A little camping trip

My next entry covers a trip Jim and I made to Shenandoah National Park. While our 2nd trip to the area, this one would cover the entire length of Skyline Drive and includes an overnight stay inside the park.

This trip generated several pages so I started off with a single kick-off to introduce the trip (and because my previous layout ended as a one-pager on the left). It's mostly post cards and brochures with the exception of the photo of Jim on an outcropping of rock. The background is from a kit I earned for buying a lot of scrapbook supplies and is nature themed, so it will be featured throughout these layouts.

I am by nature a chronological scrapbooker, but these pages are more thematic based on what we saw. For instance, we saw deer in various places and on multiple days throughout the trip so I put all those photos on one page.

I love a good title, and thought this "Oh Deer" one really worked. You can see I'm using the nature kit again and the journal box matches in a way that almost makes it seem like a vellum overlay. On the right the dark brown paper is also from the same kit. The paper doesn't quite cover the page, but cutting a strip to put the white blank section just off center isn't a bad look for the page.

So technically, we visited 2 parks here--Shenandoah and the Appalachian Trail. Though somehow I neglected to get a unigrid for the AT.

Ah, another good title. The story of Jim mistaking a log for a bear is one of those that is remembered and repeated often. I was thinking about a title for a long time before I realized that "Bear false witness" summed up the story nicely. On these pages I used border strips and corners from the nature pack and accented with just a couple of stickers. I am quite proud of this layout.


The final 2 pages highlight our campsite and our excursion on horseback (which I highly recommend). Each page features a border that I made.

When you look at these pages individually they each work well, but as a 2-page layout it's a little unbalanced. So let's discuss each one separately.

On the left the border should have been placed at the bottom. With the die cut and stickers extending over the top it really pushes the border down the page. But the composition is fairly balanced so not a bad layout.

On the right the border at the top matches the nature page and you almost don't notice the white strip between the border and the photos. Again, the photos and journaling tells the story and the overall look is appealing.

Then when you look at them together you see the problem. The borders are unbalanced and it makes everything seem off kilter. Still, minor problems overall. And it was a great trip--that's what I want to remember.

A slight retraction

As I continue through my scrapbooks in search of layouts for this blog, I came across this 2-page layout which is sort of Shenandoah National Park. Now in a previous blog post I mentioned that my first set of NP layouts was Gettysburg. Which chronologically is true. However, what I realized as I took the photo of this spread is that this was the first layout I actually made about a national park.

When my niece was born in 2000, my sister decided we should learn to scrapbook. I had toyed with the idea a bit but didn't really understand it. However, I bought a scrapbook album kit and went to a crop at her friend's house. The consultant said I should start with the photos that I had most recently taken and that would include a weekend trip to Virginia for Memorial Day Weekend. We walked through Luray Caverns and then chose to drive along Skyline Drive. We did not understand how long it would take to see everything while making all the scenic overlook stops so we probably saw about 1/3rd of the road during this trip before heading home.

Technically, the only national park photos are the ones on the right page as the cloud formations were taken from our hotel room in New Market. I'm actually pleased with the composition of the photos considering how early this was in my scrapbooking life. The scrapbooking technique used here is called "wallpaper"--you simply use 2 background papers as the backdrop for all the photos. I chose this pale blue to represent the sky, and between that and the clouds, I think the top turned out fairly well. I wish I had matched the flowers on the left and right pages. I do like symmetry. Also, if I had to do it over, I would do something to stretch out the grass and place them more evenly across the 2 pages.

The page looks unusual because I ended up tearing the first scrapbook apart and using Creative Memories pages. The original CM pages were not quite 12x12, but the paper was. So there is a bit of paper overlapping the CM page edges and that's where the edges are getting worn even with a page protector.

What is most interesting to me is the fact that I layered photos. This is something I still struggle with today as I inherently want everything to be distinct. (I also don't like food touching on my plate so perhaps there is a correlation there). A couple weekends ago I participated in a scrapbook challenge to put more than 8 pictures on one page or more than 12 on 2 pages. I ended with a 2-page spread of 14 photos. After struggling with placement I realized I would need to stack the photos and it was as strange to me today after years of experience as ever. So I guess my take away is that everyone has room for growth.