Just North of the Border

In September 2013 I traveled to the Tucson, AZ area for a conference. Afterward I did a bit of touring. One of my first stops was this little National Park Site near the Mexican border (I had to pass through a checkpoint to prove I was a citizen before returning north). It's a lovely old mission and well preserved.

The left page was made for a Creative Memories virtual crop. You can see the sketch here on my Pinterest board. Because this crop allowed us to use any Creative Memories product, not just from the previous 6-months released items, I dug deep into my stash and found the beige checkerboard print for the borders. The stickers are also older CM items. I'm learning now to figure out my background and THEN cut the photos. In this way I can crop to the same height for a nice, symmetrical page.The right page was made as a companion piece. I had a piece of the Mix and Match orange left with a nice ombre effect. I chose to add red checkerboard to give a bit more color.

While at the site I watched the video and walked through many of the buildings that were open. Amazing to see some of the original art work still visible.

These pages are also a sketch from the virtual crop and this time it was a 2-page layout. Again, I used the Mix and Match orange papers (this time the diamond print paper). I found the cute cut-out of a mission-style church as a free SVG. It only cut the black lines and the white "stucco" of the building. I backed the windows and doors with colored paper to give it a little definition. The journal box also had some brown tones and I really wanted the pages to pop. After sleeping on it, I realized that what I needed to add was more color. I had some older CM sticker packs which were just design lines and squares. Then I looked through my paper flower stash and found a few that I could stack that matched my purple and red tones. I really like the way it turned out.

Gorge-ous!

My mother and I had stopped at my cousin's house to visit with family. After we left, I managed to get my mom to agree to some more sight seeing and we drove up to the Columbia River Gorge. This is part of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Trail and we had a great time seeing some of the waterfalls. We didn't see them all because some of the trails were a little too wet or steep and we didn't bring sufficient gear for that.

The left page of the layout actually goes along with the single page below (which ends the album). Periodically Creative Memories distributes incentives for people to join as advisors. As a current advisor I'm allowed to purchase one for my own use or to show to people so that they understand what is available. For this period, it was a special project recipe with papers unavailable in the regular line. I put the kit together and thought that these scenes from nature would be a good fit.

The right page is a new technique I bought. The company is called Photo Dies and they make metal cutting guides that can be arranged into decorative patterns on the page. What excited me about this is that the dies make the cuts for you and so you are ensured of having straight edges. If you've seen some of the trendy templates that make something similar you know that you need to use an exacto knife or fussy cut to get the pieces. I am not really good at that and so when I've tried it I've always been upset with my jagged pieces that don't look neat. This takes care of it for me and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I made this at the retreat house where the machine is so that I could test it out and I'll be looking for my own machine now and more dies!

The composition of the pages was a little different for me. The Multnomah Falls are actually in the middle of the drive, but as the most elegant and photo-generating, they got their own page. I like that this ends the album as it highlights the visit with my mom.

As I mentioned above, this is the right side of the layout. I did actually turn it 90-degrees though because I had more vertical photos. I think having this as a stand-alone page allowed my brain to think about how to utilize the background. I also could have just used the mats in a different direction as I completed the layout very close to the time that I mounted it in the album, but I like this technique better. It helped that the chevrons now look a little like a waterfall next to the title picture.

A Park that Crosses the Line

While in Oregon City, my mother and I visited McLoughlin House. This residence is the original house of a physician and politician from the days of early settlement. It actually was positioned further toward the river but had to be relocated due to land movement. However, it has been restored to it's appearance from the 1800s.

This 2-page layout is actually taken from a 1-page idea which you can see here. The border is on the left page and the journal box is on the right. The border and right page papers are all from the discontinued Archivers line from CM. The left side paper that looks a bit like diamonds is from a very old CM line which actually didn't fit the entire page. That's why I picked this layout--the border covered the missing space! The photos on the right are actually all postcards that I purchased at the house. They were matted with some tan paper so that they didn't get lost on the dark background.

On Sunday morning, after dropping my mom at church I visited the other half of the Fort Vancouver unit which is actually in the state of Washington. Portland is very near the border so I didn't have to go far, but it is odd that the unit is comprised of sites in 2 states even though they are close in distance. I did not get to see much of the fort as I needed to return to pick up my mom and rejoin the family festivities but I did see the movie and tour the museum.

