50-states album part 25--Tennessee

We've had a couple of good trips to Tennessee. This one was the road trip to Mississippi for the NPTC convention. We sort of went backward--we drove to the bottom of the Great Smokies and drove through the park going north, exiting by Pigeon Forge. Then we had to head south again to Mississippi. Still, the park was a lot of fun, even if I about killed myself hiking up Clingman's dome! 😊

This is a fairly simple page, though it was modeled on this page. It helps that Tennessee is a LONG state and so it spreads across the middle nicely. The background paper is just an old piece of CM with pale stripes. The title and state shape I cut on the Cricut. The stickers across the state are from a Junior Ranger sticker album I received as a gift. The journal box is from a sticker pack I bought featuring the park. I had already scrapbooked this trip (see this post) so I was glad to be able to use up more of the stash.

Among the tree tops

We drove further into the Great Smokies with the intent to climb Clingmans Dome. We did it!

On the left is a remnant of paper from the Best in Show pack from CM. Although it's made for animals, the paper is quite useful for many layouts and the clouds were especially useful here. Along the bottom is a sticker border I wanted to use. I was surprised to find that it was really 3 stickers, but they went together so nicely I left them stacked (bottom grass, road and mountain). I added the words "scenic route" to a sign sticker and a vellum car. To me, tht border encapsulates our trip up to the hiking trail. On the right is a page I had originally intended to use for a Girl Scout page. The trees and brown tones also matched the scenic view.

I won't lie, the hike--although short--is strenuous because you start at a higher elevation and climb up another 1000 feet or so. I had to stop often to catch my breath and that's why I chose to have a little fun with the photo of me reaching the top (while gasping for breath).

Still, it's not that I want to highlight that photo so I covered it with a Peekaboo pocket and put the journaling on top. Then on the inside I found a decorative mat that also captured the thrill of the climb!

Mountain home

In the summer of 2013, the NPTC convention was at Shiloh National Military Park. Events were in both Tennessee and Mississippi, and Jim and I planned a 2-day drive to get to the convention. On our way there we stopped at Great Smoky Mountains and drove through the eastern side of the park.

I wanted to use up some of my Fast to Fabulous travel pages, so I pulled out 2 with travel stamps on them (though from 2 different packs). When trying to coordinate the layout, I ran out of room for some of the memorabilia so I added an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket page to hold the brochures. The left page is really just the one photo of me arriving at the visitor center and then I used a mat card (remember what I said about my class from last week!) In trying to tie all the pages together I chose a zig-zag border maker cartridge and cut several coordinating colored borders. The first 2 are in gray tones on the top of the left page and remind me of the mountain chain. On the front of the pocket page I made a border with the Cricut and the Campin' Critters cartridge. Those badges remind me of my Girl Scout days! I used the same paper as the border background to make the zig-zag for the right side.

At the visitor center is a collection of houses taken from the various parts of the mountains and collected to make a village.

For the back of the pocket page I used a deep red cardstock for the zig zags and then for added interest, used them diagonally on the page.  That red was also a good choice because of the red element on the left page that peeks through (the backpack). The right side, the F2F is just 3 photos and 2 stickers so the page came together quickly.

The next few layouts go into the homestead in more detail including the inside of cabins we could see and some of the other buildings common to a mountain home.

I dug through my papers and came up with some very good matches to the photos. On the left, the wood resembles the interior of the cabin. On the right the background is from Club Scrap's farm line. The shed and fence worked perfectly for the outdoor area. On the left, an orange "cut apart" from the same Club Scrap line worked well to break up the dark colors. The title worked perfectly too given the humble abode!

Just a few more outbuildings including a forge!

And this is another example of the sketch that I used last week for the bridge at Moore's Creek. This time paper was from the CM Adventure pack plus some decorative mats from Paper Loft, Club Scrap and some other pack that I apparently bought with farm life :) This time where the 3 photos are to go on the bottom of the right hand page I layered 2 photos to give a better image of the interior of the forge. That's the great thing about sketches, they are FLEXIBLE!