Feathered Friends

Today's blog will finish up my visit to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. But don't worry, there's more to the 2021 NPTC Convention yet to come!

In addition to the lovely flowers in the park, there are opportunities to see wildlife that you wouldn't expect in a city like Washington, D.C. The ducks might not be exotic, but I was surprised to see the great white egrets hunting for fish. We also saw blue herons, but I didn't capture them on film. 

For this layout, I used the Flourish Project Recipe from Creative Memories. I continued using the Sweet Blossoms fast-to-fabulous papers, and this time turned the borders to the bottom. If you look at the original recipe, you will see that I flipped the pages as I wanted the circular photos on the right. I didn't think about it when I created the page, but it's like looking at them through a telescope! Since I had more photos on the other page than the recipe called for, I didn't need to fill the top of the page with more than a small title sticker. But on the right, I wanted a bit more at the top. The Love border is on the back of one of the mat papers, and I trimmed that with the border at the top and bottom for a bit of definition.

Wild Flowers

In today's post, we continue our exploration of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens at the 2021 NPTC Convention. In addition to the numerous lotus plants, there is a rich assortment of hibiscus and other plants. (And look at the size of that leaf! It's as large as my head!) The brown "thing" is a dried lotus pod, so I suppose that should have been included in the previous layout.

I created this layout based on the CM Project Recipe, 'Bottanical Burst'. I used two sheets of Sweet Blossom paper, which is in the Fast-to-Fabulous style (meaning the borders are pre-printed). I turned the borders to the middle of both pages, so I got a bonus change of color there. I used a piece of white cardstock to create the circle, cut it in half, and layered a tonal paper between the edge of the border and the circle. I punched a leaf border from that same tonal paper and made minor cuts so that it would flow around the circle. It took 3 strips of border to complete the page. The title and sticker flowers were from the same kit, and I finished the page quickly.

Pretty in Pink

Welcome back to Kenilworth Gardens! Our NPTC 2021 Convention Bus trip left us off here for about an hour and a half, and my friend Melania and I did a lot of walking. In this layout, you'll see the lotus blossoms for which the park is best known. There are a series of pools, and each one is bursting with color. I tried to capture a few of the best blooms for posterity.

This layout is another that I created for the Creative Memories Virtual Crop in June 2025. Scroll to Layout #3. The advisor who created this sketch provided an introductory video to talk about how she made her cuts. I followed her advice closely and chose the Jazzberry and Lime Tart papers from the Vivid Melodies collection. (There is a bit of this left if you want to check the store.) Those 2 colors best matched the blooms in my photos. The vertical photo mats were created by punching one of the sheets with an older border punch featuring tulips (as I mentioned in the last blog — tulips somewhat resemble lotus blossoms). Even if they didn't, a floral punch of any shape would work well here. I trimmed the photos to the correct dimensions and layered them according to the sketch. I knew that with a sketch featuring smaller photo sizes, my florals would be perfect. I tend to center them but leave a LOT of landscape, which eventually gets cut away. There are a few additional photos in a sleeve made for the Happy Album. It provides room for 4 horizontal pictures and a bit of journaling in the middle (that's why you don't see journaling on this layout). A few bits of greenery embellishments completed the page.

Lotus Blooming Everywhere

Welcome back to my 2021 NPTC convention tour. This continues the Friday bus trip that we started in the last blog post. Our first stop on the bus trip was Kenilworth Gardens. Visiting Parks in DC is sometimes complicated. Most people think that each place they visit is a "unit". Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens is part of the Anacostia Park section of DC. But even that isn't a unit. They belong to National Capital Parks--East. And no, there is no corresponding north, south, or west designation. That is just the management office. The official unit here is simply "National Capital Parks."

I was happy to visit here as I don't often visit DC in the spring or summer, and this is when the park truly shines. After getting off the bus, we all lined up for stamps (of course). I noticed that there was an abundance of Lotus-themed items everywhere, including the bike stand you see below. Turns out Melania has a lotus tattoo as well! The only thing we missed in this visit was the visitor center, so I'll have to go back at some point and watch the movie there.

