A Very Special Trip to Washington DC

 In May 2017, Jim and I heard that Ken Burns was going to be the speaker at an event held at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We enjoyed many of his documentaries so we made a memorable trip to see him and were able to get tickets to the public section of the audience. The trip started with the Metro ride to the US  Navy Memorial. We walked along the mall to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and passed a few sites. I enjoyed seeing the Navy practice for their part in the parade that afternoon.

This layout is a Project Recipe from Creative Memories made specifically for this paper pack--Festive Fourth. I taught a class to my customers. There is a recipe available for just about every new pack of paper. If you would like a copy of the recipe, let me know through email!

I never knew that the Memorial Wall could be edited. This occasion (which I believe happens every year on Memorial Day) honors any newly identified remains (adding names to the wall) and changing some of the icons from "Missing" to "Killed in Action". 

The left page is wallpaper using one of several pages I have for "Memorial Day". While I don't have a lot of events specific to that day, the reverse side is more "generically patriotic" and I will likely use it for similar events. The right page is an 8 1/2x11 pocket page. You'll see in the next photo that I included the program from the day. For this side, I added our tickets (one showing each side) as well as the journaling. The background paper here is an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet from my stash. Nice to be able to use those up.

The ceremony was beautiful. Not only did we hear from Ken Burns and his partner Lynn Novick, but there were moving presentations by family members, and the honor guards. When the ceremony was over we walked back to the Metro station. That route was along the parade route for the DC Memorial Day parade and we dawdled enough to enjoy many of the performances, marching bands and the veterans celebrated through floats and honor cars. Those pages are available in the full album if you want to see them!

The left page is the other side of the pocket and the other side of the 8 1/2 x 11 paper. I couldn't have asked for better wallpaper there! The right side page I made at a crop. The lesson was to make the "crazy circles" along the bottom. This paper is from a Fresh Fusion pack. I cut 3 circles from different papers and stacked them, then made some "crazy cuts". You rearrange the segments to get the mish-mash effect. Those also could have been places to highlight other photos, memorabilia, or embellishments. 

I'm King of the World!

The photos below are from the Titanic Memorial in Washington DC. (Does anyone else think James Cameron visited here before having Jack perch on the rail?) The memorial was created by women's groups shortly after the sinking to commemorate the men who lost their lives by giving up space in the lifeboats to women and children. I visited on the anniversary of the disaster. This is one of those times belonging to the National Park Travelers  Club helped me with a visit. I not only never knew this monument existed until someone posted about it, but found out that the stamp was hanging from the wayside board! It was only hanging there for the weekend. You can still get that stamp at the Eisenhower Memorial in DC now.

This layout is a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. As part of the rules of the group I cannot show the original sketch or directions but you can see my finished project. This was made during one of my weekend classes with my customers so please let me know if you wish to join a future class. The paper is, appropriately enough, called Deep Blue. I've used it before but had these 3 pages remaining (the 2 background pages are also from that pack). I think the gray stripe contrasts with the rest of the blue nicely and there is a great nautical feel from the borders added on top of the striped strips. I broke out some navy sticker letters for a title. It must have been a new pack as I didn't have to fudge any of the vowels. Just a couple of other stickers in the corners of the page and the layout was complete. We did 4 layouts in less than 2 hours that morning!

Obscure Monuments Tour part 4--The end of the Road

After clearing FDR we came back to our main purpose of obscure monuments. One of the smallest monuments in the area is the Japanese Pagoda monument. Given in 1957, it commemorates the treaty signed by the US and Japan in 1854. It is undoubtedly at home among the cherry blossoms in the spring. This particular monument gave me a great perspective of the Jefferson Memorial as well.

This layout is based on a CM sketch. I'm not really sure why I did this one. Usually, I only save the Virtual Crops or the Weekend Challenges for advisors but it doesn't seem to have been in either of those. Still, the layout worked as I wanted it to. I chose a lot of pink scraps to create the borders on the edges. That goes back to my Cherry Blossom theme. I could even pull in one of the decorative mats from the Eastern National scrapbook pack.

Continuing on around the Tidal Basin, we crossed a bridge with decorative troughs. Though it looks much older, it was installed in the late 1980s. The image is "Jack Fish" who was the Park Superintendent and was about to retire. The staff decided to immortalize him on the bridge. Our tour continued on and headed to the George Mason Memorial (skipping the Jefferson Memorial). George Mason was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as an inspiration to Thomas Jefferson while drafting the Declaration of Independence, so it's appropriately placed. In addition to the collonade and his statue there is a lovely garden (well, lovely in the summer).

This layout is based on a CM Virtual Crop sketch. I rather liked this one as it was created all from one sheet of double-sided paper. I added some laser-cut borders to the bottom. All of this is from the Homestead collection from CM.

