military flavor, I chose the old CM border maker cartridge, Chevrons. I punched them in navy blue cardstock and then placed a bronze shimmer piece behind it to make the sergeant stripes. A few items from the stash provided the titles. I used the new ivory write strips for journaling to make it easier to see on the page.

Up Against a Wall

This post continues our discussion of Fort Washington during the 2021 NPTC convention. The tour included lunch and a cannon firing demonstration. You'll see the cannon next time. We grabbed our box lunches when they arrived and tried to find a bit of shade to eat. There were no picnic tables within the fort grounds, so we formed a line along one of the walls that offered some shade. This is another location with a LOT of stamps, so they put tables out in front of the commander's house for us to do our thing. That's the bottom right photo. 

This sketch is based on a sketch that CM provided to advisors. When we offered more Theme packs (which consisted of a couple of printed papers, a sheet of cardstock, and a sheet of stickers), they wanted to share ideas on how to use them to create pages. You can view the sketch here, and if you click "visit site," you should be able to download a copy if you haven't seen it already. I used the Bedazzled collection for these pages, along with some brighter, more patriotic papers. One sheet of paper is split across the bottom of the page. Another paper is cut at 5" and 1" twice and then layered on top (using both sides of the paper). The border across the middle is a brick border punch, and it picks up the walls in the photos perfectly. I had actually toyed with brick paper as the background, but honestly, the images were getting lost. The sketch shows some 3x4 pictures at the bottom left and right. I chose to make a couple of banners for each side as decoration. 

A New Slant to the Fort

Today, we continue the 2021 NPTC convention in DC. The next stop on the Friday bus trip was to Fort Washington. Two of the park's more interesting features have little to do with the military fort. In the layout below, you will see the Eastern Cedar tree that is growing at a slant. It makes you look twice to decide which of you is on more solid footing! Another reason to stop at this fort is to visit the Fort Washington Lighthouse. I've featured that before, when I participated in the Maryland Lighthouse Challenge. The planned bus stop didn't allow me enough time to walk down and see it up close again, but I could see it from the fort walls.

To make this layout, I chose to use a sketch from Cheryl Even's work with Split Coast Stampers. I wanted to use this as a kick-off page, as I knew the remaining photos would all take 2 pages for the story. I used Sweet Blossom for this page. You may not notice it right away, but the papers are all 11.5" long. That creates a 1/4" border around the layout. The background is beige cardstock, so it's a subtle difference, but I like that it isn't too garish. I needed to trim the 4x6 journal box to fit the space, so I ended up cutting one of the corners; however, it didn't impact my ability to journal.

Please Stamp Politely

Today's post is the last entry for the Frederick Douglass stop on the NPTC bus trip. This is more about the club and our members instead of the site, though. Stamping is an obsession with some of our club members. We like to find and stamp all the variations of a stamp (all caps? mixed upper and lower letters? with a period after D.C., without a period after DC? Those little details are important to us). Frederick Douglass has always been a site with a considerable supply of stamps (as of this posting, there were 18 different stamps available in the visitor center). With over 100 stampers converging on the site, they wisely moved all the stamps to the front yard where we could form a line and get our images. I wish I could say that it was orderly. As I was trying to get stamps (and trying to logically keep them all separate from what I had and hadn't used yet), people in the line behind me were reaching over me and moving the stamps about as if I were not even there! I know I'm not the only person who has experienced that, and it saddens me to see that sort of behavior. If you are a club member, I urge you to act politely and responsibly when visiting our 433 (current) units. The staff will appreciate it, and so will your fellow club members.

This layout was supposed to be another bonus post, but I goofed up on the directions. The June challenges at Lasting Memories focused on using a series of specific paper sizes when creating a layout. For challenge #755, it was three 5" squares, three 1.5x5" strips, and three 2" circles. I noticed that one of the designers had used three squares and three strips to create a block in the middle of the page. I started there but moved the pieces around a bit more and used the strips as borders. I filled the top and bottom of the page with borders (a set of 3 star banners in red, white, and blue for the top and half of a boot border punch for the bottom). The papers for the 3 squares came from a 6x6 paper pad in my Patriotic collection. I struggle with those pre-cut sizes, but I was happy to be able to use them in this manner. I added my journaling to the page and photographed it as DONE. And when I went to post my link, I realized--I forgot the circles! So I  couldn't post the layout to the challenge, and I wasn't interested in going back and trying to figure out where to add the circles. So the most we can say about it is it was INSPIRED by the challenge. It's still one more page done in the album!

Porch Talks

Today's blog continues our look at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. This is our 2nd stop on the NPTC Friday bus tour in 2021. Although we were divided into two groups for two separate ranger talks, in reality, everyone gathered in front of the porch as the rangers tag-teamed one talk for us. Both were excellent speakers. The one in the photo on the right had also been a speaker at our virtual convention in 2020 (and you'll see him again in another blog entry). 

