A New Project for a Fly-Cruise

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.

All the Grid Squares: Cely Woods & Kenningtons Park

I'm documenting a couple of recent walks in which I resurrected my old project to walk in all the OS grid squares in Thurrock Borough. I'd started this in 2022 but it fell by the wayside in 2023, and now I'm going back to it.

I've blogged previous walks in detail, but my blog is primarily for me and I don't need that detail. I'm more interested in recording which squares I have ticked off, so this post will be a quick summary and a few photos.

My first walk started in Cely Woods and continued through the neighbouring Warwick Wood and White Post Wood. This is all ancient woodland, now managed by Forestry England.

The main track is about 2.5km long but I wandered off deeper into the woods on more minor paths at some points. I was primarily looking for bluebells but made sure that I passed through all four possible grid squares.

My second walk was in Kenningtons Park which is a little way south of Cely Woods. It wasn't clear from the maps online just how much land was accessible and it turned out not to be a huge area, though a notice board in the car park shows their plan to construct new paths in the future.

I explored all the paths, including several dead ends and found myself back at the car park in no time, so went round again to make the walk worth the drive there. 

Small though the area is, I completed two more squares here and also walked a short way into a previously visited square.

I've marked the Cely Woods walk in orange and Kenningtons Park in yellow on the map below; the green squares are ones that I had previously visited; the purple one is my home square; the grey and blue squares are the land and river borders of the borough. The square with a red outline is inside Tilbury Docks and inaccessible.

This leaves me with a small, isolated block of squares in the west of the borough which I will be attempting to visit next. I've outlined them in red here, and marked the borough boundary in black.

A visit to RSPB Rainham Marshes will get me two of them, the left two in the row of three, but I'll need to do some more research to see whether I can use parks or footpaths through the other squares or if I'll have to resort to walking along roads.

80

Today's DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files was initially inspired by the February sketch for For the Love of Pretty Paper. I knew that I could use the Star Bunting 1 cut-file with that sketch and a photo from my mum's 80th birthday.

I based my colour scheme on the plate that my mum's holding as I knew I had a mixed media style paper from Vicki Boutin in those colours and, since I store my whole papers by manufacturer/designer, I immediately spotted the floral from another of her collections to go with it. 

I cut half the cut-file from a pink patterned paper to go against the yellow stripes on the background, and ended up cutting it into two pieces so that it would show on the left half of the page.

I built a paper stack behind the photos and went through my embellishment drawers (I store those by colour) for anything else that I could tuck in (and used up a pleasing amount of oddments). 

Supplies: Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, Vicki Boutin Sweet Rush, Pinkfresh Studio Happy Holidays, Basic Grey Urban Prairie, Paige Evans Bungalow Lane; Numbers - American Crafts; Filmstrip - 49 and Market; Word Stickers - Jen Hadfield; Stars - Hobbycraft; Acetate Heart & Tab Die-Cuts - 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.

(Page 25 for the year.)

All the Grid Squares: Project Resurrected

Back in August 2022, I embarked on a project to walk in or through all the (accessible) OS grid squares in Thurrock (and blogged about it here). However, by January 2023 a combination of rising workload and poor weather saw it quietly stop. It wasn't a conscious decision to abandon it, and I've thought about the project many times since then, and now I'm going back to it. I've recently retired, I want to stay active and I'm bored of walking routes from home.

Last time I blogged, my map of Thurrock looked like this, with each box being a 1km OS grid square:

The dark green squares were ones that I had walked in since August 2022, while the light green squares were ones that I had walked in prior to that date. When I started, I wasn't sure whether the light green ones would count, but now I have decided that they don't and that I will revisit them. The land border with London/Essex runs through the grey squares and the river border with the Thames runs through the blue squares (and some of the green/visited squares). I am aiming to visit all these border squares, though there are a few where the Thurrock part is tiny and might be inaccessible.

Moving forward to 2026, I've visited a good many more squares even while I wasn't actively exploring. I joined a running club in October 2024 and they are based in the black-outlined square below so I've now run all around there. Furthermore, last summer some members organised 'away nights' in different areas which filled in a few more squares. I've coloured all the running squares bright blue below (as that's our running club colour). I've also visited the orange squares - the one on its own contains our nearest library, and the three at the bottom were covered by us walking from Tilbury Cruise Terminal to Tilbury Town railway station after a cruise in December 2023. Finally, I've blanked out the light green squares following my decision to re-visit them. 