We had an option to follow the Ranger to one more stop--East Potomac Park. Having no other plans, I went along. It is a short walk from the Mason Memorial. It's a bit of a forgotten park and only has a few benches and a small bit of grass. This urn was given to us by Cuba (back when we were talking to them). The monument originally stood in Cuba to honor the American deaths aboard the USS Maine preceding the Spanish–American War in 1898. The Ranger told us that this monument had been located elsewhere on the Tidal Basin and was subsequently put into storage. It was rediscovered in the 1990s and placed in this park.

I used another CM Virtual Crop Sketch (October #3). There was a hint of fall color in the photos so I went back to the Hello Autumn. That was a good choice for another reason-I'd used it so much that I had a lot of scraps and this is one of those layouts that will use up your scraps! The border strip hides any slight inconsistencies in the lengths of the bottom row. 

The Spoils of War

My visit to Arlington Cemetery was to visit a new NPS unit for me. Arlington House was the family home of Robert E. Lee. Because he chose to fight for the Confederacy during the civil war, the government confiscated his property and began burying Union soldiers in the yard (the start of the National Cemetery). Eventually the house was restored to its 18th/19th century form and outfitted with family pieces. Robert E. Lee's wife was a descendant of George Washington's wife Martha Custis and so there are quite a few nods to the Washington line in the house as well.

This is another example of making the right side first. I scraplifted the right side from this page which features the Archivers paper and borders from CM (now retired). I thought the roses were a good fit for the home and so on the left I chose the rose paper borders for the top and bottom with the same background paper. The die cut on the left is from the Eastern national DC scrapbook kit

Even though a government shutdown was happening I could still tour just about the entire house and so I made my way down to the basement kitchen. I also toured the slave quarters behind the house.

This is wallpaper with a wood paper from the CM Timber pack. I matted the photos  with a piece of brown burlap from the Cloth pack (both now retired). The kitchen tools across the top is from a previous release of an 8x8 recipe book. I use the papers and elements on my 12x12 pages.

After leaving Arlington I took the bus back to the Mall area and stopped at the largest cache of passport stampers in the city--the bookstore near the Washington monument.

This ended my tour in DC for this trip. I chose to use a wallpaper page featuring cherry blossoms as that was the original purpose of my trip, even though I never saw any. I did grab a quick photo of the Washington Monument still under renovation from the earthquake.

Hallowed Ground

I bought a ticket for a double-decker bus ride that was hop-on hop-off around the city. Being cold, I stuck to the first level! But it was an easy way to get across the river to Arlington Cemetery. Now the cemetery isn't actually part of the NPS, but there IS a park inside its boundaries that I'll show you next week. Since the Eastern National DC scrapbook kit had some die cuts and stickers though, I thought I'd show you what I created.

This layout uses a project recipe from Creative Memories. It was made for a collection called "Cool Serenity" but by switching the paper to the Brave pack, I was able to make the same cuts and use it for the Arlington layout. I had a few random photos of the highlights of the area such as the JFK eternal flame. The sticker set in the EN kit included not only a small image of the structure but also had a title so I cut out the title as well and put it on the layout. The notated die cut was part of the kit as well and just about matched my photo! The stickers in the bottom right corner were part of an older CM sticker sheet that had patriotic and July 4th. I liked the way that the banner and stars resembled the windows of service families in WWII.

I walked up the hill toward Arlington House (next week's topic) and just in front of the house is the grave of Pierre Charles L'Enfant--the man who designed the capitol city. His grave fittingly looks over his creation and you can see from the photos that you can easily see the tidal basin and more! I wanted this layout to do justice to his vision.

This layout is a compilation of multiple scrapbook companies. Let's start with the background. Those are two 8 1/2 x 11 pages from the EN Washington DC kit. When put together at the middle of 12 x 12 album pages it leaves the edges for decoration. The paper is a map of the city as designed (or shortly after Virginia took back its land from DC). To echo the design of the paper, I bought a die cut from Paper Wizard and while I don't see this particular one for sale, they have some great items for national parks. I used some leftover 8 1/2 x 11 patriotic paper to mat the photos and the journal box is sitting on a photo mat from the kit I used to make the Ford's Theatre pages.  I think Pierre would love it!

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

After the Navy Memorial I walked over to Ford's Theatre. I had not been to this site before and I had difficulty finding tickets online to tour the site. You really need to plan in advance for this one. I was able to secure a ticket to see a 1-act play called "Destiny" which told the story of the night Lincoln was shot in a 2-man, prop-filled hour. It's quite good so if you get a chance to see it, buy the tickets! Unfortunately there were no tickets to tour the theater after the play so all I saw was the view from my seat.

