The Last Park Visit of the Year

My sister invited us to a New Year's Eve party at Mohegan Sun in the Poconos. We agreed and decided to head up early on the 31st, partly so that I could get in one more park visit. Steamtown was not that far away so we made a brief visit and took a ranger tour that included the workshop area. It was nice to be inside on such a cold day, though you can see we started outside at the roundhouse table.

I made the border on the top left page as part of a class I held for my CM business. The basic cuts could be morphed into a bunch of different borders but I really liked using the train version since I had this page coming up. With the border done all I needed to do was to pick 2 train pages from the CM Trains paper pack. There are some decorations/photos embedded in the papers but with enough blank space to add my photos and memorabilia.

The second layout features more of the workshop area. I loved being able to go beyond the "Unauthorized Personnel Keep Out" barrier.

The left page is a Fast-to-Fabulous page from the Gallivant collection. Since I had "wallpapered" the backside it was easy to incorporate into my album. The left border was printed on the page so I just added my photos and a few extra stickers. On the right, you can see that I added a 6x12 peekaboo pocket. In this photo it's covering up the right page, but without being too obstructive. 

Finally, you can see the right page and the inside of the peekaboo pocket.I pieced together photos to be able to show the entire engine. It was a unique experience to see it "naked". I never realized how many layers went into a structure like that.

The border on the right side was scraplifted from this Creative Memories blog post.  Because of the large photos and brochure, that's about all I needed. For the journaling box, I took a circular embellishment and cut it in half to frame the wording. I wish I had made it a little more even, but it didn't worry me at the time.

Life is Good in the 18th Century

 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 phrase "Life is Good".

I looked through my photos and decided that I would focus on a living history display at Moore's Creek Battlefield, NC. I had stopped here during a 2016 beach trip with Jim's family and enjoyed spending the day looking at the way people dressed, cooked, worked and lived. Many more pages to be added later!

Once I figured out the last half of the title and chose the photos, my next step was the arrangement. I found the journal box. It's from the CM Enchanted line (quite a few years old). I liked the way it had a feel of nature as well as a touch of red to match the people in my photos. I tried to match the green of the journal box with the photo mats. It's a close match but not exactly the same. I wanted a dark background to make the green pop and found 2 older pieces of brown paper. This is from an older travel collection in what CM would have called "Jewel Tones". The title was cut from the Cricut with green letters and backgrounds for balance (love the new Offset feature in Cricut Design Space).

After trimming the photos and arranging them I chose the ones that would get a mat (one short of course). For the unmatted photo, I found another journal box in the same Enchanted line. I fussy cut that small border from it and that balanced the last photo. The round circle on the bottom right is from a pack of laser-cut embellishments. It's green on the other side but not quite a match for the layout. The dark gray/black worked just as well given the frame in the journal box. I added 2 18th century stickers from my Eastern National scrapbook kit.

Picking up on the dark gray/black circle and frame led me to the Infinity Chain border maker cartridge on the bottom left. That is one 12" strip cut in half. The 6" piece is horizontally on the bottom of the page. Then I cut the other side into individual links and mounted them vertically on top. Final embellishments were more fussy cut leaves and branches from another journal box.

I'm creating these layouts while on vacation so I have a portion of my usual stash. It's really making me use up what I have--embellishments, papers, even scraps. Probably a good thing so that I get more room for new products!

On the Trail

Near the Quinault ranger station (which was closed during my visit) was a nature trail--two actually. One takes you to the Kestner homestead and the other is a nature trail. But if you go to the Kestner Homestead you can take part of the nature trail back, so I did both! The Kestner homestead only had outdoor exhibits of historic farm life. I'm not sure if they ever open the house but I don't think so as there wasn't a path to get to it easily.

This layout is a set of pages from a camping class I took with Paper Loft. I thought that the lantern decorations went well with the old-time farm look. Had I used this for camping there would have been more sayings and stickers put on the page but I left it undecorated purposefully.

My final layout for Olympic National Park features the trees seen along the nature trail. Many of them were marked with signs. Their height is impressive and difficult to demonstrate in photos. I thought the hanging moss a romantic touch to the vista as well.

You can tell I was getting to the end of a long scrapping session as the final pages didn't have as much work on them. These pages were purchased from Scrapbook.com, but are from the Scrapbook Customs line. I have purchased quite a few national park sets so you'll see more of these in the future. The only thing I had to add was a mat under one photo to keep it from blending in too much. 

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.