Finishing my Fly-Cruise Mini-Book

I've made the title page for my fly-cruise mini-album, and I've made four double pages for the four ports we visited, so now it's time to share the final single page, as there have to be an even number.

I've used a photo of the four of us, all dressed up on formal night, and placed it on a pocket which holds our cruise log. I'd initially planned to make a pocket on the back cover for the cruise log instead, but there was space here so I decided to move it and keep the inside covers clear.

My original plan was to make a version of the Jubilee Book by the late Cal Summers, which she made for Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. In the end, I don't think I've made any of her pages in exactly the same way, as I made mine in pairs to fit the photos and stories that I wanted to include. However, my basic book size is down to her and I returned to her videos to make the hinges and cover for mine. I had to pull in extra papers for this, but I'm quite happy that they are different ones from those that I used inside the album.

My outside cover is almost a polka-dot, but the dots are actually tiny planes. Unfortunately, the patterned paper started to split on the folds, so I had to go over the top and bottom of the covers with washi tape, but it's not too obvious.  I decorated the front using Twilight Crafts' Overlapping Triangles cut-file, which I cut from the same cardstock as the book pages, and backed with leftover papers that are in the book. I cut the 'Fly Cruise' words from the same dies that I'd used on the title page, and added the four ports in tile stickers below the cut-file.

I covered the insides with a cream and brown travel icons print.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Craft ID Travel the World, Simply Made Crafts Travel Keepsakes, Photoplay Anchors Aweigh, Simple Stories Hello Today, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, American Crafts Shimelle, Simple Stories I Am; Letters - Teresa Collins, Creative Devotion; Stickers - Simple Stories, Photoplay; Washi Tape - Unknown

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

Review Points

1. Format

I was trying a mini-book as an alternative to a 12x12 album for a shorter-than-usual cruise to see how they compare, whether a mini-book would hold enough photos and whether it would be quicker to complete.

My last 12x12 cruise album was for Norway last year; it lasted twelve nights with six ports of call and the resulting album took me about six months to make (in between other projects) with 36 pages holding 148 photos. By contrast, the mini-book was for seven nights with four ports of call; it took about three months to make (among other pages) and holds 92 photos. This is an average of 23/24 24 photos per port so the smaller format hasn't affected the number of photos I included. The main difference was that for the 12x12 I made pages until I had covered everything I wanted to include, whereas for the mini-book I limited myself to one basic double page per port and then added as many flaps and inserts as necessary to hold everything. This meant I had to plan carefully when designing the pages and had to scrap each port as a whole rather than just going page-by-page. I did find that there is much less 'white space' in the mini-book than the 12x12 album as almost all the surface area is covered in either photos or journalling. 

The new format certainly worked, but the resulting mini-book has a 1.75" spine and I wouldn't want to go much thicker, so I think I will have to limit it to shorter cruises. I don't think it would sensibly hold more than five ports, especially if there are a lot of shipboard photos to include too (there weren't this time but there were five pages in the Norwegian album). However, I didn't use either inside cover so I have extra space there if required another time.

We currently have three more cruises booked (for 2026 and 2027). One to Iceland has six ports, one around Britain has four ports and a return to Norway has seven ports. The middle one looks like a good candidate for another mini-book. I also have a few older cruises that don't have albums yet, at least one of which should suit the mini-book format.

2. Supplies

I blogged my starting supplies here, but I didn't use them all. I found that I filled almost all my page space with photos and journalling cards, with little room for much else. I only used bits of two of the Pink Paislee Atlas papers and none of the My Mind's Eye Hello World. My pack of Simple Stories Hello Today papers was already the leftovers from another project and was still sufficient for this album when bulked out by just four additional 12x12 sheets with quiet patterns like polka dots and stripes for the inside pages and then four more for the covers. When I make my next mini-book, I should be able to do so using existing supplies again rather than buying new ones. I may make the pages just a little smaller so that I can use 6x8 papers, but I'll need to think about that and plan it out.

Mini-Book Pages from Honfleur

This is the last of my port pages from our fly-cruise last November, for an extra port that was squeezed in as an itinerary change. We were supposed to visit Málaga, Gibraltar and Lisbon, with an overnight stay in the Portuguese capital, but an approaching storm caused the company to shorten the stops in Gibraltar and Lisbon so we could cross the Bay of Biscay a day earlier. This gave us a free day at the end of the cruise, which we spent in Honfleur, France.

My husband and I had been here before but that was 15 years ago and we didn't remember much beyond the Vieux Bassin (old harbour) and an old wooden church with separate bell tower. We picked up a map when we disembarked which showed three walking tours in the town so we started off with two of them; later in the day our daughter and I did the third.

Each port has a double page in my mini-album, with a 4x6 title card and then  generally three more 4x6 cards or photos which open up with enough flips and flaps to hold all the photos.  

This time, the left side opens up to a page of journalling for the whole day and a waterfall of photos and cards from the Old Town walking tour, as there were so many old buildings to include.

