A Tiny Bit of Olympic National Park

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I want to thank you for following my blog and my journeys through the National Park System.

The display for Olympic National Park featured the concept of "Tiny Houses". The builders are recommending a structure like this as a visitor center to help preserve the environment. The outside of the house included local trees and plants as well as a small garden. Going through the display did bring back wonderful memories of my trip there.

This layout is based on one of my class sketches from February. I used a background from the Woodland Whimsy collection and a dark strip for the banner from the S'Mores collection. I was able to use up a bit more of my Olympic Park stickers as well as a few random nature stickers from my collection. I love these pages when they come together quickly.

Poetic License

The title this week is the only thing I can think of to explain the next exhibit. If you see the actual monument at Lincoln's Birthplace, you will see a large marble structure. Inside there IS a replica of a birth cabin. The display below in no way resembles either of those 2 entities. But they were going for rustic simplicity and I suppose they did achieve their goal.

I looked through my saved pins featuring flowers and a general "Spring" theme and found this blog post from Creative Memories. I had pulled my Full Bloom collection as one of the items I wanted to use for this album and so I was able to replicate the borders. Given the large photo (created by welding 3 separate 4x6 photos together) it seemed the perfect backdrop to the rustic garden on display. I was also able to use a few of my paper flowers in the upper right corner. It's not a design element I use often so when I get a chance to use my stash I take it!

The Devil Went Down to Jersey?

 In New Jersey, there is a National Reserve (an affiliated area, not a true national park) called the Pinelands. If you grew up in New Jersey you likely heard tales of the "Jersey Devil" -a creature that flies around the Pine Barrens creating havoc. It's their version of Sasquatch apparently. The story was told in this display but they also highlighted the various crops like berries and vegetables grown in the area.

This layout is based on a border sketch from Creative Memories. Our CM Advisor group was given the challenge to use one of the sketches from the weekend and I made this border from pumpkin and apple border maker cartridges. I used paper and stickers from the "Locally Grown" pack due to the gardening nature of the display. The pumpkins and apples are a little too close to the same shape and I didn't get the variety of colors I was looking for to make them stand out, but it's a cute border and just needed a backdrop for the photos and journaling box. 

The Unofficial State Bird

So many states claim the mosquito as the unofficial state bird that it's almost a cliche. But when you see "Mosquito Meter" crafted into the display, you know there are bound to be problems. I guess I'll need to carefully plan my visit to the real park so that it's not a war zone! You'll remember that Jim and I experienced a horde of mosquitoes during our visit to Portsmouth Island (or check out that blog post by clicking the link). I may have to do this park without him!

This layout is again from one of the classes I took. It was a fairly simple concept where you lay out the letters and a border sticker and then chop and mat them to create a crazy title. I had kept a piece of the S'More Memories pack that had dragonflies as the design. But given the photo of the Mosquito Meter, you thought mosquitoes instead, right? This layout only used one piece of paper. I cut the squares for the corners from the left-over paper after the title was done.

The OTHER big trail

The next display covers another immense trail in the National Park System--the Pacific Coast Trail. Unlike the Appalachian trail, this is not an official unit. The trail extends from the Mexican to the Canadian borders and so crosses a wide variety of environments. The designers condensed all of that to just a few square feet of floor space! 

This layout is from the same class as the last 3 entries--so again, no sketch. The design focused on building those borders on the left and bottom right. My cuts were supposed to be through the middle of a chain punched with the Border Maker System. But the cuts are not quite perfect so I had to use other items to hide the imperfections (like the John Muir quote mat). The tree border was punched directly onto the background paper (that particular punch is not a chain) and I mounted a bit of cardstock underneath to bring out the tree design. I finished it off with a couple of clusters of stickers from my assorted packs.

This layout is from a DIFFERENT class--but alas I still cannot show you the sketch. I like splitting paper across a 2-page layout and that happened twice here (the light blue and the green forest designs). That technique helps the eye move from one side of the layout to the other. The sketch called for borders under the photos and instead of a punch, I used some strips from a cut-apart sheet. The left border (Adventure) was a bit smaller than the right so I mounted it on a wider piece of paper. But that was TOO pale so I added some rope borders at the top and bottom. A lot more stickers on this one to fill in some of the dead spaces (and honestly to use up some of those sheets!)

And now a word from our sponsor...

 My next stop was Yosemite National Park. I was a little surprised to find so many Subaru advertisements here, but not only do they support the Flower Show, they are working with Yosemite to reduce waste. The floral portion represents Olmstead Point. Also included is the Mariposa Grove sequoia. This California Tunnel Tree is a popular destination within the park.

This layout was created for one of the classes I took and I cannot share the sketch. My layout required some photo manipulation to get the entrance to Olmstead Point in view. Once I trimmed the photos, I matted them in pink and left them square on the bottom to allow a small journaling space. 

The page technique uses "welding" to get both sides of a paper into the act. I liked the contrast between the bright pink flowers and the tree. When you have such a vibrant pattern (the pink flowers) it helps to use it in small amounts on the page. I cut the borders and then flipped the middle. The pieces are reattached using long stickers. I was able to use some very old CM stickers from the Jumbo Great Lengths purple pack. (You can also use strips of scrap paper along the back for the same effect, but the stickers hide the seam).

Following the sketch, I added a border using the Tulips Border Punch from Creative Memories. I think I should have chosen a slightly darker shade of purple for those as they seem to get lost on the tree papers. The rest of the embellishments are more stickers from the GL Purple pack. I trimmed the squares and rectangles into banners to finish the page.

What a Blast

The next display was of Hopewell Furnace. Located not too far from Philly it's another local favorite. As with the Valley Forge display, the creators decided to go with what the place looked like after its original purpose (iron making) was over. The elements such as the furnace were recreated with fall-type leaves. The display was rather large and you could walk through the structures. I liked that they also added non-floral elements such as the pantry supplies.

The layout is based on a class I took and I am not allowed to share the sketch. I used the Hello Autumn collection from Creative Memories. The green and orange colors matched the display perfectly. I liked the portion of the sketch where we punched borders and layered them into a small 4x6 space (see the rustic fence behind the bottom photo on the right page?  Just 2 embellishment clusters here. CM had a matching foiled leaf pack to go with the collection and I clustered them for titles and a little journaling. I also substituted one photo for a journaling box. 

I like that we didn't center the photos in the boxes. It gives a little more movement to the page and shows the background papers a bit better.