Celebrate with the Eisenhowers

Hello and welcome to a special edition of my blog. This month I'll be serving as a Guest Designer for Lasting Memories. That blog posts a weekly challenge and then encourages others to play along with drawings at the end of each month. This month's challenges are all Title challenges. This week the challenge was to use the word "Celebrate" as the title. So I chose some photos of a visit to the Eisenhower Ranch. These were taken as part of a National Park Travelers Club Meetup that I sponsored in December 2016. The Eisenhower home was transformed to celebrate the holiday season. That particular weekend featured cocoa and cookies in the visitor center as well. More of that visit will be forthcoming I assure you.

The page I created was based on a sketch from my year-long class (so I cannot post the sketch). Suffice it to say that I had to turn it sideways to accommodate my photos. The background page is a Fast-to-Fabulous page from Creative Memories. All of the items come from an older line called "Season's Greetings". I like the vintage feel to the papers and knew it would work well with the home decor based on the 1960s lifestyle.

Big Trees

As hinted at previously, this part of the world is responsible for most of the world records for big trees. One of the biggest is the Quinault Big Cedar. It truly is massive and I'm not sure my photos gave a grand scale of how big it is. But I could stand up inside the opening at the base if I could get into it! The path up was a bit more rigorous than I had hoped for but it was well worth the effort. Truly my fear was falling on the way back down because it is a rather steep trail.

I continued my work with the CM Virtual crop. This is my take on Sketch #2. You'll notice I don't do all the sketches in order. I don't always have time to start the crop in the workweek so by the time I get to Saturday I have a build-up of sketches to choose from. I like that as I can match the photos to the sketch without "forcing" it too often. I used paper from the S'Mores pack--a newer pack from CM but one that I loved. I had only a partial 2nd page of the boot prints, so I filled in the gap on the left with one of the tall trees from the Eastern National Scrapbook kit. While I'm fairly sure that die cut is supposed to be redwood or sequoia, it gave a little authenticity to this layout. The CM tree border maker cartridge is an old one, but the perfect addition to the layout. The green helps break up the brown tones.

Two other "Big" trees to highlight are the large Sitka Spruce and the Big Leaf Maple. If you look on the right page you'll see that I tried to give a perspective of that maple leaf by photographing it next to my foot. These trees are plentiful in the area and my rental was awash in giant leaves.

Sketch #4 was the basis for this layout. This time I got to use the brand new Hello Autumn collection. The photo of the maple leaf really set off the design. I love the paper in this pack that is a jumble of autumn leaves. It's not quite textured paper that looks like another photograph but the colors are quite vibrant. 

The Quinault Auto Loop

 On Sunday morning I started visiting the Quinault portion of the park in earnest. An auto-loop road started near my hotel so after I checked out, I drove toward the park entrance. On the way, I saw a beautiful sunrise and stopped at the side of the road to take photos. It wasn't very busy along the road. My "friend" came over to the rail near me as I was taking photos and so I snapped one of the horse as well. I think he wanted food but I didn't have anything for him, unfortunately.

While I did create this page during the CM Virtual crop as I had been doing in the last several instances, the inspiration page was much older. For the April 2018 crop, I didn't get all the pages completed so I just saved the sketch. This is my take on the triangles. I used a zig-zag border maker cartridge for the 2 long black strips. The background page with the vertical triangles is from Woodland Whimsy. The blue denim paper is from an old blue-themed paper pack from CM. The journaling is on the next page.

My journey took me across a wooden bridge. Again, since I was nearly the only one exploring, I could stop and take photos. I stopped at one of the nature trail stops for the waterfall photo. It was so peaceful I felt I could stay there for hours. But I had more exploring to do as you'll see next week.

Back to the October 2020 virtual crop, this page is based on Sketch #5. I used some scraps from several packs here including a travel pack. The black buffalo plaid is from the Scenic Route pack. But the rest of the accents and the woodsy paper came from the Explorer pack (which was nearly completed by this time). I used the Custom Cutting System to make the circles. For the green dot paper, it is the inside and outside track of the same circle. Thus I get 3 rings with 2 papers. You can see a bit of the denim paper on this page too which helps tie the left and right pages together.

