50-states Album Part 31: Wisconsin

I've only been to Wisconsin once. In the summer of 2012 I drove from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin for a National Park Traveler's convention. It took me 2 days to drive out because I stopped at several other locations along the way. On the return trip I stopped at the Osh Kosh air show--one of the largest in the country. Even that was not enough to get my husband to travel with me to Wisconsin!

I never really had an inspirational layout for this page. I started with a die-cut image of a mouse wearing a Packer's cheesehead. But as I looked through my stash, I found that I had this piece of Wisconsin themed paper and that's all I needed! Truly the easiest of the 50 pages to put together. (Not that I didn't have similar pages for other states, I just resisted using them--Wisconsin was the hardest to locate a themed page to copy.) Other than the photos, all I contributed to the page was the diecut of the state in Packer Yellow and a couple of Packer stickers (also leftover from scrapping this trip).

Raspberry Island Lighthouse

After grabbing some lunch, I boarded another boat for a trip with the club, this time to Raspberry Island. The island is still used as a place for a lighthouse, but the maintenance is MUCH less than when lighthouse keepers lived there year-round in the 1800s.

This layout was one that I made during my year of classes at Enchanted Memories. This is the Graphic 45 Place in Time paper. We made a layout for each month and the idea was to have a single album with all the layouts in one place. Since I'm such a free spirit (😊) I chose to use the layouts throughout my albums. So, it was July of 2012 and I was heading to a historic area on a lake where nautical/beach paper makes sense. It was the perfect opportunity to use it! I didn't have to edit the photos much to fit the page surprisingly. And the post card became the perfect place to store the ticket from the trip!

As we arrived, we found a rather long climb to get to the house on the bluff. But it was worth it as we got to see the house and storage sheds for the light.

This layout is similar to the first, and I wanted to create it for that reason. It provided a little continuity in the book. The paper is from Graphic 45's By the Sea collection which has been retired. However, I still had the paper and a link to the layout directions, so I was able to piece it together. This time the postcard became my journaling box.

Out in the yard, there were gardens and sports equipment featured. This is how families who lived in the house would spend their leisure hours in the summer.

The left page features some stickers I had been holding onto for YEARS. It's so rewarding when you can finally use something, and the croquet balls were in that category. I found paper that had multi-colored polka dots and I thought that a good background. But I didn't want to interfere with the border, so I cut it down to a 10" square and just mounted it in the middle. The bottom border is a retired Creative Memories border maker cartridge called "rustic fence". For the right page, it is wall paper. There actually is a pattern to the paper, but it is so light it isn't visible in the photo. To match the red tones of the left page I chose a border sticker and some flowers in red/pink to set off the natural beauty in the photos.

Next our tour took us into the home. We started in the kitchen and worked our way upstairs to the bedrooms.

These are both Fast to Fabulous pages from the Gallivant line. On the left I simply matted the photos in a rustic red. On the right I added borders which sort of looked like old wallpaper. It was too difficult to mat the photos since I took panoramic versions and glued them together. But I did like the look of seeing the whole room that way.

Our last stop was to go out on the walk surrounding the light (which is actually in the house, not a separate structure). I didn't venture out because the port hole exit was REALLY tiny. But I did capture some of our tour group as they looked across the water.

Does this page look familiar? 😀 This page featured photos of the entire house and I really liked that lighthouse paper. This ended the convention trip, but there are still parks to visit as I drove home. Next week a big air show!

Something's fishy

Sunday morning I drove out to the Little Sand Bay visitor center in Apostle Islands for a group tour of the Hokenson Brothers Fishery. This site keeps alive the hardships endured trying to make a living fishing in Lake Superior. The tour covered multiple buildings and sites.

The left side of the layout is a remnant of a piece of Club Scrap paper with a border below made of cardstock and a shiny/iridescent marine themed paper.  The right page starts with wallpaper, but the sheet is an old version of Creative Memories and their pages used to be a little less than true 12x12, so their "perfect fit" pages run a little short on the newer, true 12x12. To fill in the gap, I used a rope sticker since the theme was "Twine Shed". I thought it quite clever!

The real highlight of the left page though, is the use of the peekaboo pockets again. This time I secured them to the page and then brought them outside the edges of the page protector so no cutting was involved. This allowed me to include the large paper brochure and still have room for photos and journaling. You can see above that I have 2 photos covering the bottom of the paper. Below, if you turn them over you can see the whole brochure, read the journaling, and see 2 more photos! I wish I had added a little something else on the left and right of the journaling box, but other than that I am very happy with this page!

Another stop on the tour was the Ice House. The tools reflect the growing technology as it moved from hand saws to power saws to cut through the ice. It wasn't for ice fishing, but to keep the ice so they could use it to pack the fish through the spring and summer months.

