Northwest Adventure part 13--Chinatown

Happy New Year!
After our return from Bainbridge, we headed in the direction of our afternoon tour--the Wing Luke museum. This is in the Chinatown area of the city and we located a restaurant. Our lunch was one price and included appetizers, entrees, soup and drinks for $10 each! Jim and I really enjoyed lunch there! We walked back to the Wing Luke museum for our guided tour. This museum commemorates the lives of those who came from all over Asia to make a new life in America.

As I worked on the layout above, I started with the right page (I do that quite a bit actually). The borders were from the Asian Miyabi paper again with one border cut to fill in the blank horizontal spaces around the page. Then looking at the left I wanted the same colors, so I used scraps from other pages to set off the title and highlight the photos a bit.

Our tour included an Asian apothecary shop which has some of the original items preserved in their original jars (EW!). From there we walked through a series of rooms that housed individuals and families in boarding room type areas.

The title on the left page is actually from a photo I took. It was the only thing of consequence in the photo so I trimmed it and mounted it on a scrap of paper. A similar scrap on the bottom with a design line from the Asian Miyabi set helped finish the page. The journal box has 3 circles cut from other green paper and those are stickers of sushi in the circles. I thought the food appropriate for the shop as it sort of was a grocery as well as apothecary. The page on the right is based on this sketch (See sketch here). It' a very literal interpretation though the stickers were again the chopped sections of design lines.

We continued through the building and I was fascinated by the kitchen area which had a projection of cooking food in the wok. Every facet of life is represented from work to play and even military service.

The left page is wall paper. I love paper that looks like wood. I often think of it more for beach photos but to me it looked much like the floor. On the right is a plain piece of paper with a border remnant at the top. Green and red were used throughout the layouts and helped to give them a sense of similarity. Also on these 2 layouts I used a hexagon punch to be the base of stickers and to help set them off from the backgrounds.

This day isn't over yet! Come back next week for the next installment!

Northwest Adventure part 12--Bainbridge Island

OK, back to something related to the National Parks! On Friday 7/18, we joined a group of NPTC folks for a tour of a new installation on Bainbridge Island. There are a couple of ways to get there, but we chose the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge.

The pages above are Fast-to-Fabulous and again, are almost opposites of each other. I think they go together quite well and all I had to do was add some journaling and label the coastlines. These pages were done in about 10 minutes!

Once we got on the island we drove to the memorial. It is an affiliated site of the Minidoka National Historic Site which remembers the Japanese-American Internment during WWII. We had a local guide who described the building of the memorial as well as the lives of the people memorialized there.

It's hard to believe that something so sweet would work on such a sad remembrance, but I actually really like how this layout came together. The papers are part of the Creative memories "Fabulous" power palette. The backgrounds are actually "wallpaper" but with enough space at the top and bottom to be able to add a border. The paper lanterns are made using the Creative Memories tag punch. You can find directions here: lanterns. I had the journal box from a scrapbooking yard sale so I'm not sure where it came from, but they look like cherry blossoms to me and so I thought it would match the pages.

As we walked through the memorial we saw the beautiful carved plaques that reflected the lives of the people before, during and after internment. If you get to the area, I highly recommend visiting.

I took my cue from the school girls on the bottom. I used the Creative Memories Asian Miyabi paper and stickers. There are ideas on the back of the paper and sticker inserts and I modified one for this layout. I thought the backpacks looked like they would be used to go to school. I used the contrast of red and green but it doesn't even remotely look like Christmas.

After we finished the tour we drove to the Historical Society which is where the stamp is located. We took a few minutes to look through the outside displays but needed to catch the ferry back to Seattle.

Because the themes of the 2 layouts were different but connected, I used a double border on the left page to box that page in so that it looked separate. I also ensured the backgrounds were different colors so that there was a contrast--your eye isn't looking to continue the story on the right. The left page borders use some older Creative Memories short cuts called "rick rack". I layered stickers from the Asian Miyabi pack over top so it was almost a vine. The 2 fans at the top filled in a little dead space. On the right is one of the pre-designed picfolio inserts. The vertical line helped set off the brochure.

Well, that ends my first year of the blog for National Park Scrapbooks! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have and will come back next year for more!

Northwest Adventure part 11--Around town in Seattle

After our Boeing tour, we drove downtown to look around a bit. Jim had been to the city before so he became my guide. Being thrifty though we actually just looked at the sights and didn't purchase admission to anything. Still, looking at the Space Needle or the Chihuly glass exhibits from afar did nothing to detract from the experience. We used the monorail system to get from one part of the city to the other. (OK, that we did purchase!)

So, I had a piece of paper with a cityscape on it, and a border sticker with a cityscape. Pair them up and you have a 2-page layout that matches! The journal boxes got a few decorative touches but there was no need to decorate the pages further. The monorail tickets are in a protective pouch.

