Hello Summer

Mr. Never Slows Down has an older who's main desire in life is to become a pro wrestler in the WWE. At the beginning of the month, we Mr. Wrestler to attend the Rotary Club's Duck Race. It was an exciting time where we got to share snow cones. We missed the ducks racing - and we didn't win. It was however, a wonderful afternoon.

Mr. Wrestler and I will be working on journals and photos of many day trips this summer to help him improve his reading and writing skills. We should layout done soon. Keep watching.

A page without pictures

When I went to sum up our vacation, I found I had no pictures that would illustrate the story. Instead, I used some of the area specific embellishments I had purchased. I used strips of journaling to make a list of the highlights of the trip.

The flag image is from a greeting card.

Continuing the layouts

I love dinosaurs and marvel whenever I have the opportunity to view their bones on display.  What marvelous creatures they were and how awesome God's world that it could contain, even at different times, dinosaurs and hummingbirds - and that they might be related.

Along with the Smithsonian, we visited the Holocaust museum. The images and stories haunt you when you leave and etch themselves in your memories. After all the sadness, we found the wall of names of all those who risked their own existence to help save others.

The postcard of the shoes so poignantly symbolizes all of those who were lost and the little portrait on the bottom is from a small booklet you receive when you enter the museum. It tells the story of one of the many people who was arrested and sent to the camps.

 This was a difficult page since I'd previously scrapped my only photo. I used the brochures and postcards to document our experience. I also discovered my photo editing program wouldn't let me work with images of currency.

 After Washington, we took a day to kick back and relax and process the things we'd seen the day before and the things we still hoped to fit in.

Scrapping a Ghost Tour

The house where we started the ghost tour was beautiful with gorgeous woodwork. I used vellum on many of the pages to give that ethereal feeling.

Since it took 5 years for me to get these photos on paper, I used Google Maps to stroll the streets of Fredericksburg and revisit the places we had talked about. Many of the events of our vacation, I had documented in a OneNote journal. Since this was our last night and we were leaving early the next morning, I needed all the help I could get to help me remember the experience.

26 layouts continued

I am still using old stash on my layouts. On this layout I cut flowers from a very bold patterned paper that I had several sheets of and used the flowers as embellishments. The postage stamps were also cut from another sheet of patterned paper that I'd probably been hanging on to since we originally went to Virginia.

This was a very simple layout. The tag on the bottom was the first one I've used out of the little pad that it came with. All of the pictures had significance for the trip that we took. I was truly amazed at the size of the tree stump and in awe of actually seeing Thomas Jefferson's grave monument. It held a sense of transcending time.

This is my least favorite layout of the 26. I think it's just too busy and the photos are not the best. It was difficult to take decent photos in Washington. It was very hot and humid, there wasn't much time to set up and some of the places we went discouraged photos. There were some stories to tell and reactions to things that I really wanted to preserve.

First of my preservation impressions is the photo and story about the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I love dinosaurs and gem stones so I was so happy that we ended up here. The top picture is a post card I purchased at the Smithsonian and shows the elephant in the lobby so much better than my photo. Since this trip, I've updated my smaller digital camera and I've learned more about lighting and compensating. This page features the first time I've used crocheted flowers on a layout. The tag was special to me also - it came on an article of clothing, it's made of canvas and I've been saving it and was so happy I finally found a home for it.

More of May's 26 layouts

What do you do when your best laid plans seem to go awry? The piece of paper I used for the journaling block looked really neat sitting on my table. It was a piece I'd created when experimenting with Distress inkpads.  The page is not so bad when you view it up close and personal, but that green ink blot just jumps out at in the photo.

This layout was the first time I'd used yellow and gray together on a layout. I also used a rub-on I'd been hoarding for a few years. Unfortunately the rub-on malfunctioned on the last letter of the final word so I filled it in with black pen. I need to go back and re-do the quote. I think the quote also needs more weight - how do you feel about it?

My new technique for this page was to experiment with my air brush tool. I wanted to make the plain cardstock tie in better to the designer paper used. This is a favorite layout of mine for a double page layout. I think I left the right hand page a little bare and the one word title is not making much sense. I'll need to put more work in to get this one to look finished.

Any suggestions on ways I could improve this?

My NSD Challenge Complete at Last

When I sat down at my work table on National Scrapbooking Day, I decided I would work the entire day and finally get my vacation pictures and memorabilia from our 2008 trip to Virginia scrapped so that the vacation album would at long last be complete. I was following Shimelle Laine's challenges during the day and although I was alone in my scrap room, I felt like I was at a crop.

I finished the day 15 hours later (I did have breaks and some family responsibilities in there). I had completed 9 pages - the last one of the day being my least favorite. I didn't finish my project. It took another 2 1/2 weeks and an additional 17 pages to call it done. It then took my three days to get photos that I actually liked of the pages.

This was first page, the introduction to the final section of the book. Another challenge I gave myself was to use up items that have been hanging around in my stash for several years. And yes, the small title runs downhill - something I didn't notice until I looked through the camera lens. The album I was completing is one by Creative Memories - from their older 11 1/2 x 12 days. Because it's a strap hinge album, the metal edges of the pages always have to be considered. All of the pages are kraft or natural in CM's terminology.

During the trip, I had journaled the days events on my computer using Microsoft One Note. Five years later, it was easy to go back and print out the days entries. I also added plenty of handwritten journalling along the way. The tow truck we were waiting for was needed to tow our car to a dealership in Poughkeepsie New York. Less than three hours into our trip, we'd blown the transmission!