This layout was based on one of the Power Hours from Meggan and Tessa (April 2024). The paper is from Old CM — one of the pastel Spring addition packs. They have some pre-printed borders and were the precursor to the Fast to Fabulous pages, I think. I cut up the elements (stripes, blue floral, and green floral) and layered them as per the instructions. There is a lotus blossom laser-cut border in the new Serenity line, and so I moved that over to this layout. It turns out that tulip stickers also somewhat resemble the lotus blossom, and those three stickers were a great way to fill the gap after my journaling.

The Tractor Story

My visit ended with a ride around the park on a wagon pulled by a tractor. I joined the children's group for this ride. A little bumpy but quite scenic and gives a nice overview of the park. We only stopped once and that's when I was able to take the scenic shot at the bottom of the right page. That is the Potomac River and Washington DC in the distance. Considering the bumpy ride I think the rest of the photos came out rather well. I did like seeing the old farmhouse.

This layout is based on a sketch I saved on Pinterest. As I'm playing along with Lasting Memories, I'll post a photo of it.  

You can also see the site I found it here. I again used Kelly Green cardstock as the base and added the plaid and gingham for the printed squares. I had already trimmed one photo to 4x4 so it was smaller than the sketch. I found a mat with similar colors (striped, not plaid though) and mounted it to give it a bit more definition. For the other photos, I wanted to keep them from blending in so I used more yellow paper as a mat. The tractors at the top of the left page are punched from more Kelly green cardstock. My die cuts (those I made on the Cricut) had tractor wheels. I paired them for some symmetry in the border.

Time for Milking

 I got bored (scared) of the chickens so I walked around the farm a bit. I came across the group in the milking barn and the ranger was hard at work showing everyone how to milk the cow. At the end of the lesson I asked to see how much milk was obtained--it wasn't as much as I thought it would be, but I suppose it was just for demonstration. 

This is another of the May 2024 CM Virtual Crop sketches (Sketch #4). I continued using the On the Farm pack. The cardstock on the bottom is Hot Fudge. Instead of a piece of paper for the 1" strips, I chose red cardstock and punched the barn/fence BMC cartridge. I didn't feel like cutting another piece of paper just for two 1/2" strips across the bottom so I decided the yellow scraps from the last layout were the least objectionable. I loved that there was a cow print paper. That is one paper spread across the 2 pages. The title came from a photo at the event--remember you don't HAVE to use a title sticker or card.

Thomas Jefferson and George Mason

Happy National Scrapbook Day! As this is posting, I'm at a weekend scrap to celebrate the event. Creative Memories began this day many years ago on the first Monday in May.

This layout is part of my visit around Washington DC and I wanted to walk the Tidal Basin. I had never been to any of those memorials and I was excited to see them all. Each one will get its own post on the blog, so stick with me over the next few weeks to see them all.

First up is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. What an enormous statue! It's a beautiful memorial with text of his famous documents engraved on the walls. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the photos. Not sure why they came out so blurry this time.

This layout was created with what Creative Memories calls a "Project Recipe". I have the original PDF version, but you can see the idea page here through a pin on Pinterest. So, you'll notice there's no blue in my layout. That's because I used paper from the Imagine paper pack. I wanted the black and red colors as this is a very bold set of photos. The contrast color of yellow actually threw me for a bit but as I look at my creation, I'm liking it more and more. I changed some photos for the unigrid, one for a die cut of a camera, and one for a journal box. Like page sketches, the project recipes are starting points. Make the layout work for you, don't try to jam your photos into something that doesn't tell the story.

Very close to the Jefferson Memorial is a little known memorial for George Mason. He was instrumental in assisting with the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Definitely a forgotten hero.

This layout was created from a sketch. The idea is to use one piece of double-sided paper and cut and arrange it to highlight 3 photos. Here is the sketch. As you can see, I turned it 90-degrees to the left because my photos were oriented slightly differently. The red paper and striped paper are the same page, just 2 different sides. The stars are a border sticker that I thought worked well. I didn't use as many stickers as recommended, but I don't see any "bare" areas that concern me.