2021 Road Trip - Craft Fair

Today's Scrapbook page is an example of modifications.  I often find that when I go to post a project and look at the picture critically, I decide I want to change something.  This happened with this page.  Here is what it looked at first:

I realized that the eye was drawn to the big white block of journaling instead of the pictures, and I just didn't like the composition.  I decided to re-do the journaling & soften the white using my Scroll & Brush markers with a water brush. (Yes!  That worked without smearing the print & dried quickly.)

This is the way it looked at that point, but it still felt a bit off balance.  I decided to mat the title blocks with white as well, and that's what you see in the final picture (above).  I would have liked to move the center block down a bit as well (I had it offset because of the way I had done the journaling at first).  Unfortunately, it was stuck down too well to move, but I think the changes I made still made things better.  I MAY print another of the pots real small & fussy cut it for an embellishment at the bottom.  I think that would help quite a bit, but I don't have time now.

2021 Road Trip - Great Sand Dunes

Here's another layout using a gate fold spread.  This time it's about Great Sand Dunes National Park.  As you can see on this first page, I created an envelope from vellum to hold a brochure for the park.  The picture below it that says Great Sand Dunes is a sticker.  I took a portion of the map and blew it up larger so that the places we went could more easily be seen - then drew a box around the blown up portion & added an arrow.  The background is patterned paper that I got in a National Park scrapbook set.  I thought the wavy sand worked perfectly for the theme.  I added a sliver of the dark green paper from the next page to try to tie them together just a bit.

Page 2 is the front of the gate fold:

The flowers are plants that we actually saw but they weren't all in bloom - and we didn't get good pictures of those that were.  So, I used these stickers to finish out recording our hike.  The "On the Trail" are gold stickers from my stash.

Opened up, the gate-fold spread looks like this:

As you can see, the backgrounds for these pages start with a piece of turquoise card stock.  I found a patterned paper that was a similar color to the sand in the pictures and added it for interest.

And here are closeups of each page:

I wanted to include the text of the sign in the picture, but it took a LOT of space.  There wasn't room for more pictures, but it needed something.  So, I found a picture of a sand sled on-line & fussy cut it to use as an embellishment.

I liked the idea of incorporating my journaling onto the expanse of sand in the larger picture.  However, I realized I needed something to serve as a Title.  I created this one in Microsoft Word. 

On this last page, I once again fussy cut an image from the web for an embellishment.  This time it was the image of a sandboard.

2021 Road Trip - Black Canyon of the Gunnison & Curecanti

This set of pages is actually fairly similar to the set for Dinosaur - the right hand page is a gate-fold, and the first page has a hidden element - this time the journaling.  This is where my Stamp 'n Up tag punch was very useful.  I could make the tag for the journaling however long and wide it needed to be rather than having to try to tailor my words to fit a pre-set size.  Here's a close up of the slide-out tag.

The picture isn't the best, but here's the companion gate-fold page:

It's pretty straight forward.  It and the inside panels all have titles in reflective fonts that I thought sort of mimicked the heights we saw in the canyons.  A blue strip forms a border on each panel.

Opened Up:

As you can see, the inside panels are similar to the outside ones.  The center panel is brown with blue borders.  The sides are blue with brown stripes. Note that I once again used a tag/label punch for the journaling mats on the side panels.

Curecanti:

This is a pretty straight forward dual page layout.  You can see close ups of each page below.

More Scenic Christmas Cards

Awhile back I showed several scenic Christmas cards that I made.  Here's what I did with the other scenes I created at that time.  Note that most of the stamps were ones my Mom had.  If they are mine, I note who made them.

Card #1 (above):  The focal was colored with scroll & brush markers - sometimes direct to paper, sometimes scribbled on my craft mat and picked up with a water brush.  I embossed a background panel using my Darice Snowflake Background embossing folder.  Then I inked it with distress ink.  I die cut the scene into a circle - then die cut a white mat to go behind it before creating the back mat layer - die cut with a Spellbinders Splendid Circles die. The sentiment is a greeting from a Debbi Moore download.

Inside:

Inside are mats I found in my scraps - along with another Debbi Moore greeting.

Card #2:

I thought this was such a cute scene!  I colored it with Inktense pencils & a water brush.  The background paper came in a swap, and the greeting is another from Debbi Moore.

Inside:

I thought this Debbi Moore "Dear Santa please give me presents. I've been very good" was a great embellishment for the inside. That with a scrap of the patterned paper is all that's needed.

Card #3:

Here I've once again colored the focal with Scroll & Ink markers & a water brush.  The vellum background is only attached to the card front behind the focal.  Snowflake stickers from my stash & another Debbi Moore message completes the card front.

Inside:

 

Inside I've added a greeting - another of my Mom's stamped - stamped with distress ink.

 

Card #4:

 

This is my least favorite of all the scenes.  The focal was another stamped image - put together from Mom's stamps & colored with Scroll & Brush markers & a water brush.  These were backed with a couple of die cut mats (Spellbinders Beaded Circles for the white, and Nellie's Multi Frames Flower for the aqua).  The background was created with ink & a wavy card stock piece that I used as a stencil.  I cut part of the wavy stencil with a die that had little houses on it.  I decided that part didn't look right just used as a stencil, so I die cut some of the houses from white & colored them.  That now looked quite out of place with the rest, so I die cut some more & put a little one over the stamped house that had been there originally - just to try and tie it in better.  The greeting is from Debbi Moore.

Inside:

Another stamped greeting (Mom's stamp again) and a die cut piece with more houses & inking completed the inside.