Montana Journal – the last of Yellowstone

We cannot leave Yellowstone without a visit to Old Faithful.  I made an attempt to make a paper geyser that was not exactly a pop-up, but would rise up off of the page a bit.

I wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, and as you can see, I had to refold the heavy watercolor paper several times.  But that is the joy of these art/travel journals!  You try new things, improvise, and even when it doesn’t turn out, you have learned some things for the next time around.  Next time I will be more successful because of the mistakes I made on this page!

With limited supplies available, I simply used a scrap of the watercolor paper folded in a zig zag to supply the lift.  As you can see, my paper old faithful also serves to hide a string that was part of the page before that you saw in last week’s post.

Nearby were tons of lovely, toxic smelling pools.  Our favorite was the Sapphire pool.  I took pictures of many signs as we went so I could use them the way I did on this page, saving me the need to letter a page title.  The papers on this page (as well as the Old Faithful page) are from a Creative Memories paper pack…now discontinued I believe.  The facing page has a map of the Yellowstone park.

I wanted to keep the page simple, but also found the facts about this pool very interesting, so I stuck in a library card pocket to hold a ticket topped piece of map page with all the details.  I am intrigued that the depth is unknown.  That gets the imagination stirring!

The next page also has a map of the area, but this time it is not the background, but is cut into another type of interactive page.

I cut the page in a square spiral, leaving an outer border to glue down.  The butterfly holds a little tag that says “lift”.

When you do, the page lifts in a delightful spiral, revealing a background image underneath.

Let it back down, and it is nearly invisible!

I continued the butterfly theme in the tab on this page:

Each day on the trip is marked by a different tab, all made from found items.  Some of them, like tickets, Monopoly game cards, etc. I brought along with me.  Others, like the butterfly, were gleaned from postcards, tea bags, attraction tickets and camping permits.  I added the number for the day (14 days total) on most. I love how interesting the accumulation of days looks!  It just invites you to open it up doesn’t it?

Next week we will move on through the Tetons and rafting the Snake River.