What's in That Case?

Heading further south, I arrived at Petersburg. I am fond of this place since Jim wrote about the battle in his first book. I saw the new movie and walked through the visitor center but didn't have time to walk the battlefield.

The theme for these pages is Red White and Blue. I chose wallpaper for all the pages. This one came from a CM paper pack that has a bit of a denim feel to it. Red mats help to keep the black and white photo from getting lost on the page. To add some more details I used an older CM star punch which has 2 different sizes. I cut the larger in white and the smaller in red and then stacked them.

These are some of the items I thought were most interesting in the museum area. I have overall shots and then some close-ups for detail.

Thanks to Jim's book I knew that George Meade played a key role in the battle and so I chose a sheet of paper I found with his likeness and a quote. The photos have a lot of orange in them from the back of the case so I didn't need to mat them. The right page is also wallpaper. I had found some digital paper for Gettysburg and sent it to a company to print full sheets of paper, This is one of the prints and I thought the red on the right page balanced the blue from the left. These photos also didn't need matting because their backgrounds were pale white.

The Outskirts of Richmond

June is the annual trip to the beach with Jim's family and my time to visit parks on my way there (North Carolina). In 2013, I returned to the Richmond area but traveled the battlefields just outside of the city. They were involved in several different campaigns but proved a bloody field no matter when fought.

This layout was inspired by a Pinterest idea which I turned into a 2-page layout. The bottom half of the page uses up some paper that isn't a full 12" wide so I cut two pages to 6" (and will use the rest on other pages down the road). The top half is one full 12" sheet cut in half (I believe from the Stone paper pack). The middle is a strip of pine from the very old Evergreen pack which nicely hides the seam. The stickers are from Reminisce Civil War.

There were several other smaller sites to visit but the one that stood out was this large field which was the scene of several suicidal charges reminiscent of the gory Picket's charge at Gettysburg.

This page is wallpaper. I liked the photographic image of the canon because it matched the photos I had on hand but gives more detail. Red cardstock mats help to prevent the photos from getting lost on the page.

Philly Philly

Once more to the City of Brotherly Love! On this trip my only foray into NPS territory was my lunch at City Tavern. But I was able to obtain several pieces of memorabilia to commemorate my visit. If you come to see the album you'll learn about Dr. Physick and his home which is a historic site of an 18th century physician.

This layout is one side of a purchased kit from Club Scrap (scroll down to layouts 5 and 6). I bought the kit because I knew that I would have some gastropub photos, but when I realized this was a non-photo layout, I thought it would be perfect. On the bottom left are 2 coasters (never used) that came with the kit. It's not really what I would have put there, but of all the non-paper pieces sent with the kit, they were the least objectionable. It took me about 3 hours to put all the layouts together so the other 7 are ready for my next adventure!

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!