Pronounce it as you like

 I stayed outside of Richmond Saturday night and Sunday I drove out to a part of the battlefield I'd not seen previously--the Rural Plains area. There was a Harvest Days event, and I love visiting during those events as it's more than just the house tour. I did tour the house but it requires some repair work and all the furnishings are missing. Like the Thomas Stone home, there is graffiti carved into the bricks.

I used a pin I had saved which you can see here. I used papers from Paper Loft as the kit I had on hand had extra banners. I interspersed those with a couple of the phrases from their cut-apart sheet and that filled the space. Granted the left side is a little wonky but it sort of works. The bottom borders are VERY old rick rack shortcuts from Old CM. I have a TON of those to use up and periodically I pull them out and throw them on a bunch of pages. I like that the Paper Loft pages have an antique feel to them but can also be used for a jazzier page due to the designs. It's multi-purpose!

The living encampment was a Confederate Group. It took a while for me to realize this as I'm so used to seeing Union forces on display. Additionally, they had soldiers from the Revolutionary period. Virginia has been bloodied a lot I suppose.

This layout is separated by the pocket page which holds the memorabilia. It's based on a VERY old CM virtual crop challenge (March 2017) (flipped upside-down). While the left and right backgrounds are the same (though I can't remember what pack they are from), since the soldiers were from different periods, the bottom borders are different. And since the pocket page is in the middle it isn't a noticeable change. The left page is a sticker from an old Reminisce Sticker sheet for the Civil War. The right side is a laser-cut border from the Welcome Home pack. On each side, I substituted an item for the other upright photo. On the left, it was the journal card. On the right, I took a few embellishments and filled the area. Those were left from the Gemtones pack.

Some of the other living history displays included a still--not for alcohol, but for making rose water! It was not only a scent to wear but would be used in medicines as well. Part of the Union's strategy was cutting off supply lines to the South.  The shortage of supplies forced people to substitute. One table displayed a variety of common substitutions. It was a particularly interesting point of view for my visit. This page ended the album.

This layout is based on another pin I had saved which you can see here. I did not round the highlight section (the grid pattern paper), but the rest of the items are pretty close. I used a cluster of photos and journaling for the larger photo on the sketch. For the title bar, I clustered some embellishments from the Welcome Home collection and then used a couple of the title stickers--I love how the scroll stickers make a frame for the title.

Summer Road Trip Part 1--Richmond

 In September 2016 I had quite a road trip. My in-laws had reserved 2 weeks at the beach in North Carolina, and the Health Professions Network was scheduled to be in Louisville around the same time. We'll spend a few months going through all the National Park components of the trip. There are 2 full albums and of course many more layouts you won't see here as they are either family events or non-NPS sites. 

This is the kick-off page for the first volume. It doesn't say volume 1 because I naively thought that I would get everything in one album. The base page is a fast-to-fabulous page from one of the travel packs. The title "Life is an Adventure" was pre-printed on the page. I added a strip of brown cardstock as a sign base and then cut a few directional words from patterned paper and found a few travel stickers that would describe a road trip. The old station wagon sticker and suitcase were the final touches. I based the page on this layout I pinned.

You can see from my itinerary that I drove thousands of miles! My first stop was in Richmond where I revisited the Maggie Walker National Historic Site. I had time to watch the movie in the visitor center and get stamps but didn't tour the house again. I doubt that much has changed inside the house.

The left page is based on this page that I saved on Pinterest. I changed up the components of the top border but it has the same feel. I thought that gave me enough room to print my itinerary. On the right, I decided to make a border from a sketch I had saved from Creative Memories. Follow this link and scroll to the third sketch to see the suggestion. I used some Paper Loft papers and a few stickers from my Heritage stash to finish the border and I love how it turned out.

While in Richmond I stopped by the Tredegar Iron Works which is the main visitor center for the area. I didn't go to any of the outlying battlefields on this trip. Tredegar is always a nice place to stop and see the artifacts. This time I focused more on the outdoor elements of the building.

For this page, I pulled an old sketch I had saved from CM's 2017 Virtual Crop. While I kept the borders at the top and bottom, I didn't add the title to the middle of the page. The borders were made with 3" strips of brick paper and a lattice border maker punch which I cut in half. The vintage train added to the overall brown/sepia tone (even though these are full-color photos).

The Outskirts of Richmond

June is the annual trip to the beach with Jim's family and my time to visit parks on my way there (North Carolina). In 2013, I returned to the Richmond area but traveled the battlefields just outside of the city. They were involved in several different campaigns but proved a bloody field no matter when fought.

This layout was inspired by a Pinterest idea which I turned into a 2-page layout. The bottom half of the page uses up some paper that isn't a full 12" wide so I cut two pages to 6" (and will use the rest on other pages down the road). The top half is one full 12" sheet cut in half (I believe from the Stone paper pack). The middle is a strip of pine from the very old Evergreen pack which nicely hides the seam. The stickers are from Reminisce Civil War.

There were several other smaller sites to visit but the one that stood out was this large field which was the scene of several suicidal charges reminiscent of the gory Picket's charge at Gettysburg.

This page is wallpaper. I liked the photographic image of the canon because it matched the photos I had on hand but gives more detail. Red cardstock mats help to prevent the photos from getting lost on the page.

The Hospital That Wasn't There

On the next day of my trip, I drove south of the city to the Chimborazo Visitor Center. This was the site of a rather large Confederate Hospital and the building on the site now (which wasn't there during the Civil War) houses a very nice medical museum. That's all I needed to hear to plan the trip!

I love this piece of paper. I don't remember what line it is from, but the silhouettes of soldiers seemed perfect as the backdrop to the introduction page. Almost ghostly in fact. To keep it simple, I just matted the photos with some dark paper similar to the black in the unigrid.

The next layout showcases the inside of the museum. I was delighted with the array of instruments and the displays. My favorite (which I hope is not too gory for my audience) is the amputation with the anatomical drawings to illustrate the tourniquet and bone knife. I actually used a few of these photos in one of my surgical technology lectures because the overall technique for amputation hasn't changed in 200 years. We've only upgraded the tools to high-speed electrical or gas powered saws.

Because I had so many photos, I only needed to decorate the edges. I used the Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe paper and cut out the middles of 2 pages. The apothecary jars around the edge seemed the perfect choice for the medical photos. There were just a few blank areas left which became a journaling box and then a place to layer stickers or cut-outs from the other pages in the pack.

South to Richmond

Beginning this week we move forward to August 2012 to my annual trip to North Carolina with Jim's family. I travel on my own so that I can make stops at some national park units on the way. This year I drove to Richmond. Though I didn't see all of the park, I did see the Tredegar Iron Works and Chimborazo Hospital.

The border for the left page was based on this Father's Day Card. The inner squares use the Creative Memories Postage Stamp punch and then I used their mini car punch to add detail. By mixing up the colors of the cars on the background (sometimes turning them over to get a totally different color) it creates movement on the page. The white square underneath helps highlight the cut out cars in the postage stamps.

The background of the border and the Junior Ranger book on the right are from the same piece of paper. This is an early CM piece when they made papers 10x12. Still, by cutting it and spreading it across 2 pages, you get a lot of use from one sheet. The color block journal box was designed that way, I didn't make it. However, you could certainly use that as a template to make one of your own!