We did a LOT of walking. I was surprised at how hilly the city was given that it is right next to the ocean. I was expecting the land to be more like the east coast beaches. On the right page below is my attempt to show a moving sculpture outside the art museum. If you look at the hammer you'll see I chose a sequence of photos as it moved up and down.

On the left page is another set of Creative Memories borders I made. These had a good sight-seeing feel to them with the camera and maps. On the right is just wallpaper over (what turns out to be) a Fast to Fabulous page. If you find that the layout on one side doesn't work for you, feel free to cover it up! The other side will work fine for the next page.

So you can't go to Seattle and not see Pike Place Market. I did get to see them throwing fish, but couldn't quite catch them on film. We had dinner at one of the local restaurants as well to finish our evening.


As I mentioned, these were fast-to-fabulous pages. I do wish the photo boxes were a LITTLE more to the right so my brochure fit a little better. But on the right, the Good Eats & Treats page was custom made to highlight all the great food of the markets and restaurants. (Remember that page from the cruise? It fits a multitude of situations!)

Northwest Adventure part 10--A Day for Jim

Since so much of the trip was my visits to national parks, I wanted to ensure Jim had a day to do what he wanted. His choice was to tour the Boeing plant just north of Seattle. Have to admit, I ended up getting a bonus stamp!

We took a scheduled tour of the plant which included watching planes in production. The photo of us in the plant, however, is actually a green screen picture. There are absolutely no photos allowed on the tour. In fact, you can't even carry a purse or any type of bag.

The left page above is just wallpaper, but the right page is a Fast to Fabulous page. If you remember, I used the same page to describe a day of flying to Alaska. Here it's used to highlight the Boeing plant. On the bottom left is a pocket to hold our tour tickets. Since the tickets were a little shorter, I threw a plane sticker on the pocket to add to the decoration. Similarly I added a vellum sticker to the journal box. I like to use decorated journal boxes when I can but usually I can't figure out what to put on them.

After the plant tour we walked through their museum. The size of the plane parts is unbelievable! There was also a place to design your own plane.

On the left is the back of the Fast to Fabulous page, which I kept. I added a few stickers as a pseudo-border and a piece of paper that had "flight" printed on it to decorate the page a little further. On the right is the last of the double matted pages from the vacation kit someone purchased for me. This time I used the blue underneath to match the tan on the left. Stickers and a vellum quote helped fill in the gaps I didn't have photos for.

Finally, we went outside to the roof of the museum where we could watch planes taking off and landing. It's not a true airport, it's the testing grounds before the planes leave for their final destination. The plane highlighted below is a supersized cargo plane called a DreamLifter.

The borders on these pages are old Creative Memories stickers from the Cabana collection. I had 2 packs of them so I could mimic the pages left and right. I wish I had been able to reverse one of the clouds though. Because the photos have beautiful blue sky, they are set off without matting. I liked that the airplane stickers were cartoonish as they really resembled the plane we saw!

Northwest Adventure part 9--The North Cascades

After leaving the ship, Jim and I joined a group of our club members for a special bus trip to Seattle. Instead of traveling straight there, the group had arranged to make 2 stops--the first was the Sedro-Wooley visitor center which was in a little village. In addition to getting stamps, many people picked up the Junior Ranger book and lunch. We had a good hour's drive to the 2nd stop at the Newhalem visitor center. It was a limited visit--just enough time to see the movie and walk a small trail to see the mountains.

These 2 pages are both Fast to Fabulous pages. I thought that since the right page had teal photo boxes they would complement each other. I was able to add some stickers to highlight the journey and the tan journal box on the left matched the right page. Quick and easy!

Northwest Adventure part 8--end of the cruise

Our last shore stop was in Ketchikan. Ironically, Ketchikan is the rainiest spot in Alaska but the weather was beautiful for us.

On the left page is a border I made with Creative Memories paper and stickers. It's busy, but I like the combination. Also on the left is a punch art sun made with the Creative Memories paisley punch. I put 5 of them together for the rays, and then punched a circle for the sun in the middle. I really wanted to highlight the good weather! I think I might have needed a 6th ray because it also looks a bit like a starfish. Yellow matting for the photo helps tie the page together. On the right is a Fast to Fabulous page. With cropping and layering of the photos I was able to piece together the multiple sides of the statue in the round.

Also in the area just off the ship was the "liquid Sunshine" gauge. This includes snow as well as rain and last year they had over 100".  We walked through the city, but one of my planned stops was the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center. This is another part of the Tongass National forest so I got more bonus stamps. There were some good displays to view as well.

I kept these pages very plain. There is a background wall paper for both which was a little darker than the traditional pages. I again added a sticker of the sun and the photography sign. Really, the page is all about the photos and journaling. Well, not every page has to be a masterpiece.

Our plan for the day was just to walk around the town and our next stop was the Creek Street area which was the business district (and in those days was the red light district). I loved that everyone was fishing from the bridge. I'm not sure how the lines don't get crossed. The right page features photos of a salmon statue and though it's a replacement, it's really quite lovely.

