Two lighthouses

After returning from Mosquito Island we were headed back to our cottage. Since we were passing Cape Hatteras light, we stopped to take a few photos. The visitor center was closed but we could still walk around the structures. The next morning we revised our route to the Corrigan's Condo and so I requested a stop at Bodie Island Lighthouse as well.

These 2 pages are from Forevermore Scrapbooks in Gettysburg. They have a wide array of National Park photo pages. They actually are each to have another page so that they make 2-page layouts with the 2nd page being a photo of the lighthouse. I find that sort of redundant, so I just buy the page with the park sign on it. And it worked perfectly here as wallpaper for my lighthouse photos. All I needed to do was mat the photos and journal and--voila!

Ocracoke Island

In September, Jim and I made our annual trip to the beach to stay with his family. We started a few days early to work our way to North Carolina. Our first stop was the Outer Banks area. I wanted to go to an offshoot of Cape Lookout called Portsmouth Island and the only way to get there is to take a ferry from Ocracoke. Ironically, Ocracoke is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, not Cape Lookout.

For this page, I used a layout I made at the Lancaster Creating Keepsakes Convention through Petticoat Parlor (Link). The class was held to help us learn to use gelato paint on thin wood as die cuts for our pages (palm tree and 2 shells in bottom corner). I have to admit, I do not like the wood die cuts. Even though they are thin, they are too thick for my taste. (Not crazy about the string or anchor at the top either). However, I took the class and paid for all of it, so I left the page "as-is". This is actually 1/2 of the layout I made. I used the other half for a non-NPS page.

Traversing the Outer Banks

After leaving Atlantic Beach with Jim's family we planned an extended return by heading to the Outer Banks a little further north. We dropped off Jim's niece just north of Hatteras and headed up the island stopping at Bodie Lighthouse which was under renovation. Since there wasn't much to see there we headed north to Wright Brothers National Memorial.

The left page just has 2 borders as decoration. The borders were made by punching light and dark blue waves with the Creative Memories border maker system. The sand bars come from one rectangular piece of beige paper which I tore diagonally. The stickers are from Creative Memories as well. I scraplifted the idea from a pinterest pin (Dawn Dimock's idea). I think she intended that they border 2 pages for a double layout, but I sort of liked the way they stacked. There is just the one photo of the lighthouse and a unigrid so it helped fill the page nicely. The journaling box is decorated with some remnant seagull stickers I had.

The right page is a pre-made layout. At one point Creative Memories had some pre-designed pages for what they called picfolio albums. Instead of the strap pages they were pre-bound in an album. Unfortunately it wasn't expandable. I did use the album to make a gift but used my own pages as the theme was a bit more tropical. So when I got to these pages, I found the stash and decided the pale blue and beige really looked good with the historic theme and the beach location.

Once we got to Wright Brothers we attended a ranger talk in the visitor center near the replica Wright flyer. This was a great overview to the park. Afterward we walked the grounds and toured the museum.

In the layout above, the left page is a simple wallpaper technique. Beginning with the right side I started using some pre-designed pages that Creative Memories calls "Fast to Fabulous". I bought them because they were on sale. I didn't really think I'd like them but I have to admit--with very little effort a layout comes together QUICKLY. The bottom right rectangle is a pre-designed space. Since I didn't have a photo for that space I looked around for something else to fill in. I found a deck of cards with inspirational sayings that I had won at a crop and thought "Dare to Fly" was quite appropriate for the page! I slipped it onto the page and it was done in a jiffy.

The F2F pages are printed on both sides. One nice thing about that is that you don't have the bulkiness of many layers of card stock on your page. The left page had room for 4 photos. I took one of the pre-arranged photo boxes and added a very large sticker that I had of the Wright Flyer. On these two pages there are just 3 embellishments--the plane sticker, a sun sticker and the word "Fly" that I cut from a sheet of paper travel words. Everything else is F2F,  and a journal box and photo mats made to align with the theme/colors. I didn't even have to trim the photos this time.

If you've tried Fast to Fabulous, let me know your thoughts! Comment below.

Lookout!

Jim's family makes a trip to North Carolina every year and many times we take a trip to or near Cape Lookout as it is only 20 miles from the beach house. This time I wanted to land on the island with the lighthouse and get the stamps available there. I booked a ferry trip from nearby Beaufort and you can see my transport in the photo below. I did NOT expect that the sea spray would completely SOAK me on the ride out and I had not packed a change of clothes. I only stayed a few hours before returning so I could eventually get into something dry.

I scraplifted this from a Creative Memories idea sheet (Click here for directions) and while I like it, I think I might have focused too much on the background than the photos. Now, the photos are all good and tell the story of my visit along with the memorabilia (unigrid), but the paper pieced lighthouse I made in the middle sort of draws the eye away and that wasn't my intention. I'd like to hear from others--do you think the page would still sing without that hunk of paper in the middle or does it set the tone? Comment below!

Scrapbooking without pictures

This page is a one-page layout of a trip Jim and I made to Cape Lookout. Or more precisely, Harker's Island which is where the visitor center is for the lighthouse. You have to take a ferry to the lighthouse which we didn't feel like doing that day. We just looked through the view finder lenses. We had visited the lighthouse previously during a boat trip. It landed us on the beach side of the island where we swam and looked for shells. That was of course prior to my learning about the stamps. I remember the visitor center at Harker's Island was not that impressive but I did buy a postcard and that and the unigrid became the focus of the page.

This turned out to be a very simple layout but I got lucky by having the large and small diamond border stickers. They perfectly matched the design on the light house, and really that's all that was needed. Looks like I used another photo holder for the unigrid and if I get a chance I will probably replace it. Just remember, it's about the story (journaling) so don't worry if you only have memorabilia to make a page!