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2015: Flying to America
Henry, our exchange student, had planned on creating his own scrapbook, but when he saw what I was creating for him he asked me if I could scrapbook parts of the trip that he had already collected ephemera and photographs for. So this is the first page of his album, and it includes all of the tickets and boarding passes for his flights to get to the United States. Henry landed in New York for a 3 day exchange student entry program.
I used a cloud background page and affixed a Cricut cutout of an airplane on it. Since he was flying Lufthansa I made the airplane blue and yellow to match their colors and the tickets. In order to help the tickets stand out a little more on the cloud background page I used the same blue paper that I cut the airplane out of, to border the tickets.
Europe Vacation 2015: Returning Home
This is the final spread of our 4 album scrapbook of our trip to Europe in summer 2015. It actually captures two days and two different flights. On the morning of July 34rd Mrs Ollmann took us to the Hamburg airport and we flew on SAS to Arlanda in Sweden. We then stayed the night at the amazing Arlanda Clarion Hotel, and left the next morning on SAS to Chicago, IL. On our long flight to Chicago we actually ended up in amazing seats with a ton of leg room (see pictures) and our own personal interactive screens. I watched 4 movies on the way home and was surprised when they announced that we were getting ready to land – it was the perfect ending to our trip!
The left hand side of this spread highlights the Arlanda Clarion Hotel with pictures out of our hotel window looking at the airport as well as our room and pool keys. I also attached a welcome card that was on our bed as well as the used the hotel stationary to journal on for this spread.
The right hand side highlights the two trips that we took, with the boarding passes resting behind some photographs from the flight. We were so impressed with our leg room that I took a picture of it and another of the personal screen that we had. I also used two photographs from that screen of our flight path as I thought it was cool to watch where we were on the trip. Thanks SAS for a great flight!
Europe Vacation 2015: Flying to Hamburg
On the 1st of July we fly from Stuttgart to Hamburg, to meet the family of our new exchange student who would come to spend the year with us in 2015-2016. Since we had just spent a week a piece with our two former exchange students, it was different to meet our next exchange student in his home before he had been to ours. The Ollmann’s greeted us at the airport and immediately took us on a tour of Hamburg.
This page shares the flight, and some ephemera from our time in Hamburg, Germany. We flew Air Berlin and we very impressed – we managed to get seats with lots of leg room which is a necessity for two 6’4″ guys flying together (Notice the picture of Levi on the top left hand page – he is happy!). This page also includes our Boarding passes for the flight, and a heart shaped chocolate wrapper that they handed us when we got off of the plane. There is also a picture of our exchange student, Henry, holding up the welcome sign that he and his family had at the airport.
The right hand page has a map of Hamburg, which is affixed to the outside of the plastic protector sheet so that the viewer can open it to see it better, as well as a screen cloth that the Ollmann Family gave us with art from around Hamburg. I chose a yellow, black , and red theme for this page to highlight the colors of the German flag.
Europe Vacation 2015: Flight 2
This is the second spread that I created to document our flight to Europe. I know that a plane flight usually doesn’t warrant two full spreads, but I had a lot of things that I wanted to keep. We flew from Chicago to Copenhagen, Denmark where we had a short layover and then continued on to Arlanda, Stockholm, Sweden.
The left hand side of the page has pictures of us landing in Copenhagen, Denmark, the food that we got on the plane (it has been a long time since I have had a flight long enough to be served food without having to get out my credit card), and a picture of Levi sleeping on the plane. This last picture is placed on top of the “puke bag” from the flight, which has a coffee stirrer from the flight in it.
The left hand page is dominated by a map of Sweden (taken from the flight magazine) and pictures of our passport stamp in Copenhagen and the Air Control tower at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm.
Europe Vacation 2015: Flight
Our trip started on a Saturday afternoon and we drove up to Chicago to catch an overnight flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. We flew on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and had a pretty good flight. I attempted to sleep but am not sure that I was too successful at it. After a short layover in Copenhagen, we flew to Arlanda Airport, one of the airports in Stockholm, Sweden.
If you follow my blog, you know that my style relies heavily on the use of ephemera – items collected during the experience – and you will see several on this page.
TIP: Read this post on “How to organize ephemera on a long trip“.
Maps: I cut the maps out of the airplane magazine and placed two of them on this page. The square one and the round one. The square one shows a traditional Mercator Projection, which makes it look like we flew in a large arc. The round one is a Mollweide projection which tries to capture that the earth is a globe. From this projection you can see that we pretty much flew a straight line between the two cities. (Click Here to find out more about Map Projections). I measured the diameter of the round map and then used my Cricut machine to cut the blue border circle of exactly the correct size.
Tickets and baggage tags: I placed our tickets and one of the baggage tags on the page and also bordered them in blue to help them stand out on the page. I like to use ticket stubs on pages because it shows dates and times, and in this case also the routes that we were taking. In the top left hand corner I used a baggage tag that I picked up from the ticket counter. I punched a hole in the plastic protector sheet and the page and pushed the elastic through the hold and taped it at the back of the page. This way it hangs free on the outside of the plastic protector page, and creates a cool effect when the page is opened.
Pictures: There are three pictures on this page: 1. Selfie of us waiting for the plane taken by my son. 2. The screen at the boarding gate, and 3. a picture of the check-in sign. I like to take pictures like this as a form of photo journaling that helps remind me of the details of the trip.
2008: Disastrous Flight to San Francisco
2008: Flight to San Francisco
My son had never been in an airplane before he moved in with me, but was terrified of flying. He must have seen some movie at some point about a plane crash because he was convinced that if he got in a plane it would crash into the ocean and/or burst into flames. 😦
Since I was planning a trip to Disney World to celebrate our adoption (See that Scrapbook HERE) – which involved a 5 hour flight – I knew that I had to get him into a plane before this time to get him used to the idea. I found a very cheap Virgin America flight to San Francisco that was supposed to be on 40 minutes long. Virgin America has planes that are like being in a club – when you get on the plane you are welcomed by neon lights and techno music. Every seat also has a monitor which serves as a TV, web browser, and game console. I figured that all of these things would keep my son busy and that he would forget that he was on a plane.
Well – the whole thing turned out to be disastrous. There was a storm in San Francisco, and we circled in very turbulent weather for over an hour. My son, along with almost everyone else on the plane threw up. I didn’t – but I was trying so hard not to that when the plane landed I realized that I was in shock and could not move my body at all for about 5 minutes!
I thought for sure that I would never get my son back on a plane after that experience – but when we got off the plane, he said “Lets do that again!”. I had to sit in the airport for about half and hour before I felt like I could walk!
This page is dedicated to that first flight that we took together:
The left hand background page I painted myself. I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for in a scrapbook store and I wanted to have something that gave the feeling of shaking and disorientation to represent the storm and turbulence. I used simple craft paint and a foam brush to put the paint on to the light blue background page.
I made the Title with my Cricut machine, and had to include one of the puke bags from the plane as a reminder of that bad experience. I also attached our boarding passes. To round out the page I bordered the two pictures with a red border to match the puke bag.
I used a cloud background page for the right hand side and had fun putting a plane sticker in the sky on this page. I took opportunity to journal on this page which I rarely do, but I wanted people to understand the story that was behind this experience. I cut the pictures on this page with a pair of decorative scissors to make them look like they have cloud edges, but I am not sure that I like the way that they turned out and I am not sure that I would do this again.
Related articles
- Flying is Scary (themidnightdiner.wordpress.com)