This page is a pre-designed cardstock from the previous CM company. You can see that I didn't really follow the suggested photo spaces, but I don't really think that it is quite as noticeable. The kit came with matching journaling cards and I was able to use one with a car to describe my visit. The other 2 items are just memorabilia--postcard and unigrid. Quick completion!

The End of the Trail

My next trip was in the fall of 2013 to my cousin's wedding in Portland Oregon. I traveled with my mom and we had some time to go sightseeing between the various events. One morning we headed to Oregon City and found the museum that represents the end of the Oregon Trail. This city is where pioneers would have to register their land claim so all of them had to come through here even if their destination was farther west. This isn't part of a national park, but does have a passport stamp (at least it was supposed to, I only got a bonus stamp).

I started this page using this layout. I found some free cuts for the Cricut and fashioned the cowboy, cowgirl, horse and wagon from various shades of cardstock. The wagon wheels turned out a little thin but I didn't feel like re-cutting them. The layers of desert and mountain were made with 2 shades of brown shaped with a tearing tool similar to this one (though with a bit of a rugged edge instead). You can also use a q-tip lightly dampened with water to create a path to tear paper.

In the Hills of Shiloh

Sunday morning before heading home we stopped in Tennessee for a ranger talk at our host park--Shiloh National Military Park.

I have used this technique before and I think it is especially useful here. I took one piece of 12x12 paper and cut it in half vertically. I mounted each to the outside edges of the two pages and then used the inside area for mounting photos, journaling and memorabilia. The journal box is one of the pieces from the Eastern National scrapbook kit, and was the epitome of this layout! The remaining blank spaces were filled with some random Civil War stickers from other packs.

Also at Shiloh is a national cemetery, very similar to Arlington. I didn't explore too far, but did find a few notable headstones. I also completed a scavenger hunt so that I could earn the Civil War trading cards. This one seemed to fit the page so I added it with photo corners.

This layout is another in the stash-busting course I am taking (the February edition). Again, I cannot post the actual sketch, but the paper cutting uses one entire sheet of 12x12 paper. I actually used remnants from 3 different papers from the retired CM Archivers pack. I hope they bring something similar back as the papers are very useful for my travels. The top left corner is another vine sticker. I tore it in half and layered it into the corner to get the angle. The fence is a single punch from a border maker. I wanted to fill the gap under the title and took inspiration from the iron gates to the cemetery.

Newsworthy

We made the newspaper! On Saturday we held the convention in a meeting room at one of our hotels.

For the news article, I found a background page that was newsprint. Oddly enough it came from a tablet of Christmas papers. I had a couple of 5x7 photo sleeves to preserve the actual newspaper. Creative Memories products are great at protecting from the high acid content found in newspapers. Keeping them in these protective sleeves will prevent decay from leaching to other parts of the page. I'm hoping it also keeps them readable for many years. You can also scan newspaper and use photos of the page to keep stories.

On the right page, I used my handy sketch seen in previous weeks but used only the left hand side. I only had the 2 photos (one of the convention and one of the hotel welcome sign). I used my nametag and a journal box for two of the right hand elements and then dug out a tag and used a couple of ranger stickers from the EN pack as an embellishment.

Contraband

On Saturday morning Jim and I drove to the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center. The path from the parking lot to the front doors is strewn with cast bronze items reminiscent of items found during an archeological dig. Inside the center are exhibits about how freed slaves struggled to begin a new life after emancipation. The term used for those refugees at the time was "Contraband".

Do you recognize the layout? If you look closely it is the 1-2-3 sketch I've used in each of the past few weeks. This time I squeezed a journal box between the left side photos, and used 2 full 4x6 photos on the bottom right. The paper is not actually double sided. I chose 2 scraps of black and white patterned paper and cut them to the sizes of the sketch. I added a few antique stickers and some ivy for the upper right corner. Since the items along the path were of such variety, just about any sticker I owned worked on the page.

While at the center we had 2 ranger talks. The first one was a musket firing demonstration in authentic wool uniform. In Mississippi. In July. Brave man! (Though in all seriousness the weather was quite mild). When done, he changed into his NPS uniform and talked about battles around the city.

Since the primary theme is the musket firing demo, I pulled out the musket paper on the right as well as other gun stickers. The left page was in a similar brown tone and had pre-pasted blue and dark brown paper. To be able to see the "Ranger Talk" stickers, I mounted them on a piece of vellum. The background still shows through but the letters stand out. When adhering vellum, Creative Memories makes a great adhesive that turns invisible when rubbed to adhere to the page.