One of the buildings I visited looked, from the outside, like an adorable cottage. I thought I would walk in and see more beds, cooking items and other memorabilia. But what I got was quite different!
If this looks familiar, you'll probably remember that I posted it as a bonus post a few weeks ago. Click here to see the original post and the sketch it was based on.
And here's the reminder that what I got inside was NOT the cute house but a tool shop! But hey, that's historic too!
I found the quilting ladies in the building marked as a boarding house. You can tell if they are present as they hang that red and yellow quilt flag. They were very nice but had almost finished for the day so I didn't spend too much time with them. I did enjoy walking around the boarding house. I'm rather proud of my perspective shot of the pump through one of the window panes.
I based this layout on one of the CM Summer Challenges. The idea was to use a border punch in multiple ways. I used 2 punches to make the borders across the top (the home punch and a barn punch). I then used the home punch to make a decorative mat (not crazy about the ones on their sides but it worked out in the end). And then I used the heart punch-outs from the houses to decorate the bottom of the page. The paper design is based on a sketch from the June 2023 CM Virtual Crop (scroll to sketch 3). I continued to use the Burlap and Lace papers and stickers. The red cardstock was almost a perfect match for the red in the quilter flag and the water pump handle.
I made a weekend trip to Hopewell Furnace because they were having a quilting bee and I had never really explored the outbuildings in the park. There is a group of ladies who meet regularly and work on quilts. The park incorporates them into the "living village" concept and allows them to work inside one of the buildings that had previously been a boarding house. There is a large room for them to work together on their quilts.
I was starting this visit on the right page of my album because of ending the prior event on the left in the chronological album. I decided that the best use of space was to add an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket page to hold the brochure and a few photos. I worked on the layout below first and then wanted this to coordinate. I had an extra laser-cut border and some wood grain paper to put across the bottom to be similar to the borders I made for the next page.
I visited several of the buildings and found lots of vignettes of life when the furnace was a booming business. Since the focus at the furnace was on the work the men did, this side focused on the women and children. How they cooked, learned, and did their own work during the day.
I chose this pin of borders made with the Burlap and Lace papers from one of the 2023 secret boxes (one of my favorites). You'll notice that I switched the orientation to horizontal and put one at the top and one at the bottom to frame my photos. The background paper is wood grain though it may be hard for you to see as it blends into the wood floor where I take my photos! The left side is the back of the 8 1/2 x 11 seen above. I matted the photos with a bit of burlap paper and added a few more stickers to the page to make a cohesive layout.
Hello and welcome to another bonus post as I play along with Lasting Memories Challenges. I'm using this month's sketch challenge to finish off some pages of a visit to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in 2018. You'll see more of this visit soon. In the meantime, here are the photos.
I wanted to make this as surprising for my reader as it was for me, so I put the outside of the lovely little shed first. Underneath, you can see that I walked into a dirty, dusty tool shed!
Here is a photo of the sketch they posted.
I chose Paper Loft papers for this sketch. I had a remnant with a large striped pattern at the bottom reminiscent of the pattern in the sketch so that saved a bit of time putting it all together. I added just a hint of red since there is red in the shed's roof and trim. Mostly I stuck to the greens and browns. Another scrap I had included those medallions. I used a circle punch to make individual elements and sprinkled them across the page. The title is also from Paper Loft's quote pages.
Here you can see the lifted flap. I do love using Peekaboo Pockets from Creative Memories.
The next display was of Hopewell Furnace. Located not too far from Philly it's another local favorite. As with the Valley Forge display, the creators decided to go with what the place looked like after its original purpose (iron making) was over. The elements such as the furnace were recreated with fall-type leaves. The display was rather large and you could walk through the structures. I liked that they also added non-floral elements such as the pantry supplies.
The layout is based on a class I took and I am not allowed to share the sketch. I used the Hello Autumn collection from Creative Memories. The green and orange colors matched the display perfectly. I liked the portion of the sketch where we punched borders and layered them into a small 4x6 space (see the rustic fence behind the bottom photo on the right page? Just 2 embellishment clusters here. CM had a matching foiled leaf pack to go with the collection and I clustered them for titles and a little journaling. I also substituted one photo for a journaling box.
I like that we didn't center the photos in the boxes. It gives a little more movement to the page and shows the background papers a bit better.
