Making charcoal

 The reason for our meetup was the demonstration of making charcoal. This process was done on a much larger scale, and every day, when the site functioned as a furnace. Now they have special demonstrations twice a year. The people who work the site in period clothing attended (I realized later who they were) and gave an element of reality to the event. The sign about fire being hot made me chuckle though.

I follow several other scrapbooking blogs and this one had a page I wanted to try. I didn't sign up for the boot camp, but this layout follows the half-page technique displayed. It is 1 piece of decorative paper cut in half and spread on 2 pages, then one piece of cardstock cut into specific strips. I did have to use another piece of cardstock to punch the rustic fence border across the bottom but all of the mats and the 2 thin strips along the paper are from one sheet of cardstock. The CM 12" trimmer has a measurement line on the side of the cutting blade and that helps to be able to make the cuts to get four 4.25x6.25 inch mats. 

My First Meet-up

 My next journey was not long after returning from Chamizal. It was special in its own way though because the National Park Travelers Club had recently developed a Meet-up program to encourage people to visit the parks together. We would receive a special meet-up stamp, as well as the park stamp, and both would count toward our yearly tallies. Vanessa put this one together on a weekend where Hopewell Furnace was doing a program on charcoal making. It was the fuel needed when the furnace was running daily--1800s. The buildings were renovated and recreated to be authentic to when this was a booming business.

I made this page for the July 2022 CM Virtual Crop. You can see the sketch on this page. I used an old piece of Discover(I think) CM paper. Since the border was pre-made I just had to fill in with photos and make a border at the bottom. I chose 2 pieces of CM Shortcuts. These were packs of decorative borders in various cardstock colors. The 2 I picked ended up looking like mountains and a fence and that worked well with the rustic feel of the photos. The middle embellishment is a flower from an old heritage pack. This came together quickly with the patterned paper!

Happy Trails part 23--the Final Entry

 The last of my trip was a night-time visit to Carlsbad Caverns. While I can certainly count this as a unit visited I did not arrive early enough to visit the caves. I was able to tour the visitor center and then head to the Amphitheater for the Bat Flight presentation. Our club snagged several rows together and we had fun calling to the newcomers at the top of the staircase. My husband still can't believe I attended this event because I tend to freak out when a bat flies in the house. Luckily none tangled in my hair that night! There are only daytime photos because phones, cameras, and other electrical devices are prohibited once the bats start emerging from the caves.

In a rather unusual burst of enthusiasm, I completed this page a little earlier than normal. One of the Facebook pages I followed showed how to make the bats--from an Airplane Border Maker Cartridge! They are punched from black paper, turned upside down, and embellished with a white gel pen for the eyes. I knew I just HAD to make the page right then (it was October 2018 and I was still a couple of years away from completing the album). So it's been sitting in one of my pre-made page containers waiting until I got to this album. Because I made it so far in advance, I used cardstock as the base. I found 2 close shades in the yellow/orange family. Then I took one sheet of stone paper from the CM Textures pack and cut it to make the non-symmetrical layout. I made 3 12" strips of "bats" and layered them across the middle. A few bat stickers and die cuts from my Halloween collection helped create the bat flight across the page.

I was having trouble getting all the photos on the page so I used a peekaboo pocket on the photo above the park brochure. If you lift it, the journaling is underneath. Hindsight is 2020. I didn't realize when I made this that it would be the last page in the album. Had I been planning it out, I would have rearranged the layout to make 3 pages with the last of the photos as the final entry. 

And that leads us to the final page. I struggled with what to put on the page but finally found inspiration in making a closing page similar to my kick-off pages. I used the "Happy Trails" theme to say goodbye and to talk a little about the upcoming convention in Philadelphia. (That set of pages has been covered if you look back through the blog posts).

Once I decided what I was doing, this page came together quickly. I had a western themed photo page with the hat and hay bale. I used the Cricut to make the Happy Trails sign and the letters to indicate the next trip. I may use this technique again!

Happy Trails part 22--Guadalupe Mountains

After the ranger talk, I headed outside the city to the Guadalupe Mountains. The club had arranged for a portion of the park to be open that is typically difficult to visit. Before we get there, let's look at the approach and the imposing El Capitan mountain. I had just obtained a new cell phone and people had told me that it wouldn't get very good photos. However, my image of El Capitan is amazing. Or perhaps the mountain just doesn't take a bad picture! I did visit the visitor center and then returned to the scenic pull-off to grab this shot. It was worth it! 

