A Peek at the Poconos

Today we'll begin the October 2021 trip to the Poconos. For the second year in a row, Jim and I decided to do a fall "leaf peeping" getaway. This time, we stayed a little closer to home by heading to the Delaware Water Gap NRA area. While there, we spent a day walking, first around the Airbnb we rented and then at the Pocono Environmental Education Center (PEEC) — pronounced PEEK. This non-profit is aligned with the National Park Service, and it has a passport stamp at the visitor center. I chose the Two Ponds trail as our walking path, and the first part was quite lovely. Being near the end of the season, though, it was a little tricky to follow (even with the blazes Jim is pointing out below) and got pretty muddy. We backtracked and chose a different trail, which you will see in a future blog.

I worked on these pages while at a crop. My packing strategy for taking supplies from home is to focus on one album, and this time it was the Fall 2021 trip. Doing that makes it easier to grab coordinating papers and stickers. I just had to grab my boxes with "Fall" and "Camping and nature". (All of my paper packs are sorted by theme or color, just like Tiffany Spaulding recommends.) Since I had all of my older Croptoberfest packs with me, I decided to purchase a class from Meggan and Tessa. Their 2022 Croptoberfest Page Makers Workshop helped me use up some of my extra supplies and create six new 2-page layouts. This is one of the creations from that class. The left page features a laser-cut frame from the Croptoberfest Bundle. I usually struggle with how to incorporate those on a page, so I'm thankful that they had 3 ideas for using them in this class. 

An Apple A Day

Today's post takes a look at a trip my husband and I made in September 2021. Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site is not too far from our house. In their quest to create an authentic historic village, they have recreated an 1800s apple orchard. This means that the varietals are different than what you'll find in today's grocery store. The apples are a little smaller and on the tart side, so they're better for baking than for eating out of hand. The Park allows the public to come and pick apples (though you are not allowed to take any that have fallen to the ground). You pay by the pound, but that includes the tools for picking, like the picker that looks like a Lacrosse stick and the collection bucket. We had fun searching the trees for ripe apples and ended up with a little over a pound to take home! I made a pie with them, which was rather tasty.

This layout was made during the 2020 Creative Memories Croptoberfest event. If you have not participated in an event, a "Project Recipe" kit is available, which includes the papers and embellishments for two double-page layouts. The theme usually coordinates with the fall collection, and indeed, this recipe coordinated with Hello Autumn, which was launched around the same time. I cannot find the sample of how the photos were to be arranged on the page, but I know I had to move some mats around to accommodate my photos and used one as the base for journaling by adding the white Write Strips. I also added a small blurb from one of their brochures that describes the apple orchard. It blends in on the top right page, but I didn't need it to be too obvious.

Mama's Little Helper

Hello all! Today's blog is about a page featuring a National Park puzzle that I received as a birthday present in the summer of 2021. We decided to set up a large table in the living room to have space to assemble it whenever we had time to work on it. Our cat, Murphy, was always on hand to help us out! She is quite the supervisor. The finished puzzle was glued and framed for my scrapbook room.

This layout is based on one of the Creative Memories Virtual Crop sketches from July 2025 (scroll to Sketch #1). I rotated the sketch 90 degrees to the right to fit the layout of my photos, then swapped the circle for the puzzle punch pieces. I chose to use the "Set Up Camp" pack because it is a lighthearted layout, and I wanted the bright, 'campy' feel of the papers. Assembling this is not as complicated as it appears. I punched the puzzle pieces from two different patterns, and layered them on cardstock (with a dark brown paper between for contrast). Then just cut one of the borders in half with the 12" trimmer and spread to the top and bottom (or left and right sides) of the page! I made sure to highlight the cat with arrows in each photo, using just a few other enamel stickers as embellishments. The puzzle pieces are visually busy, so it doesn't need clusters of larger stickers. 

A General Layout

Folks, we have reached the last entry for the 2021 NPTC convention! The Night Tour on golf carts came to a close by driving past the White House and then on to Pershing Park. This is the site of one of the newer memorials dedicated to World War I. The statue of General Pershing had been there, making it the perfect spot to add more material and rename the memorial. You can see the intended look in the photo on the far right. However, the monument isn't quite done! That's a canvas rendering of what the statue will look like. Since I took this photo, the project has been completed, and you will see the results in a future blog post.

I based this layout on an old Project Recipe from Creative Memories called Mix and Match. This is the older of the 2 Mix-and-match collections (2017). I used papers from the "Called to Serve" collection, as well as the back side of a Scrapbook Customs DC page with a map of the National Mall area. I liked the concept of the sketch with mirrored border punches, so I chose a patriotic version with the Flag Banner punch. It mimics the canvas's reflection in the memorial photo.

After the tour, the golf carts returned us to our hotel. It was late and I went right to sleep! It had been a long day. On Monday morning, I had a leisurely breakfast, then packed and headed to Union Station to catch my train back home.

