Nationals Park - Washington DC Scrapbook Page

Last 4th of July we were in Washington DC for vacation, and we surprised our youngest son with a trip to Nationals Park. He is a huge baseball fan and our home team happened to be playing there over the 4th. Even though it wasn't the warmest day and we got quite a bit of rain that day, it was great experience and I had so much fun scrapbooking this. I took about a million pictures that day, so I'm quite proud of the fact that I only made 5 layouts for this!

We left our hotel that morning and hopped a cab to go to the stadium. My son didn't know where we were going, but kept asking along the way, and I kept making up different answers to distract him. When we pulled up, we couldn't see the stadium, just the parking garage - but there were these decorative baseballs all over it and he started to ask if we were at Nationals Park. As we approached the gate, we got our tickets out and showed him and he realized that the Brewers we playing! He was thrilled! Once inside, we watched the players warm up and the boys were both given baseballs that they later got autographed. 

I created 5 layouts for this using a collection of baseball supplies by Moxxie called All Star Baseball. I chose this collection because it most closely matched the color scheme that I was using in the rest of the DC album, and I liked all of the red, white, and blue and star designs it included. It worked perfectly for baseball but also the 4th of July.

For these layouts, I tried to add in a lot of little details from our day, including our tickets, photos of the scoreboard, the flag ceremony, and the running of the presidents. I also printed out team logos and a logo from the stadium.

I'm quite happy with how these came out, and they are some of my favorite pages that I've probably ever made. 

Thanks for looking! What is your favorite thing that you ever scrapbooked?

Mountain Biking on the Glacial Drumlin Trail

The last of the 2016 mountain biking layouts was actually the first one we did last year. My son and I rode 15 miles of the Glacial Drumlin trail one morning, and I created four scrapbook layouts for it. 

The papers on these layouts are a combination of papers from the Paper Studios "Murphy's Square" collection mixed with one sheet of paper with trees on it, and one sheet with gears on it. Even though they were not a direct match to the other papers, they were a close enough match and I wanted to bring in a little bit of nature and a little bit of a biking theme into the pages.

I left the photos in chronological order to highlight the different things we saw along the way and the things we stopped to look at. Often I will shuffle the order of photos around to create the best use of space, but these all seemed to work in the order they were taken, so there wasn't too much shuffling. Here are the final 4 layouts:

Thanks for looking! For more mountain biking layouts please click here!

Mountain Biking on the Badger State Trail

The second trail we rode this year as a family was the Badger State Trail. We drove to the trailhead in Belleville, and biked the few miles to the Stewart Tunnel. Several years ago we biked this part of the trail, but enjoyed it so much we decided to go back and do it again.

It is a straight, flat trail that has just a slight uphill grade as you go south. After just a couple of miles you approach the train tunnel. 

The tunnel is dark and a little eerie! Since you can't see the other end of the tunnel when you enter, flashlights are required as is walking your bike through. After the tunnel we continued down the trail a bit, then turned around to bike back to our vehicle, once again going through the tunnel. 

For these layouts, I again used a paper collection called "Murphy's Square" by The Paper Studio. I also used this on the CamRock Trail Page, and continued to use this for additional biking pages. Although it's not necessarily biking or nature themed paper, I liked the little bit rustic look and the colors lend themselves to an outdoorsy page. I've found that biking themed scrapbook supplies can be hard to come by, and it's often just adding little details like the gears that can make it theme specific.

I accented the page with some journaling cards by We R Memory Keepers Grayson Collection, some metal gear embellishments also by The Paper Studio, and some arrows created with paper punches or cut by hand.

Here are the final 4 layouts:

Thanks so much for looking! Our next biking trail is the Glacial Drumlin Trail.

Mountain Biking on the CamRock Trail Scrapbook Page

Last year we tried to bike more as a family, and one of the trails we rode was the CamRock Trail. This trail offers a traditional flat gravel trail, but also known for it's single track trails that branch off the main trail.

The single track is a challenging trail, and we had all biked on it once before several years ago. We all did better this time around that last time, and only had to stop and walk our bikes up or down the steep hills a couple of times.

For this layout, I used a couple of earthy fall papers, since it was late October when we biked this trail. The papers are from a Paper Studio paper stack called Murphy's Square, and the wooden gears, journaling card, arrow border and wooden-look frame were added to add some little details to the page.

