Art of the Brick

Just one page today, but it's a mammoth one - a double with an insert - for our visit to Art of the Brick in March. This was a touring exhibition of artworks created from Lego bricks, and there were plenty of them. I had trouble whittling the photos down to just these twenty. I'd originally thought that I would use lots of primary colours to match the bricks, but it turned out that yellow was the best match for the photos and I just added a bit of green. Embellishment is sparse because I really wanted to focus on the photos for this one.

I'm down to three gaps in my 2024 album now: a page from the recording of a QI episode (and I'm waiting for it to be broadcast so I can perhaps take some screenshots); a double for my husband's TGO Challenge walk across Scotland in May; and a few pages from a weekend camping in the Peak District in August.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon; Stickers - Tim Holtz, Studio Calico

(These are pages 91-93 of my page count for the year.)

Pages from Starting Points

I sometimes make 'starting point' pages, a term I have taken from Shimelle, pages that I start without photos and finish at a later date. I do this either in order slim down my scraps box or to kill off a collection pack. And, eventually, they do generally get used even if that's years later, like these two pages.

89. Girls' Night Out
I started this one back in 2016, one of two pages that I started with the remnants of Basic Grey's What's Up collection.  I planned it for a single 4x6 vertical photo and it's taken eight years to get one that suits the colour scheme. I finished it using the Girls Night Out cut-file from Twilight Crafts which I backed with some of the scraps that I had kept, before fussy-cutting some leaves and a flower as embellishment.

Supplies: Paper - Basic Grey What's Up, My Mind's Eye Cut and Paste; Letters - My Mind's Eye; Stars - Rosie's Studio; Nuvo Drops

90. #Boyznite

My second page is only five years old, and was started with an assortment of blue and green pieces from my scraps box. I cut down the blue paper with the writing on as it wasn't completely right for the page once I had decided to use it with this photo, and tucked in a journalling card to the side. I based the embellishment clusters around three punched circles that I had kept and finished off two packs of puffy stars.

Supplies: Paper - Cherry Arte, Jillibean Soup, Sandylion, My Mind's Eye; Letters - American Crafts; Stars - Pinkfresh Studio, MRI; Enamel Dots - Altenew, 49 & Market, Ebay

This just leaves one starting point page in the folder, waiting a bit longer for its finishing touches. Though my scraps box is getting rather full again ...

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

Pages with Jenny Wren Cut-Files

I've been trying to keep on top of my 2024 album as we go along. There are a few gaps, but I'm not doing too badly. These are a couple of pages where I have used Jenny Wren Cut-Files from Twilight Crafts.

87. Celebrate 70

A page for my husband's aunt's 70th birthday in August where we had afternoon tea at a local hotel. I used a smaller version of Flower Lace 1 for this page and paired it with a soft pastel blue background and fussy-cut flowers.

Supplies: Paper - Carta Bella, Cocoa Vanilla Studio Daydream; Letters - Heidi Swapp; Numbers - American Crafts; Stickers - Cocoa Vanilla Studio, Jen Hadfield

88. Trick or Treat

I used a Hallowe'en cut-file for the title on this page, cutting the whole thing from black cardstock and then separating out the pumpkins for embellishment in two sizes.  

Supplies: Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill, American Crafts, DCWV; Paper - Simple Stories Simple Vintage October 31st, Pink Paislee Memorandum, 7gypsies Avignon; Puffy Stars & Gems - Paperchase

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 - Part 2

Last post I shared four parkrun pages made with scraplifts from the 12 Days of Autumn event over in the Scrap Squad Facebook group and now I have another four to share. These bring my parkrun album up to date, which was one of the tasks I set myself to complete before I can start my cruise album.

84.5 250 Runs

I completed my 250th parkrun back in July and used the scraplift from Day 8 for this page. Ours is a two lap course so we often get two photos and I generally use the better one, but we had heavy showers that day. It was dry at the start so I risked running without a raincoat. Big mistake and having got soaked through I swapped my sodden shirt for my waterproof for the second lap. Hence I used both photos and printed them small as neither is very good but they contribute to the story.

Supplies: Paper - Kay Miller Designs Simple Pleasures; Letters - American Crafts; Phrase Stickers - Pretty Little Studio

85. Monsal Trail

Moving on to Day 9, and Monsal Trail parkrun which we ran in August while camping in the Peak District. The original had a circular cut-file, lots of stitching and some fussy-cut leaves, but mine is much simpler as I deliberately keep these 8x8 pages quite flat.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV; Paper - Docrafts Spring Chic; Making Memories Fresh Anthology; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

85.5 150 Runs

My husband completed his 150th run this summer, and I've recorded that with Day 10's scraplift and lots of diamond shapes. The original page had a small landscape photo but I chose to crop mine to match the papers.

Supplies: Paper - Dovecraft, Pinkfresh Studio Let Your Heart Decide; Letters - Simple Stories; Washi Tape - Unknown; Enamel Dots - Hey Little Magpie

86. Y Promenad

You might have seen this photo before as I scrapped it recently for my 2024 album on a 12x12 double page as part of a weekend away in Wales. However, it also needs to go into my parkrun album so I went back to the scraplift from Day 4 as that was the only one left that I could make work with a 4x6 photo though I tweaked it so that it wouldn't look too much like South Woodham Ferrers/Day 7.

Supplies: Paper, Die-Cuts & Puffy Stickers - Vicki Boutin Fernwood; Washi Tape - Little B

Parkrun Pages with Scrap Squad - Part 1

I started bringing my parkrun album up to date when I came back from my holiday, and this coincided with the 12 Days of Autumn event in the Scrap Squad Facebook group, so I aimed to do as many of their scraplifts as possible with my parkrun photos. 