My last layout for the Meetup trip is of the final steps pouring the molten iron and revealing the finished product. We were a few rows back in the audience so it was hard to get good shots of the craftsmen pouring the liquid metal. They make very small batches now. I'm sure when the furnace was in full production the cauldrons were much larger.
This layout is based on a free sketch I got from Club Scrap. Due to COVID 19, the Lancaster Scrapbook Convention was transitioned to virtual. We were sent to this website for the directions (there's a video as well) but we had to supply our own papers. I chose a piece of textured paper that looked like rusted metal from the Creative Memories Timeworn paper pack. I added a sheet of cardstock called "Copper". I was hoping it was a shimmery paper but it ended up just looking dull green. If you look at the website, the sample pages have a LOT more photos, even putting small photos in the four squares across the top right page. I didn't have many photos left of the day so I spread them around and filled some of the remaining blocks with stickers and journal boxes. The frame around the 4x4 photo on the left page is from the Memoirs and Memories embellishment kit.
During our time at Hopewell Furnace, we got to walk through several areas demonstrating the production of iron pieces. The left page focuses on the creation of heat. Water runs over a wheel which pumps a bellows. That pushes air into the furnace to increase the heat. In the photo below, I'm listening to the rush of air through the pipe as it heads to the furnace. On the right we watched re-enactors preparing a mold to be cast. It was just like when I was in metal shop in high school!
I made this page as I took a "Summer Camp" class for scrapbooking. The week's challenge was to take one of our punches and turn it into a stamp. I used the Medallion punch on a styrofoam plate and then secured that to a wooden block leftover from our stamping days. I did not re-ink the stamp each time I pressed down. This enabled me to get gradations of the image. The styrofoam was thin so you can see that I inadvertently inked the block and that showed up on the page as well. I used metal designed stickers and die cuts to finish the page.
Hopewell Furnace ran in a time when everyone kept their own farm animals--sheep for wool or meat, chickens for eggs, and horses to pull wagons. That life is kept alive today and we enjoyed visiting all the animals during our tour.
I'm 95% certain that I used a sketch for this layout. However, I cannot figure out where I got it. So if you recognize it, please let me know so I can give credit. The papers are from the very old "Discover" line from Creative Memories. I like it because it has a very rural or rustic feel to it. The distressed elements--faded edging, light tarnish accents--seem to fit with the farm life. Added to the page are some animal stickers which are also older CM. The borders at the tops of both pages are from a non-CM source. I found a few other companies with packs of farm-theme papers and stickers. And the tones matched the Discover theme well.
The reason for our meetup was the demonstration of making charcoal. This process was done on a much larger scale, and every day, when the site functioned as a furnace. Now they have special demonstrations twice a year. The people who work the site in period clothing attended (I realized later who they were) and gave an element of reality to the event. The sign about fire being hot made me chuckle though.
I follow several other scrapbooking blogs and this one had a page I wanted to try. I didn't sign up for the boot camp, but this layout follows the half-page technique displayed. It is 1 piece of decorative paper cut in half and spread on 2 pages, then one piece of cardstock cut into specific strips. I did have to use another piece of cardstock to punch the rustic fence border across the bottom but all of the mats and the 2 thin strips along the paper are from one sheet of cardstock. The CM 12" trimmer has a measurement line on the side of the cutting blade and that helps to be able to make the cuts to get four 4.25x6.25 inch mats.
My next journey was not long after returning from Chamizal. It was special in its own way though because the National Park Travelers Club had recently developed a Meet-up program to encourage people to visit the parks together. We would receive a special meet-up stamp, as well as the park stamp, and both would count toward our yearly tallies. Vanessa put this one together on a weekend where Hopewell Furnace was doing a program on charcoal making. It was the fuel needed when the furnace was running daily--1800s. The buildings were renovated and recreated to be authentic to when this was a booming business.
I made this page for the July 2022 CM Virtual Crop. You can see the sketch on this page. I used an old piece of Discover(I think) CM paper. Since the border was pre-made I just had to fill in with photos and make a border at the bottom. I chose 2 pieces of CM Shortcuts. These were packs of decorative borders in various cardstock colors. The 2 I picked ended up looking like mountains and a fence and that worked well with the rustic feel of the photos. The middle embellishment is a flower from an old heritage pack. This came together quickly with the patterned paper!