For this layout, I modified an idea posted on the CM blog for creating travel borders (see the 2nd border on the page). The example focused on the Scenic Route travel pack, which I have used up. But the concept of the Passport to Adventure used here is very similar, and there was a lovely premade layered border with a train and a station. I followed all the other directions for the layers. After adding the embellishments, I wanted to point toward our next convention, so I fussy-cut an image of the St. Louis Arch from an Eastern National paper and added the small numbers for the following year.

I hope you enjoyed the journey through DC. Next time, we'll look at some unique park experiences closer to home!

Reflections of Lincoln

Happy Halloween, everyone! It's so perfect that we continue our nighttime tour of the Washington, DC National Mall in 2021. Our golf carts took us right up to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I loved capturing the images with the night glow from the lights and the remnants of the sunset. This may be the first time I've understood why the reflecting pool is such an essential part of the National Mall. And then I walked over to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. If you've not been here at night, it's quite a moving experience--even more so than a daytime trip. 

Similar to the page in my last blog, I had another sheet of black paper with pre-printed photos around the edge. I had initially planned to use those side by side on a two-page layout, but the pre-printed images were arranged along the right-hand side of each page, so I couldn't achieve the desired symmetry. That's when I decided to separate the papers. 

This paper also featured the statue of Lincoln from the memorial; however, the page was quite crowded, and I wanted more space for the photos and unigrid. I took the thin white title strip off at the top, then I cut the page in half and spread it across two pages. I layered each of the 6x11 pieces onto black cardstock so the background consistency carried across the pages. That gave me all the room I needed for my own photos (anything that is a 4x6 or 6x4 photo is mine — everything else was pre-printed), as well as the unigrid from the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. To be consistent with the pre-printed photos, I matted all of my photos with white cardstock. I reattached the title strip on the right page. To give me a bit more symmetry, I cut a piece of white cardstock to the same width and found some pertinent stickers to fill in the space on the left page.

Around the Mall

Welcome back to the 2021 NPTC convention. In this blog post, we cover a little more ground on our Golf Cart Night Tour. As the sun set, our driver took us to some of the more iconic areas, as well as the new Eisenhower Memorial (since we had just been there the previous week, no one disembarked the carts!). The Jefferson Memorial was visible from the MLK Memorial across the Tidal Basin just before we boarded the carts. On the right page, the Capitol was glowing as the sun set. As we came past the Grant Memorial, the sun was even lower in the sky. This is when the illumination of the memorials begins, as you can see with the Washington Monument.

With this layout, I started on the right page. The photos with the white border are pre-printed on the page along with the Washington, DC title. Since the images were centered at the bottom and right, the paper worked best on the right side of the layout. I liked that the page had a black background because it represented the nighttime tour. To fill in the left side of the layout, I pulled a new set of Advisor-only papers and embellishments called "Everybody Smile". It combines the summer's patriotic holidays with backyard barbecues and family reunion gatherings. The layout is part of the project guide, which is available with the papers if you earn the kit from me. I added the white mats to keep the photos from disappearing into the background. The journal box is from the Eastern National Scrapbook kit. While we didn't have fireworks, it was a nod to the nighttime experience.

Rocking MLK

We are approaching the end of the 2021 NPTC convention in DC. In the last blog, we concluded the bus tour with a visit to the Old Stone House in Georgetown. The bus dropped us off at the hotel, and then my group made a mad dash for the Tidal Basin. We had signed up for the last Golf Cart Night Tour and needed to be at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial for our Ranger talk. Although I've visited this monument several times, I always find something new. This time, I found a medallion set in the concrete, indicating that the time capsule buried there is to be opened on the 50th anniversary of the memorial. That's August 28, 2061, for anyone who wants to put it on their calendar (I'll be 92, so I'll see you there!)

This layout is based on two different pins. First, I chose this sketch (which I flipped left-to-right). I saw the large title border and chose this pin from CM. I had to click through to this page to get the directions for creating the sunburst effect. To boil it down, you cut 2 strips of paper. One piece is cut into strips diagonally, but reassembled on the other strip so that it still appears to be a solid piece of paper. I recommend a lot of repositionable adhesive on the back. Then, simply pull off every other strip and discard it. Trim the edges for a clean edge or layer a border along the edge.

Once that border was completed, I finished the layout with more scraps of red, white, and blue. The Land of the Free title block is from Eastern National. The "Let Freedom Ring" is a vellum accent from Old CM. I used an old CM star punch to make layered blue and red stars to "emerge" from the starburst design. That flowed into the smaller blue and red stars on the left page, almost as if they were getting smaller the further they got from the border. 

After the Ranger talk ended, we boarded our golf carts.

You might remember this layout from my stint as a Lasting Memories Guest Designer in September. You can click here to read all about this layout.