Marching Band Scrap Book Pages

Well, they don't LOOK like "traditional" fall pages, but what could be more closely associated with "fall" than football? And what is more integral to a college football game than the marching band's half time show?

Our son, Jacob, has been a proud member of the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band, first on the tuba line, and then playing mellophone. The UMMB is one of the highest ranked college bands in the country. The director, Mr. George Parks, has been the band director for 31 years and he is credited with developing the modern band style and techniques you see in many college band performances today.

And oh, the places they've gone (and we've gone with them)! Army, Navy, exhibitions at Allentown (PA), Montreal, Symphony Hall in Boston to play with the Boston Pops, and last fall, as the premier band in the country, to play an exhibition performance at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis for the Bands of America National Championship.

DH and I flew to Indianapolis while the kids traveled by bus, a 22 hour trip that culminated with an absolutely breathtaking performance and then an hour and a half rehearsal after the performance. Then this awesome group of kids spent the night camped out on the floor of a local high school gym.

Here are the first four pages I've made to record and commemorate the trip. I stamped the background for this page, which shows the kids rehearsing after a long bus trip and show, using a stamp of the first couple of lines of music of a winter song.

First I laid out the pictures on the page and secured them with some removable two-sided tape so I could adjust the position and make sure everything was even. Then I used a white gel pen to draw a box around each one and gto draw a border around the page with a 3/4 inch margin.

Next, I removed the pictures and masked every place I didn't want the background to cover... the margins and each of the boxes for the pictures. Lastly, I inked up the musical score but not the song title, and stamped the background for the page.

The background for this page was made with torn strips of red and white paper. The flags and stars on both of the next two pages are stamped.



The stars were stamped with white ink on metallic gold paper and embossed with white embossing powder. The flags were stamped three times: on gold with gold ink, embossed with gold; on white with cranberry ink and embossed with cranberry; on white with navy blue and embossed with navy. The pieces were then cut out and assembled into flags.