Summer Road Trip Part 1--Richmond

 In September 2016 I had quite a road trip. My in-laws had reserved 2 weeks at the beach in North Carolina, and the Health Professions Network was scheduled to be in Louisville around the same time. We'll spend a few months going through all the National Park components of the trip. There are 2 full albums and of course many more layouts you won't see here as they are either family events or non-NPS sites. 

This is the kick-off page for the first volume. It doesn't say volume 1 because I naively thought that I would get everything in one album. The base page is a fast-to-fabulous page from one of the travel packs. The title "Life is an Adventure" was pre-printed on the page. I added a strip of brown cardstock as a sign base and then cut a few directional words from patterned paper and found a few travel stickers that would describe a road trip. The old station wagon sticker and suitcase were the final touches. I based the page on this layout I pinned.

You can see from my itinerary that I drove thousands of miles! My first stop was in Richmond where I revisited the Maggie Walker National Historic Site. I had time to watch the movie in the visitor center and get stamps but didn't tour the house again. I doubt that much has changed inside the house.

The left page is based on this page that I saved on Pinterest. I changed up the components of the top border but it has the same feel. I thought that gave me enough room to print my itinerary. On the right, I decided to make a border from a sketch I had saved from Creative Memories. Follow this link and scroll to the third sketch to see the suggestion. I used some Paper Loft papers and a few stickers from my Heritage stash to finish the border and I love how it turned out.

While in Richmond I stopped by the Tredegar Iron Works which is the main visitor center for the area. I didn't go to any of the outlying battlefields on this trip. Tredegar is always a nice place to stop and see the artifacts. This time I focused more on the outdoor elements of the building.

For this page, I pulled an old sketch I had saved from CM's 2017 Virtual Crop. While I kept the borders at the top and bottom, I didn't add the title to the middle of the page. The borders were made with 3" strips of brick paper and a lattice border maker punch which I cut in half. The vintage train added to the overall brown/sepia tone (even though these are full-color photos).

50 States Album part 27--Virginia

Virginia, as anyone who has driven the entire length of I-81 knows, is a VERY long state! We've made quite a few trips over the years, especially when my uncles lived near Charlottesville. This page features one of my solo trips to the beach where I stopped in Richmond for some touring to break up the trip to North Carolina. That's the Maggie L. Walker NPS unit. The other photo is from Mabry's Mill which is along the Blue Ridge parkway. I highly recommend a stop at the restaurant near here and if you can get the blackberry cobbler--do so!

My inspiration for this layout came from this page. The cut-out of the state was one of my trickier bits of fussy cutting. I did have the Cricut cut the outline shape in blue. I mounted that on white and fussy-cut around leaving a small border, then mounted that on red and did the same thing.

I found it amusing to place a sticker of "We the People" just like the original (which hardly ever happens) but then augmented with some civil war and colonial stickers I had on hand to demonstrate the age of the state. The small informational piece on Maggie Walker is from the Eastern National scrapbook kit. I had cut a framed piece out previously for Clara Barton so this was an easy way to add more detail on a rather obscure historical figure.

A Walk through Maggie Walker's House

Maggie Walker's residence was preserved to honor her work in developing community opportunities for African-Americans in the Richmond area. In addition to starting a bank, she had a role in many charitable organizations and women's rights groups. She had some tragedy in her life as well and that is talked about through the tour of her house.

I don't have any photos from the interior of the house, but I was able to get my photo taken with the NPS sign and to show the entire structure by knitting 2 photos together. To highlight the page, I took a rather old idea shown in this pin and updated it with stickers I had on hand (like the shoe instead of glasses shown in the original). Sorry the bottom right corner got cropped too much. That is a sticker of a trunk similar to the one in the pin. The journal box is from a Club Scrap farm/heritage page that I had. I chalked the edges brown to set it off on the page. No matting because the photos are so oddly shaped. Just a simple layout!