Inside the lodge

The outside of the lodge was amazing. And then you step inside and it's like going back in time! This lodge has a rustic yet sophisticated feel to it. The bedrooms have old-fashioned claw-foot tubs and the lobby is meant to serve as the communal living room. There was a fire in the fireplace and some extremely comfortable leather chairs. I will definitely return for a longer visit.

This layout is from challenge #6 in the CM Virtual Crop from October 2020. I combined elements from 3 different Creative Memories packs. But the best part of the layout (in my opinion) is the border I used where the 2 background elements meet. This is a branch border punch. I chose it because it had a nature theme to it but also because the branches reminded me of the animal head hanging above the fireplace (and in my sticker). The dark brown cardstock draws the eye to the border. 

I chose to substitute one of the 6x4 photos for a large journaling box. Because I did that, I had to find filler for the bottom left and upper right corners. I chose to fill in with sticker clusters. The bottom left is a signpost I created myself from several sticker pieces. I mounted it on lighter paper so it wouldn't get lost in all the brown of the background paper.

Lodge Front and Back

I made it to my hotel--the Lake Quinault Lodge. It's a historic hotel right on the edge of the National Park boundaries. This is the front of the lodge and the photo below is behind the lodge. I was most impressed with the redwoods near the entrance.

I based this layout on a sketch in the October CM Virtual Crop. I used paper from the Explore pack including some small paper borders from a cut-apart sheet. I liked the woodgrain background because of the tree photos.

In the morning I was up early and was able to go down to the lakeside behind the lodge and grab a few photos. The birds were cooperating with me and I got a few choice shots.

This is sketch #3 from the same CM Virtual Crop. There are a variety of paper and sticker packs here. I group my supplies by theme so I could just browse through my "nature and camping" folder for pieces that would work.  I used a lot of blue tones for the lake feel. The rounded piece is a circle that I cut punched around the edges. I used the Cloud border maker punch without the straight guide. I just free-punched all around the edge. By turning the punch upside-down I was able to match up the edges for a smooth look. 

Water Water Everywhere

 After leaving Hurricane Ridge, I started driving around the park heading to my hotel for the evening. I stopped at 2 additional locations. Though neither of the stamping centers were open, I was able to see more of the diverse landscape of this unusual park. On the left is Crescent lake and on the right is the beach near Kalaloch. Both were along route 101 as I was driving and well worth the stop.

This layout is really 2 individual pages and yet they are connected by colors. I started with the left page and chose the elements based on a challenge in one of my yearly scrapbooking classes. We were given a chart and had to choose 2 different papers (one from each of 2 lists), a technique to incorporate, an add-on, and a word style. I chose: Paper 1: overall washed/textured look (this is the background blue), Paper 2:cardstock (for the mats), 3) technique: fussy cut (I fussy cut the wavy border along the bottom); 4) add-on: journal card; and 5)word style: Die cut words (the "perfect spot" and "spectacular view are from Paper Loft word sheets). Many times when I see those lists it is daunting to find things that relate but this one came together fairly quickly.

I then chose similar tones to have the beach photos match (same family for the background paper, same cardstock mats and same word die cuts). What you probably didn't even notice is that both papers were from a time when Creative Memories had pages that were slightly under 12x12 (for whatever reason they were 12" x 11.5"). They made "perfect fit paper" (of which these papers are examples) but it is sometimes hard to use them on our newer true 12" pages. So I cut strips from the same paper family and filled in the "gutters" along the outer edges. If you look closely you might see where they fit.

Exciting News!

 A small break from my usual posts to let you know that I've been chosen to be a guest designer for the Lasting Memories Scrapbook layout blog. During the month of July, there will be extra pages posted to this blog as I participate in their challenges. You can follow my progress here or on their blog. I hope I can complete all the challenges with the National Park pages but you may have to excuse something a little more personal during that time. This is my first time being a Guest Designer and I hope it all goes well! I was chosen based on my submission of this layout back in April.