Give us Liberty!

The last stop of the day was at Liberty Hall. I had arranged an NPTC Meetup. While we didn't run into each other much during the day, we gathered here for the day's final tour. I set up my stamper near the official stampers and tried to pull everyone together. However, I missed the last tour as club members kept arriving and wanted to stamp! Well, there will be another one next time, I'm sure! Several of us headed to dinner after this to chat more, and then it was time to return to the current year.

This layout is based on one of the CM sketches in the 101 sketchbook (page 60). I am using a collection called Gem Tone, a secret box from a few years ago. I love it for pages with historic homes. It just seems to "fit". The bottom is 1 1/2" strips (again, a great way to use up scraps!) The border sticker across the top covers any slight imperfections in the length. The kit came with a set of laser-cut frames. The one you see above is 1/2 of the frame in the kit. I only needed to highlight one photo, and I could keep the other half for a different page. I tucked the cut edge under the brochure so you cannot see any imperfect edges.

Post #500! Stop Inn

Wow, this blog is on post #500! Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me over the years. I hope you've enjoyed the tales as much as I enjoyed making and sharing the pages with you.

My next stop was this historic tavern. The location was active a bit AFTER the Revolutionary War. It was part of a stagecoach route connecting Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. They recreated the tavern and kitchen from the early 1800s. Another building on site is related to the Colonial era, but while it is preserved, it serves as their gift shop.

This layout is based on Cheryl Even's Sketch #76. I used an ivory piece of cardstock and a long strip of Old CM paper (I'm not sure what pack that came from, but it's probably 2009 or so). I cut another piece of cardstock with one of CM's large custom-cutting system shapes. It's no longer for sale on their site, but keep an eye out, as sometimes they do "retro" sales and bring back classic pieces for brief periods. Replacing one of the photos with a journal box allowed me to add the brochure for the site to the decorative element in green. I then added a 12" border sticker (cut in half so I could use it top and bottom) and a couple of old candlestick stickers, which I think are actually from a formal dining kit 😊. Given it's a tavern, I thought the "Cheers" title fit pretty well. 

No Bread For You!

My next stop was to the Frazee House. This house is undergoing extensive renovations, so there are only photos of the exterior. I did enjoy the story, though I wonder how true it is. Supposedly Betty Frazee was an excellent baker and the British Army, and supposedly Cornwallis himself, came through and wanted to buy the bread from her to feed the troops. As someone inclined to follow the American Rebels, she declined. Whereby the British ransacked her farm and took the bread anyway. True or not, it is that type of story that helped stir up sentiment to follow the Colonials. And of course, history is written by the victors...

If you've noticed, the past few layouts (including this one) include some little trading cards. They were available at the sites and with a shortage of photos, they really helped tell the story! They are all mounted with photo corners so that they can be removed and you can still read the story on the back. 

This layout is based on a sketch from the CM December 2023 Virtual Crop. Scroll to Sketch #1. I had pulled my patriotic materials to work on these pages and this paper was from a secret box. The paper is called "Starlight" and due to the stars, it ended up in the Patriotic box. It was the perfect background for this layout as I wanted something patriotic but also "homey". The quilted background paper fits both categories. I used some of the larger star embellishments as my journal boxes. If you look closely at the gold strips you might be able to see that they are cut with the new Colonial blade for our 12" trimmer. It's a small detail, but it does work!

Outstanding in His Field

I did not know about the next stop--Ashbrook Reservation. It's a local park and the site of a Revolutionary War Battle called the Battle of the Short Hills (definitely missing from my high school history book). If you want to read a bit about the battle, try this website. The stamp and information booth was in front of a local vocational-technical high school. It was quite odd to see tents and colonial-era people milling about there. I had a great talk with the gentleman on duty about people in the area and names from the era with which I was familiar. In his discussion about the battle, we looked over his cannon. And then he picked it up to show me that it was not only not "period" but was painted styrofoam! His associate had been taking photos with my camera and captured the moment that I realized the folly, and THAT was what I wanted to capture on the layout.

