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!
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.
I'm sharing the pages from my cruise mini-book in the order that they come in the book, not the the order that I made them. I rarely make holiday album pages in chronological order so that there is no evolution in style or sudden introduction of new supplies as you turn the pages. I've already shared the pages from Málaga but these from Gibraltar were the first that I made.
Gibraltar was our shortest stop, with the fewest photos, so it seemed like a good place to get started and feel my way with this new size. I will have a double page for each port, with as many flaps and inserts as I need to cover everything in that space. This is the initial view for the Gibraltar pages:
The left side, with my title card and a view from the ship at sea, pulls out from a pocket and unfolds to three panels with photos from our cable car trip up the Rock:
We flew out to Málaga for our cruise, and then spent the next day in the town. Each port of call is getting one double page in my mini-album and I've decorated four 4x6 title cards (one per port) which will start off the left side along with a photo of the town each time. I'll then add as many flaps and inserts as I need to accommodate my photos and journalling.
This is the initial view of the Málaga pages:
The right side is dedicated to the 14th century Castillo de Gibralfaro which was built on a on a hill above the city in order to protect it (spoiler - it failed in 1487). I had plenty of photos that I wanted to include so this page opens out with two flaps:
Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Pink Paislee Atlas, American Crafts Shimelle; Letters - Teresa Collins; Journalling Cards - Project Life; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Make & Create, 49 and Market, Teresa Collins; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee
The cut-file was pre-cut in a soft yellow so I looked for a 6x6 pad to match it and found an old one from My Mind's Eye with enough patterns left to make it interesting. I tried to alternate darker and lighter papers but did them randomly rather than in strict rotation as I had varying amounts left.
Supplies: Paper - K & Company, My Mind's Eye Now and Then; Letters - American Crafts; Stickers - Studio Calico; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.
(Page 27 for 2026)
I'm sharing the first page of my new cruise mini-book today.
All our previous cruises have started and finished at a UK port, but this was a fly-cruise where we flew out to Málaga and sailed back to Southampton, joining the ship for final week of its 57-night Mediterranean Grand Voyage.
I will have a double page for each of the ports visited, but this is just a single to get started. The top photo is one I bought onboard which shows our route, and the bottom is one of our ship, Fred. Olsen's Balmoral. Both of these are stuck to flaps that lift up for more photos and journalling.
The top flap lifts to show a photo as we boarded the plane, one of Málaga from the air and a journalling card.
There's more journalling under the bottom flap as our original itinerary was changed due to bad weather so I have an explanation of the changes and then both the old and new versions.
(Page 26 for 2026; it's neither 12x12 or 8x8 so doesn't follow my existing 'rules', but I've decided to count this as a whole page in my count for the year. It has the same total surface area as a 12x12 and I also had to make the base page first.)
Up to now, I've made (or planned to make) an album for each of our foreign holidays. However, that is beginning to cause me problems so I am going to change tack.
Both our children have left home and we cut down our working hours in recent years, so we've been able to take more holidays and the albums 'to do' list is growing faster than I can complete them. We've both recently retired completely so this 'problem' is only going to get worse. I am more-or-less completing the current annual albums but I don't find the time to work on the older ones that still have plenty of gaps, or to turn the boxes of pages from even earlier years into albums. This weighs on my mind as I will eventually be leaving all my albums to our daughter (our son has no interest) and I'd rather leave her a complete set of annual albums than a stack for holidays where she wasn't even there.
I don't want to stop documenting our holidays, but I'm going to try switching to making mini-books for them instead of 12x12 albums. I don't plan for the books to be particularly 'mini' as I'm starting with an 8"x8.5" for a fly-cruise we took in November. This one's an experiment to see whether I can make mini-books with enough flips and flaps to hold all the photos and whether I can make them in a shorter time period.
I'll be basing my first mini-book on the 'Jubilee Album' taught by the late Cal Summers in the summer of 2022 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee; however I'll obviously be using different papers and I will mix and match the page types to suit my needs rather than making exactly the same book.
My last 12x12 holiday album was for a cruise to Norway in July/August last year. It lasted twelve nights with six ports of call and the resulting album has 36 pages with 148 photos. In November we took a seven night fly-cruise with four ports of call; I expect my mini-book to have two single pages and four double pages (one per port) with extra pockets inside the front and back covers. Cal's version holds 208 photos (which is more than my Norway album does) but, as I said, I'll be modifying her design.
I've bought a stack of A4 kraft cardstock for my basic album structure, but nothing else as I'm planning to 'bash my stash' for this one. I started from the remains of Simple Stories' Hello Today collection; it may be an odd choice as it's an annual collection with patterns on one side of each paper and an assortment of monthly cut-aparts on the other, but I like the way that the colours repeat in different patterns across the collection.
I've added the leftovers of Pink Paislee's Atlas collection which is travel-themed and some of the colours match those in Hello Today. I originally used this for Austria 2016 so it's high time I got the rest used up or passed on. I also have the remains of a 6x6 pad and some journal cards from My Mind's Eye Hello World which I might mix in, though only some of the colours are right.
Since I mostly have scraps of all these collections, I've pulled out some 12x12 papers from Simple Stories, Heidi Swapp, Shimelle, Echo Park and We R Memory Keepers which match the colours of Hello Today. I also have two pieces of memorabilia which I want to include - our cruise log and a postcard with a map of our route.
I'm going to keep the pages flat on this project so that everything folds up neatly. This means no enamel dots or bulky embellishments so I'll be decorating with stickers and punched shapes. I have a sheet of travel-themed washi stickers from 49 and Market, most of a pack of camera-themed clear stickers from Make & Create and a filmstrip washi tape, all in black and white. I won't be using any Thickers and will concentrate on die-cut letters and flat stickers for titles.