For this layout, I used the Project Recipe for Passport to Adventure, featuring Passport to Adventure papers. (A rarity, I know!) The background cardstock is Canary, and I made my cuts using the green arrow paper (this time because it matches the rangers' outfits) and the street map paper (which looks like a blueprint). Both of those were scraps from other projects, so I used navy cardstock to create the mats. I punched out the circles from a remnant of gold paper and added some circle stickers, as well as another passport stamp design from one of the photo mats.

Looking Down on DC

Welcome back to the 2021 NPTC Convention. The next stop on our bus trip was the Frederic Douglass House. I've been here once before, but it was nice to revisit. On this trip, we did not go through the house, so I'm glad I had that experience previously. Frederick Douglass purposefully built his house up on the hill so that he could literally "look down" on Washington, DC. He was not a fan of politics as he struggled to fight for civil rights for all. The room on the bottom of the right page was his "Growlery," and I imagine he spent a lot of time there grumbling about politicians.

If part of this layout looks familiar, it's because the right page was a bonus post for a Lasting Memories Challenge. The rules of the challenge said that a double-page layout would have to incorporate at least 2 of the exact paper sizes from the challenge. I didn't need to do that, so I omitted the left side from my entry. I like the unigrid from here because of the full-page photo of Douglass. It complements the heritage papers I selected nicely. The strip along the left is a laser-cut border that I back-filled with the gold and red papers you see on the right-hand page.

Feathered Friends

Today's blog will finish up my visit to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. But don't worry, there's more to the 2021 NPTC Convention yet to come!

In addition to the lovely flowers in the park, there are opportunities to see wildlife that you wouldn't expect in a city like Washington, D.C. The ducks might not be exotic, but I was surprised to see the great white egrets hunting for fish. We also saw blue herons, but I didn't capture them on film. 

For this layout, I used the Flourish Project Recipe from Creative Memories. I continued using the Sweet Blossoms fast-to-fabulous papers, and this time turned the borders to the bottom. If you look at the original recipe, you will see that I flipped the pages as I wanted the circular photos on the right. I didn't think about it when I created the page, but it's like looking at them through a telescope! Since I had more photos on the other page than the recipe called for, I didn't need to fill the top of the page with more than a small title sticker. But on the right, I wanted a bit more at the top. The Love border is on the back of one of the mat papers, and I trimmed that with the border at the top and bottom for a bit of definition.

Wild Flowers

In today's post, we continue our exploration of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens at the 2021 NPTC Convention. In addition to the numerous lotus plants, there is a rich assortment of hibiscus and other plants. (And look at the size of that leaf! It's as large as my head!) The brown "thing" is a dried lotus pod, so I suppose that should have been included in the previous layout.

I created this layout based on the CM Project Recipe, 'Bottanical Burst'. I used two sheets of Sweet Blossom paper, which is in the Fast-to-Fabulous style (meaning the borders are pre-printed). I turned the borders to the middle of both pages, so I got a bonus change of color there. I used a piece of white cardstock to create the circle, cut it in half, and layered a tonal paper between the edge of the border and the circle. I punched a leaf border from that same tonal paper and made minor cuts so that it would flow around the circle. It took 3 strips of border to complete the page. The title and sticker flowers were from the same kit, and I finished the page quickly.

Pretty in Pink

Welcome back to Kenilworth Gardens! Our NPTC 2021 Convention Bus trip left us off here for about an hour and a half, and my friend Melania and I did a lot of walking. In this layout, you'll see the lotus blossoms for which the park is best known. There are a series of pools, and each one is bursting with color. I tried to capture a few of the best blooms for posterity.

This layout is another that I created for the Creative Memories Virtual Crop in June 2025. Scroll to Layout #3. The advisor who created this sketch provided an introductory video to talk about how she made her cuts. I followed her advice closely and chose the Jazzberry and Lime Tart papers from the Vivid Melodies collection. (There is a bit of this left if you want to check the store.) Those 2 colors best matched the blooms in my photos. The vertical photo mats were created by punching one of the sheets with an older border punch featuring tulips (as I mentioned in the last blog — tulips somewhat resemble lotus blossoms). Even if they didn't, a floral punch of any shape would work well here. I trimmed the photos to the correct dimensions and layered them according to the sketch. I knew that with a sketch featuring smaller photo sizes, my florals would be perfect. I tend to center them but leave a LOT of landscape, which eventually gets cut away. There are a few additional photos in a sleeve made for the Happy Album. It provides room for 4 horizontal pictures and a bit of journaling in the middle (that's why you don't see journaling on this layout). A few bits of greenery embellishments completed the page.