Both of these are wall paper pages. On the left is an older piece of Creative Memories from their Earthy paper line. I chose a wintery theme and then added a variety of snowflake stickers to make the print stand out. I find the Earthy line to have a bit of a rustic or heritage feel and it worked perfectly here. The right page is paper from Club Scrap. Since we were in the fish processing area, I thought the print of fish along the right side appropriate. The stickers are from the Creative Memories NSD kit from several years ago (actually the same kit I used for the rope sticker above). I didn't realize that I had so few photos including the club members on this tour.

The last photos from Little Sand Bay are of the larger pieces in the yard. The rigs were used for hauling boats and nets or for driving posts into the area for a dock. After Little Sand Bay I had time before my next excursion so I stopped at the Visitor Center in Bayfield. I was impressed with the Fresnel lens which could generate a wide and bright beam for nautical safety.

The left page again has a remnant of paper with a nautical theme. The top border is the same border I made for the opening page but this time I added some fish stickers. Those stickers as well as the bottom shoreline border are from an older CM sticker pack. The right page is wallpaper. Since the focus of the photos was the lighthouse lens, I chose a lighthouse themed paper to highlight the photos. More lighthouses to come next week!

At the Convention

Saturday morning I drove to the visitor center in Ashland to look around before our meeting. It's a rather new building but already has nice displays. You can take an elevator to the top floor to look out on the surrounding area. That's what you see in the 2 photos on the right.

This layout is one of the 1-2-3 sketches by Noreen Smith. She has a lot of ways to take 1 piece of double sided paper, 2 scrapbook pages (or cardstock backs) and with just 3 cuts of the trimmer, you have everything you need to decorate the page. If you look at her sketch, you'll see I didn't use the banner cuts on the right page. But I was able to use the unigrid and the park entrance sign to completely fill the space between the coral papers. It really helps you stretch your supplies! Likewise, on the right I used the center brochure and a journaling square to fill in the left side of the page. I added a couple of stickers to the top left and the page was done in a flash!

We had lunch in the center and then started the meeting. On the left page is the registration area and on the right are a couple of photos of our speakers.

This layout is part of the 2017 Creative Memories National Scrapbook Day pack. Each year NSD is celebrated on the first Saturday of May and around that time, Creative Memories offers special themed papers and project recipes. I don't have a copy of the recipe used for this page, but check with me about a current offering! I know one complaint people have about pre-designed layouts is that their photos don't "fit" the design. But you can see here that I simply use the photo mats as part of the background. Although some do fit as indicated (like the 4x4 photo in the bottom right) others extend off the mat or I use them for journal squares. You should always make a layout work for you, don't feel you have to adjust your photos to the page.

This year our break during the meeting turned into a party! I was thrilled to see Smokey the Bear usher in the cake!

I went pretty simple for this page. I thought the brown background fit the bear theme. The bear in the corner is an old Mrs. Grossman sticker that I still had and I topped him with a Mrs. Grossman party hat (which is probably just as old). A mat and a journal box are the only other embellishments for the page.

Stockton Island

Friday evening I booked a tour with the NPTC to Stockton Island, one of the many islands in the Apostle Islands group. We left the dock and sailed out to the island. Once there we had a choice of activities.

I haven't shown this technique in a bit--but this is the 4 squares. This is an older pack of CM thank you paper that I trimmed to 6" each. The journal box is one I made a few years ago. The strip along the bottom of the journal box is from the CM Done with One Travel die cut pack. The same strip was used to punch circles for the title. Those are layered onto gold sand colored paper and the title was spelled with mini letters.

The activity that I chose was to stay by the campfire with the ranger and play Native American Jeopardy. They would ask a question in English and not only did we have to know the correct word, we had to use the dictionaries provided to translate that to the Native American word. The pronunciation was the trickiest part.

This page is simply laid out and is decorated with some of the outdoors paper from a Creative Memories pack you've seen before. What is a little different about this is the photo in the upper right corner. See the "lift" tag? I used a new product from Creative Memories called Peekaboo Pockets to put in more sunset photos. I almost threw out 4 photos, but I was able to attach them to the page without crowding the layout! They are a great addition to the CM brand and you'll see them again in a couple of weeks!

The photo below is what the page looks like if you take the "lift" tab and extend it all the way to the left. If you compare the photos closely you'll see the difference from the one above.

I really went "all out" on my first use of the pockets. I created a string of 2 together!
Below is what the page looks like when you pull the tab all the way to the right.

What's great about the pockets is that you can attach them to the page directly at an edge, and they'll rest on top of the page protector, or you can attach them to the page protector directly. My recommendation is that if you cannot get the pocket near the edge of the page, attach to the page protector directly. I've tried on 2 different occasions to slice a hole in the page protector to let the pocket come through and each time it took a lot of effort and I ruined a page protector as well once. The strip above IS through the page protector because of the direction I wanted the flaps to open, but I'm not sure I would do it again.

I hope you try your hand at them and let me know in the comments how you liked it!