Hometown Tourist

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I want to say how thankful I am that you read my blog. If you have any comments or suggestions, please drop me a line!

I know a couple of ladies from the Park Travelers Club that live close to me so we decided to have an outing together and chose a walking tour of Lancaster focusing on the Underground Railroad. Before we got started I took the opportunity to photograph some places I've been to frequently such as the Penn Square statue of soldiers and the Central Market. 

This page was a kit from Scrapbook Concierge. It's another example of pages that I am glad to have completed, and that I will NEVER do again. It took a while to figure out which photos would easily (not sure that's the right adjective but we'll stick with it for now) morph into the letters in "Lancaster". It took quite a while to fussy cut and apply the photos to the letters. I did get lucky in that one photo could spread across up to 2 letters if positioned correctly.

A Very Special Trip to Washington DC

 In May 2017, Jim and I heard that Ken Burns was going to be the speaker at an event held at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We enjoyed many of his documentaries so we made a memorable trip to see him and were able to get tickets to the public section of the audience. The trip started with the Metro ride to the US  Navy Memorial. We walked along the mall to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and passed a few sites. I enjoyed seeing the Navy practice for their part in the parade that afternoon.

This layout is a Project Recipe from Creative Memories made specifically for this paper pack--Festive Fourth. I taught a class to my customers. There is a recipe available for just about every new pack of paper. If you would like a copy of the recipe, let me know through email!

I never knew that the Memorial Wall could be edited. This occasion (which I believe happens every year on Memorial Day) honors any newly identified remains (adding names to the wall) and changing some of the icons from "Missing" to "Killed in Action". 

The left page is wallpaper using one of several pages I have for "Memorial Day". While I don't have a lot of events specific to that day, the reverse side is more "generically patriotic" and I will likely use it for similar events. The right page is an 8 1/2x11 pocket page. You'll see in the next photo that I included the program from the day. For this side, I added our tickets (one showing each side) as well as the journaling. The background paper here is an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet from my stash. Nice to be able to use those up.

The ceremony was beautiful. Not only did we hear from Ken Burns and his partner Lynn Novick, but there were moving presentations by family members, and the honor guards. When the ceremony was over we walked back to the Metro station. That route was along the parade route for the DC Memorial Day parade and we dawdled enough to enjoy many of the performances, marching bands and the veterans celebrated through floats and honor cars. Those pages are available in the full album if you want to see them!

The left page is the other side of the pocket and the other side of the 8 1/2 x 11 paper. I couldn't have asked for better wallpaper there! The right side page I made at a crop. The lesson was to make the "crazy circles" along the bottom. This paper is from a Fresh Fusion pack. I cut 3 circles from different papers and stacked them, then made some "crazy cuts". You rearrange the segments to get the mish-mash effect. Those also could have been places to highlight other photos, memorabilia, or embellishments. 

I'm King of the World!

The photos below are from the Titanic Memorial in Washington DC. (Does anyone else think James Cameron visited here before having Jack perch on the rail?) The memorial was created by women's groups shortly after the sinking to commemorate the men who lost their lives by giving up space in the lifeboats to women and children. I visited on the anniversary of the disaster. This is one of those times belonging to the National Park Travelers  Club helped me with a visit. I not only never knew this monument existed until someone posted about it, but found out that the stamp was hanging from the wayside board! It was only hanging there for the weekend. You can still get that stamp at the Eisenhower Memorial in DC now.

This layout is a 1-2-3 sketch from Noreen Smith. As part of the rules of the group I cannot show the original sketch or directions but you can see my finished project. This was made during one of my weekend classes with my customers so please let me know if you wish to join a future class. The paper is, appropriately enough, called Deep Blue. I've used it before but had these 3 pages remaining (the 2 background pages are also from that pack). I think the gray stripe contrasts with the rest of the blue nicely and there is a great nautical feel from the borders added on top of the striped strips. I broke out some navy sticker letters for a title. It must have been a new pack as I didn't have to fudge any of the vowels. Just a couple of other stickers in the corners of the page and the layout was complete. We did 4 layouts in less than 2 hours that morning!

Believe it or not: I visited without stamping!

 In April 2017, I traveled to Iowa for one of my HPN conferences. I arrived early enough to do a park visit before the conference. Unfortunately, I got to Effigy Mounds too late to enter the visitor center. It was still light out, and the trails are open until dusk so I did a self-guided tour of the park. I think I will have to go back, not just because I need a stamp but because all I saw were some bumps in the ground. I get that these are burial mounds and are supposed to have the appearance of certain animals, but I just wasn't seeing it.

This layout had been in my stash for a while. I made this at one of the Lancaster scrapbook conventions. The class was focused on painting thin wooden pieces with gelato crayons and then heating them. The fawn and the bear prints were made using that technique. I made the pages as I paid for the class but I didn't really care for the product. I also don't typically put metal on my pages. This one included the compass spinner. Again, I paid for the class so I included it. I was able to mount the unigrid between the pawprints and compass but just barely!

My hike took me along a well-marked path and had an overlook of the Mississippi River. I took photographs of the signs to help explain what it is I was looking at. They tell a better story than my photos do of the mound orientations. The weather was a bit chilly so I spent an hour or so here and then headed back to my car to go to the conference.

