Forevertron Park

You can't see we don't stop and see it all on our family road trips.  :)
This was a little out of the way stop somewhere in Wisconsin that my brother had read about and put on the list of stops on Day 4 or the trip.   It was amazing.  This man, Tom Every, has been making the "sculptures" out of trash.   The main attraction is the top picture on page 2.   This is called "Dr. Evermor's Forevertron."  It was built in the 1980's, was the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing at 50 ft. and 120 ft. wide, and weighing in at 300 tons.  This sculpture incorporates two Thomas Edison dynamos from the 1880's, lightning rods, high-voltage components from 1920's power plants, scrap from a nearby Army ammunition plant and the decontamination chamber from the Apollo II spacecraft.      All I could say was WOW, when we finally found the little back drive to this acreage to walk around and look at everything.     One section that I include in 4 of the pictures here is "The Bird Band & Orchestra" which includes about 70 birds ranging from the size of a child to twenty feet tall, all made from scrap industrial parts, geological survey markers, knives, loudspeakers, springs, and musical instruments and other salvaged materials.
So if you are ever out on Highway 12 in Sumpter, Wisconsin, you have to stop and walk around and see all of this, it is amazing.

Now that you have the history of this layout, let me share with you the great sketch that I used for the September 4th challenge at "Scrap Much?!"   I love that I'm on Design Team A and get to work with a great double page sketch every month.    Our one and only Laura Whitaker made this sketch and I hope you like it as much as I did and join us at the challenge.   Check it all out "SCRAP MUCH?!"    and you can see what the other Design Team members created with this sketch.

Kayaking

I wanted to make one last layout of our long weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks and this was it.
Bruce, Leslie and Jason went kayaking.   I decided not to go but could see them take off from the driveway of our cabin.   They had a great time.  Started out with sunshine but then also were out in a brief rain shower too, so I'm glad I passed on this.

I used Sketch #163 made by Bev Code, she makes such fun sketches at "SKETCHES IN THYME".   I had totally different background paper picked out.   One with anchors and then I started looking to see if I had any embellishments from swaps that might have oars or something like that.   But in the drawer where I keep camping/fishing/outdoor paper and embellishments in I found this piece of paper I had never used.   How lucky is that to have a full piece of paper covered in kayaks.

Check out the sketch below and go to "SKETCHES IN THYME" to also see the layout that Bev made with her sketch and read the details on the Sept. challenges.

The Past

A blast from the past at the Lake of the Ozarks.    When we were little and went to the Lake we always had to stop on the strip and go to Dog Patch.   So this trip wasn't any different.  We went down there and walked around more than just running into want to buy souvenirs  (oh but we did that too)   We found this tree trunk called the memory trip in the park behind that we had never seen before when little.

I used the Sept. 1st challenge at "PICTURE THIS" to make the layout.   The challenge is to use two pictures plus green, black and white.   I found the perfect paper to use for it and embellishments.
But the paper was the A & B sides on one sheet so just cut it in half and taped it together on the back for the layout.   I'm really pleased with how it turned out.   We were there on the 29th of May and there happened to be a 29 on the bingo card so I put a black gem on the number as an extra embellishment.

Check out the details at "PICTURE THIS"  and then come back again on the 15th for the 2nd challenge of the month.

Science Project

Kai's 9th b'day was in July and his Aunt Leslie and Uncle Jason got him a monthly science project kit.   So every month he will get a new experiment in the mail to do.     I love this collage of he and Mylan playing with the one that came in August.

For this layout I used the single page sketch at "STICK IT DOWN"  it was perfect because it was for using a single picture.  I just printed it out in 5x7 size so all the pictures would show up better.  I started matting it, keeping white around the print first and then was just going to do gray and black but then decided to do one more gray mat to finish it.   I kept it simple with no embellishments and just used a title and let that and the pictures tell the story.   I did write on the back of it where the kit came from so if Kai is looking at these as an adult he will have more details on it.

Check out the sketch below and click on  "STICK IT DOWN" to read the details on the September challenges and you will also see the double page sketch and the card sketch.   Have fun creating.

First Day of School

It looks like Mylan is loving her first day of school in Kindergarten.     She is such a smart girl I know she is going to do great and smile like this everyday.

I am going to enter this layout in two challenges.    First off I used the sketch at "MY CREATIVE SKETCHES"  and then the Back to School challenge at "BITTEN BY THE BUG"  to use school supplies on your project.  I have pencils and colors and even an apple for the teacher.

Here is the sketch and below it links to both challenges.

"MY CREATIVE SKETCHES"

"BITTEN BY THE BUG"

Explore

When I was asked if I wanted to stay on the Design Team at "LET'S SCRAP" for another term,   I didn't have to think about it twice.   I have always loved the double page sketches here even before I joined the DT.    Even though we were staying we still had to submit a layout using the sketch the goes live today.   Sept 1st.     I decided to go back and do a layout from an old vacation back in 2006 to the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore area.    This was about the time I first start scrapping so the few pages I had made from this trip look A LOT different than my style now.

Check out the sketch below and join in the fun at with this sketch at  "LET'S SCRAP"    I'm looking forward to seeing what you create.   Plus there is a great prize from Unity Stamps this month.

Foo Fighters

I got to go to one more Foo Fighter concert with my daughter in August.   The first concert we ever went to together 15 years ago was the Foo Fighters.   This was my 3rd, but being this is by far and forever her favorite band she has been to probably close to 20.   Everywhere she has lived and then traveled to some too.    Here in Kansas City, St. Louis, NYC, Toronto, DC Baltimore and even London.   Multiple times in some of these cities and also other places I don't remember.

I took so many pictures and was waiting for just the right sketch so I could use a big variety.
So even though I had already made a sketch for the DT reveal on 9-15 at "LET'S SCRAP" I decided to go ahead and make another layout using the sketch since I could uses such a variety of pictures.
SO if you also have a lot of pictures from an event that you have been wanting to scrap then this is the one for you.   I used a few more pictures than the sketch shows but as always just do your take on the sketch even if you decide to only do one side of the double page sketch.

Check out the sketch below and then go to "LET'S SCRAP" to check out all the details.   Unity Stamps is our prize sponsor this month.