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!

Centennial part 24--The Final Entry

Wow! It's been a 6-month journey showing the week I spent in and around Philadelphia for our NPTC convention during the NPS Centennial. Thanks for joining me and enjoy the last few layouts!

After Elfreth's Alley I returned to the Independence Visitor Center for the evening picnic (which was also a club meetup event). I did enough walking that day to complete a 5K race! (In 8 hours, but who's counting?)

The club members and I pulled out chairs and blankets and settled on the lawn area just outside the visitor center. The re-enactors were around and now included Teddy Roosevelt, Ben Franklin, and a few others. There was music and food and the components for a time capsule.

This layout is another kit that I purchased from Our Memories For Life, so most of the work was pre-designed. I placed some of the stars and the photos. Easy!

One highlight of the event was the free ice cream.

One more of the pre-purchased kits. I had bought a series for the summer and frankly was worried I would never get a chance to use it as I don't have kids and there are few opportunities to photograph a trip to the ice cream stand. Again, an easy layout and as I was close to the end of the book, a welcome way to finish.

We posed for a group photo with our new banners and I thought this was a great way to end the book.

The last page is simply blue gingham wallpaper (for the picnic feel) and a trimmed large group photo. The title stickers at the top you've seen before. As I'm getting close to the end of the pack I did have to modify them a bit to get all the letters I wanted, but I love that green leafy background for this layout. And that was all there was to it! (I even managed to lay them in a straight line this time).

Next week we'll return to 2013 and my ongoing National Park Adventures.

Centennial part 23--A Tiny Alley

After Christ Church, I consulted the map and realized I was quite close to Elfreth's Alley. Not truly part of the park system, but one of the earliest settled areas in Philadelphia. In fact you can still see the Fire Association markers on the houses dating back to the 18th century! And if you want a tiny link to the NPS, Ben Franklin was one of the city leaders who brought "modern" firefighting to Philadelphia.

The left page is wallpaper with a brick toned paper. I thought that appropriate to the venue! The right page is scraplifted from this image. The background paper is from Graphic 45. I bought quite a few sheets of that as it works well with all the historic photos I have. I think I purchased the brick on the left to use as the middle of this layout but I liked it for the houses better and I used a piece of brick colored cardstock for the center on the right. I chalked the edges with black ink to give it a little smoky essence. I trimmed the fire association photos to ovals to match the emblems and to fit more on one page. For that I used the CM oval custom cutting system templates.

Centennial part 22--Christ Church

The ranger walk ended at the historic Christ Church. I chose to go inside and listened to one of the tour guides for a bit but mostly looked around on my own.

This layout is scraplifted from this layout. It's an older Noreen Smith layout using the CM Reminisce papers. I turned it into a 2-page layout by stretching out the corner components. The left sheet of paper has the oval decoration pre-printed at the top. I added a "blessings" sticker (since it's a church) and created a 4-point oval. I ended up finding a similar item in my Cricut files and was able to turn it into a journal box. The remaining photos were matted with paper from the kit to give a little contrast around the page.