Normandy

Today is Memorial Day, a day not for barbecues but to remember those men and women who died in the service of their country.  And today's scrapbook layout is particularly appropriate today.

While on a trip to France in 2013, we took a train from Paris out to Normandy and did a tour where we visited the D-Day beaches, a few towns and battlefields, and the American cemetery (see my original blog post about it here).  We happened to do the tour on July 4th, and when we arrived at the cemetery a small group of people was handing out roses and the names of soldiers.  All of the soldiers to whom we paid our respects don't have graves though; they're all known casualties of the D-Day invasions but their remains have never been recovered, so we left the roses at the wall inscribed with their names.  Even today, scientists are using DNA to identify remains, so there are some brass rosettes on the wall that indicate that that particular soldier has been found.

I kept the layout very simple but I just had to use this eagle stamp from The Free & the Brave.  I have a Post-It Note mask of the eagle's head, so I used it to watercolor around with Smoky Slate ink on a scrap of paper:

Then after it dried, I used the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to stamp the eagle on top of it with Dapper Denim ink so the eagle is white but the background is gray, but after I stamped it the Smoky Slate looked so pale you can't really tell the difference anyway :p  I used just a teeny bit of So Saffron ink for the eagle's eye and beak.

It was just my great good fortune that my title fit *exactly* on the journaling panel.

Today's color palette is Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White, with a smidgen on So Saffron and Basic Gray ink for the journaling.  I thought about adding some red, but I figured there was enough red in the photos, and otherwise I liked the blue/gray combination.  And I like that the Perfectly Artistic DSP kind of mimics the pattern you'd see on marble.

Have a good day, folks.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  The Free & the Brave, Spencerian Alphabet (retired)
Ink:  Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, So Saffron, Basic Gray
Paper:  Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, Thick Whisper White, Perfectly Artistic DSP
Accessories:  Stamp-a-Ma-Jig