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.

Don't Chicken Out

In May 2019 I headed to National Harbor (just south of DC) to attend an AST conference. As I wasn't a delegate, I had large blocks of time where I didn't have to be in a lecture, so I took the opportunity to visit some new locations. One stop was the Oxon Hill Farm which is part of the National Capital Parks management system. This working farm teaches about the history of farming and provides an opportunity to get into the country for those who live in the city. When I visited there was a group of school children on site already. Because they had just one ranger, the visitor center (the large red building below) was not open when I arrived. So I chose to wait on the porch. But I was CLOSELY watched by the chickens who were not sure I should be sitting there. I never realized chickens could be guard animals!

This is Sketch #2 from the May 2024 CM Virtual Crop. I chose the "On The Farm" kit from last year to create my layout. The base is Kelly Green cardstock. I chose 3 papers to layer on top--the white chicken wire just because there were chickens involved, the red because the tonal print is chickens and the yellow for a pop of a different color. The chickens are all stickers from the pack, but the title has 2 die cuts attached. This kit was so popular when it came out that the bonus embellishments sold out within a few hours and I missed them. So I bought the digital kit and used my Cricut to print then cut the objects. You can't tell the difference!

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.