The BEST Jerry, the BEST!

 In June 2016, Monocacy National Battlefield held an open house. Literally--one of the farmhouses (called the Best Farm) was opened for special tours. It's only open 1-2 days a year so I took advantage of the opportunity to visit. And get stamps. They had some reenactors in period costumes and some ranger talks in the barn. I spent a nice day wandering around the displays.

I was playing along with the Creative Memories Virtual crop and based this on sketch #12. This was another mystery box weekend and the contents (Shabby Chic Rose) had a perfect rustic fit for the farmhouse. The box also included the medallion flower punch and I used a series of them to create the border between the top and bottom sections of the layout. You'll notice I doubled the sketch and repeated the process on the right as well. The title sticker on the right is from a very old pack of CM paper but I thought the sentiment worked well with the theme.

In order to use all the photos I wanted on the layout, I included 2 peekaboo pockets on the right page.

My second set of pages focused on the living history encampment featuring a physician. I can spend a long time looking over the medical history items. The ether bottle was a new one for me.

This layout is also based on a sketch from the virtual crop. This time sketch #11. The paper is from the Homestead collection--another pack that works well with historical and rustic themes. The overall technique is a series of 12" strips (varying widths) and some border stickers to separate the areas. There is another peekaboo pocket here. I have the contents of the lean-to tent as a close up once you lift the photo of the tent. I thought that was clever.

The Lost Orders

Between 2011 and 2015, Civil War Battlefield sites commemorated the 150th anniversary of the war. Many of them created special stamps for the occasion and the National Park Travelers Club had a special certificate for obtaining those stamps. I earned my certificate by attending a presentation on the Lost Orders at Monocacy in September of 2012. I will not tell the story here, but I do encourage you to look it up as it's an interesting piece of history.

I made this layout during the Creative Memories Sun-Sational Summer challenge in which we were to use ONLY new CM paper to develop layouts. That's really a challenge to me as I like to jump between all the variety of papers and items I own, but I did stick to the challenge for this layout.

To create this layout I used 2 pieces of paper--one from the Creative Memories Archivers Paper Pack and one from the Timber pack (no longer available). I cut each at 6" across the middle and then rearranged them so there was a "time" reference in opposing corners and similar patterned paper filling up the blank areas. The photos needed no matting with that paper--it's a really great background! The long border on the left is also from the Archiver's line, but from the Laser Cut Borders. If you've been to Monocacy you'll know that a bridge played a significant role in the battle, and I thought this gave the image of a bridge just a little. The journal box on the right is also from the Archiver's line and I loved the open journal book look to it. Especially when you can see the letter on the top of the page and the background of the brochure. This is one of my all-time favorite layouts.

Two Small Stops

In 2011 Eastern National produced the 25th anniversary stamps to commemorate the Passport Program. Since Jim was visiting his family I took the opportunity to make a day trip visiting Monocacy for the first time and revisiting Fort McHenry.

I debated cutting the photo in half and posting  each page separately, but there isn't much unique enough about either experience, and the visits were literally hours apart. In fact, I also visited Catoctin Mountain Park but didn't take any photos. You'll notice that there are just simple photos of each place--the sign without me near it and an establishing shot of the park. In some ways this is the epitome of a "stamp and run" layout.

The left page is another page from Forevermore Scrapbook's civil war papers--just a line of rifles across the bottom. Adding the drum and bugle to the title/unigrid area finishes the decoration. On the right I used 6x6 paper in flag colors as the base for the quintessential story of our flag. The red sticker is my admission proof (they change color every day). On my way home I mounted it on one of the passport pages so I could scrapbook it later. Journaling on that page is a silver/white pen on dark blue paper. I will say it's hard for me to find a suitable pen that writes in a fine tip and in a color light enough to see on dark cardstock. Do you have one to recommend? Comment below!