Madness in the Desert Part 33--Cactus Loop

I had visited Saguaro NP previously but had only seen the park's western side. You can see that post here. This time we visited the eastern end and drove their auto loop (which I'm happy to say is paved!) 

I wanted to make this layout after I saw this post on the Farmhouse Memories blog. I don't use fabric a lot, but they have a few examples that have enticed me to include it. Even though I know it isn't lignin-free, sometimes it just makes the right statement and this page is a good example of that. Farmhouse Memories sells a sheet of sticky paper that you use to stiffen the fabric so that it lies flat and gives you a surface so that you can attach adhesive just like you would for photos or other papers. My hardest decision was where to cut the fabric as I didn't want it to cover the photos. So I ended up cutting off the tops of some of the cacti. There are just 2 photos on this page. The image on the top left is a panoramic postcard I purchased in the gift shop.

Madness in the Desert part 32--Looking Sharp

To refresh, my last post on this trip looked at Montezuma Castle. After leaving there, we finished our drive to Tucson and then spent a day looking at planes. Jim's excitement over that trip was that we would go to the Pima Air & Space Museum, the starting point for a "Boneyard" tour of the nearby Air Force base. All those photos (and there are a LOT) are in the album at home. As they don't focus on national parks, I'll skip them (you're welcome). 😁

After leaving that museum though, we had some time in the early evening so we made an impromptu visit to Saguaro National Park.We did have time for a few photos near the entrance so I could get my sign photo and Jim could pose with the cacti.  

I made these layouts in the spring of 2020 using the Creative Memories National Scrapbook Day kits. Each year, we celebrate National Scrapbook Day on the first Saturday in May (truly--Creative Memories invented this day!) The kit this year featured a strawberry theme. Here's a photo of the kit:

The strawberries were not all that prominent so I was able to show my crop friends that you could really use the pages for anything. The kit makes 2 double-page layouts and the other one I used for some of the photos from the Air Museum. Have you made an unusual choice of pages for a layout? Tell me about it in the comments below!

A Prickly Subject

My last stop of the day was the western side of Saguaro National Park. This park is split into 2 sections and as I was nearing the end of the day I could only  visit one. After watching the park movie I drove along a nature trail. It got a little scary as I was in a rental car and the road turned to dirt about halfway through! But I got to see all stages of saguaro life.

The borders on this layout have been in my stash for a while. The paper and stickers come from an older CM kit called Cabana. I liked the southwest feel to the paper colors and the stickers of a camera and car fit the details of my visit nicely. The matching journal box was made at the same time as the borders. I added a little collection of cactus and coyote stickers and a couple of peekaboo pockets to get all the photos into the layout.

Below is a close-up of the left page peekaboo pockets. I used one to partially cover the unigrid, though I trimmed the photo to allow the title to show through.

Below is the right side close-up of the peekaboo pockets.

By using peekaboo pockets I could show the great variety of cacti without having to create a second layout. This will keep my album to a much more manageable size.