There Are Two Sides to Every Layout

While we were at the statue, we posed for a group selfie. We were a bit far from the memorial statue at the top of the hill, but we could see it better with a bit of zoom in the camera.

If this layout looks familiar, it was one of my bonus posts, as I played along with Lasting Memories again. (The link is here.) It will also give you some background on the sketch used.

The right-side layout was made to coordinate but didn't get posted simultaneously. However, the topic was slightly different, as I was venting my frustration with people who do not abide by regulations. Whether it's a COVID precaution or basic crowd control, it doesn't matter. I get very frustrated when I see people ignoring signs posted by the rangers. And this time, I just had to scrapbook it. 

The previous page was made with the Summer Denim and Feeling Bright pages. Since nothing was left of Summer Denim, I pulled some similarly colored and patterned papers from Feeling Bright for the coordinating page. Of course, the orange photo mats and the thin border at the bottom were the same papers. I found the "Covidiot" sticker in a pack of Covid papers and stickers from PhotoPlay. 

Just Plane Fun

In July 2020, Jim and I went on vacation with my sister and her husband. We had planned the trip before COVID-19 and decided to keep our reservation for a beach house. While in the area, we decided to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial while maintaining appropriate social distancing and masking around others (even outside for me, as you just couldn't be too careful). After getting our entrance sign photos, we drove to the large statue commemorating the first flight, and the camera used to capture the historical event. 

This layout is from one of the Paper Loft classes I took at the Lancaster Scrapbook Convention. The green strip of paper on the left is a pocket where I stashed the journaling box and a small card with the image of North Carolina (not from Paper Loft, but it matched well!). I added a few words and enamel dots to round out the layout. I thought the "Anything is Possible" quote was particularly relevant to this layout.

Bonus Post--The Wright Stuff

I thought I would play along with Lasting Memories again this month. Here's a bonus post from a trip to the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina. This was a trip in July 2020. With Covid running rampant we kept to family outings. My sister and brother-in-law joined us at a beach house nearby and we took a day to do some sightseeing--well distanced as much as possible!

This layout is based on the Lasting Memories challenge #726. They posted a piece of artwork for our inspiration. I looked at the gorgeous colors—orange, blue, green, and yellow—and put them together using the CM Worldwide Virtual Crop sketch from September. Scroll to sketch #7. The papers are from the CM Summer Denim collection with the orange from the Feeling Bright collection. Feeling Bright was a secret box in June 2022. It coordinates so well with the Summer Denim, an advisor-only pack. I love being able to stretch my pages by combining collections! One piece on here is not from Creative Memories. The little die-cut of the memorial is fussy-cut from an 8 1/2x11 Eastern National paper. 

Along the Outer Banks

In August 2015 I started driving to the annual vacation spot in North Carolina. For this trip, I hugged the coast a bit more stopping in Manteo to see Fort Raleigh as well as refreshing my stamps at a couple of other nearby parks such as Cape Hatteras and Wright Brothers National Memorial. My Wright Brothers stop was so brief, all I got was a brochure and the stamps. I love the long drive by myself though I appear in fewer photos. The weather was great and I learned a lot on the trip.

This page commemorates my stops at 3 different parks. The borders were copied from this Pinterest item. It uses the Cool Serenity papers that I had handy from my White Sands pages. I intentionally made the wave borders going in opposite directions. I think it adds visual interest that way. The middle of the page uses some stickers I had purchased in the Atlantic Beach area years ago. The large square cut in half brings the 2 sides together. The stickers luckily had the same tones as the CM paper and stickers so you don't really notice they are from 2 packs. After I photographed this layout I realized that I had printed the lighthouse in 2 sizes so I switched to a 5x7 photo with less mat showing. 

My stop was designed to pick up a new park: Fort Raleigh. Not only did I get to see the park sites but I stayed for their outdoor performance of the Lost Colony (including a back-stage tour!). I recommend seeing that play if you have time and are in the area. The visitor center has a lot of great dioramas and interactive displays as well. A nice day-long visit.

My next layout is based off a layout I saved from the original Creative Memories blog. You can see it on my Pinterest page here. I turned the page 90-degrees to accommodate my horizontal photos. I dug out my corner rounder for this layout as well. I used to use that on every photo originally but now it's just for special occasions. I used up some of the old CM Cottage paper and stickers for this one. Using patterned paper for some blocks meant that I didn't need a ton of photos. I also used them as journaling boxes and a place for title stickers. 

Traversing the Outer Banks

After leaving Atlantic Beach with Jim's family we planned an extended return by heading to the Outer Banks a little further north. We dropped off Jim's niece just north of Hatteras and headed up the island stopping at Bodie Lighthouse which was under renovation. Since there wasn't much to see there we headed north to Wright Brothers National Memorial.

The left page just has 2 borders as decoration. The borders were made by punching light and dark blue waves with the Creative Memories border maker system. The sand bars come from one rectangular piece of beige paper which I tore diagonally. The stickers are from Creative Memories as well. I scraplifted the idea from a pinterest pin (Dawn Dimock's idea). I think she intended that they border 2 pages for a double layout, but I sort of liked the way they stacked. There is just the one photo of the lighthouse and a unigrid so it helped fill the page nicely. The journaling box is decorated with some remnant seagull stickers I had.

The right page is a pre-made layout. At one point Creative Memories had some pre-designed pages for what they called picfolio albums. Instead of the strap pages they were pre-bound in an album. Unfortunately it wasn't expandable. I did use the album to make a gift but used my own pages as the theme was a bit more tropical. So when I got to these pages, I found the stash and decided the pale blue and beige really looked good with the historic theme and the beach location.

Once we got to Wright Brothers we attended a ranger talk in the visitor center near the replica Wright flyer. This was a great overview to the park. Afterward we walked the grounds and toured the museum.

In the layout above, the left page is a simple wallpaper technique. Beginning with the right side I started using some pre-designed pages that Creative Memories calls "Fast to Fabulous". I bought them because they were on sale. I didn't really think I'd like them but I have to admit--with very little effort a layout comes together QUICKLY. The bottom right rectangle is a pre-designed space. Since I didn't have a photo for that space I looked around for something else to fill in. I found a deck of cards with inspirational sayings that I had won at a crop and thought "Dare to Fly" was quite appropriate for the page! I slipped it onto the page and it was done in a jiffy.

The F2F pages are printed on both sides. One nice thing about that is that you don't have the bulkiness of many layers of card stock on your page. The left page had room for 4 photos. I took one of the pre-arranged photo boxes and added a very large sticker that I had of the Wright Flyer. On these two pages there are just 3 embellishments--the plane sticker, a sun sticker and the word "Fly" that I cut from a sheet of paper travel words. Everything else is F2F,  and a journal box and photo mats made to align with the theme/colors. I didn't even have to trim the photos this time.

If you've tried Fast to Fabulous, let me know your thoughts! Comment below.