The Great Western Journey Part 17--End of the Road

We have come to the final entry for the Great Western Journey. If you recall, we flew into Denver to start the trip. Before returning to Denver we made a bit of a southern spur to visit my aunt and uncle who live in Florissant. They had a lovely log cabin there and we stayed for a couple of days. In that time we of course had to go to Florissant Fossil beds. A repeat visit for me, it was Jim's first time seeing the unusual artifacts in the park

This layout is one that I made many years ago when Club Scrap first brought out their National Park collection. If you go to this page and scroll to pages 13-14 you will see the base. It looks like I might have been short some of the right-hand page papers but given the number of photos, it works out fine. I didn't bother with ribbon on this one but I did add the cute saying on the bottom right corner to fill in some white space.

I suggested a different trail for this visit and my uncle joined us on the walk through the meadow. The Petrified Forest loop leads you to the large fossilized remnant that you see below: "The Big Stump". It's impressive in size but also for the remnants of sawblades from the 1800s where people tried to get the stump to move or sell pieces of it.

This layout is based on the CM December 2022 bonus challenge. It was a single-page challenge but I doubled the "recipe" for this layout and it worked well in a larger format. The background papers are from the Leave No Trace collection. They are likely supposed to be redwood or sequoia trees but it works well for the fossilized trees (which were redwoods anyway when they lived many years ago!) The borders along the outside edges were made with the Spiky Evergreen border maker cartridge. Each border is 2  sets of punched leaves that I intertwined randomly before adhering to the page. The inner-most border is called "Leaf Trail" and as that was more of an edger border, I could cut them to create the frame edges. Once those were in place a few embellishments and a journal box completed the layout.

Also along the path was a selection of native plants, some with labels on them. My uncle pointed out that many of them were also visible in his front yard. I noted that while this was true, he had no identification signs in his yard! Our visit included several other non-NPS sites and then we headed back home. The rest of the album is available at my house if you want to view it, so drop by for a cup of tea and a visit!

This layout is based on one of my Noreen Smith classes, so I cannot show you the sketch. The papers used were a combination of spring pages. The green "grass" in the middle is from one of the textured paper packs called Glowing Gardens. That bold look is a good contrast to the all-over floral print of the longer strips. One larger embellishment provided the "rest" from the busy patterned paper so that I could add a title easily. I used a few random embellishments from my stash for the rest of the clusters.

50 States Album-Part 4: Colorado

Jim and I have been to Colorado a few times. Our most recent trip was summer 2017 when we flew in and out of Denver for our Great Western Loop. Before flying home we went to visit my aunt and uncle who live near Florissant and so, of course, stopped at the NPS Unit there (Florissant Fossil Beds).

I used the left side of this layout as the basis for the page. Instead of buying the kit, I made or had all the components. The title is reminiscent of the Colorado flag and I did have to hand-cut the red circle for the "C". The rest of the large letters I actually had from an old CM pack. I used the same red and yellow for photo and journal mats to bring the page together.
The trees at the bottom were all die-cuts that I had, including the group of 4 that forms the back of the lake. I am not sure why I have a border that is less than 12" but it worked out in this setting. I chalked the outline of each to show on the dark blue background. I hand cut the lake and added a moose sticker I had on hand to complete the page.

Fossilized Trees

In the summer of 2010 I traveled to Denver for a conference and as my aunt and uncle live just south of the city I made plans to visit them. While I was with them we visited a National Park very close to their house called Florissant Fossil Beds.

This is one of my favorite layouts. The paper and embellishments come from Club Scrap (You can check them out here). While you could sign up for monthly shipments, they also allow people to buy "a la carte" and I've purchased from them several times. I think their National Park themed papers are now sold out, but it's worth checking out their site periodically to see if they do a re-issue or a new similar theme.

This is the layout as shown on the Club Scrap website (click here). You can see that I modified the layout slightly. The backgrounds are the same and I used red card stock to mat the photos but they are laid out slightly differently. Because the backgrounds are busy the mats help make the photos stand out. I made a couple of cutting errors. First, I cut the photos too soon so I had to be creative in arranging them on the page. Next, I cut the mats wrong and the upper right is actually 2 pieces edged together. Still, you have to look closely and there is just a slight difference in matting around the photos.