Bonus post--Fort Washington

I am playing along with Lasting Memories today so here's a bonus post as I join their "WINTER" games. 

In October 2019 I participated in the Maryland Lighthouse Challenge. One of those is not only a lighthouse but a National Park Unit! This light was placed near the fort in the 1800s and while nominally under the jurisdiction of the US Coast Guard, the keepers were required to abide by the direction of the Fort's military commanders. There never were any battles so other than ensuring competence and compliance I think they had little to worry about. The lighthouse is still working but instead of the large Fresnel lens, it now boasts a small but powerful LED light (very common today). Because the structure is less important, it has been neglected and is in very poor condition sadly. The most interesting part of the lighthouse is the large triangle with the number 80 inside. This was the identification marker so ship captains could locate their position by the color and markers along the Potomac River.

To meet the challenge, I needed to use items beginning with the letters in Winter on my layout. I used:

Woodgrain paper (one of the background sheets)

Inked edges (around the triangle I made on the vellum)

Navy (the other background sheet)

Tag and triangle (tag on the upper right page and triangle on the lower right page)

Enamel embellishments (there are stars and a fish on the tag)

Ripped paper (I ripped the small scrap under the triangle I made)

I typically am daunted by the word challenges but it is a fun way to ensure you have a variety of elements on the paper. If you participate, let me know what you used for your letters! Need some help? I did and I used this handy guide that you'll see as a link in the challenge page. I based the layout on this sketch I saved. The background is papers from Creative Memories as well as Club Scrap. By welding the 2 halves on each side I only needed one sheet of each. I had made the tag at the Creative Memories convention when Serene Waters was launched. The border across the middle (mirrored triangles) is punched on a coordinating collection called Summer Nights. That was a secret box collection and it's great that it works so well as it expands my ability to use the collection components like mats and stickers.

Madness in the Desert Part 4--How the West was Fun

 Our first event with the club was on Thursday. They had arranged a train ride from a nearby town up to the Grand Canyon. Though Jim and I had been there before, it seemed like it would be a great event so we bought tickets. We arrived early as I was tasked with handing out tickets to people as they arrived. We still had time to catch a bit of a Western cowboy show held near the train depot.It was very tongue in cheek but just because it's geared for children, don't think the adults didn't enjoy it as well! 

I based this layout on the pin that I saved. I doubled the layout for the 2-page spread. The wood papers were trimmed so that the scrapbook pages provided a natural border around them. The papers and stickers mostly came from the Dakota papers in the Close to My Heart kit but I added a few mats in blue bandana design.

After the show, it was time to board the train. But as we moved toward the train my eye was caught by the fun tombstones and the face cut-out characters. Those are some of my favorite photo ops and I insisted on stopping and getting some photos. I mean, how can you pass up the chance to be the engineer from Schoolhouse Rock?!?

This layout is basically wallpaper as the printed sheets didn't need much additional work. Don't look too closely though or you'll see that they weren't QUITE 12x12 and there are some gaps in the middle. The only other addition is a journal box I've had in my stash for a while. It seemed a great place to put something that colorful. The title was of course cut on the Cricut to preserve my sanity.

Madness in the Desert Part 3--Embrace the Rainbow

At the convention, it is tradition to wear convention shirts on certain days (typically you wear the current year on Saturday for the meeting, the prior year's on Friday, The year before that on Thursday, and so forth). Obviously, only some people do it but enough do that we can easily identify our group! The 2 years of shirts I highlighted don't really give you the essence of how colorful we can be (each shirt is colored according to the ink in the Passport Stamp for that region). I think these shirts are from New Bedford (orange for the North Atlantic) and Mount Rushmore (yellow for Rocky Mountain). Wait until you see the 2021 convention where we had a TRUE rainbow shirt event. 

This album layout is a little different. Instead of focusing on chronological visits, I combined some photos into one layout to look at their theme. This is one of those pages. Creative Memories had recently released the rainbow border maker cartridge so I punched 7 colors to create the stacked rainbow border on the right. That makes a very thick element, but I think it's worth it! I also chose to use some sticker letters in my stash. It's always frustrating to have to "manufacture" letters when you run out of vowels or other common letters.  That's why I appreciate the Cricut so much---I can cut as many "e"s as I need at once!