This layout is loosely based on this pin from CM's December 2022 Virtual Crop (also on page 58 of the 101 Sketches book). the background paper is one of the patriotic packs from my stash. Since that was in blue and white, it made sense that my mats were red. I chose 2 punches to add decorations--the CM star punch which makes a frame star and gives you the inner cut star, and the rocket punch. Clustering those in opposite corners gives you the flow across the page. The flag embellishment is from a pack I picked up from Paper Wizard. I bought that pack of minis for my Boston photos. I guess I'll have to pick up another pack!

How could you not like the Drake?

My next adventure was in October 2019 for the Union County Four Centuries in a Weekend Event. Union County, NJ is the home of many historic sites with connections to Washington and the Revolutionary War, the Industrial Revolution, and World War 2. Some sites are connected to the Crossroads of the American Revolution historic trail and have National Park stamps. The event organizers also created Union County stamps so we can generally get 2 at each location. Though it is a 2-day event, I had to work on Saturday so I visited just on Sunday and got to only a few locations. The event is held yearly, so I can return for more visits.

My first stop is a home called the Drake House Museum. This house's claim to fame is that during the Battle of Short Hills, George Washington used the front parlor as his headquarters. The photos on this layout reflect the heritage and rooms that are decorated in the colonial style (including a kitchen and medicine cupboard). I also got to pose as Alexander Hamilton's long-lost cousin. See a resemblance? 😁

This layout is based on Noreen Smith's January 2019 1-2-3 layout. I reversed the layout (imagine it flipped horizontally) so that the tall column of photos is on the right side of the layout. I used some of the last of my CM Americana paper packs. It really is perfect for that Colonial Era theme. The papers are layered on light blue cardstock. Flipping the sketch meant that I had a large blue area on the far right. I used a similar scrap of tan paper to cut 1 3/4" squares. Do you see the small square on the top of the left page? That is part of the indicator sheet included with all the CM paper. It provides a look at each of the papers so you can see at a glance if it will work with your photos. I cut that square as it matched the layout best and mounted it. The small bunny on the right is from an 8 1/2 x 11 paper pad I bought a long time ago. This is just the image of what a paper piecing project would look like, but with a little fussy cutting, it too became an embellishment. I had an extra 12" sticker border with those rustic stars that finished off the layout.

No Pigs are Involved in this Post

It's Hogmanay! That's a Scottish tradition where you celebrate the incoming New Year. The Brearly House in New Jersey hosts one every year. And again, since I now live closer it was easy for me to visit. They have a bonfire (carefully controlled by the fire department) where they encourage you to write down everything you were unhappy with in the previous year and throw it in the fire to BURN! It's quite cathartic. I arranged an NPTC meetup for this event and had a great turnout! It was a very cold night and had recently snowed but we kept warm and enjoyed the event.

This layout is from one of my Paper Loft classes and uses their Euphoria paper kit. I liked the brown tones that also incorporated fun with the banners and diamond prints. I didn't pay any attention to the photo mats--I just placed my photos where I wanted them and it worked out perfectly! I do love their word cut-apart sheets. They are the perfect accents to the page.

The official picture was indoors (and I think everyone appreciated that!) You can also see the organized, polite line of people stamping. I think we were a bit loud and may have drowned out the fiddle player in the next room though. Well, it can be months between seeing each other and there's always a lot to catch up on!

This is the last page of the album so I only needed one page. I used another of the same layouts from Paper loft and again ignored those photo mats. Quick pages!

Centennial Part 16--The Old Barracks

On Wednesday I toured by myself for a bit. I stopped at the New Jersey capitol building, and while they did have a lobby dedicated to the National Park centennial, I chose to not include it in the blog. It is in the album, so if you are particularly interested, stop by to look! After the capitol building I walked around the corner to the Old Barracks. This is part of the Crossroads of the American Revolution trail. This is where the Hessian soldiers were stationed when George Washington made his famous river crossing and attack on Christmas day. I was the only person on my tour, and it took more than an hour to go through all the various rooms.

