Up on the Hilltop

After the conference, I decided to visit another new park--the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site which was his home while in Washington DC. He wanted to look out over Washington and wanted a house high on a hill. He certainly found it! You can see that the view is wonderful. The visitor center is at the bottom of the hill, so fair warning--there is a climb involved in the visit. I was able to tour the home and you'll see a bit of that in the next blog. In this blog, I posed with his statue and the entrance sign.

I created this layout as part of the CM Virtual Crop for May 2024. This is sketch #1.  While I enjoy the quote at the top of the unigrid, when unfolded I loved the idea of showing the portrait of Douglass in its entirety. That took up most of one page so I concentrated on the right side (as I typically do) and found that the photos for the rest of the first 2 pages fit the sketch referenced above. I chose a light blue cardstock for the bases and used some of my remaining stash of Welcome Home. As I had one photo to add to the left, I mirrored the papers from the right page to provide some continuity between them. I thought the "Home" sticker provided a nice title for the layout. I'm fairly certain I use the laser-cut and sticker titles in ways CM never imagined!

The Tractor Story

My visit ended with a ride around the park on a wagon pulled by a tractor. I joined the children's group for this ride. A little bumpy but quite scenic and gives a nice overview of the park. We only stopped once and that's when I was able to take the scenic shot at the bottom of the right page. That is the Potomac River and Washington DC in the distance. Considering the bumpy ride I think the rest of the photos came out rather well. I did like seeing the old farmhouse.

This layout is based on a sketch I saved on Pinterest. As I'm playing along with Lasting Memories, I'll post a photo of it.  

You can also see the site I found it here. I again used Kelly Green cardstock as the base and added the plaid and gingham for the printed squares. I had already trimmed one photo to 4x4 so it was smaller than the sketch. I found a mat with similar colors (striped, not plaid though) and mounted it to give it a bit more definition. For the other photos, I wanted to keep them from blending in so I used more yellow paper as a mat. The tractors at the top of the left page are punched from more Kelly green cardstock. My die cuts (those I made on the Cricut) had tractor wheels. I paired them for some symmetry in the border.

Time for Milking

 I got bored (scared) of the chickens so I walked around the farm a bit. I came across the group in the milking barn and the ranger was hard at work showing everyone how to milk the cow. At the end of the lesson I asked to see how much milk was obtained--it wasn't as much as I thought it would be, but I suppose it was just for demonstration. 

This is another of the May 2024 CM Virtual Crop sketches (Sketch #4). I continued using the On the Farm pack. The cardstock on the bottom is Hot Fudge. Instead of a piece of paper for the 1" strips, I chose red cardstock and punched the barn/fence BMC cartridge. I didn't feel like cutting another piece of paper just for two 1/2" strips across the bottom so I decided the yellow scraps from the last layout were the least objectionable. I loved that there was a cow print paper. That is one paper spread across the 2 pages. The title came from a photo at the event--remember you don't HAVE to use a title sticker or card.

Don't Chicken Out

In May 2019 I headed to National Harbor (just south of DC) to attend an AST conference. As I wasn't a delegate, I had large blocks of time where I didn't have to be in a lecture, so I took the opportunity to visit some new locations. One stop was the Oxon Hill Farm which is part of the National Capital Parks management system. This working farm teaches about the history of farming and provides an opportunity to get into the country for those who live in the city. When I visited there was a group of school children on site already. Because they had just one ranger, the visitor center (the large red building below) was not open when I arrived. So I chose to wait on the porch. But I was CLOSELY watched by the chickens who were not sure I should be sitting there. I never realized chickens could be guard animals!

