Stone Age

Today's blog entry marks the final stop on the Monday bus tour at the 2021 NPTC Convention in DC. The early part of the day included a visit to the National Arboretum and Lincoln Cottage. Since none of that is officially related to the National Park Service, I did not include those pages in the blog (but feel free to visit me sometime to see them!)

We stopped at the Old Stone House in Georgetown. You may recall that I mentioned this house in my Week 3 'Lasting Memories' challenge post, which can be found here. This site is handled by the Rock Creek Park portion of the National Park Service. Built in 1766, this house is the oldest structure on its original foundation within the Washington, DC area. It's a relatively small structure, but you can see that inside is the original fireplace, complete with a scarred wood mantle. Interestingly, the house was not preserved simply because of its age. For over 200 years, a misconception that George Washington used this as his headquarters when traveling helped spur the community to maintain the structure. After the government bought it, historic excavations and research on maps of the area concluded that this was never a tavern, and George Washington never stayed here. However, since it had become a historically preserved site, it was now saved for its own history.  

This layout was made during a Paper Loft class at the Lancaster CKC scrapbooking convention. The overall yellow tones of the stones and my shirt helped pull everything together. Paper Loft intentionally creates pleasing palettes to help create a layout with interest (read--multiple patterns) that do not conflict or cause too much discordance on the page. I wasn't sure how much journaling space I would need, so rather than try to cram it all into a small journal box, I wrote out my journaling on CM's Write Strips. Then I can adhere them to the page and trim the lines as I lay out the strips. The house embellishment on the bottom right comes from the Eastern National scrapbook kit.

Lasting Memories Guest Designer Week 3 (Francis Scott Key Memorial Park)

Hello everyone! I'm guest designing for Lasting Memories throughout September! I'll be sharing an extra layout every Sunday at noon for the next 2 weeks (and I encourage you to go back to review the last 2 weeks). Each one follows the weekly challenge posted at Lasting Memories, and I encourage you to join the challenge! Post your version using the link at the bottom of their post.

For this post, we are jumping ahead in the NPTC convention again. On Monday, we had a 2nd bus tour, and one of the stops was the Old Stone House in Georgetown. Though managed by the Rock Creek Park unit, the land isn't technically part of that park. However, nearby is Francis Scott Key Memorial Park, which IS. It was located close by where our bus was parked, so when we were done at the house, one of the Rangers walked us back to the bus, stopping at the park long enough for a few photos. 

This week, the Lasting Moments challenge is to use floral paper. I turned to CM's Spring Medley pack. The background floral paper had been used previously, and all that remained was a 1" wide frame. I found a piece of blush cardstock that matched the tone of the stones in the photos and trimmed that to 11". I found a sketch that I had saved and used it to finish filling in the elements. The green leafy print is also from Spring Medley. It's 6" x 9". I trimmed the statue's close-up photo to 3 3/4" x 3 3/4" and then matted it on a piece of blue paper from the collection. A few stickers and a journal box finished the layout.