I've been out twice in the last couple of weeks to collect a few new squares so I'll blog them soon.

Parkrun Pages

Having finished my 2025 album, I'm turning my attention to my parkrun album now. I've been sitting on the first page since January since I generally share them in pairs; I count these 8x8 pages as halves in my page count for the year and it's been waiting for a 'twin' to keep the count even.

(The numbers are my page count for the year.)

22.5 Wickford Memorial

Catherine's Page

I made this page for week 3 of the January/February series from Scrapbook Challenges UK. We were asked to use yellow, paint splatters, 2+ photos, an animal and the theme of happiness, but we didn't have to use all the prompts. There were bonus points for scraplifting one of three layouts and I chose one by Catherine Lapidge.

I saw Catherine's page as a giant bauble which was perfect for our run at Wickford Memorial parkrun on Christmas Day. I found a couple of Christmassy die-cuts and popped a robin on one for my animal. The background is yellow and I spattered gold paint across the diagonal. I only had one photo and I thought that I would be dropping the happiness theme too, until I found the journalling die-cut. 

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV; Paper - Junkitz Salsa Celebration; Die-Cuts - Fancy Pants, Pebbles; Ribbon Laser-Cut - 49 and Market; Gems - Love to Craft

23. Whitecliffe Lake

This page comes from from January when we visited a newish event which started in November and immediately became our NENDY (nearest event not done yet). I used the March sketch from For the Love of Pretty Paper for this one.

My paper choice was driven by my scraps box. I sort by size (simply two pizza boxes with large and small scraps) so I went through the 'large' box until I found two papers that went together and then stopped looking. I only had one photo so I used a journalling card instead of the second, an ancient one that I am happy has finally found a home on a page.

Supplies: Paper - Simple Stories, Crate Paper; Journalling Card - My Mind's Eye; Flowers - Unknown; Puffy Crosses - Studio Calico; Washi Tape - Tesco

23.5 Valentines

We toured again in February when our local grass course was a quagmire so we turned to alternatives in parks with solid paths. First up was Valentines Park in Ilford. It was a rainy day so I based my page around a raindrop card and pulled matching papers from my scraps box.

Supplies: Papers - Unknown Scraps; Card - Studio Calico; Labels - Kaitlin Sheaffer; Puffy Hearts - Shimelle; Enamel Hearts - My Mind's Eye, Altenew

24. Raphael

The following week we went to Raphael Park in Romford, and I scraplifted a page by Kirei Baldwin which was one of the '12 Days of Spring' scraplifts in the Scrap Squad group on Facebook recently.

I took all my paper strips from a 6x6 pad which I would love to kill off, and added oddments of embellishments in matching colours, including the same clear stickers with faux stitching that Kirei used.

Supplies: Paper - Basic Grey Mint Julep, Shimelle, Vicki Boutin; Stickers - Pretty Little Studio; Enamel Hearts - Maggie Holmes, Altenew

I have a few more pages to do to bring this album up-to-date, but I haven't printed the photos yet so it's back on hold for now.

Malta Memories

I'm sharing my latest DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files today. It's a summary of our holiday in Malta last year, which will go in my annual album for 2025.

I used the frames from the Covid Memes Polaroid cut-file (cutting away the wording) and backed them with eight photos from our trip. I then made a 'MALTA' cut-file to run across the middle in place of the original wording and layered the chipboard word 'Memories' over it. I outlined both cut-files to give them some definition and added a few word stickers and enamel shapes.

This concludes my 2025 album. I have a few pages to make for my 8x8 parkrun album, and I need to make a start on 2026 (five pages on the list so far). I also have plans for a new holiday album project, so look out for that soon.

Supplies: Cardstock - Rosie's Studio; Paper - Rosie's Studio Golden Afternoon; Chipboard - 49 and Market; Stickers - Tim Holtz; Enamel Shapes - 49 and Market

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 22 for the year.)

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.)