I didn't take a lot of photos on this trail since we were busy biking it, but had enough to do one layout. Thanks for looking! Up next is the Badger State Trail and the Stewart Tunnel.

Hiking the Ice Age Trail Scrapbook Page

Early last spring we went hiking on the Ice Age Trail and hiked a short segment called the Blackhawk Segment. We only hiked a few miles of this segment since we had to backtrack to get back to our car, but it was a fun and scenic hike none the less.

We were pretty excited to be hiking on a National Scenic Trail, and the boys enjoyed looking for the Yellow blazes that mark the trail. Along the way, I took several photos of signs and markers on the trail, in addition to scenery shots and photos of the kids exploring the trail.

For these layouts, I used a collection of supplies called Outdoor Trail by Kaisercraft. I had originally purchased this in hopes of using it for one of our National Parks trips, but I ended up not using it for those and thought it would be perfect for these photos instead.

Since it was so early in the year, the photos are quite neutral a with a  lot of grey, tan and brown...there is not a lot of color. To add some color to the layouts, I accented with green and orange - using green background paper and accenting with orange where I could. Even with the little bits of color, the layouts are still pretty neutral and earthy.

Here are the final 4 layouts:

Thanks for looking!

Halloween "Trick or Treat" Scrapbook Page

Halloween is always a fun time and we've had some great years trick or treating with our kids. For this years Halloween layout, my goal was to use up a bunch of miscellaneous Halloween supplies that I had left over from other years - bits and pieces of other kits and things I've not used in previous years.

It was kind of a mash-up of several different colors and patters - I had 2 12x12 papers, a few pieces of small cut-off scrap paper, and pieces from 4 different sets of stickers. I'm not even sure what brands or collections any of these things came from! I decided to use black, orange, white, and yellow for the color scheme and went with the supplies I had on hand. I'm a big believer in matching multiple patters together, and it'll work as long as they fit in the color scheme of the layout.

What I like about this layout is that it shows that you don't need to have a lot of supplies, or spend a lot of money, to create something cute and special, and something that works together. 

Thanks for looking!

Christmas Card Scrapbook Page

Sometimes the simplest layout can be the one you like the most. 

Several years ago when I started making photo cards for Christmas, I started scrapbooking them as well. I usually use this single page as the back cover page for that years album. They are usually really simple layouts - just the card and some accent paper, maybe a couple of stickers. This years Christmas Card page was no different.

I found this beautiful piece of paper that was left over from the paper stack I used for Christmas photos two years ago. It's from a DCWV stack called Winter in the Woods. I didn't use it before because all of my Christmas layouts had more than one photo on them. But I thought this paper was so pretty, so when I started looking for paper to use for the card page, it jumped right out at me as completely perfect for this layout.

Once I had the card and the sheet of paper, it just needed a few accents. I highlighted the photo by matting it on grey and brown to compliment the colors in the wreath pattern, and added in a few green accents as well. I also added double layer triangle shapes on each of the corners to mimic old-fashioned photo corners. Even with those additions, it needed something else. Maybe a little bit of bling.

I don't usually use a lot of sparkly or blingy material, but I happened to have some clear crystal snowflakes and added one to each corner and one to the center tag. It was just enough to give it some sparkle and detail.

Here is the final Christmas card layout:

Do you scrapbook your Christmas Cards?

Thanks for looking!

Bear Country USA Scrapbook Page

Our very last stop in South Dakota was to drive through Bear Country USA in Rapid City on our way toward the interstate. It was something we had planned to do, as we had driven past it last year but didn't have time to stop, so it was on the list for things to see this year. Unfortunately Mother Nature had her own plans for the last day of our vacation, and we ended up cutting the day short and heading home due to poor weather. But we swung through Bear Country first.

As we entered the park, we began the drive-thru portion and saw elk, wolves, mountain goats, and big horn sheep. As we continued further, we entered the bear section and couldn't believe how many bears there were. Since we arrived pretty early in the morning, it was feeding time! We watched the truck toss out the food to the bears and were able to watch them eat. All of the bears were clustered really close to the road since that is there the food was. After the drive, there is another section of the park where you can walk through and see other animals.

I created 2 layouts for Bear Country and wanted to include photos of as many animals as I could, but also include the map of the park. I ended up doing a collage of the small animal photos to fit in as many as I could. I also created one bear page since we spent the majority of our time there looking at the bears. 

This is the final scrapbook layout from our South Dakota trip. Please click here to see the complete album. Thanks for looking!