Locked up

My trek through the Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia area took me to one of the C&O canal locations. Visiting in March, several locations were closed, but Williamsport was open. The visitor center had a movie that was taken in the early 1900s showing traffic along the canal. It was a cold day but I took a walk up to Lock 44 and the keeper's house there. The house wasn't open for tours so I just looked around before heading back to my car.

This layout is scraplifted from this layout that I found on Pinterest. All of the small bits around the top and sides of the pages are scraps (yay for using up scraps!) I debated including the scavenger hunt booklet as the color is so much brighter than the photos, but wanted to fill up the page so I left it in. The sticker below the brochure is from the EN scrapbook kit.

A Short Walk on a Long Trail

While at Harpers Ferry I decided to visit the Appalachian Trail office. It was a bit longer than I anticipated walking from the lower town. AT Hikers stop here for a photo before heading north again and I was able to find a photo of a friend who stopped by in the early 90s.

I scraplifted this layout from the paper manufacturer's post on Scrapbook.com. I've found that when you have a lot of printed paper, using small amounts and layering keeps the page from being too busy.

RAID!

In March 2014 I spent my spring break vacation on a stamp trip. My first stop was Harpers Ferry NHP. While the most famous happening here was John Brown's raid, I wouldn't say it was the predominant story told. Yes there are plaques about it and some parts of the museum discuss his actions but there is much more to see.

The layout above is one that I purchased from Scrapbook Concierge. It came with the pieces in a bag and I had to layer them together. That was a little challenging actually, but I do like the layout. My contribution was the journal box which came from an older CM Croptoberfest kit.

Harpers Ferry has an upper and a lower town. The lower town is mostly just historic buildings, but it still surprised me that it had a western feel. The city is near where West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland connect and that doesn't remind me of western life.

I started this layout on the right as I wanted to mimic that western feel. I found the paper with the wagon wheels and layered the photos on. A couple of the photo mats actually came from the layout I purchased above (saved because of putting the  journal mat in place of a photo). The left paper was out of my stash of heritage sheets but the brown and gold seemed a good fit for the subjects.

The photo of the inside of the General Store proved too long for the page, so I placed the third photo in a peekaboo pocket so that it could be folded out to make one long panoramic photo.

Baby, it's Cold Outside!

I was leaving the conference on Friday because I was scheduled to go to my annual scrapbook weekend. That meant I could go to one of the office buildings to get the stamps you can't get on the weekends, so I chose the Department of the Interior. Constitution Gardens is very close to their building and so I made an effort (in the chilly weather and on icy paths) to visit this park. I'm sure I've walked through it previously but I wanted to actually stop and see the markers.

This layout is based on a sketch from my Scrapbooking Class. Ironically, the template was from June and had a beach theme to demonstrate the technique! My beach ball area became a journaling circle. The background is a piece of rounded corner cardstock that CM provided as a Christmas treat many years ago. The bottom right corner has a circle with a snowflake on it and I intended to use that where the dark blue one was but decided I wanted more contrast. I covered the hole with the vertical paper (an older piece of CM from a winter collection). The border is one I've had for a long time. I didn't have to do each square individually, it comes as one unit. The extra, dark-blue snowflake helps add some color to the top of the page. I thought my use of 2 sizes of letters inspired for this layout. It gives it that frosty look!

Not So Fun with Flags

My next park trip began in January 2014. I was driving toward Washington DC. This house was listed on the trail map and I assumed (incorrectly) that there was a passport stamp there. But I did find the story interesting and so made a layout about the brief visit.

This layout was created for a scrapbook summer camp I joined online. The camp started at the end of June and our first challenge was to make a patriotic layout and use a sketch. I can't post the sketch here but I did turn it 90-degrees to match the direction of my photos. The papers are from an older CM line called "Americana". I liked the duller/historic look of the paper for this layout. Stickers (border, upper left and the 3 arrows) are from a Reminisce sticker page.

A Prickly Subject

My last stop of the day was the western side of Saguaro National Park. This park is split into 2 sections and as I was nearing the end of the day I could only  visit one. After watching the park movie I drove along a nature trail. It got a little scary as I was in a rental car and the road turned to dirt about halfway through! But I got to see all stages of saguaro life.

The borders on this layout have been in my stash for a while. The paper and stickers come from an older CM kit called Cabana. I liked the southwest feel to the paper colors and the stickers of a camera and car fit the details of my visit nicely. The matching journal box was made at the same time as the borders. I added a little collection of cactus and coyote stickers and a couple of peekaboo pockets to get all the photos into the layout.

Below is a close-up of the left page peekaboo pockets. I used one to partially cover the unigrid, though I trimmed the photo to allow the title to show through.

Below is the right side close-up of the peekaboo pockets.

By using peekaboo pockets I could show the great variety of cacti without having to create a second layout. This will keep my album to a much more manageable size.

Inside the Gates

Continuing my drive along the Juan Bautista de Anza trail, I went to another presidio--this one in Tucson. This restored building highlights life in the 18th century in the west with reproduction arms, furniture and even brickwork. This is a much smaller area than the original fort because the city has encroached on the historic area.

This layout is another entry in the CM Virtual Crop. I went very literal with the layout, and in hindsight I probably should have used a different shape than the heart for the right side photo. The top border uses an arrow border cartridge from CM. I used the part that is cut out rather than the border itself which is a nice way to get double duty from a cut! Works well for the stars and chevrons too! The papers are much older CM paper but are still in keeping with my southwest tones. The tag used for a journal box is actually from the vintage papers but the orange tone matched the paper. And by turning it so the orange is at the bottom it creates a nice flow down the page.

I enjoyed the trip back in time but also the juxtaposition of the city buildings rising above the fort walls.

For this layout I used a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. The striped/orange paper didn't end up the way I thought because the stripes run in 2 different directions so I had to play with the cuts to see which worked best (the inner larger pieces or the smaller corner pieces). the larger won out! Additional embellishments include a journal box that came from a sheet of tags I bought and a photo border of chile peppers from a scrapbooking calendar I got for Christmas many years ago. The sun is from the Everyday Photo Decor kit which is a new collection that provides a gift frame for 3 photos. I had used most of one kit for my Administrative Assistant Day cards and the sun was leftover. I think the variety came together nicely though.