A Tale of a Trail

After leaving Nicodemus, I drove to the Barton County Historical Museum. They have a passport stamp for the Santa Fe Trail. I took quite a while to explore the museum, which covers every era of this locale, from the Native Americans to the 1950s. I won't include all the pages about the museum, but they did have a display of the Santa Fe Trail, including this reproduction wagon filled with supplies. There are wagon ruts still visible in places, but I did not have time to go to each site (and not all were open due to the pandemic). I'm heading to Fort Larned next, another site along the route, but I will focus on its structures rather than the Santa Fe Trail. What you don't see on this page is the Santa Fe Trail passport book for Barton County (they have stickers, not stamps). I placed it in a pocket attached to the page. Stop by to see it for yourself!

This layout is based on one that I pinned. Take a look and realize that it is a VERY LOOSE interpretation. I was at a crop when creating this and purposefully had not brought all my cardstock. I forced myself to use scraps and other papers from my stash. The background papers are from an older Advisor-only pack called Painted Prairie. I liked the ombre effect and thought it created a sunset look. I then added some dark brown along the bottom to represent the earth and covered it with a border punch of wheat stalks. The wagon was cut on the Cricut. The sheriff is a very old item called "Paperkins." Before Cricut, die-cut machines, or fancy punches, these little kits gave us a parade of people in all sorts of costumes. This one came with a hobby horse, but I decided that would be too juvenile for the page. The final touch was the journal box. The Wide Open Places kit had this saloon door card and was a good fit.

Trail's End

After visiting Petroglyph, I drove to Santa Fe to visit with a friend. Near a museum we stopped at was this large statue installation commemorating the end of the Santa Fe Trail. It was more of a commerce route than an immigration route. The statues were quite lifelike, especially in the light of the fading sun. 

This layout is based on a sketch from the September Worldwide Virtual Crop from Creative Memories. I pulled the Wide Open Spaces collection from my stash. The middle section is the paper resembling a saddle; I wanted the horses and cows' paper for the outside. The sprinkle stickers are some very old CM. The journal box was fussy-cut from the mat to fit the space better. The title box on the bottom left is from a sheet of New Mexico mats and works perfectly here.

The next layout is another you've seen before as it was the 3rd installment of my Guest Designer stint for Lasting Memories in October. You can review the story and layout here.

Next week we move back east!

Lasting Memories Post 3--A Day at the Museum

Hello all! I'm serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories all through October! I'll be posting an extra layout each Sunday at noon for the next 2 weeks. Each is following the weekly challenge posted at Lasting Memories and I hope you join the challenge! Post your version through the link at the bottom of their post.

Still from my New Mexico trip in October 2019, this layout features a museum I went to near Santa Fe. My NPTC friend Robbie lives near there so we met to get a few stamps, and this museum covers 2 different trails. Some of the displays were lovely examples of colonial life such as furniture and religious icons. Then there was the display of Paul Pletka's art. Some of which I found quite disturbing. I told Robbie that it was her fault if I had nightmares after seeing that gallery!

Today's challenge is LM #724  - Harvest - be inspired by those growing crops by using ascending sizes of paper strips or shapes OR use a colorful ombre design. I used a sketch from Cheryl Even for this layout. I had remnants from several collections here but the floral print is some of the last of the Creative Memories Mexico theme pack. the cactus border is from that pack as well and I cut it in half to spread across the layout. I liked this sketch as it had room for a large 5x7 photo. I inadvertently made that size when I stitched 2 photos together to show the living space all at once. The outside of the museum is a postcard I purchased in their gift shop.