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Europe Vacation 2015: Stockholm and Stortorgskallaren
After visiting the Royal Palace we walked to the Restaurant Stortorgskallaren. This spread celebrates the walk to the restaurant and the amazing meal that we had.
The spread has a black background with gold accents. On the left hand page are pictures of Stockholm, including the top left hand picture which is of the official resident of the President of Sweden. In the center of the pictures is a gold Fleur-du-lis brad (which I know is not Swedish, but I thought that it looked good.) The pictures are bordered with a gold and black Fleur-du-lis pattern paper.
The right hand page has a strip of this same paper accented with some silverware washi tape placed behind a high quality napkin collected from the restaurant. To the right of the napkins are pictures of three of our meals – a hamburger, fish, and a wonderful steak! The food was delicious and the environment was noble and historic.
Europe Vacation 2015: Swedish Royal Palace Courtyard
This spread shows the areas around the Swedish Royal Palace. The background of this spread is actually the clear plastic bag from the Royal Palace Gift Shop. I carefully cut the bag apart and then folded it around white card stock paper to create this background, which I believe is the official pattern of the Swedish Royal Family. (Note: I have learned that if you are going to use this wrapping technique that you must cut the 12×12 cardstock down about 1/4 inch on two sides so that it will fit into the plastic protector sheets when you are done.)
The left hand page showcases royal portraits from inside the palace, a picture of us entering the palace, and two pictures of the inner courtyard. The right hand page has pictures of a military band that was performing, a laser cut wooden cutout of the palace, and an informational piece that I cut from a brochure. The pictures on both sides of the spread are bordered in a black and gold paper to help them stand out against the light background.
Europe Vacation 2015: Swedish Royal Palace
On this day we went to visit the Swedish Royal Family in their palace in Stockholm. They were kind enough to let me take some formal pictures of them while we were there (jk!). The day before we arrived in Sweden was the royal wedding of Prince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist. Prince Carl is the second born of the Royal family, and I was able to watch the wedding as the Johansson family had recorded it so that they could watch it later. It was so cool to walk in the places that I had just seen on the TV.
My favorite part of these two spreads is that the background is actually royal family paper napkins that I purchased in the palace gift shop. I carefully opened the napkins, turned them upside down, placed white card stock on top of them, and then folded the napkin over the edges and taped down tightly. (Note: I have learned that if you are going to use this wrapping technique that you must cut the 12×12 cardstock down about 1/4 inch on two sides so that it will fit into the plastic protector sheets when you are done.)
The left hand page of this spread contains ephemera that I purchased in the Royal Palace gift shop: a Crown metal bookmark (middle), postcards of the royals, and the program from the tour of the palace. The program is affixed to the outside of the plastic protector sheet so that it can be viewed by the reader. To keep it from flapping open while the page is being turned, the pages are clipped together with a contemporary paper clip. The right hand page contains pictures of the banquet room and dancing hall that I saw earlier on television. The bottom right hand picture is a scale model of an earlier version of the castle that was in the castle dungeons as part of the tour.
This second spread is created in the same way as the first spread above. All of the photographs are bordered in gold paper. In this spread the left hand page show cases the entrance to the coronation room and the chapel were the royal wedding was held just 8 days earlier. The right hand page has a picture of the organ from the chapel, the entrance to the chapel, and pictures from inside the coronation room. Notice that the date in gold is the cut out which was left from creating the date plate on the first spread shown above.
Europe Vacation 2015: Skansen 2
This is the second spread of our trip to Skansen, and it is dedicated to the animals of the zoo. Notice that the background paper for the two pages mimics each other. The paper that I used for the background on the left hand page, I used for the borders on the right hand page and visa versa. both sets of paper came out of a “safari” pack, which I know is not very Swedish, but it did work wonderfully for these pictures of animals at the various zoo on the property.
If you look carefully at the bottom left hand picture you will see that the bear is looking at something shiny. It is a cell phone! Someone dropped it in the cage and the bear was getting a kick out of playing with it. Someone kept calling it which kept his attention. We never did see it rescued, but my guess is that it got scratched up quite a bit! We also saw reindeer (which was something I hoped to see in Sweden), and some very brave squirrels. We enjoyed the lemurs, but only my son enjoyed the snakes!
Europe Vacation 2015: Skansen 1
After we visited the Vasa Museum, we walked over to Skansen. The Skansen’s website shares that “Skansen was founded by Artur Hazelius in 1891. It is the world’s oldest open-air museum and is situated on the island of Djurgården within the city limits of Stockholm.”
We found it to be a mix of historical museum, living history museum, zoo, and children’s entertainment. We were only able to spend a little time at Skansen, but I am sure that it could be a full day event, as we only saw some of the parts of the facility.
I chose orange as the theme color her to match the “tram” ticket, brochure, and my son’s sweatshirt. The left hand page serves as a holder for the Skansen brochures. The black and white paper is the bag from the Skansen Museum store, and the orange ticket is for the children’s tram that we rode on to get a quicker tour of the facility so that we did not have to walk as much. I used a rotary cutter to cut the slit in the black and white bag to slip the brochures in.
The right hand page has a picture of my very yummy lunch, my son trying out stilts, and a cool picture of an old log home juxtaposed with Stockholm’s modern TV tower.
Europe Vacation 2015: Vasa Museum 1
As part of our day in Stockholm we visited the Vasa Museum – which is often touted as the number one thing to do in Stockholm, and frankly, I can see why. Wikipedia shares that “The Vasa Museum (Swedish: Vasamuseet) is a maritime museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Located on the island of Djurgården, the museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia.” Everything about this museum is fantastic – from the ship itself, to the architecture of the building housing the ship, to the interactive and engaging exhibits in the museum.
The Museum is fairly dark, to help protect the ship from sunlight and the building is cool, also to protect the ship. Since the museum was dark many of my pictures did not turn out very well. I chose a brown theme for this page as a homage to the wooden ship. On the left hand side of the spread are two pictures from outside of the museum, as well as the Museum brochure, which is affixed to the outside of the plastic protector sheet so that the reader can open it to read it. On the right hand page are pictures of the tall ship – I apologize that they are so dark, and a rare picture of me within the spread. I tend to be the one taking pictures, and am not often in them. The “Vasa” title is made with cork letters that I purchased at a craft store.
Europe Vacation 2015: Stockholm
This page marks the beginning of a very adventurous day in the capitol city of Sweden – Stockholm! While our plane landed in Stockholm we were whisked away to Uppsala right away, and now the Johansson family brought us back to Sweden to enjoy the day.
Our first stop was along the harbor to enjoy the panoramic view of the harbor and all of the places that we were going to see during the rest of the day. I took a series of pictures of the harbor that I pieced together to put on this page. Now, before you all start emailing me – I do have a panoramic setting on my camera and I could have created a picture that way – but I have found that they are very expensive to get printed that way, and I like the staggered effect that putting the pictures together in this way has.
Also on this page are an antique map of Stockholm that is over 100 years old that I purchased on Ebay! As well as a plastic coated map that I bought after the trip on Ebay as well. You may ask why I did this and did not collect a map on the way, and the main reason was that I completely forgot to do so. I like having the maps so that we can look at them later and find the places we visited on the maps. This newer map is mounted to the outside of the plastic protector sheet so that it can be opened by the viewer.
The antique map is mounted inside of the plastic protector sheet that it came in so that I didn’t have to put a glue or sticker onto the antique map, and I used the brown background of that protector sheet as a border color for the other items on the page.
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.