Madness in the Desert Part 2--Getting My Kicks

 Few people realize that Route 66 is part of the National Park Service. In 1999 Congress passed an act which appointed the NPS as one of the administrators for preserving the legacy of the "Mother Road". You can read more about the NPS' influence here. My travels hadn't taken me near it, though my husband and I did enjoy watching Alton Brown travel along much of it and eating from local restaurants as he and his crew traveled. Parts of Route 66 do go through Arizona and one of the unusual structures we saw on a bus trip was this hot dog stand. Literally, you DRIVE THROUGH it! I only wish we had a chance to stop for a bite.

The design I focused on for this page was the journaling box. I had saved this pin from AC Moore. The luggage tag turned out to be just right for a journal box. As I had recently received Route 66 stickers, I was able to recreate it. Then all I had to do was mount my photos on black cardstock and arrange them on the page. The large Route 66 vinyl sticker was one I obtained on the trip as well. I think it was part of the goodie bag we received when we registered for the convention.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

It's time to feature the albums from the 2019 National Park Traveler's Club convention in Flagstaff Arizona. I created these albums shortly after I returned but only recently realized they had never been featured in the blog! So we'll be focusing on this for the next few months. The title is one of my husband's inventions. He likes to name our trips and because of the heat, this one became Madness in the Desert. He wasn't far off with that one as you'll see soon!

I turned to the Cricut to create this title page. As usual, I only realized I would need Volume 2 once I added so many pages to album one and realized there were many more to add. Once I decided on volume 2 I created the title page below (also on the Cricut).

I chose the same desert scene for the 2nd page though it was a bit smaller.  I also had the title "Desert" from a Cricut travel cartridge. I added the rest of the lettering from the Cricut fonts.

Here is the itinerary page. We did have travels outside of the National Park System, so you won't see every page of the albums. One highlight was traveling to  Tucson so Jim could tour the Boneyard of old Air Force planes. Below is one more photo I didn't know how to incorporate into a page but also seemed to summarize the "madness" component. When driving through Tucson there was road construction and I found it interesting that they gave conflicting advice on staying both left AND right at the same time!

These pages feature borders that  I made based on the CM blog. The left page is here. The only edit I made was the stickers in the 2nd circle. What I had left fit the border perfectly. The right page is here. Both borders were easy to put together. The itinerary is outlined using stickers from an older kit I had purchased. They are on foam dots and while that isn't my favorite adhesive, I generally leave them in place. I still have a few numbers and am still trying to figure out what to do with them since the earlier numbers were taken! Any ideas? Leave me a comment below.

The Second Bank is First Rate!

After the parade, I met up with my friend Melania and we got our cupcakes at the visitor center and then headed to the Second Bank to view the portraits. I enjoy the Peale Gallery, and now that I realize who Robert Morris is (as Morrisville, where I live, was named for him) I captured a photo of his portrait. I had not seen the detail in the Washington print before. Those 2 faces looking over his shoulder are "selfies" of the Peale brothers who painted the General. That made us look twice!

This layout is another of the layouts from the Fast Formula from Creative Memories and Noreen Smith. This is half of Sketch #5. I did mat the photos with red cardstock since the base page is so blue. The title sticker came from a sheet from Reminisce (though it's a pretty old page). The rest of the stickers are from a lot of kits in my stash. I've been going through them and picking appropriate stickers to finish all the pages. I still have a ton of Patriotic papers and stickers though!

It's Been Two Years Without a Philadelphia Post!

It's odd--the closer I live to Philadelphia, the less I go there! At least to the National Park area. However, I decided to attend the Independence Day Parade there in 2019 and spent the day exploring old and new elements of the city. 

Because this day produced so many photos, I'm designing an entire event album. I wanted to do a kick-off page and chose a laser-cut 12" square that had been a promotional item from Creative Memories. I layered scraps of patriotic paper on the back to highlight the stars and then added a 4x6 mat from one of the kits. The numbers are red ABC-123 stickers.

I started my day at the visitor center because that's where the stamps are! Because it was a special day, many reenactors walked around, played instruments, and made colonial-era items like shawls or doilies. But the most impressive display was that GIANT table of cupcakes! The bakery was still decorating but I could see how the final project would be impressive!

This layout, and many more from this album are from a formula Creative Memories and Noreen Smith developed. It was one of the summer 2023 classes and you can review the video recording here. I made the pages from various patriotic packs I had on hand and some border punches. During the summer of 2023, I only had these 2 pages completed. Recently, I added a few more embellishments and a journal box before declaring it "done". I rarely complete an entire album of pages before working on an album but I enjoyed having them done as I returned to working on it this spring. While I may never do the entire formula to create an album again, I have turned to the formula to get ideas for a layout and then referred to the directions for the dimensions to cut the pieces. Let me know in the comments if you would complete an album through the formula method.