These were 2 very simple pages to put together. On the left, I combined 2 papers: the background paper from Scrapbook Customs with the state image and name of the park and the overlay that I purchased at the Lancaster Scrapbook convention. Those 2 created the perfect backdrop for my photo of the entrance sign and the park brochure. Now I did wonder about putting the name of the park on the page 3 times, but I suppose it is a variety of ways to display it and I am leaving it that way. On the right, I started with a Fast-to-Fabulous from an earlier travel pack. It has a nice large opening in the middle and just a hint of borders. That was a great place for me to put a journal box and my excellent picture of El Capitan. The border on the right is from the Eastern National scrapbook kit and while it is greener than the trip to Guadalupe, it is not all incorrect! They were paved roads on the way, but JUST.

My other stop in the park was at the Frijole ranch--a historic homestead turned into a museum. The club had arranged for rangers to staff a table for questions but the tour was self-guided. This ranch is not frequently opened so I'm grateful that we were able to visit when we did. I know I need to return to the park and do some trails but I won't have to worry about seeing the ranch again. There is a small trail leading away from the ranch which has great flowers but I didn't have time to see much of it.

The papers on this layout are from the BoBunny line called Paparazzi. It has a great historic feel to it. I picked it up at a yardsale. An entire Iris case for just $5--including the case! The only downside is there is a heavy perfume smell to the case. The case included papers as well as a 6x6 decorative mat tablet and that's what I used on the bottom left and top right to highlight a few photos. The camera die cut is also from that pack. A title bar from one of the pages highlighted the top left page. Another quick layout!

Happy Trails part 21--the Ranger Walk

 I chose to take the guided tour of Chamizal on Sunday morning. There were 20 or so of us gathered for the tour and the ranger walked us around the grounds explaining the border markers and the need for this National Memorial park. It was a bit warm, even in the morning, so he tried to keep us in the shade of trees whenever possible.

These pages are pre-designed Creative Memories pages. It pre-dates the Fast-to-Fabulous layouts but is the same sort of design. And for once in my life, my photos actually matched the openings made for the layout! The only edit I had to make was to the ranger photo (which was a horizontal photo but cropped to 4x4 nicely so would fit in a vertical box and allow room to journal below). I added 2 stickers on the right page--one in the ranger's photo box and one in the middle of all 4 boxes. It was such an international site I thought the world globe worked in that space.

Happy Trails part 20--the Convention!

The convention starts with registration. One of the most important tables to stop by is the stamping station. The club creates its own stamp, plus an iconic stamper for the park. We add those to the park's commonly used stamps and the tables get BUSY! I snapped a few folks in their stampmania. It's always interesting to see how everyone does their collecting--some take multiple images on one page, some have multiple books, some want specific impressions. There's no wrong way to stamp though.

This layout was created at a Paper Loft class at a Lancaster scrapbook convention. It had been in my stash a while, and I had to move the banners on the right page because my cat had found the edge delicious (there were tooth marks left in the paper!). I added a few strips of paper (the pine cone strips are leftover from a paper in the Eastern National scrap kit) and some Cricut cuts of the rubber stamp. A couple of stickers from the Junior Ranger sticker pack and a passport sticker (not what we usually use, but it was blue and said passport so I went with it) and the page was complete.

You may think the pages don't quite lie next to each other. I had to take 2 photos and stitch them because between them is a pocket page holding my copy of the program from the day. I grabbed a couple of photos during the convention. One of our speakers was the superintendent and I found a photo of her from outdoors to include. On the right are photos with several club members (including me) with the park's mascot--Chami the Chipmunk.

This layout is from Club Scrap's National Park kit. Scroll down to pages 7 and 8 to see it without photos. I spent a day putting a bunch of these layouts together and was excited to be able to use them. I bought a few sheets of paper from the club as part of a clearance sale. Later, I had scoured the eBay and Facebook group postings and bought some leftover packs of paper as well--enough for me to put together the layouts, cards, and even a few extra pages not included in the original instruction pages. Because my first layouts were made before I realized the cutting guides were on their website, I had to make a few edits to which embellishments were placed on each page. But, they work for me! Especially the quote about laughing).

The final pages of the convention take us from the break (and the fabulous cake the club was able to get) through the President's dinner and a quick shot of one of our members who joined us at a Karaoke bar after dinner. The group photos were taken by multiple people so I'm sort of standing to the side instead of in front of the group. (Also why you won't find me in the photos!) 

The final pages are another pre-designed layout. This set was completed at a local scrapbook store. When I lived near Harrisburg I would drive to the store once a month to complete a layout. I have to admit I never knew what I was going to use this one for. "Sippin on Sunshine" and lemons didn't seem to apply to any of my usual summer photos. But I decided that I would pull it for the break/dinner photos and it doesn't "wow" me, but the pages are completed. And the lesson of this set of posts is that it is GREAT to take time to put page layouts together in anticipation of using them. But at some point, please remember to take them out and put photos on them! 

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.