Tea @ Claridge's

I've reached April now on my run through 2026, and an afternoon tea at Claridge's to celebrate my friend's big birthday. I'd thought that this page would have a mint green colour scheme, to match our cups, and even mentally selected the papers, but the the cool tones did not work with the warm tones in the photos, so I had to rethink.

After considering quite a few collections, I decided on 49 and Market's Plum Grove, using their rub-ons to create a roughly square frame around my photos, with my title across the middle. 

Supplies: Paper - 49 and Market Plum Grove; Letters - American Crafts; Rub-Ons - 49 and Market; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

Cycling the Downs Link

I'm trying to fill in the gaps in my 2026 album chronologically rather than picking out the 'easy' pages and leaving all the 'difficult' ones for later. The next set comes from my husband's first major cycle ride of the year, back in March. This was along the Downs Link, a route that runs through Surrey and West Sussex, joining the North Downs Way to the South Downs Way then continuing to the coast at Shoreham-by-Sea.

I printed seven photos, all at the same height, and arranged them in two rows, loosely based on the June sketch from For the Love of Pretty Paper.

There's not a lot of colour in the photos, so I concentrated on the orange from my husband's shirt, this being one of his favourite colours. I found a couple of individual sheets from Bo Bunny which match perfectly despite being 11 years apart in age (2006 and 2017) and both so old that they are well overdue for being used up or passed on. 

I kept the plainer piece as my background and tore the stripes to go in the top part of the page. Later on I tore another smaller strip to go at the bottom (that isn't on the sketch). I also moved the embellishment clusters to go at the ends of my photo strips, clusters made up of assorted oddments arranged around a couple of die-cut chevrons. The cross-stitch sticker was the last one of that colour in the pack so I cut it in two and used bits top and bottom.

Supplies: Paper - Bo Bunny Daydream, Bo Bunny Cottontail, Shimelle Starshine, Pink Paislee Memorandum; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Border - Unknown; Bicycle Die-Cut - Simple Stories; Acetate - 49 and Market; Stitching Sticker - Pretty Little Studio; Stars - Studio Calico; Gem Chevrons - Prima; Enamel Dots - Hey Little Magpie, Ebay

Mandala Birthday Cards

There are four newish mandala patterned cut-files in the Twilight Crafts shop, and I've used two of them for birthday cards for my first DT make this month. 

I dropped the size down to about 11cm across and cut them from black card. There were lots of areas to back, so I stuck with plain cardstock as being easier to 'read' than lots of patterns. 

I chose a rainbow of colours for both cards, going from purple in the middle to red/pink on the outside for Mandala 4, and then from red in the middle to purple on the edge for Mandala 8. 

Both mandalas looked isolated/disconnected when I originally placed them on the white card-fronts, so I smooshed some ink onto the cards in pink/purple to match the colours on the outer edges of the cut-files.

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

Parkrun Pages with Scrap Squad

It's that time of year when Scrap Squad publish their '12 Days of Summer Scraplifts', and I've used a few for parkrun pages. These are all 8x8, the photos are all quite similar and I don't generally add titles, so I welcome the scraplifts as a way to get some variety into the album.

I started off with Day 4, scraplifting a page originally made by Morag Cutts for Bramble Fox. 

Working on 8x8 means that my photo takes up proportionately more of the width of the page, so I made my layers wider too, using a 6x8 pad for the layers of patterned paper. With just one photo, I added a mason jar alongside it as a journalling spot, instead of the second photo.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Alchemy Hearts Out and About 2025, Paige Evans Bungalow Lane, Dear Lizzy Neapolitan; Sticker - Pretty Little Studio; Die-Cut - October Afternoon

Next up was Day 8, a page by Laura Alberts for Cocoa Vanilla Studio. 

I rotated the page as I only had one photo again, which was wider than it was tall, so that was a better match for the column of three photos in the original.

I found the white background to be too plain, so added a light smooshing of yellow ink behind the photo.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV, Bazzill; Paper - Simple Stories Summer Snapshots; Labels - Kaitlin Schaeffer Printable; Washi Tape - Unknown; Puffy Dots - Jen Hadfield

My third page was from Day 9, a page by Rachel O'Neal for Paper Issues.