I haven't taken pictures of all the waterfall pages, but there are 10 photos in there with a few journalling cards to explain what they all are.

The top of the right-hand side has a view of a park called the Jardin des Personnalités, and this lifts up and pulls out from a pocket. The Jardin is full of busts of famous people connected with Honfleur, and I have included about half of them, in four groups.

The bottom of the right-hand page has a smaller lift up flap from our third walk, to the Côte de Grâce viewpoint. The outside (above) has an overall view of the town, and the inside has photos of the small chapel on the top of the hill.

So that's the last port done, just one other page left and then I need to construct the cover. I've left that until last as I had no idea how thick the pages would get when I started, and therefore what size spine the book would need. That will all be the subject of my next post.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Simple Stories Happy Travels, My Mind's Eye Now and Then; Letters - Glitz Design, Creative Devotion, Make & Create; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Tim Holtz, OneCanoeTwo; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Mini-Book Pages from Lisbon

I'm returning to my fly-cruise mini-book now, and will finish it off in the next few posts. This was a seven night cruise last November with four ports of call, and I'm trialling the mini-book format instead of a 12x12 album. I've previously shared the title page and two doubles for Málaga and Gibraltar, so now it's the turn of Lisbon.

The initial view of each double page has been similar, with a 4x6 title card and three other 4x6 photos or cards, which open up to as required to share all the photos I want to include from each port.

For Lisbon, the left side opens as two separate flaps. The top one has photos of the central Praça do Comércio and also Belém (which our son visited); the bottom one has photos of the Elevador de Santa Justa and the Carmo Church (which our daughter visited):

The right side is a large flap, hinged at the top, for photos of the Alfama district, Lisbon's old town.

I made a pocket to sit behind the lower set of photos, which holds a double-sided pull-out card for the Castelo de São Jorge. 

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Echo Park Dots & Stripes, Pink Paislee Atlas, Simple Stories Simple Vintage Botanicals, Simple Stories I Am, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart; Letters - Glitz Design, Creative Devotion; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Tim Holtz, Pretty Little Studio; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Club Night with AI

I have another page for my 2026 album today, and it's also a DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. My pictures come from a social night for our running club, where afterwards a member turned the group photo into a drawing using ChatGPT, and then my husband turned us all into Lego people.

I stuck with the Lego theme by using the girl from the Lego Pirate, Girl and Spaceman cut-file as a large embellishment, cutting her from dull brown cardstock and backing her with paper scraps, including making her shirt match our club colour. I didn't trust myself to draw her face, so I used some punctuation stickers instead.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania; Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Hello Today; Letters - Shimelle, American Crafts, Papermania; Journalling Cards - Maggie Holmes; Word Stickers - Tim Holtz; Stickers - Studio Calico, Hobbycraft, OneCanoeTwo; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Unknown; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

Salt Marsh Half Marathon

My husband's first race of the year was the Saltmarsh Half Marathon, and I went along as support crew, dropping him at the start, pausing twice to see him en route and picking him up at the end.

This page was built around one of the photos I took of a line of runners beside the river, which came out in soft focus and reminded me of a watercolour painting. I decided to print it on plain white cardstock which adds to the softness, and use it in place of patterned paper in the middle of this page. I then layered the before and during photos over the top and the finish photo with a journalling box over the bottom part.

Supplies: Paper - Mintay Golden Days, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline, Basic Grey Urban Prairie, Shimelle Glitter Girl; Letters - Hip Kit Club, Echo Park?; Die-Cuts - Simple Stories, Pinkfresh Studio, October Afternoon; Enamel Stars - Latech

20 Years of Blitz Gooday

Years ago, I received some swatch books from Paige Evans' collections in a mystery box; these are 2" square books packed with patterns and sayings filling each page. I've been meaning to make a tiled layout ever since but never got round to it. April's sketch from the girls at 1 Sketch: 3 Ways (originally published by Page Maps) finally gave me the push to get it done. 

I picked a photo from our company's 20th anniversary celebrations as it matched the colours in my swatch books, an odd way for me to start but it was curiously satisfying to switch round my normal process.

Supplies: Paper - Paige Evans Truly Grateful, Amy Tangerine Brave + Bold, Shimelle Never Grow Up; Swatches - Paige Evans Wonders, Paige Evans Go the Scenic Route; Letters - Doodlebug; Washi Tape - Shimelle, Little B; Enamel Dots - American Crafts, Stampin' Up!

A Few Birthday Cards

I'm sharing a few cards today, in particular one that I made as a DT project for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used the Chain Circle cut-file shrunk down to about 5.5" across and backed with four papers from a 6x6 pad. I then added another circle in the middle with my sentiment and popped it up on foam squares.

This one was a lift of a previous card, as there's no need to 'reinvent the wheel', a change of papers gives it a different look, and it went to a different recipient.

Finally, this card was based on one of the 'bits and pieces' that I keep in a drawer for making cards. I've had the plaid paper with the sentiment for ages so I tore it in two to stretch it across a wider card and filled in the gap with coordinating pieces. 

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.