Shining Bright

You'll recall that the last post mentioned the new Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. My visit was not only to count the new park (though that didn't hurt), but it was because three of my National Park Travelers Club friends were reaching our ultimate goal. When you have visited EVERY park in the system at the time you reach the last park, you have reached our Platinum Status. It's highly coveted and challenging to achieve. In July 2021, there were 423 units in existence (as of this blog post, it's now 433), and you have to travel to remote places like Guam or the most northern and complex parts of Alaska. Jen "Oma" Baxter, as well as Cheryl and Mike Carver, reached that goal by visiting this unit, and so we held a Meetup to celebrate with them. Jennifer even had her grandchildren with her to help commemorate the event. 

I made this layout during one of my 1-2-3-4 classes for my scrapbooking customers. Due to the way I purchased the sketch, I am unable to share it with you. However, the placement of the photos is crucial in this case. The middle block of 4 is taking up space on the page, allowing you to use the decorative paper to S-T-R-E-T-C-H across the page. Because the platinum status was so important to this page, I used silver shimmer cardstock as the base and a piece of gray patterned paper from the Silver and Gold pack. Matching embellishments were from the same kit. I used some shimmer ABC-123 numbers to highlight their park visit achievement on the title card. You probably can't tell from the photo, but I also used one of the shimmer pens to add some sparkle to the rest of the embellishments.

I Like Ike

This post continues our examination of the 2021 NPTC Convention in Washington, D.C. After arriving by train, I checked into my hotel and then took the Metro to the newest unit — the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial. It sits between the Air and Space Museum and the Department of Education (he created both NASA and the Department of Education during his presidency). It's an open-air memorial and has several installations tracing his life from farm boy to soldier and then president. 

I created this layout based on a pair of pins. Sometimes the only way to pin an idea is to pin the left and right sides separately. I used olive cardstock as the base (a perfect match to Army green, don't you think?) Sadly, they are my last 2 pieces. You will notice that I cut my side triangles incorrectly. It's a 3" piece of paper cut corner-to-corner. I actually did cut it right, but when I turned it over to apply the adhesive, I realized that the stars would be even better than the blue words on the other side. Luckily, the angle isn't crucial to the overall design. I added 2 borders from a cutapart page I bought at the Lancaster Convention. I was aiming for a military theme, and the stars and Jeeps fit nicely. I filled the gap on the bottom right with a few soldier stickers. Look closely, and you might catch that those are actually "Green Army Men" toy soldiers. I figured if I lined up their "bases," it would resemble a strip of ground. The remaining word and star stickers came from the CM Military Service pack.