Summer Road Trip part 2--Petersburg

After Tredegar, I did make an additional stop for a stamp and toured the Henricus Historical Park. The stamp was for the John Smith Chesapeake Trail and it's a tangential connection at best. There are MANY pages of that visit and I didn't want to overload the blog. Similarly, the evening before Petersburg included a stop at the Blandsburg cemetery next to the park where I learned about Victorian Era grave decorations. It was a fascinating talk and if you see it offered, take the tour. But there are tons of photos of gravestones too and I thought the blog would be better without them. If I ever run out of ideas to post (HA!) maybe I'll return to those pages.  Let's turn instead to the next stop on my trip--a return to Petersburg.

I started my Petersburg visit with a return to the visitor center and then walked the Mortar Loop trail. This was the Confederate line with a variety of cannons.

For this layout, I wanted to use the canon/field paper on the left because it matched my visit. the secret is that this is really a page meant for Gettysburg. I taped the Petersburg sign over the label though because that is the only thing that really makes it a Gettysburg page. The journal box is a card from the Eastern National scrapbook pack. The right page has 2 more stickers from that pack on the small journal box. Nothing fancy on the right--just wallpaper with an old CM brown page. I was hoping the compass watermark looked a bit like canon wheels.

Along the trail, I got to see the "Dictator" (well, not the one actually used in the siege, but a similar one from that era). I was impressed with the size of the mortar! My next stop was out at City Point to see Grant's Headquarters. I toured the home and then went to see a ranger talk on the use of the telegraph. There are 2 rivers nearby and the views were lovely. But I had to head down to the beach so I didn't stay too long.

I'm not completely sure where the idea for this layout came from. It isn't a 1-2-3 based on the amount of paper used, and it's not a familiar sketch. So perhaps I had my own idea! It happens sometimes. What I can tell you is that the base is a 12x12 sheet of brown cut in half and used to anchor the bottom of both pages. I used a rather old piece of CM paper that had a printed border on one side. however, it wasn't 12" in both directions (this was the "perfect fit" paper for the CM pages that were not QUITE 12x12). I cut it "across the grain" and created the 2 border strips. The blue tones were a nice contrast to the browns. I punched 2 borders with the grass punch to fill in the bottom. Very little embellishment on these pages--just 2 stickers that came from a Scrapbook Customs sticker pack. I have lots of these as they are the same for every park and I bought at least 2 dozen packs!

What's in That Case?

Heading further south, I arrived at Petersburg. I am fond of this place since Jim wrote about the battle in his first book. I saw the new movie and walked through the visitor center but didn't have time to walk the battlefield.

The theme for these pages is Red White and Blue. I chose wallpaper for all the pages. This one came from a CM paper pack that has a bit of a denim feel to it. Red mats help to keep the black and white photo from getting lost on the page. To add some more details I used an older CM star punch which has 2 different sizes. I cut the larger in white and the smaller in red and then stacked them.

These are some of the items I thought were most interesting in the museum area. I have overall shots and then some close-ups for detail.

Thanks to Jim's book I knew that George Meade played a key role in the battle and so I chose a sheet of paper I found with his likeness and a quote. The photos have a lot of orange in them from the back of the case so I didn't need to mat them. The right page is also wallpaper. I had found some digital paper for Gettysburg and sent it to a company to print full sheets of paper, This is one of the prints and I thought the red on the right page balanced the blue from the left. These photos also didn't need matting because their backgrounds were pale white.

Back to Petersburg

My early trips show a very limited exposure to the various parks in the system don't they? Well, at this point even though I had purchased the passport book I hadn't yet found the National Park Travelers Club (NPTC). So this visit is a return to Petersburg. That isn't too surprising because I mentioned our previous visit was for Jim to get ideas for a book. This time the book is in full production and he arranged to spend time in the archives as well as tour the battlefield and Crater sites.

Very little technique on these pages, but I've tried to add some ivy as a nod to the heritage/historical aspects of the place. Not sure the "Remember When" sticker is enough of a title and there is plenty of space to put one on the left upper corner. The journal mat is an odd choice. Perhaps I didn't notice the swirls in the background as I journaled.

The photo mats show some promise as I purposely arranged them to get the most of the NPS arrowhead paper around the edge. The kit is available at many gift shops and online at the Eastern National store. Unfortunately it includes 8 1/2 x 11 paper, not 12x12.

So this is the first lesson in what to do with non-12x12 paper--use it for photo mats!

The First Double Double

My next set of National Park layouts is this pair of pairs from Petersburg. Jim and I were at the end of a very long drive back from Atlanta where we stopped at a variety of military museums. This was mostly a "Jim" trip, but don't worry I get back at him later. 😁

I wonder where I got that Civil War paper. This is something that I'm going to struggle with a LOT as there are many Civil War era national park units and a shortage of papers and stickers for that theme.

So obviously the left page is "wallpaper" technique. The right side is a bit bare. I should have matted some of the photos I think. Or perhaps used a split page for that one piece of Civil War themed paper.

Here is the 2nd set of layout pages. What is a bit unusual is that the "Title" ends up on the 2nd of the 2 layouts. I think that is because this was the real focus of our visit. Jim is planning to write about the Crater and this will provide some background for his book.

I rather like the alternating square border on the right and that I seem to have coordinated colors a bit better, pulling the red/brown from the left photo and using that to mat photos and choose the squares.  In this phase of my scrapbooking history I'm using the "natural" colored pages from Creative Memories and it does seem to deaden the title letters. Perhaps I should outline them with a dark marker.