The Great Outdoors Challenge

The Great Outdoors Challenge is an annual event with participants planning and walking their own routes from west to east coast-to-coast across Scotland. My husband has done it six times and this double page documents his most recent challenge and will go in my 2025 album.

I originally printed 16 photos and later ditched two so that I could make a 4x4 grid in the middle of the page, with title and journalling in opposite corners. I then filled in the edges with torn strips of patterned paper and created a couple of similar embellishment clusters, happily using up a few die-cut labels and heart stickers of  indeterminate age and origin.

Supplies: Paper - Simply Made Crafts?, Heidi Swapp Wanderlust; Border Sticker - atd; Laser-Cuts - 49 and Market; Stickers - Echo Park, 49 and Market, Pretty Little Studio; Die-Cut Labels - Unknown

(Pages 20 and 21 for 2026 - I count doubles as two.)

Stitched Birthday Card

My first DT project for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files this month is a birthday card that I made with a one of the flowers from a stitching cut-file.

I printed out the PDF version of Card Flowers and Border 1 and pricked the holes in a piece of white cardstock by hand. I added distress oxide inks to the outlines and then stitched over the ink with matching threads.

Finally I matted the flower on pink patterned paper and added another piece of the same paper below with my sentiment.

Away Nights

Another page for my 2025 album, and it's a round-up of the extra runs that our running club organised last summer, in country parks and open spaces across the area. I took part in six of them and double-matted each photo with papers from a 6x8 pad. I then butted them all up together to make a colourful panel in the centre of my page.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Simple Stories Summer Snapshots; Letters - Rosie's Studio; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

(Page 19 for 2026)

Fly-Cruise

Another page for my 2025 album, and this one's a double to document a short cruise we took in November. It was the final week of a 57-night Grand Mediterranean Voyage, with us flying out to Málaga in Spain and sailing back to Southampton via Gibraltar, Lisbon and Honfleur.

I turned to the leftover supplies from a previous cruise album and made a symmetrical page with photos from the four ports on a large bracket-shaped square in the middle. I flanked this with two 3x4 photos of our flight and ship on the left side and a 4x6 of our family on formal night on the right.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Set Sail, Pebbles Seen & Noted, Bo Bunny Early Bird, My Mind's Eye Market Street; Letters - American Crafts; Stickers - Heidi Swapp; Die-Cut - Heidi Swapp; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Rosie's Studio, Craftelier

(Pages 17 and 18 for 2026 - I count doubles as two.)

Snoopy in the City

Time to share another DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-files. This one is from a sculpture trail I did in London last December which celebrated 75 years of the Peanuts comic strip.

I've used the Covid Memes cut-file; cutting the wording away left me 11 frames which I rotated and filled with photos of 11 of the 12 statues.

I didn't initially have a colour scheme in mind, so looked at my pad of pre-made mixed media backgrounds, picking one which was a yellow/green. I then picked an orange paper that had touches of that yellow/green in the pattern for my cut-file. With eleven photos framed by the cut-file, I added the twelfth in a column on the left with my title and journalling.

Supplies: Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, K&Company Mira, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline; Letters - Hip Kit Club, Shimelle; Journal Cards - Studio Calico; Stickers - My Mind's Eye, Studio Calico, Jen Hadfield, Latech

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 16 for 2026.)

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all those celebrating today (I know it's in May in many other countries). I'm sharing the card that I made for my mum, and it's quite a simple one this year. I bought Simple Stories' Mom's Day collection a few months ago, and the cut-apart sheet contains a 4x6 sentiment piece that makes the perfect basis for a card. I layered it on a larger patterned paper and just added a couple of old pearl swirls to finish off.

Parkrun Tourism 2025

Having finally finished my Norwegian cruise album, I'm turning to my 2025 annual album, aiming to complete it before 2026 draws my attention instead.

This is a round-up of our parkrun tourism for last year, when we ran seven courses other than our home event. I went with a grid of photos for this month's challenge from Hey Little Magpie, and an orange and blue colour scheme taken from the name signs.

I'm really glad to have cleared some older stash here too; that background is from 2017 and the stars 2018. There's no year on the letter stickers but I'm pretty sure they are even older. Much better to have them in my album than in my stash.

Supplies: Cardstock - Payper Box; Paper - Dear Lizzy Star Gazer, Vicki Boutin Sweet Rush; Letters - Stickopotamus; Puffy Stars - Bella Boulevard

(Page 15 for the year.)