But the building isn't the National Park Site

 My next stop was Dover. I visited the Old State House because that is where the NPS stamps are located. I took the tour with a rather, um, well let's just say, opinionated docent. I felt that I was attentive (especially since I was the only person on the tour) as she took me through the various rooms and uses. At the end, I politely asked for the stamps and that's when I was informed that the building had absolutely nothing to do with the First State National Historical Park. The actual NPS site was the Green outside of the building. Apparently having the stamps was a great inconvenience to her and what was most interesting was that she felt a need to capture the number of stamp impressions I made (one did not stamp completely and so I had to make a 2nd impression). It was almost as if she wanted to charge me for the number of stamps I made. 

So on to happier thoughts--let's talk about the layout. I followed one of the sketches in my year-long class. When following a sketch I often have to substitute. For example, the bottom row was supposed to be made up of 6x4 photographs. I substituted the unigrid for a pair on the left, and a journal box on the right. That left me enough room to put an extra-long item on the left. Instead of a 4x6 photo, it's another brochure about the First State sites. There are 2 more photos under the journaling box. That is the top of a peekaboo pocket. See the picture below.

I did use wallpaper for the background of both pages. I found a sheet that was colorful but not too distracting. Then I used some old paper from the Earthy collection for the borders and upper-page mats. I know that I could have added some embellishments but when I get to this era, I seem to have a shortage of appropriate elements. I'm not one to put flowers on a page, especially one that is focused on history. 

And Yet More Flowers!

 Well, although we left the flower show, I have another page of flowers to share! My next trip was in April 2016. I had been in Atlantic City for a conference and had a long weekend to drive back to Lancaster. I started with a drive down to Cape May where I caught the ferry to Lewes, DE. My plan was to visit all the sites in the rather new National Park called "First State". In Lewes is a small house called the Rhys Holt house and that was my first destination While I did get a stamp at the house there was no tour, so instead I walked around the town. They were having a tulip festival and it was a beautiful day for walking.

This layout is based on another of my class sketches. The basic idea was to have similarly toned borders on the left and right. I had made the tulip journal box and matching borders YEARS before. While I would not normally have chosen yellow for the palette I was following an example I found online. For the right side and the banners, I found the same paper to bring the color all the way across the page. Then I added some additional flower stickers ( the red tulips were from the same original kit called "Cabana").

The Last of the Flower Show

The hours for the Flower Show were ending as I came to the smaller displays. Here is my final entry in the album--the Edgar Allan Poe cabin from Acadia. Poe shows up in a number of National Parks, and of course, has his own in the Philadelphia area. But here we see a highlight of his stay in one of the cottages. They decorated the door and yard with symbols of his writing such as a typewriter and a raven. I thought it was well done and made for a great ending page.

This layout is based on one of my year-long classes so I can't show you the sketch. I based the color scheme on the door with its rich purple. The Secret Garden stash which I bought specifically for this album (and yet used very little of) did come in for the last page. The washed look of the purple background was a great canvas for the floral aqua-colored papers and stickers. I used a dark purple cardstock for the middle strip and was also able to journal using a white gel pen. The original sketch was to be just 4 photos in 4x4 size, but there was no way for me to trim the upper left photo so it's a bit asymmetrical and yet works. I hope you enjoyed the past months traveling across the country through one evening at the flower show. Join me next week as I return to my larger travels and we head to the First State National Historical Park!

Thirsty?

Only 2 more layouts for the Flower Show! For this week, it's the bridal display for Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Everything was so romantic! I took a few photos to send to my sister who was planning a wedding that year.

This is another layout that I cannot share the sketch for. Because of the wedding theme, I wanted to use pinks. I was able to use some scraps to accent the page. In real life, you can see more detail. This photo doesn't really show some of the prints well. The circle that is cut in half is from one of the circle punches from CM. There are tulips around the edge. Though everything else is roses, it doesn't clash.

The Golden Arches

It's the last post of 2021. I hope you all had a great year. I look forward to sharing more layouts with you in 2022! 

The next display was for Arches National Park. There were multiple arches made of stones, wood and flowers all lined up along the walkway. It's funny how an arch makes you change perspective. Do you look at the arch itself or do you look at what is revealed in the opening? Or both! I think you'll see that I took both perspectives in my photos.

This layout is based on a class I took. I used more of the paper from the Mystery Box as well as some red/orange cardstock. I had the title from a page of park names that someone gave me and it drove the rest of the colors on the page (though the display certainly matched that tone as well). You can see that the paper was cut and then folded back on itself to get the contrast in the 4 quadrants of the layout. That also means that you can tuck photos under the edges for a change. I added the arched border across the top to highlight the theme and then just a few stickers from my stash that were floral but in the same red/orange tone. 

