Mountain Biking in Moab Scrapbook Page

This summer we took a trip to Utah to visit their National Parks and Monuments, and while we were there we spent 3 days in Moab. Since we like to mountain bike, we thought it would be fun to try mountain biking there. So we booked a tour at Dead Horse Point State Park, whose trail system is well known out there for mountain biking. The trail was hard. A lot harder than we thought it would be. But it was quite the adventure and we did have fun. Although I wasn't able to stop often or take many photos on the trail since we were with a group, I was able to get a few good shots before and after the ride, and at one of the overlooks we stopped at.

Scrapping these photos was so much fun! I had been keeping an eye out for any biking themed papers or supplies for a while, and had picked up a few things that I wanted to use including some metal gears, wooden cut-outs and bike themed paper. I was able to find paper with bikes, gears, and tire tracks that fit the color scheme I wanted to use.

The pattern in the yellow paper reminded me of the inner spokes of a bike tire.

The color scheme I used on here - kraft, grey, blue, yellow, and white, I used throughout the Utah albums. I was able to mix and match papers that were not bike themed with those that were to keep the same feel as the rest of the layouts in the book. These layouts also have some black accents in the tire tracks.   

We stopped at one scenic overlook in the park where we were able to do some photos, which turned out really nice. Our tour guide even took family photos of us all together.

I tried to add the wooden and metal bike related accents where I could on the pages, and I was able to download a few Moab pieces of clip art and printed those out to use as well. I used several wooden cut-outs on these laytouts, which I haven't used a lot before. I wasn't really sure where to place them, but ended up layering some of them on journaling cards, and I really liked the look of that.

Here are the final layouts, thanks for looking!

Wisconsin Camping Trip Scrapbook Cover Page with Map

This summer our family took a 10 day/9 night camping trip to northern Wisconsin. We stayed at 3 different campgrounds for 3 nights each, and from those campgrounds we toured different areas of the state. It was kind of a camping trip and road trip all in one! We had a great trip and visited several State and National Parks and trails. I began scrapbooking it as soon as we got home and started with a cover page. I wanted to include an interesting map of the state to show where we went.

 

 

After finding a suitable map online, I printed it out and began to lay out the page, adding 3 polaroid frames down the side and debated whether to put pictures or text in the boxes. I went with text and decided to label each frame with the 3 campgrounds we stayed at, and then listed some of the things we saw and did in that area. 

 

 

On the map itself, I used small banner tags to label the State and National Parks we camped at or visited along the way, and used metallic brads to mark the locations on the map. I also added some larger metallic brads to the corners of the map to frame it out, and added a banner at the top that mimicked the look of the smaller tags on the map.

 

 

 

Here it the final layout - thanks for looking!

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White House Scrapbook Page - Washington, DC

Our first stop on our DC trip was to walk from our hotel down to the White House and have the kids get their first look at the White House! On the way we walked through Lafayette Square and approached the White House directly from the front for the best view!

After viewing the White House from the front, we walked around to the back side to see the back lawn and also the Ellipse, where we saw the National Christmas Tree. The Ellipse was blocked off with barriers due to the 4th of July, so we were unable to walk through but could still see across.

Since we were unable to get a White House tour, we did the next best thing and went to the White House Visitor Center. This very impressive visitor center had tons of history on the White House, a great interactive model with a virtual tour, and lots of artifacts from the presidents who lived in the White House. We all really enjoyed this visitor center and I would definitely recommend it.

The visitor center offers a Junior Ranger badge, so the boys both got busy on working on their booklets, and after completing a few pages, watching a short movie, and talking to the Ranger, they received their badges.

The supplies that I used for these pages were a combination of several different kits and paper collections that I had been collecting and discussed here. The color scheme for the entire DC album was based off of grey, white, tan, and black, with different accent colors mixed in on various pages. The only memorabilia included on these pages is the White House brochure and the Passport Stamps we picked up at the Visitor Center. I also included a photo of the Junior Ranger Badge.

Here are the final four layouts:

Thanks for looking! Our next stop iss the Washington Monument.

We all Start Somewhere: First Scrapbook Page

I thought it would be fun to go back and take a look at the very first "real" scrapbook page I ever made. I say "real" because I did do some decorated photo albums before this, but I don't really consider those scrapbooks in the real sense. 

I really started scrapbooking after my first son was born in 2003, and almost the entire first album is baby pictures, of course. For my first layout, I took the easy way out...I used a premade kit! And here it is:

The paper was pre-printed and the kit came with some cut out tags and die cuts, so everything coordinated and all I had to do was add the photos. And that's really about all I did, or knew how to do at that time.

This first set of photos were taken while we were still in the hospital. Since our son was in the NICU for the first 5 days (he was a preemie), all of the photos we have in the hospital are from the visitation room there - he was never in the regular nursery or my room. We don't have any of the usual photos that most people would have of their first child in the hospital - visitation was quite limited in the NICU, and we only got to spend about 30 minutes with him for feeding every 3 hours. With the limited time I didn't take a lot of photos, I do wish I would have taken more.

The layouts are really quite simple, but I was new to this and didn't really have any supplies other than the scrapbook kit. Over time I would accumulate much more. 

I took a look at the second layout I made and was surprised to see that I did a little better job - added some decorative metal frames and accent photos in them. 

These early pages are a good reminder that we all start somewhere, and over time things change and hopefully become better. I do see how these early layouts resemble what I still do now...everyone really does have their own style that kind of sticks with them. But we all start somewhere, and it really doesn't matter where, as long as you keep going.

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.