Poppy's Flags - A Memorial Day Custom

Remembering.... I wanted to share a this page I created many years ago when I began scrapbooking when my boys were still quite small, celebrating one of those “little things” that honor the memory of my grandfather.  Now they are 12 and 14,  my grandmother has joined my grandfather in heaven, and the singing part of this tribute may have stopped, but the flags still find a place of honor in our front yard on each occasion. 

Tom did the honors of placing the flags this morning...

This simple page began with a pre-blocked patterned scrapbook paper.  But even when I started the journey of scrapbooking so many years ago, I wanted more depth & dimension, so I popped things off the page - I added real buttons and wire over those printed on the page itself, cut second hearts and stars from a separate piece of paper, wrapped them with fibers, then mounted with Elmer’s foam tape over the preprinted ones.  Journaling was printed onto a removable tag kept in a pocket.  The photos are done “flip book style” - I used 3 clear envelopes, mounted with the tabs together, to create a flip book of photos of the flags and my boys with my grandmother performing their ritual to place the flags.

The journaling reads:

Poppy’s flags make their annual trip to our front yard each year for Memorial Day, Flag Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day, (and now 9/11).  Great Grammy King, Joe & Tom have a parade from the back yard to the front yard singing "God Bless America" as loud as they can and I just know Poppy is enjoying the show and smiling down from Heaven!  - 7/2004