Autumn is in the Air

After our hike, we relaxed at the resort's outdoor features. Though the fire pit had no fire, the swings were pretty comfy. We also found some Adirondack chairs overlooking the river. We enjoyed that, except when the wind created microbursts around us, and the leaves and dirt flew. You can see Kris protecting herself during one of them! 

I made this layout during Tammy McEwen's end-of-year challenge. She brings back sketches from the CM blog over the year, and we are to create additional layouts to help finish our albums quickly. The sketch had originally been shared during the summer in a weekly challenge. I chose Shades of Golden Harvest for my layout and used orange shimmer cardstock for the base. Instead of pockets, I trimmed the foliage photos to 3x4. I love how trimming my horizontal images makes it look like they are matted when they are simply attached to the orange base. The large blue mat on the left is a piece of vellum that had been issued with the papers. I didn't have any stickers left from that pack, but I found some in my stash that worked well, including a thin title sticker border that I cut and layered on the right side.

Blazing a Trail

After my "dip" in the Bluestone River, we decided to take the River Trail. They had not maintained all of the trail, which was confusing, but we did manage a nice walk. I found some hanging vines along the trail and persuaded Jim to do a little "Tarzan" impersonation. Although it is called the River Trail (and does start near the river), we ended up on a path further into the hills for the return part of the trip.

I chose one of Cheryl Even's sketches for this layout (I love that she allows so many photos on the layouts). You can see a copy of it here. The sketch calls for a border at the bottom. I chose the one on the left page that I had made in one of my Saturday classes with my customers. The technique will work with any paper pack and is great for using up scraps. Cut any color of cardstock to 1 1/2" wide, then cut a bunch of 1" strips of paper. Start away from a corner, lay one of the strips diagonally across the cardstock, and then trim the ends. Continue mixing and matching strips along the length, cutting off the extra at the edges. For the left side, I added a small title and embellishments from the coordinating sticker pack (this is all from Hello Autumn). When I decided to use the border, I found more papers and created another matching one. (I matched the angle of the paper from the first border so that there was consistency across the page. After that, I simply mounted the highlight photo on a mat and arranged the rest of the pictures and memorabilia. I found that lovely mat card and turned it into a journal box. I switched to a white pen when I got to the dark green section of the card.

Am I Bluestone

Once we reached the resort, I headed over to where the river flowed and could put my hand in the river. Now I have officially visited the park!😀 What's interesting is that while Pipestem is the official location of the park, there are no stamps here. I obtained the stamp about 40 miles from here, at the New River Gorge Visitor Center. 

I used the CM Virtual Crop Sketch from September 2024 for this layout. Scroll to layout #5. I chose a vibrant background cardstock (Goldenrod), so my designer papers are more tonal, and the colors are muted. These are scraps from Hello Autumn, which is just about gone. I did add some embellishments from Leave Nothing Behind, but the photos do most of the work on this layout.

Risky Business

On the 3rd day of our vacation, we traveled south to get to the 3rd and last National Park, the Bluestone National Scenic River. Our best way to visit was to go to Pipestem State Park. During the trip, my sister-in-law Kristin was considering trying a zip line, but we never arranged that. This was the next best thing. To get to the river and the resort, take an aerial tram (gondola) down the mountain. The "Ride at your own risk" sign gave us a little pause, but it was a very comfortable and pretty ride down. 

This layout was made using a 1-page (12x12) sketch by Cheryl Even. I doubled it by creating a mirror image of the page on the left. I wish I could tell you the name of the paper packs I used for this. I was going through scraps, and I could only identify the tan strips in the middle. That's part of Hello Autumn. The leaves are part of an older "Fall In" collection. I liked how bright and cheery they were on this layout.