These are the first four and they are all 8"x8" so I count them as half-pages in my count for the year as they are roughly half the area of a 12"x12" page.

82.5 Blaise Castle

I started with Day 5, using two small photos offset diagonally with papers from a 6x6 pad. I ran here on the weekend of the Twilight crop back in May.

Supplies: Paper - Dovecraft, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye

83. South Woodham Ferrers

Next was Day 7, a page with layers of paper across the the top and a single landscape photo. We did this one in August to tick off 'South' in the compass point challenge.

Supplies: Paper - Dovecraft, Vicki Boutin Storyteller; Sticker - Vicki Boutin

83.5 Jubilee

I then went back to Day 1, with three big tags and a single portrait photo from Jubilee parkrun in Spennymoor which we ran en route to our recent cruise.

Supplies: Paper - Dovecraft, Heidi Swapp Wanderlust; Stickers - My Mind's Eye, OneCanoeTwo; Nuvo Drops

84. Hoblingwell 

Then Day 6 with another portrait photo on a large banner. Hoblingwell gave us an H for the Alphabet Challenge.

Supplies: Paper - Fancy Pants Little Sprout, Bo Bunny Little Wonders, Maggie Holmes Chasing Dreams; Glitter Tape - The Works; Stickers - Jen Hadfield; Enamel Dots - Altenew, My Mind's Eye

Nomads on Tour

Things have been quiet around here as we've been away on a cruise round the Mediterranean, and then I had to create something to share with you. I'm itching to make a start on my cruise scrapbook but it will have to wait as I have a few things I want to do first, such as finishing my 2023 album and bringing both my parkrun album and my 2024 album up to date.

I'm starting with 2024 and a double page for a weekend in Wales last month. This was organised by a member of Thurrock Nomads, our local running group, with the aim of doing a parkrun on Saturday morning followed by a walk up Pen y Fan in the afternoon. I made both halves of the page using Jenny Wren cut-files from Twilight Crafts as my DT projects this month, with Picture Wheel on the left and Road Sign 2 on the right.

(These are pages 81 & 82 for my page count this year.)

Supplies

Paper - Make & Create Moments, My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm, Make & Create Grunge Dreams, My Mind's Eye Necessities

Letters - American Crafts, Paige Evans

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo, Paige Evans, Pretty Little Studio, 49 & Market

Die-Cuts - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Dots - Altenew, Maggie Holmes

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

Pages from Stockholm - Part 2

Last week I shared the first six pages from Stockholm on our Scandinavian cruise, and now I'm publishing the rest. We had visited the city before and visited the major attractions that interested us, so we spent some time on Stockholm's metro system, dubbed the longest art gallery in the world, looking at the artworks.

These are all pocket pages and, although I do use a few configurations of pocket page protectors, each of these has six 4x6 landscape pockets.

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

75. Universitetet / T-Centralen 

I gave the top four pockets here to Universitetet station which has a series of tiled panels devoted to Carl Linnaeus. The bottom two pockets are for T-Centralen, the only station which all three lines pass through; the walls of the red and green lines' platform are tiled with geometric patterns.

76. Odenplan / Thorildsplan / Rådhuset

Three stations this time, with two pockets apiece. Odenplan had a display from a local college; Thorildsplan is tiled with images in the style of early video games; Rådhuset has a variety of artefacts designed to look like they had sunk through the earth and reappeared in the station below.

77. Solna Centrum

This was the most impressive station, carved from the rock and painted with almost a kilometre of spruce forest below a sunset red sky. There are lots of smaller scenes along the walls highlighting nature, rural depopulation and environmental damage, and cases displaying smaller tableau. 

78. T-Centralen /Kungsträdgården

Back to T-Centralen on the blue line, which here is painted with calming blue vines and flowers. Then four pockets for Kungsträdgården; it means the King's Garden and the station is below a park of the same name where a palace used to stand. The bare rock walls have been adorned with casts of statues from the old palace and one end has a mock excavation site.

79. Underground Overground / Skeppsholmen

Back above ground, we visited the real Kungsträdgården and then walked over to another island called Skeppsholmen for coffee.

80. Stockholm Archipelago

My final page features the Stockholm Archipelago, the collection of 30,000 islands that we sailed through after we left the city.

That concludes my Stockholm scrapbooking and, since it was the last port I scrapped (though not the last we visited), it finishes off my Scandinavia album. I just need to have a check through all the pages for anything that's worked loose, or for any places that need a bit extra, or for places to add a few pieces that I like but haven't found a home on a page yet. Then I'll find an album and make a title card for the front cover.

Next up I have pages to make for my 2024 annual album and also for my 8x8 parkrun album, as I am trying to keep both of those up-to-date this year. I'll also be starting a new holiday album soon for this year's Mediterranean cruise.

Supplies

Cardstock - Core'dinations, The Craft Place, Craft UK

Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pinkfresh Studio Simply the Best, Pinkfresh Studio Brighter Days, Pebbles New Addition, Simple Stories

Letters - Pinkfresh Studio, Jillibean Soup, Doodlebug, American Crafts, Studio Calico

Journal Cards - Studio Calico

Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, Heidi Swapp, 49 & Market

Filmstrip - 49 & Market

Glitter Tape - Unknown;

Enamel Dots - Altenew, 49 & Market, Pinkfresh Studio, Carta Bella, Pretty My Page, Freckled Fawn, My Mind's Eye, Simple Stories