Madness in the Desert part 23--Guest Speakers

Our guest speakers included the local superintendent for the 3 Flagstaff parks, one of the rangers, and a Route 66 National Trust representative. I enjoyed all of their presentations. As I may have mentioned previously, the convention coincided with the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. I was born just 6 days later and so it has always fascinated me. Our ranger talk included a discussion on how the astronauts prepared for that mission by using the rocky terrain at the parks to practice with their equipment.

Can you guess the method for this page? If you said "Wallpaper" you are correct! That Route 66 sign was the perfect art for our speakers. Adding the vinyl stickers we got from the Flagstaff parks rounded out the details of the talks. I journaled right on the page as well!

Madness in the Desert Part 22--The Meeting

Saturday is the day for the big convention meeting. As president, I am the emcee. Here's a secret--we have a convention book that has the speeches all prepared!

These pages use the Under the Willow collection. I "earned" this by recruiting another consultant for Creative Memories (though it was nothing I did, the person just chose me!) The Western Region of the Eastern National Passport has green ink. For that reason, we had dark green shirts for the convention. So I went to my green papers and chose this theme for my pages. The page above is just a border maker cartridge along the top and mats for the photos. I wanted to add the Stamp pad but it was blending into the white cardstock in the pocket, so I mounted it on cardstock to give it a little contrast.

This year we had a special room for the kids during the meeting. One of our club members volunteered to host the room and she had games and projects for them so that they weren't bored with our "adult" meeting. They all seemed to love it!

For the back side of the pocket page, I mounted our name tags and ribbons on the same matching cardstock. While I used a different background paper for this page, it is roughly the same type of page with just a punched border at the top. I like my little decorative corner though!

Madness in the Desert part 21--Circle Time

Our group gathered in one of the ball courts for a ranger talk. I believe this is a reconstructed one as they were okay with us sitting along the edges. I had been up at the visitor center as people started gathering so I was able to get the top photo of everyone sitting around the edges. Once I joined everyone I could take some close-ups. Luckily we all share pictures and someone grabbed a shot of me sitting there too!

This is the reverse side of the Fast to Fabulous page shown earlier this week. There were still significant orange tones along the edge. The blue tones matched several of the shirts in the photos. The only thing I added to the page was the title in some small blue letters (that I believe I bought from Current many years ago) and some journaling. Fast to Fabulous indeed!

After the ranger talk, we had our group Junior Ranger ceremony back at the visitor center.

I print the groups as 8x10 size photos. I typically still trim a bit from the top and bottom but I need the width so that you can see all the faces. I'm 99% sure I followed a sketch for this but I can't find a copy of it. Still, it's pretty straightforward. If you calculate the triangle with a 6" side and bottom, the hypotenuse is about 8.4". Trimming the dark brown paper to that size square lets me rotate it to a diamond in the middle. The large photo then crosses that but you can still see the corners. When journaling on a dark color I like to use a white gel pen (not a chalk pen though--the letters get too thick). The Junior Ranger sticker is available from the visitor centers. I picked one up to use on this page.

Madness in the Desert part 20--Time Passages

After lunch, we had time to tour the visitor center and the site. This park protects an ancient Native American community (from around the 1100s!) There is some deterioration but that enables us to see inside the structures and the great rooms that they contain. Outside the dwellings were ball courts and other ceremonial sites. The rangers are quick to point out that this is not an abandoned village and that our responsibility to it is to preserve and remember the original inhabitants.

Let's start on the right side again! That is an older Fast to Fabulous page that had pre-printed photo mats. I liked that the orange color matched the tones of the dwelling rocks. I was able to use the 2 horizontal mat spaces (sort of) and trimmed another photo to fit in the vertical box. That left me a little room to journal. To create the left side of the layout, I matched the orange print with a half-sheet of printed paper as well as a laser cut strip that JUST fit the space on the bottom right corner.

Madness in the Desert Part 19--But First, Lunch

The first thing we did when we got to Wupatki was to hand out the box lunches. There were a few tables but mostly people found seats on ledges or even on our coolers. It would be nice if you could find a bit of shade as it was very hot that day. I love when we can use a local caterer as the sandwiches, even when simple, are outstanding! And there were some different sides like fruit salad or potato salad.

This layout was created for my February 2020 class with Noreen Smith. That means you can't see the original sketch. What I liked about this layout was that I got to use another big square embellishment in a photo area. The papers are from an old CM kit that was a Memory Keeper's Club. The lighter papers have a botanical theme and the darker brown is more geometric. I never knew what to do with plain square stickers, but I think cutting them and using them as ends of the border was a nice touch.

Madness in the Desert Part 18--the Doorway to Wupatki

 Our bus stopped at the entrance sign to Wupatki. Most people in the club like getting a photo of themselves with the park signs and this one is unique because they built the background to mimic the historic houses and with the door--well it was just too delicious to pass up the photo op! Here's a sampling of club members posing at the doorway. I am the second from the top.

I'm not completely sure if I followed a sketch for this layout. It's possible but I can't find anything that I used. It's fairly straightforward and is similar to a few other pages I've made. CM produced this border punch with a "knock-out" effect. That is, the image is hollow and reflects any paper put underneath. After punching you trim it to the appropriate size. This created a nice frame for the multiple horizontal photos. It looks like I had a few of the punched arrowhead designs from the Sunset Crater page. Those created bases for the 3 clusters. The decorative card on the bottom left is from a pack of "Project Life" cards I won in a raffle. The 3x4 cards were new to me but they are an essential part of scrapbooking now

Madness in the Desert part 17--The Great Outdoors

Our group climbed back onto the bus and headed toward our next park. Along the way, we stopped at an overlook so we could see the valley. It was a great view and as I was looking around I found a rock with multiple colors of algae growing on it. I grabbed a photo of that, of course.

Although this is a single stop and one double layout, it's really 2 separate pages. The left page came from a sketch from the 2020 monthly class with Noreen Smith. I can't show you the sketch, but I turned what was to have been 4x4 photos on the right into 2 decorative boxes. I used larger square stickers from my camping stash and then cut a title sticker so that the words were evenly divided between the 2. The little tree was a nice touch too!

The right page is based on this pin I saved. Sometimes it's nice to keep a page very simple. I traced around a template to get my puffy border. Instead of hexagons, I used a few scraps of paper as diamonds in the lower right corner. I used the pale Spargo CM pages as a base so the blue and brown popped easily. I inked the white edges of the square. As it was blending into the background, the brown along the edges helped to make it stand out. You can use your CM pens for this, or any archival ink.