Happy Trails Part 1--NPTC Convention 2015 Album kick-offs

This album was made chronologically--a first for me I think! Most of my large trip albums are completed soon after I arrive home. That's because I like to have them completed for the next convention. When I'm in driving range, I bring my scrapbook albums with me to share. If you've not been to one of the NPTC Conventions, it's a weekend of excitement and friendship. Our next one is in July/August 2021 in Washington DC. Join us! I'll be bringing quite a few completed albums with me.

For this convention, we traveled to El Paso, Texas to visit Chamizal National Memorial. You'll get to see that park, but it will be a while! Here I'm showing off the album kick-off page and the itinerary page.I had to come up with a title for this trip. Jim had not given me one before I left. Perhaps because this was to be a short weekend getaway. But I packed a LOT into it as you'll see in the coming weeks.

My inspiration for the title page came from this Pinterest post. What I got from that was the overall color scheme and the travel shapes. I transitioned that to a Fast to Fabulous page that had a great deal of open space but with a good brown tone print. I added some stickers to the bottom and upper right corner and then cut the title on the Cricut. This is 3 layers of color together and the black is cut strategically to show the yellow and orange papers through. I'm not completely sure I did it all correctly (cutting and layering) but decided to keep the title and not cut a new one. 

My itinerary shows that this was a quick trip--Friday through Monday. But look at how many events per day.

This page was inspired by this layout. At one time I did have a journal box/mat like the inspiration page. However, I must have used it because it wasn't in my stash that I could see. So I used the CM Custom Cutting System rectangles to cut the red cardstock and map paper for the base of the die-cut. The car and driver were both cuts on the Cricut, as was the Texas shape title box. I put long border stickers with a western theme on the left and right pages. I guess I thought that my itinerary would not take much space. But then I started journaling at the top and just barely got it all on the page!

First to Stamp!

In June, the National Park Travelers Club was notified that a new stamp had been made and placed in Wrightsville, York County. That's near my house! So in early July, I decided I would take a drive to locate the stamp and made a stop on my way home from work. I was the VERY FIRST PERSON to use the stamper. I even helped the folks to set the date wheel. Unfortunately, the ink pad was quite wet and it took a while to get a decent impression, I doubt the docent really understood why I wanted my photo taken of me stamping but she complied. The home is part of the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail--a water-based trail that commemorates Captain Smith's explorations in the early 1600s. I'll need to return eventually as the site was open,  but no tours were scheduled until the next day.

This is the left page of a 2-page spread. The base of which is a layout I made at a Paper Loft class during one of the Lancaster Scrapbook Conventions. It was the July 4th weekend and the combination of the red and blue papers gave it not only a patriotic touch but also had a nice historic rustic look that worked on this page. The following page is about our dinner cooking on the fire pit so I didn't photograph that half of the layout. I like having pre-made pages ready to go. It can make for fast page completion. Notice that there are 2 vertical 4x6 photo mats. I don't always allow that to determine how I layout the photos. I just consider them part of the background and use it as I would any other component.

On a Mission part 3: Mission Concepcion

We've reached 200 blog entries today! I hope you are enjoying these entries as much as I do. 

My last mission to visit was Mission Concepcion which has a bit of a different shape to its buildings. There is a lot of ground left but not much else.

For this layout, I cut a piece of paper in half and used it to wallpaper the left side of the page. This is because the paper is actually for Arizona and I had to cut away that portion. 😀 I matted the photos with some vibrant orange to give a little life to the page (as much as I like that paper, it's a little drab--and so are the stones of the actual church).

On a Mission part 2--San Jose

I next drove to the San Jose Mission which is the main visitor center for the parks. This is also the largest and best-preserved site of all the missions. In hindsight, I should have started here because the rangers would have been able to tell me about the staffing times at the other missions. While here I took a ranger walk with a group of random visitors. You can do a self-guided tour, and some of the families who chose to do that were reprimanded by our ranger for not being respectful of the grounds (the children, with the apparent consent of the parents, were climbing out of the window openings in the housing section.) So please--if you visit any of our great National Park units, treat them as if they were your own house.

The first pair of layouts started with the right page (as so many of mine do). This is one of the fast-to-fabulous pages. I've found that orange and brown tones work well with the southwest architecture and so I chose to incorporate this page. It helped that my pictures were oriented correctly as these older pages have mats built-in for photos. I trimmed one photo down to 4x4 and used the rest of the mat space as a journaling box. To make the left page match, I chose some scraps of orange and yellow paper to mat photos and the unigrid. I also used the yellow paper and the Medallion border maker cartridge to make the corner border.