This is Sketch #2 from the May 2024 CM Virtual Crop. I chose the "On The Farm" kit from last year to create my layout. The base is Kelly Green cardstock. I chose 3 papers to layer on top--the white chicken wire just because there were chickens involved, the red because the tonal print is chickens and the yellow for a pop of a different color. The chickens are all stickers from the pack, but the title has 2 die cuts attached. This kit was so popular when it came out that the bonus embellishments sold out within a few hours and I missed them. So I bought the digital kit and used my Cricut to print then cut the objects. You can't tell the difference!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

These are the wind chimes that had recently been installed. They call it the Tower of Voices and eventually, there will be one chime for each member of the flight. When I visited there were just 8 bells so that they could study how they moved in different weather conditions. I would like to go back when it is completed. I could hear the chimes but it was quite soft. I was surprised that I could go inside the bottom of the tower and take a photo of the bells above me.

This layout is based on another of the NSD Virtual Crop sketches. Scroll to Sketch #5 (the Bonus Sketch). I had trouble deciding on what paper to use but eventually realized that this paper from Wanderlust would work. I mounted the paper on black cardstock. You can see a lot more of my black cardstock than called for in the sketch. I made it a bit larger because of how I had to cut the paper (the border was pre-printed but I cut it off and then turned the paper into a square and mounted it on the black cardstock). I gutted the black cardstock and used it to mat 2 of the photos. I had another black mat handy so all photos would stand out.

I was thinking about how to add the memorabilia to the pages. I was out of 8 1/2 x 11 pockets, but I did have some sticky memorabilia pockets. I decided to attach one to the inside back cover of the album and tucked my Junior Ranger book and the Unigrid inside. I don't think I'll have a problem with them falling out as I store my albums vertically.

Photographic Memory

My trip ended with a visit to Flight 93 NM. I stopped by as they have a new item--the Tower of Voices. You'll see that in the next post. Since I've been here several times I decided to complete the Junior Ranger book. I didn't follow the trail, just looked at the memorial materials near the visitor center.

I've had this background paper on hand for a while now. I originally bought it to highlight the Walk 93 I did with my sister but used different papers for that one. So when I was planning out the album I pulled these 2 photo pages and they ended up being a good base for my trip this time. The papers are from Forevermore Scrapbook in York PA. We would always go there during the Buggies and Buds Shop Hop. They had several floors of wonderful products. But even better, they had a large inventory of photo pages like this covering many national park sites and lighthouses. I struggled a bit with creating this layout. I re-watched a video from Noreen Smith on working with photo pages and she said that you either wanted to make the photos similar to the background or wildly different. I chose similar ones but matted them to stand out from the paper. I also took her advice of adding a border to the bottom of the page. I didn't need many embellishments for my scrapbook page, but I added a grassy journal box and a plane that I thought added to the pages.

A New Hope

My last park of the day was also a new park for me. Hopewell Culture (not to be confused with Hopewell Furnace) is a site that preserves ancient Native American burial mounds. It's similar to my visit to Effigy Mounds but with fewer trees around, the mounds are much easier to identify. Even if they do still just look like grass-covered mounds. I started at the visitor center to watch the movie (as I had missed this at Effigy Mounds I really wanted to understand the site). Afterward, I had plenty of time to view the mounds. There are 6 local sites. I chose to only do the Mounds Group near the visitor center. If I return I'll have plenty more new mounds to look at.

This is another layout I made on National Scrapbook Day. Scroll to Sketch #1 to see the layout design. I looked through my Spring paper stash and found a pack called "Ladybugs" (a promotional kit from 2023). I liked the brown paper with the swirled design as it reminded me of the interior diagrams of the mounds. The newest packs of CM paper all have coordinating cardstock colors on the front page, but that started AFTER this had been released. As it wasn't a standard pack, there wasn't a "postcard" available (one of the CM Advisors had created a cheat sheet for us for all the paper packs so we could offer cardstock to our customers). However, I found a post about making borders and cards with this pack, giving me references to cardstock that would coordinate. That's how I ended up with Kelly Green for the base! The kit had no embellishments, so I used one scrap of paper to create the border on the left. I used some VERY old CM Shortcuts for the border across the middle. Both had images that reminded me of "mounds". Because I used Kelly Green cardstock, I realized that the Kelly Green tonal pack would also work, so I used some of the stickers that matched the tonal pack and a matching journal box.