This layout is from a kit I purchased from someone on Etsy. It was supposed to be a July 4th layout, as you can see from the Left page and Right page.  The vintage tones of the paper really matched the 19th century theme so I turned it into this historic layout. I used 2 postcards to ensure I told the complete story. The sticker on the journal mat is from the Eastern National scrapbook package.

After the play, I was able to walk across the street to the Peterman House which is where Lincoln was taken after the shooting. The home has been recreated to resemble that fateful night.

This layout uses wallpaper from the Paper Loft heritage line (which to me looks very close to the wallpaper seen in the house). I added a couple of decorative mats from the CM Archivers paper pack and used one of the same pack's journal mats to highlight the photo of the bed (bottom right). The vine on the left is a laser cut border and to ensure it could be seen, I layered it on some lighter toned paper.

Back to the Future! Or at least 2013

Hello from Scrap Central! As you read this I am at my yearly getaway weekend with my family and friends. We'll be creating new pages and I'm sure some of them will appear in a later blog.

Before taking a 24-week look at the NPTC Centennial convention in 2016, I was posting about my Oklahoma trip in September 2012. My next adventure in a National Park didn't occur until March 2013, so that's where we are picking up.

Jim and I had traveled to DC for a Spring Break getaway. I was hoping to see the Cherry Blossoms but we were a bit early (and it was still pretty chilly!) My first stop was at the southeast side of Pennsylvania Avenue at the Navy Memorial.

I made the left page for a Creative Memories virtual crop from this sketch. (You may have to scroll down a little to see it). To me this is similar to the sketch I used to make the Clara Barton page (again, you'll have to scroll a little). This uses the "Brave" pack from CM (now discontinued, and I just made the page in October 2018 so you can see how fast they sell out!). I liked the camouflage background in blue since this was more of a nautical theme. The bottom right flag is a cut-apart mat from the Stars and Stripes paper pack (also discontinued). The blue and red cardstock help to highlight the photos and provide a calm part of the page to put some stickers. The border at the top uses the CM Border Maker system with the star cartridge. The card in the middle is actually a piece from a postcard I picked up at the site. It turned into a nice title box.

After I finished the left page I realized I had more photos to include of the murals. I used another page from Brave for the right side, and stuck to all red mats to highlight the photos. I journaled directly on the paper with a silver pen. The 2 blue stickers (anchor and ship) are ANCIENT CM stickers from my stash. Don't you love the feeling of finishing up using a page of stickers? :) The red stars at the top were the ones punched from the border on the left! How easy to use up those scraps!

No foolin--this was a trip to the mall!

Well, I just couldn't pass up the pun so I am adding a 2nd installment this weekend in honor of April Fools Day. This layout is another example of a trip to the National Mall which isn't really about the park as much as it is a special event held there. But, there is a photo of the Washington Monument, so I'm going to count it as a park visit.

I found out about the National Book festival because my favorite author, Diana Gabaldon was there to do a reading and sign copies of her new novel "A Breath of Snow and Ashes". Jim and I also got to listen to David McCullough. It was just a day trip, but we made the most of it.

I hesitate to call this layout "wallpaper" technique. The cardstock from Creative Memories was 10x12 (at the time) so they don't really cover the page. I ended up taking a contrasting sheet and using it to cover the open middle. If you look closely you'll notice the torn edges. I don't think I had a tearing tool at the time, it was just a hand rip. The maroon and green color scheme comes from the brochure for the festival, and coordinates nicely with the photos.

The top left and bottom right corners come from a border making class I took once. It was really difficult to keep all those individual strips together so if you look REALLY closely you will probably see the adhesive showing through some of the gaps. Between that and the stickers though, I was able to keep this intact until it found a place on my pages. It has a fall sort of feel to me, so it works pretty well on the layout.

I guess it was a visit...

Jim and I often had date night by taking a trip to a dinner theater, so this trip was focused on attending the Lazy Susan Dinner Theater. I did some research to find a National Park nearby so I could get a stamp and decided on Manassas. We went to the visitor center and saw the maps then bought a tape of the auto tour to listen to as we drove around the battlefield. Unfortunately the map in the unigrid did not match the auto tour numbers and the map that should have been given to us with the tape was missing. We got frustrated pretty quickly because a lot of the drive is on local roads and there was quite a bit of traffic. We felt unsafe making stops in what clearly was not a standard stop. We drove back to the gift shop to demand our money back, skipped the battlefield and headed over to Arlington Cemetery where we walked up to the Marine Corps Memorial. I did save the entrance tickets from Manassas for scrapping and so that is as close to a National Park as I could get for this layout.

This page is another example of wallpaper technique. It's a little hard to make out but this is a pattern paper with cars on it to represent our car ride. Patterned paper can be very useful in setting a tone for a page.