Stop and Smell the Roses

Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I hope you have an enjoyable holiday season with friends and family. Thanks so much for adding me to your celebration! 

As I came to the end of my night at the Flower Show, the displays change from the over-the-top extravaganzas that I've been showing you, to smaller, compact, and sometimes even dainty displays. I loved this small set of flowers and a manikin from Weir Farm. The park is all about artistry and many people go there to paint landscapes. The artist who originally lived there had painted "Flora" and that photo was turned into a 3-D rendering through flowers.

This layout is based on a sketch from the February CM Virtual Crop. I used papers from the Full Bloom collection for the edges. This type of layout is a great way to use up scraps from any collection. The inner-most 3 squares are all one sheet of paper. By using the CM 12" trimmer, I can stop a cut before coming to the edge of the paper. I made several squares by trimming a block from the center of each consecutive cut. By flipping the middle square, I had a nice set of contrasting colors. The green and dot paper is not from Full Bloom, but from a "green" themed pack. CM offers those types of packs fairly often so they can coordinate with multiple other paper sets. It certainly helped pull Full Bloom into a full layout.

It's All There in Black and White

Lots of photos for you today! The next set of displays focused on a brilliant photographer named Ansel Adams. Known for his dramatic photos of landscapes using black and white photography, a group of designers used the black and white motif to present multiple national parks in this theme and even included large prints of Adams as backdrops. I am putting them all in this post as I think they should be seen together. 

The first park represented was one I would not think of seeing in black and white--Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Hawaii. The site is now a place of refuge but had originally been isolation for those with leprosy and other infectious diseases. It's now home to many rare plant species. The cascading flowers create a lot of movement in a still-life I think.

This layout was created for another challenge in the CM Virtual Crop in February 2021. I again turned to the mystery box papers. I thought blue was a good color to offset the black and white flowers. Two of the papers had ombre tones in them and I thought flipping the stripe ombre (dark top, light bottom) on the regular paper (light top, dark bottom) highlighted the cascades on the photos. I chose yellow stickers to accent the page as well. There are some ivory/yellow tones in some of the "white" photos--though that might be artifact from the lights in the space.

The next part of the display was the domed room of Carlsbad Caverns. I have visited this park but not been in the cave so I definitely need to go back someday. I do like going through caves, as long as there is ample room to walk. I'm not one of those who want to go on the cave tour where you have to shimmy through a box to prove you won't get stuck. Let's just admit that I'll get stuck and leave me on the regular path!

This layout is another sketch from the virtual crop. More importantly, it used a template that was included in the mystery box. Check out the blog post here to see the sketch and a photo of the template (you couldn't buy it, you could only get it in the mystery box). I will be the first to admit, I don't really like using templates. I've used them several times and I always seem to mess up the cuts and ruin the intended "symmetry". This one had a lot of straight angles so I figured I could use my trimmers to make the cuts, which helped a little. I chose papers from the O Canada pack. The darker background reminded me of stone and the yellow I chose just as an accent. The diamond-shaped pieces are from a scrap of stone paper I still had. I thought it would help fill in the page since I didn't have many photos of this section. I finished by using an icicle border maker cartridge to punch stalactites and stalagmites for the edges. That's probably the part of the layout I like best.

Next stop, the Grand Canyon! I've been here twice now and I can't say that I ever knew there were aspen groves! I focus so much on the canyon that I forget there are other things. Here they are collected and secured with flowers around the middles. 

This was one more of the challenges for the virtual crop. I changed the number of photos in the original sketch, which you can see here. I utilized paper from the Camouflage pack. The background paper is birch bark and I turned it so that there was some definition against the direction of the trees in the photo. I also used leafy paper in the middle to help the photos stand out. Two brown borders also helped define the photos. One is a leftover border and I liked that it had the hiking boots printed on it. I chose the CM Stamping set to create the title. I thought that the uneven covering of ink on the letters also represented the tree bark.

OK, we come to the last layout in the Ansel Adams collection. This one is King's Canyon--another site I've not been to. Though I found out recently that my grandparents did! I have their photo album from the 1960s when they went on several cross-country trips and my grandmother labeled many of the sites so I know where they are. Now I can recreate their photo when I visit!

One more sketch from the virtual crop (check it out here). I returned to the mystery box papers and to the use of blue to offset the black and white flowers. For one of the circular elements, I chose to create a journal box by using the custom cutting system on a piece of ruled paper. I accented with some stickers (top and bottom) from a couple of older, non-related CM packs. But I thought the colors and tones matched the layout. My favorite piece of this layout is the border at the top and bottom. I used a new border maker cartridge called "Mirrored Triangles". In addition to punching a set in white, I punched a set in black and used that to edge the white against the striped paper. It gives a great shadow effect. The title was one of our laser-cut titles. I love those packs. So much easier than splicing letters together!