Happy Trails part 19--We finally come to Chamizal

 It's been a while since I started the album, but we are FINALLY getting to the actual convention! After my visit to San Elizario, I drove back to El Paso and the Chamizal visitor center. The mural has been recently updated and I took some time getting photos outside.

This layout is one of the 1-2-3 sketches I love. You can see the directions here. It's not as complicated as it looks. There are circular cuts made on one sheet of 12x12 paper, and you use the curved parts for one page and the remaining paper on the other so you have sort of a negative image of the other side. The plain cardstock behind helps to prevent the layout from becoming too busy. I didn't add any embellishments to the page in another attempt to keep it balanced.

Inside the building, I looked through the museum (which is slated for renovation soon so I'll have to go back) and got situated in their spacious auditorium.

This is another 1-2-3 sketch, one that I saved from a summer class in 2018. It's available here. I had, of course, pulled all of my yellow, red, and orange papers for my southwest trip so this was in the pile. I'm sure it is Creative Memories, I just don't recall which paper pack it is. Still, the point is to have a contrast in the middle to use as accent squares and then arrange photos and journaling around the edges. I used a handful of orange mats from my stash as well to fill in the blocks around the photos and the "Find Your Park" sticker. 

The rest of the embellishments are a bit of a jumble but I think they pull together nicely. On the left page are a compass rose (provenance unknown) and a vellum title strip. (Vellum is tricky because adhesive typically shows through. Try the CM vellum adhesive and when you burnish the top of the vellum, the adhesive disappears.) The postcard is an old sticker from CM's travel pack. The buffalo (mirroring the statue) is from a junior ranger pack I received as a gift. On the right are fewer embellishments. I wanted to use the 2 old CM stickers but because the mat was so busy, I mounted them on a piece of yellow cardstock so they didn't get lost on the page.

Happy Trails Part 18--San Elizario chapel

 My last stop in San Elizario was to the chapel. I couldn't go inside but I had picked up a photo/postcard in one of the gift shops so I could show the detail. The chapel is still in use and has a lovely mission style facade. 

I based this layout on a sketch but also wanted to use it for a challenge in my summer camp class. Our challenge was to use texture. The bottom strips are paper that has a textured look to them, but to up the ante a bit I also decided to add some 3D materials. I had some jute string and tied several knots along its length. Then I tied the ends together to make a loop and pasted it to the page. I drew a small cross (it's in the bottom left if you look closely) and is to simulate an old-fashioned rosary.

Happy Trails Part 17--San Elizario Law

First let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR! I've enjoyed the process of posting and describing my pages and I hope you have enjoyed the posts. Let me know if you want to see anything new this year or any way to improve the blog!

Now, back to San Elizario. There are still historic buildings in the town though many have been repurposed. The outsides still show the traditional stucco and wooden porticos. I apparently like to photograph the tunnel-like passageways. I didn't realize how many of them I had taken until I put this page together!

I based this layout on a sketch from my year-long scrapbook class. In March we were challenged to use banners on our pages and this certainly takes advantage of that challenge! I used up some older paper for the banners. The borders on top were left from a ranch/farm pack from Club Scrap. A couple of stickers on the first banner and some journaling was all that was needed to finalize this one.

One of the more intriguing stops in town is the old jail. This has been kept as a museum not because of who was confined here, but because one of those prisoners was sprung by Billy the Kid. If you ever are in the area, I do recommend stopping by for a few minutes to take it all in.

My pages were based on this layout on Pinterest. It enabled me to use up a bunch of scrap pieces. Everything is in the same brown-ish tones. The frame on the upper right is also a left-over from a project that I worked on. I originally thought I would use three of those frames on one page but they were too big. So I held on to this one and with a little cropping of the corners, it filled in nicely on the page. 

Happy Trails part 16--San Elizario Moseying

I wanted to take a moment to say Happy Holidays to all of my readers. This will post on Christmas night (prepared ahead of time of course) so I hope you are all celebrating in a safe and meaningful way with your friends and family. 

Saturday morning I had some free time so I decided to continue my exploration of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro by driving to a small town called San Elizario. There is a self-guided walking tour of the town showing some of the historic structures. It's a very small town but they are quite proud of their history and I stopped at just about all of the sites along their route. The first stop had to be for the stamp of course. It's in a small visitor center/museum and also had a small video to watch.