Although the Manassas tickets are red, they accent the page well because red and green are complimentary colors (there's a reason they look good at Christmas time too!) If you haven't picked one up for scrapbooking, investing in a simple color wheel helps find colors to use together. You can take a single color in a variety of tones (monochromatic), two colors opposite each other (complimentary), or three colors evenly spaced around the spectrum (triad). If you try something new, drop me a line below and tell me about it!

Journaling is always important to scrapbooking because it helps tell the story of the pictures. I generally feel like I over journal but given the limited amount I shared above I think shortchanged the reader. I guess I didn't want to sound too harsh to the park in something that will outlive me. What do you think, should I add more detail to the journaling on the page?

Another trip to Washington D.C.

Well, I'm on my 2nd snow day thanks to Winter Storm Stella so I thought I'd post another entry. Today I highlight a trip my husband and I made to DC, or at least the NPS portion of it. I am not including a stop we made to the US Postal museum or the Supreme Court because they aren't an official unit of the National Park Service. So if you want to see those pages, you'll have to stop by sometime!

We visited the brand new World War II Memorial just a few days before the official opening ceremony. This was a great visit and especially important to me as my grandfather served in the Army Air Corps during the war as a flight mechanic. I was especially moved by the wall of stars.

I did not digitally merge my photos of the wall of stars, I just took sequential pictures. (My camera does have an option to allow me to line up the pictures but it isn't perfect). I ended up cutting the middle section in half and spreading the image across 2 pages which I really like. I also included photos of the Atlantic operations memorial as that is where my grandfather served. The red, white and blue theme was a sure-fire win but it's still got a lot of blank areas (and that isn't really intentional dead space).

Our walk around town included a stop at the Old Post Office Tower and we went up to take a look and get the stamp.

Here is another lesson in what to do with 8 1/2 x 11 paper in a 12x12 scrapbook. Cut it into strips and spread it across the page! I actually own a template which sizes the strips appropriately but you can work with just about any size that is effective. On the right is a Creative Memories pocket page. I used that to include the unigrids for the various parks. I only put the name of the city at the top, but I probably could add some decoration to the page as well.

Here is the other side of the pocket page and the beginning of our special Mall experience. You'll notice that the letters I chose for the title are all different shades. It was my attempt to not have to manufacture letters. One problem with sticker sheets is that there are limited letters and once you spell out your first title you are sometimes stuck missing a key vowel to complete the second or third use. I actually like the effect as it becomes sort of an ombre look and goes well with the "wallpaper" I chose to mount the photos.

We were in town for several days as I was there for a conference, so we had evenings and then the weekend to explore the city. It was our second visit to the Mall when we discovered that to enhance the WWII memorial opening, they held an encampment of WWII memorabilia, reenactments, and displays. The stickers used on this page actually came from one of the displays at the event. I carried the green theme through from the prior page but just as accents along the borders. There was quite a bit of green from the grass and vehicles though so not much more was required.

It's nice to know that you can return to a park and see it in a different way over and over again.

Back to the Mall

Another trip to DC. This one is with my husband Jim. It was an extremely cold weekend and I'm surprised we got to see so many things outdoors. This is our first look at the Korean War Veterans Memorial and though you can't see it in the photos below, when we arrived it was foggy. You really felt like part of the patrol.

On the left page I made a border with what I think is a "Fast Formulas" design from Creative Memories. The red accents really work with the photos but I think I could do a better job with the title. As I noted earlier--more footprints! I had several pages of these so I know I used them on a lot of pages.

A couple of "firsts"

I have researched my scrapbooks and my first page of a National Park visit is this 2-page layout to Gettysburg in 1988. My Uncle Larry and his family came to visit from Texas, and we took a family trip. This is not my first ever visit to a national park--I know that my family took a trip to DC in 1976, but I don't seem to have any photos of that trip.

What I like about this layout is the fence I created out of paper strips. I also like the ivy letters (and I think I still have a few to use). I do wish that I had been better at placing the letters in a straight line though. Like many layouts from this era (and I'm guessing I created this around 2000-2002) there is a lot of white on the page. I think I could have put a little more paper behind the photos. But overall the composition is pleasing.

A couple of pages later, I found this layout from a trip to DC (which I am including here in order to tie in my first visit to any national park). My brother and I went specifically to see something at the art museum though I don't remember what. We also walked over to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and I remember buying a poster of the wall. We parked outside the city and rode the Red Line from Shady Grove. I still remember the sound of the conductor reciting "This is the Red Line to Shady Grove" on the way back to the car. I wish I could record that sound here--probably the one drawback to scrapbooking.

The technique I used here is called "Between the Lines". I created a double border with design lines top and bottom and then filled the middle with small decorative stickers. The title sticker worked well for this technique and then I matched the stars and stripes along the bottom. This may be the first use of the footprint path, but definitely will not be the last.

Overall I like this page though again I think I could have used more paper under the photos.

So that's my first entry. Stay tuned to see how my scrapbooking progresses!