I used a set of Vicki Boutin stamps with distress inks on my white background, inspired by the crosses on Rachel's original. I wasn't going to use twine on the tags as I like to keep these pages flat, but the tags looked unfinished until I punched the holes and added the twine.

Supplies: Paper - Simple Stories Summer Snapshots; Labels - Kaitlin Schaeffer Printable; Stitching Stickers - Pretty Little Studio; Puffy Hearts - Shimelle; Washi Tape & Enamel Hearts - Unknown; Twine - The Ribbon Reel

Then I moved on to Day 10, a page by Claire Louise for Papermaze. 

I used my only square photo for this one, rounding the corners instead of framing it as in the original.

I started from the two floral clusters when choosing my supplies, a mixture of Jen Hadfield stickers and Paige Evans papers. 

Supplies: Paper - Paige Evans; Stickers - Jen Hadfield The Avenue, Paige Evans 

From Ledgers to Leisure

Today I'm sharing my second DT page of the month for Twilight Crafts and, for once, I haven't used a cut-file. Instead I've used a couple of papers from 49 and Market's Spectrum Gardenia collection; it's a slightly older one now (2023) but collection packs are still available in the shop (at the time of writing).

My page has photos from my leaving do when I retired earlier this year. The title is something that one of my colleagues wrote in my leaving card, which I earmarked for re-use here. I double-matted my photos using both sides of the Menagerie Medley paper and positioned them on the Pinwheel paper. I embellished by colour-matching some puffy stickers to the different areas of the background, and added a couple of black ones to balance the black title.

Supplies: Paper - 49 and Market Spectrum Gardenia; Letters - Anita's Glitterations; Puffy Stickers - MAMBI, Bella Boulevard, Rosie's Studio

Fact or Fiction

I'm returning to my 2026 album now, and filling in a gap from earlier in the year. My son and I went to a recording of the Radio 4 show The Unbelievable Truth in February but we were a long way back and my photos (the smaller ones, taken at the end) weren't very clear. Thus I waited until the programme was broadcast and pinched a publicity photo to go with them. 

I'm trying to clear some old stash, so the colour scheme for this page came from a set of border stickers that I want to use up. Everything on the page except the letters and enamel dots is probably at least eight years old and comes from a wide range of suppliers.

I have two more border stickers left from this sheet, but they are black/white and grey/white so more versatile than these with the yellow and blue.

Supplies: Paper - Dear Lizzy New Day, Bazzill Basics, Simple Stories Heart, Pink Paislee Portfolio, My Mind's Eye; Letters - Hobbycraft; Stickers - Fancy Pants, Crate Paper, OneCanoeTwo, October Afternoon; Stars - Studio Calico; Enamel Dots - Violet Studio

All the Grid Squares: Watts Wood and Sandy Lane

I'm continuing with my project to walk in/through all the OS grid squares in Thurrock. At the end of my last post, I was going to focus on six unvisited squares in the south-west of the borough.

I started with square TQ5678, the single square at the bottom-right of the map, and plotted a rectangular walk round the upper part of the square. 

I started with the footpath on the right of the square, which took me through Watts Wood and into a grassy field behind the wood. I followed a well-trodden path through the grass until it turned back into the wood and fizzled out, then made my way back to the main road. The second part was more urban, following a couple of alleyways and another road to complete the route.

I then relocated for a second walk, in the top two boxes of the map. 

You can see there's one orange B road running across the squares as far as the black line which is the Thurrock boundary. All the white space is landfill, which is securely fenced off, and the little green wooded part was inaccessible behind the same fencing. Thus my route for ticking off these squares was just an out and back along Sandy Lane/B1335 from nearby Aveley. This was the first time that I'd walked over the boundary on a road, so I took a photo of the 'Welcome to Thurrock' sign.

Now my map of Thurrock overall looks like this:

My three new squares are yellow, and I've previously visited all the green squares (since August 2022). The grey and blue are the land and water borders with Essex and the Thames. The I square at the bottom is within Tilbury Docks and inaccessible to the public.

My next outing will be to Rainham Marshes to tick off the two grey squares on the left (which are grey because the border runs through them), which are the left two of the middle row of the OS map segment at the top of this post.