 This layout is based on a sketch from one of my classes that can't be shared. It is the same structure as the 1-2-3 layouts I've shared previously though. I used brown cardstock as a base and the barbed wire paper had the red/white stars on the back. Very quick cuts. I added a few embellishments from my western sticker stash--mostly little button type stickers.

Happy Trails part 15--White Sands (the sand)

The club met at one of the picnic pavilions for our Friday get together. There are also individual picnic tables (shown below) which can be turned to provide shade. They remind me of sailboats a little. Dinner was nice, but it was just fun to talk to all my friends I hadn't seen in quite a while.

This layout is from Club Scrap. I had only purchased the "cut apart" sheets for the picnic theme and had to supplement the designer paper and background pages with items from my stash (which is not a bad way to use up product). The blue/green stripe paper came from the Cool Serenity line that I had used on the first White Sands pages so this became the perfect way to move to the dinner portion of the park. Notice that the original layout on the bottom right calls for 3 vertical photos cut small and angled. But, I had 2 horizontal photos that bridged those 3 spaces and I like that EVEN BETTER! 

After dinner, we joined 2 of the park rangers for a walk along the dunes while they told us all about the park. It was a large group but we all managed to stay together and the walk was quite pleasant. Until we turned around and realized that there was a storm brewing behind us and it was heading straight for us! The rangers gathered us all together and herded us back to the pavilion. The "sand" storm (as I said last week, it's really gypsum) created a great exfoliating facial (has to be some sort of silver lining right?) and while uncomfortable as we walked through it was not truly damaging. Once back at the pavilion we did have time to get our junior rangers sworn in before heading home for the day.

These 2 pages were created using Photo Dies. The left page uses the hexagon from Kit #6, while the right uses Kit #18. I probably need to buy a few more as they have some nice new designs. I like the concept of the page stencils (Lea France and Creative Memories both make those) but I don't have the evenness when cutting and I'm always disappointed in how they turn out. With photo dies, the cuts are perfect every time and because it's a 2-sided die, it cuts the frame and the photo simultaneously. That also leaves the inner mat as another shape and on the left page, I was able to use those to fill the corners. Those were filled with fussy-cut photos and titles and the page was complete!

Happy Trails part 14--White Sands (the sun)

 After leaving Fort Selden, I drove to White Sands National Monument (it was then, it has since been updated to a National Park). We had planned an NPTC picnic there. I arrived with enough time to explore the park on my own a bit. It's important to note that while it is called "sand" it is not the same material you would find on a seaside beach. This is a huge amount of gypsum that has been liberated from the nearby mountains and washed into the plateau. However, it certainly still acts like sand--forming dunes and supporting grasses and wildlife. I didn't try it but people also use it as snow and will toboggan down the dunes (this is an approved use of the park).

This layout is based on a Pinterest layout I saved. I was torn with how to scrapbook these pages and decided that I would think about "sands" as a beach and went through my beach/tropical board for inspiration. The blue and white really seemed to fit nicely with the photos and I was quite happy with the results. I used paper from the "Cool Serenity" line which CM had a few years ago.

After the visitor center, I stopped at a nature trail along a boardwalk. It was hot and sunny but there were a lot of great sights along the walk.

This layout is based on a 1-2-3 sketch by Noreen Smith. I rarely do this but I actually copied her sample EXACTLY. What I added to the layout was the dots down the left side and across the top of the right page. These were made using the new CM Dot Pens. These create different size dots depending on how long you press. I probably should be more tolerant of "white space" on my pages but I just felt that there needed to be something along those edges.

Happy Trails part 13--Fort Selden

 After leaving the Farm and Ranch Museum, I headed to my next stop on the El Camino Real stamp path: Fort Selden. It was built around the time of the Civil War to provide safety and peace in the area. It must have worked because by 1895 it was no longer needed and was abandoned. Only remnants of the buildings remain.

The impetus for this layout is the border at the top of the left page. It was a pin I had saved on Pinterest. The paper is from an older CM line called "Reminisce"--one of my favorite lines. The tones and background designs work for so much of my travels. The letter block in the top left is supposed to say "US"--something I cut from my heritage Paper Loft word sheets. But I decided that a couple of judiciously placed dots would create U. S. and it worked perfectly!