On the left page I used more of the paper from my Scrapbooking Page a Day calendar. It's funny that when I originally went through the slips I thought "When am I going to use the fishing pages?" And then you come across people fishing and it just works! So the bottom right mat with the fish corners is a page from the calendar. In the space under the photo were a couple of clip art photos--one of which I used on the bottom left. The title is a simple strip of blue cardstock with a decorative circle in the middle and a second layer of creels and bobs to highlight the fishing theme. The journal box is a piece of journal paper with a couple of stickers across the bottom.

On the right I used a piece of Creative Memories' Enchanted paper. The blue diamond paper really reminded me of the scales on the statue and I thought it a perfect match. I apparently had used a portion of that page before so the gap at the top is filled with another frame from the calendar and a green journal  box. 

We saw quite a lot when walking around town and I wanted to capture all the various pieces of the trip. Look at the staircase on the right page--would you like to climb up and down that every day to get home!?! Sometimes we saw wildlife, sometimes we saw strange shops like the whale popcorn place. It made it a little difficult to put it all together cohesively but I think this worked.

These 2 pages are also from the pre-designed picfolio pack and again, I'm using them as they are meant to be! Since the left page ended up being about totem poles, I added the sticker from an Alaskan Scrapbook kit I picked up. The eagle sticker on the right is similar to all the bear stickers. We hung out in various locations (like near a fishing boat launch) to try to get photos of bears and eagles and got NOTHING. Still, for us the day spent doing nothing was quite something!

Below are the layouts for the end of the cruise. There was still a days worth of travel before reaching Vancouver and the ship held some contests as a sort of boat carnival. We ended with a grand dinner and then transitioned back to our land portion of the trip. 

On the left is another cruise page I bought. i added the circle for "Fun at Sea" and that's all the page required. On the right I made a wave border with the Creative Memories border maker system to carry the water theme from the left across the layout. The journal box was actually part of the set made with the border seen in the post at the beginning of the trip with the champagne fountain. The top border is from one of the cruise pages. On the back of that border is the bar code so that when checking out the store can scan it easily. Some companies are thoughtfully printing a contrasting or border design on the other side so it isn't wasted. I used one here with a small sticker as a combination title and decoration.

This is the last page of the album. I always have problems figuring out how to end an album, especially a theme album. Some people make decorative pages much like my kick off page. This time, the club had a group photo taken and I chose the 8x10 photo as my ending page. 

This is one more of the picfolio pre-designed pages and it seems made to highlight a large photo. The title stickers had to be blended though I tried my darndest to get all one shade. Still it is all the same font and I didn't have to manufacture letters. Now it's time to get to the land tour. We took a bus from Vancouver back to Washington state and our adventure keeps going!

Northwest Adventure part 7--State Capitol Tour

It's Black Friday! I hope you all found some great scrapbook deals if you were out shopping. Or did you stay home to scrap? Share something you made today in the comments!

In addition to National Park passport stamps, I also collect stamps for the state capitols and lighthouses. Because we were to be in Juneau I could not pass up the opportunity to get this capitol stamp and arranged an unofficial club gathering (unofficial because it has nothing to do with National Parks). It is one of the few capitol buildings without a dome! Still, I was joined by about 10 other people as we toured the building. I loved that all of us stood in the same spot to get a photo of the building.

This page includes a set of borders that I made with Creative Memories travel stickers and map paper. I added the shore excursion sticker on the bottom left to give some symmetry to the page. I'm thinking now that I should have set off the brochure and photo a bit--perhaps with some blue mats.

Inside the building we meet our tour guide and got the stamp. The building is all inclusive--governor's office and both chambers. They've grown somewhat since the original legislature was formed so some rooms have different uses.

The 2 pages above are from a kit I got as a present. Each is actually 2 pieces of paper arranged so that there is matting in the pre-formed openings. I had a devil of a time trying to fit my photos into the spaces but managed with twisting and turning the pages to find something that works. I was able to augment the openings with a few cropped photos and stickers as well as a journaling box.

Alaska has not been a state long but still has a much longer history of people who have lived here and influenced styles. Russian art as well as Scandinavian influences are easily seen which is surprising for a building with such a boring facade. During the tour we also learned about the formation of the state flag (below right).

The left page is a pre-designed paper and I thought the decoration lent itself well to the photos of the hallways and chambers. On the right I focused on some of the more ornate rooms and wanted to use the Creative Memories Reminisce Travel additions. I also used a sketch for this page (Sketch is here). You'll notice I turned the sketch sideways and expanded the size of the paper mats quite a bit. I used quite ornate paper and so some of the photos had to be matted so they didn't clash with the background. It took a good long time to match those 3 papers but I like the way they look together. I'd love to see your take on a sketch. Feel free to post a comment with an example below!