Meetup at Manassas

 The ultimate purpose of my trip was this meetup on Sunday morning. Shellie (in the denim jacket) wanted to host a meetup and we gathered quite a few people together. We all met at the visitor center, saw the map, and did our stamping. Then we joined a ranger talk that walked to the farms just around the visitor center. We also visited the Stonewall Jackson statue. The ranger pointed out that Jackson was more often than not sleeping while in the saddle and did NOT have the "Superman" physique as the sculptor created. We went to lunch afterward and then I returned home.

This layout is another of the Pajama party layouts. I was a little unsure about using it because I didn't know how to incorporate the 4x6 photo. I cut the right side to fit the square (I think they are 3.5x3.5) and decided to just put the rest on the adjoining block I like the way that it worked. The title of the Stonewall Jackson monument had a similar treatment but I stacked the pieces in one block. My favorite is the lower border on the left page. I just love the way the ovals framed those 2 uniform coats!

Taking the Tour

My next trip was in October 2014. On my way home from an all-day surgical technology conference, I stopped for a few stamps at Manassas National Battlefield. It was getting close to the end of the day so I had a choice of seeing the Stone House or watching the movie. Well, of course, I had to take the tour!

This layout is another sketch challenge from Creative Memories. As you can see, the sketch really focused on vertical photos and I only had 1 for this layout. In fact, the photos I worked on during the entire virtual crop were almost all horizontal. So instead of focusing on the photo arrangement, I focused on the page elements. There were several complimentary strips of paper crossing the pages and a couple of areas for embellishments.  I chose the Timeworn paper for the edging of brick on one page and cut both copies of the sheet at the same time to prevent un-even edges. The rest of the strips were scraps from a previous layout and worked with the tones of the page.

The left page embellishment was made by Creative Memories. I just had to put adhesive on--the components were already layered. I stacked the stickers on the right, though I think I did a pretty good job.

I guess it was a visit...

Jim and I often had date night by taking a trip to a dinner theater, so this trip was focused on attending the Lazy Susan Dinner Theater. I did some research to find a National Park nearby so I could get a stamp and decided on Manassas. We went to the visitor center and saw the maps then bought a tape of the auto tour to listen to as we drove around the battlefield. Unfortunately the map in the unigrid did not match the auto tour numbers and the map that should have been given to us with the tape was missing. We got frustrated pretty quickly because a lot of the drive is on local roads and there was quite a bit of traffic. We felt unsafe making stops in what clearly was not a standard stop. We drove back to the gift shop to demand our money back, skipped the battlefield and headed over to Arlington Cemetery where we walked up to the Marine Corps Memorial. I did save the entrance tickets from Manassas for scrapping and so that is as close to a National Park as I could get for this layout.

This page is another example of wallpaper technique. It's a little hard to make out but this is a pattern paper with cars on it to represent our car ride. Patterned paper can be very useful in setting a tone for a page.

Although the Manassas tickets are red, they accent the page well because red and green are complimentary colors (there's a reason they look good at Christmas time too!) If you haven't picked one up for scrapbooking, investing in a simple color wheel helps find colors to use together. You can take a single color in a variety of tones (monochromatic), two colors opposite each other (complimentary), or three colors evenly spaced around the spectrum (triad). If you try something new, drop me a line below and tell me about it!

Journaling is always important to scrapbooking because it helps tell the story of the pictures. I generally feel like I over journal but given the limited amount I shared above I think shortchanged the reader. I guess I didn't want to sound too harsh to the park in something that will outlive me. What do you think, should I add more detail to the journaling on the page?