50-states album part 3--California

My next entry in the 50-states album is California. Both photos came from the 2014 trip recently posted. Stops included Long Beach, Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Mountains.

This layout was scraplifted from this design. To keep the weight of the page down, I used 1" strips of red cardstock along the edges of the page and then cut the blue dot background paper down to fit the opening. The state shape was created in the same way the Arizona state was, only this time I used a dark tan over a light tan paper. The filmstrip was created using the CM Border Maker cartridge and the state name was cut on the Cricut. The one lonely sticker is a leftover CM Cottage sticker from many years ago. I liked it better than a die-cut though.

Here's your sign, Hollywood

Another group of stops we made was to visitor centers in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. Those photos are on the right but I made them part of a double-page layout so you also get to see the Hollywood sign. It was a real challenge to find a spot to take my photo (bottom) so I added a postcard of the sign for good measure.

This layout is another challenge from the CM virtual crop. You can see the sketch on this page. I used paper from the Travel Log pack (paper, stickers, and mats). It makes it so easy to coordinate the items as the kits have a mix of matching tones.  Once I choose the elements, the page comes together fairly quickly.

Mission: San Gabriel

My next trip after Pipestone was actually our 2014 NPTC convention cruise. That album has been shared, so if you want to look chronologically, go to this post.

In September 2014 I went to an HPN conference in Long Beach, CA. After the conference, I traveled a little north to the Los Angeles area. I met up with a club friend who lives nearby and we made several drives around town to get stamps. One of the stops we made was to Mission San Gabriel--part of the Juan Bautista de Anza trail. It's a lovely church and still in use (as we tried to not disturb the baptism going on there).

The left page of this layout was created for the Creative Memories Virtual Crop. You can see the sketch here. The paper is from a new line called Memoirs and Memories. The sun in the center is cut from the center of one of the matching mat packs. The right page uses a mish-mash of older items. The paper is 10x12, so by stacking the photos on the left I hide the fact that it doesn't reach the edge of the page. The border on the right is from the older Archiver's line. The mat is from a Vintage pack from several years ago. I added the title of "Timeless" to the top. It's light in color so still not very prominent. The journal box is from a Club Scrap pack. When I originally cut it my blade was dull and so the edges are pretty rough. On the other hand, they look really rustic and I think that matches the page!

Inside the Gates

Continuing my drive along the Juan Bautista de Anza trail, I went to another presidio--this one in Tucson. This restored building highlights life in the 18th century in the west with reproduction arms, furniture and even brickwork. This is a much smaller area than the original fort because the city has encroached on the historic area.

This layout is another entry in the CM Virtual Crop. I went very literal with the layout, and in hindsight I probably should have used a different shape than the heart for the right side photo. The top border uses an arrow border cartridge from CM. I used the part that is cut out rather than the border itself which is a nice way to get double duty from a cut! Works well for the stars and chevrons too! The papers are much older CM paper but are still in keeping with my southwest tones. The tag used for a journal box is actually from the vintage papers but the orange tone matched the paper. And by turning it so the orange is at the bottom it creates a nice flow down the page.

I enjoyed the trip back in time but also the juxtaposition of the city buildings rising above the fort walls.

For this layout I used a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. The striped/orange paper didn't end up the way I thought because the stripes run in 2 different directions so I had to play with the cuts to see which worked best (the inner larger pieces or the smaller corner pieces). the larger won out! Additional embellishments include a journal box that came from a sheet of tags I bought and a photo border of chile peppers from a scrapbooking calendar I got for Christmas many years ago. The sun is from the Everyday Photo Decor kit which is a new collection that provides a gift frame for 3 photos. I had used most of one kit for my Administrative Assistant Day cards and the sun was leftover. I think the variety came together nicely though.

Southwestern Life

The word Presidio means "fort". Tubac is a small town just north of the Tumacacori site. Although this is a state park, it is associated with Juan Bautista de Anza and had a stamp from the trail. I spent a bit of time looking through the museum. There are several buildings to tour.

This layout was another one created for the CM Virtual Crop in April. You can see the sketch here. It was a great way to use up scraps of paper. You can probably recognize the tan and red checked papers from  the Tumacacori page. There are remnants of other papers from my southwest trip as well. I even found a similarly toned journal box. The lesson on color stuck with me from the Tumacacori mortuary chapel layout and I found more of the purple and yellow stickers to layer. The stickers were more transparent than I would have thought, but I think the overall effect is nice.

One of the other buildings on the site is a vintage 1-room school house.

I used one more CM Virtual crop sketch. For this layout I used a very old pack of paper from the original CM called "Cottage". The papers were not quite 12" square so this was a good use of them--using smaller bits to trim a layout. I also had coordinating stickers with a school theme and I think they paired well with the photos. I'm working hard on using up my sticker letters. I added the "School Days" letters to the books sticker as a title. The letters are all the same size, but match the variety of paper colors rather than being monochromatic. I believe I'll be doing this a lot more in the future as I whittle down my stash.

On the Trail of History

My travels in Arizona followed the Juan Bautista de Anza trail. He was a Spanish officer who was charged with leading groups of people from Mexico to establish towns in California. The journeys happened right around the same time that the eastern states were fighting for independence from Great Britain. He successfully led groups all the way to Monterey California.
I made this layout during the Creative Memories virtual crop in April 2019. The sketch can be seen here. The background paper is part of the CM Stone pack. The middle yellow (which I thought matched the sign in the photo well) is an older piece of CM paper. On top is a remnant of white brick also from the CM Stone pack. Since this was a story about settlers traveling I figured they would have taken some livestock with them and found a few horse and sheep stickers to decorate the middle of the page.

Next week I will share pages from the Tubac Presidio (that's where the blue and yellow signs were photographed). I visited a number of sites along the trail and this was sort of the kick-off page for that journey.

One of the other sites I stopped at was this church--Mission San Xavier del Bac. It is actually a notecard I picked up with scenes from the area. It made a good addition to the page but I couldn't make this a 2-page layout and still wanted to include the cover photo and some journaling. Peekaboo pockets to the rescue!