This is a pair of Fast to Fabulous pages. Once again you can see that I strayed outside of the pre-printed photo boxes. I chose these 2 because of the writing on the background. It reminded me of a letter home. I attempted to piece together photos to show the shape of the compound, but ran out of space on the page, so on the right there are 2 photos combined at the top and the remaining side is below. The title is cut from the Cricut in nice big letters. You can make the letters any size you like, which can be a real bonus to page filling.

Centennial part 4--Friday night picnic

After touring the Brearley House, we all drove over to Washington Crossing State park. Yep, the Jersey side where Washington and his troops landed for that fateful surprise attack. This state park contains another Crossroads of the American Revolution stamp and we saw the film at the visitor center, picked up the stamp and then gathered for the picnic.

The left page uses a sticker that I'd been holding onto for a LONG time. I mean, when ELSE am I going to use a Washington Crossing the Delaware sticker?!? I mounted that on a piece of blue cardstock that I tore with a rough edge ruler (this double wave tearing tool is very similar to what I used but has more rough edges). To add to the water theme I used a leftover piece from a strip where I cut out a bunch of triangles to make banners. I also had a journal box with water rushing over rocks.

For the right side, I used 1/2 of a layout kit that I made during one of my monthly trips to Enchanted Memories. Most people don't think of splitting up pages, but in this album I actually did that a couple of times. You'll see the left side of the layout in a few weeks. I just didn't want to use the left (hot dog) page with the intro being all about the Washington Crossing.

After we ate, one of the members arranged some group games and everyone had a lot of fun.

This is a layout I created at a Paper Loft class during one of the Lancaster Creating Keepsakes conventions. The classes are great because they focus on highlighting the photos, not the paper. The Fun and Games title was created through some older CM letters. The mixed colors not only worked well with the paper, but brought out the energy of the contests. This is another good example of not worrying about the photo mats already placed on the page. You can see that NOTHING fits within the original (cream) boxes. My favorite use was cropping the long photos so that they fit within 2 of the mats on the right page. Those mats become great journaling boxes. You could even layer stickers in that space. I think the paper on these pages is busy enough that stickers weren't needed though.

Centennial Part 3--The Brearley House

On Friday, we arranged a tour of the Brearley House in Lawrenceville, NJ. It is not normally open on Fridays, but they were happy to arrange 3 separate tours to accommodate all of the members who wanted to go. There are some stamps there that are hard to obtain, so this was a very popular opportunity. Although we had people sign up for the 3 different start times, few actually showed at their appointed hour. But between those showing up early for one and late for another, the tours were still the right size!

This layout was created during a virtual crop from Creative Memories. To get people ready, there was a "preview" sketch challenge on Friday night that you can see here. For once, I followed the sketch almost exactly! I chose an older piece of CM with red tones to match the brick work. Then I accented with yellow to match the other predominant color in the paper. I ended up going back after the challenge and replacing the original sticker letters (much manipulated due to shortages of the required letters) with Cricut cut ones. If anything looks slightly ripped, it's from where the original sticker letters were. But that just matches the antique feeling of the page! 😀

I took the tour with the first group so that I was prepared to help the subsequent groups along. There are a number of time-period correct antiques in the home, though not necessarily from the original family holdings. It's amazing how some parts of the house are still in great shape hundreds of years later, including the floors.

The left page uses an idea I saw to create flames. The story is about a  burning log on the wood floor. The flames are actually red and yellow paper cut with the Creative Memories Border Maker system using the grass cartridge (now discontinued). I also found a piece of paper with a design that sort of reminded me of flames, so I fussy cut 2 of them out to fill the corners. The right page was copied off an idea sheet I have in my stash (I want to say it was a page formula, but I'm not positive). I did get the idea somewhere. I just supplemented with what I had in my stash.

As the rest of the tour groups formed I could jump in and out to take photos inside and outside. Have to love the orderly line of club members waiting on their stamps!

I think I created this on my own, not a sketch or idea sheet, but I honestly can't remember (and I only created it about 18 months ago). I went fairly simple using the pale blue to match everyone's t-shirts and then contrasting with yellow (another favorite color combo). The embellishments are few but helps to create an X on the page for flow. The bear head is a VERY old paper piecing kit that I had. I just like the way he's peeking over the paper.