This layout is based on a Meggan and Tessa Power Hour class (July 2021). They offer a free monthly class where you make 2 layouts in an hour. This particular layout was perfect for all my horizontal photos. I essentially had 12 blocks to fit a 4x6 item. Seven of those are photos, one is journaling and the rest are strips of paper cut to particular widths and rearranged to create the filler. Using several sheets of double-sided paper allowed me to get a variety of designs that could be mixed and matched across the pages. A few clusters of stickers finished off the page. The papers are from the CM Woodland Whimsy collection. (I have 3 packs of paper--boy, girl, and a re-released mixed pack; the papers are a combination of all 3). Stickers were mostly random leftovers from my stash

Just Outside of the New Park

 After our meetup concluded, I chose to explore a few other nearby areas. This is the Bucktown General Store. When Harriet was a small child she was in this store when another enslaved person was trying to run away. That enslaved man's overseer grabbed a weight off the counter and threw it at the escaping man but hit Harriet instead. This is what people attribute to her subsequent "visions" that would propel (and possibly save her) through her life. The store and its shelves are filled with the goods you would have seen in the mid-1800s around the time Harriet was here. And there is a Passport stamp here. 

This is a layout I made at a weekend class for my scrapbook customers. If you haven't been to my CM Facebook page, this is the link: https://www.facebook.com/CorriganCM. Typically I have a class on a Saturday afternoon where I share up to 4 of Noreen Smith's 1-2-3 layouts. (One piece of double-sided paper, 2 sheets of cardstock or base pages, 3 cuts). Anyone is welcome to join but you must email me for the Zoom link and instructions. I cannot record the sessions. 

The papers used here are from a free paper pack I earned called "Timeless". With the yellows and creams of the photos, I think the yellow paper with trees created a nice base. The 2 background pages are also from the pack. That's a new trend for me. I tend to work directly on the strap-hinge pages Creative Memories makes. The sticker clusters are from some older packs I had with a "farm" feel to them. I think the elements would be those found inside the store. I had one non-CM product--the mason jar element. I trimmed a piece of journal paper to create a nice spot to write my notes of the experience.

A Brand New Park!

 In March 2017 I was privileged to attend the Grand Opening of a brand new National Park Unit. Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland and this area has now become a National Historical Park filled with details of her life. One of the club members held a meetup for the event. There were MANY people in attendance besides our group, but because we arrived so early we could park at the NPS site and not be shuttled in from a nearby town. It was so crowded I didn't get a chance to see the visitor center other than the lobby and the bookstore. However, there were 2 excellent presentations that we all attended. First, a Harriet Tubman reenactor gave a talk on her life and answered questions from the audience. She was marvelous.

I used sketch #5 from the November 2021 CM Virtual Crop for this layout. I substituted 2 rows of paper pieces for the punched railroad tracks. Everyone thought that was a great addition to the page. The rest of the paper is scrap from a very old CM paper pack (that I believe is called Discover). Having a few pieces left over, I cut them into ribbons and added them to the blank parts of the page. 

The second speaker is an author who wrote about the life of enslaved people. He had some helpers from the audience but also provided samples. He didn't expect so many people to be in attendance so I'm glad we saw his first presentation as I don't think there was much left for the second one. Though the things he provided to us were rather distasteful--some of the beverages and salted fish common to enslaved people's diet. 

This layout is based on a sketch I saved--though I don't know why I saved it. Typically I save the virtual crop sketches if I don't get them done on the crop weekend. It's possible I saved this as I didn't have a clue what to do with Sorbet (check out the paper in the links on the blog site). I didn't use Sorbet here, but remnants from a "Painted" paper pack that was a bonus pack. By cutting everything into 2-3/4” x 3-3/4” and 5-3/4” x 3-3/4” mats, a background was created that would hold all the photos I wanted. On some of the smaller rectangles, I added decorative cut-outs from a Heritage pack.

He also demonstrated the torture devices used on returned runaways. I applaud the lady from the audience who was the "model". That massive iron frame must have been heavy even for the few minutes she wore it on stage.

This is a bonus sketch provided by CM when they had a promotional paper pack. This is the 2nd sketch on the page. I used some very old Earthy papers and stickers to create the layout. I think those papers captured the somber tone of the images. 

Washington Really Slept Here

 I had an afternoon tour of the mansion and took a little time to see the area around the house as well as photograph the exterior architecture. It's a Georgian-style building from the 1770s. The owner had died but his widow allowed Washington to stay during the winter of 1779-1780. He was here for about 6 months. Martha would stay here as well and of course several other pieces of his entourage,  visiting dignitaries and servants. Mrs. Ford and her children lived in just 2 of the rooms.

For this layout, I dug into my saved sketches and found one from December 2021. I used one of the border maker cartridges to punch a border (as it's double-sided paper, I could use both colors and the border wouldn't disappear into the background.) The paper is the old Cottage line from Old CM. I'm just about done using that pack!

Inside, the rooms have been returned to how they would have looked in that winter (which by all accounts was one of the worst on record for heavy snowfall). Though Washington's bedroom attracted attention, I was interested in the camp beds used by his aides. It gave it almost a circus feel! The kitchen had to feed a lot of people but at least it would have been warm there.

This layout is a kit I purchased from Paper Loft. I thought that since there was a bit of food the teapot theme would work well. I had to fussy-cut the medallion papers but I do like the effect it gave to the borders.