Most Wanted

The C&O canal stretches across the top of Maryland and I made my way to several of the stamping stations. One of them was their headquarters--an office building open only Monday through Friday. They have a HUGE box of stamps and I enjoyed getting impressions of all of them in my passport. I uploaded them to the NPTC database when I returned and found out that one of the stamps I collected there was a Most Wanted!  That's a stamp that was thought to exist but no one has seen in over a year. In fact, this one had been retired as possibly never to be found. I earned the certificate below for my find.

I really like what I did with this page. The EN scrapbook pack has a page with the stickers and stamps as a border, but it's 8 1/2 x 11. So I cut the pieces apart and stretched them around two 12x12 pages. I added a few other strips of paper and stickers to complete the border and then filled the middle with my photos and memorabilia. The Most Wanted certificate is in a Portrait Sleeve and that gave me another bit of scrapbook real estate to cover.

One of the other stops I made was out in Cumberland, MD. There was a lovely little museum and a few outdoor pieces to explore. I like that I was able to use a sticker I picked up at the visitor center as part of my page.

This shows the backside of the portrait sleeve. I wanted to marry it to the rest of the layout so I used additional strips of the NPS arrowhead paper on top and bottom. It is a little "off" the larger page but I think it makes a good transition.

Locked up

My trek through the Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia area took me to one of the C&O canal locations. Visiting in March, several locations were closed, but Williamsport was open. The visitor center had a movie that was taken in the early 1900s showing traffic along the canal. It was a cold day but I took a walk up to Lock 44 and the keeper's house there. The house wasn't open for tours so I just looked around before heading back to my car.

This layout is scraplifted from this layout that I found on Pinterest. All of the small bits around the top and sides of the pages are scraps (yay for using up scraps!) I debated including the scavenger hunt booklet as the color is so much brighter than the photos, but wanted to fill up the page so I left it in. The sticker below the brochure is from the EN scrapbook kit.

Great Falls

In May 2012 I traveled to DC for a surgical technology convention. In my spare time I visited a few parks. My first trip took me back to the C&O Canal on the Maryland side (where the Great Tavern is). We had been here the previous August with the NPTC convention. This time I was able to find the trail to the falls, and it made for a completely different visit.

This is a wallpaper technique. I used a piece of older Creative Memories paper from a travel kit. I liked the way the design looked like falling water. This is just the right hand side of the layout because the left focused on my convention activities, so I actually posted the end of the trail first--the falls. But that gives good context for what comes next. One notable piece to this page is that I used photo corners to mount the unigrid as I usually do. However, I had 3 made of black paper from my stash (older than 8 years I think), and since they didn't detract from the unigrid, I used them. I couldn't use the 4th one because it would have partially covered the title--so I used one clear corner mount in the upper left.

The new part of my park experience was the walk to the falls. It was an easy walk across planked wood for the most part but took me past some very nice plant and animal displays.

The left page of this layout is also wallpaper. I toyed with the idea of cutting out the left edge as a border but decided I liked the all blue background. I tried to match it on the right with some blue and green mats in the same shades. The right border is another scrap of paper in blue tones. I layered the stickers at the top and bottom onto dark blue paper to make them pop and used a corner rounder to try to match the shape of the stickers. A little dragonfly in the middle made for a pleasing symmetry. And on this unigrid, since the bottom has some color, I used all clear photo corners.

Convention in the Capital--part 4: Canal Boat Ride

Jim and I joined a group trip out to Great Falls Tavern where we prepared to take a ride on an authentic canal boat. The trip is staffed by re-enactors in period garb who perform all the same tasks as the original canal workers--handling the mules, opening the locks, and running the boats.

This is another example of when I work on the right page and then make the left page fit the style. I wanted something that would have a little nautical feel to it but also would work well with the historic feel of the photos. This is the inspiration for the right page: Scraplifted from here. I certainly added more photos, but kept the basic elements. Once that page was done, the left fell into place. The rope stickers were from the Creative Memories National Scrapbook Day kit. Since I had that out, I found the background paper on the left that resembled wood from a boardwalk. That worked out for the "land based" part of the photos. I did mat the unigrid because it was getting lost in all the grey and white of the page. The die cut with the description of the tavern is from the Eastern National scrapbook kit.

Once on the boat we had a great view of the locks as we traveled through. It was really amazing how much water flowed through the lock as it took us up and down the canal.

I returned to wall paper for these pages. I believe these are from an older Creative Memories travel pack, though I don't remember the name of the pack. I liked the gear because it reminded me of a ship's wheel. I only matted a couple of the photos because they were so close in color to the page that I didn't want them to be lost. The journal boxes are from a Club Scrap farm kit.

We ended our trip with a group photo. Since group photos look better at 8x10, they need a full page to themselves. Again, I found a ship's wheel to accent the page with a small journal box from club scrap.