Our tour took us through the various parts of the compound which included the church but also the daily life areas such as homes, baking ovens, and the gates of the compound. The interior photo of the church is actually a post card. I rarely photograph inside active churches.

The left page above is the reverse of the F2F from the first layouts shown. I simply had to lay the photos in place and the page was done. On the right, I chose to stack the 3 remaining horizontal photos. That left a 6x12 spot on the right of the page which I filled with scrap orange paper. The journal box matches the F2F front-side page and I found a coordinating mat to frame the last vertical photo.

On a Mission part 1--Espada and San Juan

While in San Antonio, I wanted to visit all of the missions. Jim had no interest so I set off in the morning and drove to the most southern of the missions--Mission Espada. I was earlier than the park opened so I had a chance to look around the outside. I waited for the posted hours for the visitor center to open, but no one arrived so I chose to drive over to the aqueduct that was nearby. Based on the same principles the Romans used, this aqueduct carried water to the settlement--water was important for the survival of the area. 

The layout is based on a sketch from my year-long scrapbook class (so I can't share it). It was actually a single page sketch, and I doubled it. I liked the way the triangles met and formed a shape reminiscent of the front of the missions. The paper is a mixture of an orange print and a piece from the Memoirs and Memories pack that was a little industrial. But the colors matched the color of the mission walls so you can't really see the gears and rivets until you look closely. I added a few stickers from a very old Yellow Design Lines packet. The squares sort of resemble a cross.

Below, you can see the aqueduct up close as well as the next visit I made--Mission San Juan. This site is unmanned so I gave myself a tour by reading all the signs and then moved on. More missions next week!

The left page is another sketch from our April class (so again, I can't show you). I used one block to have a journaling square rather than another photo. I had to manufacture some letters, but I thought the "Agua" title turned out well. 

On the right, I didn't use any inspiration. I had pulled paper packs with oranges and yellows when I started on the mission pages knowing those work well with Southwestern theme pages. I had one ombre yellow page which I turned sideways and then added the sun borders (CM Border Maker Cartridge). The middle sticker is the Alamo, but without the title, it rather looks like a church so I thought it decorated the page nicely. To pull a little more yellow into the middle, I added the Yellow Rose of Texas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.....

We next drove to the LBJ ranch which is still a working ranch. We did the auto loop through the ranch and THEN found out there is an entrance fee to pay at the Ranger Station. We didn't know our timing so we didn't pre-purchase tours of the house. I think I'd like to do that if we ever get back. We did get to see the animals as well as his Air Force One plane. At the Ranger Station we discovered that this park abuts a state park dedicated to preserving farm life of the early 20th century (before electricity and running water). If you have an extra hour or two you should explore it!

I debated showing this as 2 individual pages but decided that it was just as easy to talk about the differences in one paragraph. The left paper is a simple wallpaper. When I realized I had cow photo paper, I HAD to use it. The windmill is a VERY old CM die-cut. 

The right page is a sketch from one of my classes, so I cannot show you the base. I struggled to put the map of the ranch on this page. Look closely--do you see it? Nope. I finally realized it added nothing to the story so I left it out. I do have some military stickers and had an Air Force title sticker. I thought adding the giant "1" sticker as well as that blue plane die-cut put the whole layout in context.

Back in Time--LBJ's Boyhood Home

It's time to return to our chronological pages! As you may have forgotten, the last post in the chronological albums was 8 months ago and featured Manassas in October 2014. It wasn't until May of 2015 that I had any additional park photos to share. Jim and I had taken a trip to Texas as I was speaking at a Surgical Technology Conference. We added a few days of sightseeing before the conference and we traveled first to the LBJ National Historic Site. This is a collection of sites and the first stop after the visitor center was the Boyhood Home.

What you see above is an 8 1/2 x 11 pocket page. I had trouble getting the brochure onto the layout and so decided to use the pocket to give me some extra room. I used a piece of patterned paper as the background, using something similar to what would go on the next page to have some consistency. If you see this book in person you'll see that you can just see the edge of the following page along the side.

We toured the home with a ranger--just Jim and me on the tour. It's a very primitive house full of lovely vintage pieces. These are my favorite types of structures to visit. I love the old kitchen stoves and the hand-operated gears. Not that I don't like modern conveniences. I just find the setting homey.

The photo on the top of the right page is a combination to create the panorama. No sketch or inspiration page this time--I just went through my supplies and tried to arrange things in a way that would highlight the photos.