A Walk in the Snow

This is the fourth page that I made from Shimelle Laine's Perfect Collection class which I started with five sheets from Basic Grey's Granola collection.

It fits in with the three previous pages from this class, Friends, Taking Shelter and Alwen Reservoir, and they will run consecutively in my 2012 album.

I had enough pieces left for a fifth page, so I have make a 'starting point' layout. I used dark brown cardstock this time to make it a bit different from the other four and I will keep this for another album.

I just have a few tiny pieces left now, so small that I have no qualms about consigning them to the recycling bin, and this is probably the first time that I have completely used all the pieces of a collection. I got five pages from five sheets and I consider that to be about normal for me.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania Kraft Basics, DCWV Neutral Stack
Paper - Basic Grey Granola
Letters - Pebbles, Bo Bunny Et Cetera
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - Dovecraft

Alwen Reservoir

The 'pile it all up on the page' method that I used for my last page reminded me of the Perfect Collection class that I took earlier this year. I made two pages at the time and then got distracted by other things. The two pages that  I did make, Friends and Taking Shelter, have photos from the same day so it was an easy thing to pull out the rest of the paper pieces from my collection (Basic Grey's Granola) some kraft cardstock and the rest of my photos.

The photos all come from a Sunday afternoon walk on holiday in April this year, but I've spread them across four pages as there were four different parts that I wanted to scrap. This pair of photos are of the nearby reservoir and the very long wooden bridge that we had to cross.

SuppliesCardstock - Papermania Kraft Basics
Paper - Basic Grey Granola
Letters - Pebbles, Bo Bunny Et Cetera
Pearls - Dovecraft
Ink - Dovecraft

Woof & Snuffle

Another of the prompts from Scrapbook Remix was a method of creating a page from almost nothing, a page made entirely of scraps. Shimelle suggested choosing a colour combination and pulling out all the scraps you have in those colours then arranging them in order from largest to smallest on the page in one big stack. I gave this a try with red and green and topped it off with a photo of our friends' dogs. 

This is a great way to bust a large number of scraps, and with so many patterns on the page it really doesn't need embellishing.

Do you see the tickers in the sidebar? I reached my initial target of 156 pages for the year (three per week) last month and I'm amazed that I have done another 52 since then. I think that both the UKS CyberCrop and Scrapbook Remix have helped me to get on with the scrapping rather than procrastinate over my choice of supplies.

Supplies

Cardstock - American Crafts

Paper - Includes Basic Grey, K&Co, Kit 'n' Craft

Label - K&Co Hannah

Letters - American Crafts Foam Thickers

Washi Tape - Trimcraft

Ink - Ink It Up!

Tilbury Fort

I'm coming to the end of my 2006 photos now; I just have a double page left that I will make when inspiration strikes.

Inspiration for my next page came from Shimelle Laine's Scrapbook Remix class, where one of her sample pages used a combination of two landscape photos and one portrait photo. This was the exact combination of photos that I had from our visit to Tilbury Fort, which were next on my 'to scrap' pile for this album.

Supplies

Paper - K&Co Hannah, MME Bohemian, K& Co Sea Glass, Unlabelled Turquoise 

Letters - American Crafts Remarks

Tag - K&Co Life's Journey

Ink - Dovecraft

Tools

Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Culbone Church

I'm making steady progress through 2006, and the next page comes from a walk we took to Culbone Church, the smallest church in England, and one that can't be reached by road. I had three pre-digital 4x6 photos of the church so it was an easy matter to line them up with a border strip and a journalling box. However they are all very similar in colour and looked better trimmed slightly and matted on a neutral background. This 'three photos in a column' is a page layout that I use frequently but I try to limit it to one appearance per album.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan, Cherry ArteArcade 
Journalling Card - KaiserCraft
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Woodware Label Punch
Crayola Butterfly Punch

Tank Museum

I skipped over our photos from the Tank Museum in Dorset before as I couldn't think how to deal with them. These are pre-digital and I had ten 4x6 photos already printed. Clearly this needed a double page, but would I cut down on the number of photos or scan, resize and reprint them? 

Either way, I couldn't decide on a page design, so I left it for later. Then a new prompt arrived from Shimelle Laine's Scrapbook Remix class - all about multiple photos and pointing us towards her 4x6 Photo Love series from last year. I frequently use her class pages for three and five photos so I should have thought of this for myself. I decided to dump one of my tank photos and adapt the August class for my nine remaining photos (with three cropped to 4x4).

Shimelle described her page as ' a page and a half' but it's more like a page and two halves. She designed a shorter page to sit in front of the standard 12x12 page, opening up to reveal extra photos 'inside'. 

Supplies
Paper - K&Co Green Stripe, Kit 'n' Kraft + some unlabelled
Letters - American Crafts Remarks, Bo Bunny Et Cetera
Journalling Card - Echo Park This & That
Washi Tape - We R Memory Keepers

Tools
X-Cut Scallop Border Punch

Dunkery Beacon

More 2006 photos, from a walk up to Dunkery Beacon, the highest point in Somerset. They were taken by the cairn at the summit and are rather similar. I decided to just line them up across the page, with my journalling on a tag. 

I wanted to fill the space next to the title but I wasn't sure how; a large embellishment cluster just didn't feel right on a geometric page. I recently discovered a versamark ink pad in a box of craft stash that my sister-in-law gave me so I decided to try it out with a mask covering the right hand side of the page not just that area. It may be a bit too subtle, but the space doesn't feel so empty now.

I wrote recently that I don't 'do' multicoloured titles, but such rules are made to be broken. The page was only had two colours when I added the title and this brought in a few more and added some interest. I then added the zig-zag strips that use many of the same colours, and the MME paper that I used for the tag has a subtle pattern too.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Hang 10, Kodomo Waterfall, MME Howdy Doody, Unknown Map Print
Letters - KI Memories
Ink - Ink It Up! & Versemark
Zig-Zags - Basic Grey Plumeria

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Tando Creative Harlequin Mask

Dunster Wool Market

This is pretty much a standard page design, but it's one that hasn't appeared in this album yet. Nice and straightforward, another page done.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Wisteria, K&Co Paper Doll, Fancy Pants Love Story, Dovecraft Princess Fairytale 6x6 Pack
Letters - Scenic Route, October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Epoxy Flowers - WHSmith

Tools
X-Cut Scallop Border Punch
Woodware Medium Flower Punch

46 to 16

A major event for us in 2006 was a house move. I wasn't a scrapbooker then so I don't have any photos from the day, just the estate agents' photos from the property details of the houses we bought and sold.

I have pulled out and put back the numbered background sheet a couple of times recently, but this was the page where it got used, and I centred my page design to make a border from the numbers. 

I'm low on brown letters and I couldn't make a title from the letters I have, so I turned to my leftover numbers instead, using the numbers of the two houses. I don't often use numbers so it was good to use a few up on this page. I'd previously pulled the flower off the 'Home Sweet Home' label for another project, but I replaced it with another one from the same pack. 

Supplies
Paper - K&Co Cut 'n' Paste, K&Co Hannah, K&Co Life's Journey, Pebbles Floral Lane
Letters/Numbers - American Crafts Thickers, Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type
Label Sticker - Pebbles Floral Lane

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Castles in the Sand

Back to 2006 and set of beach photos. I originally thought that I would mat these as a block with one 4x6 photo and two 3x4 photos, but they were taken on different cameras and the sand colours differ too much. This lead to me splitting them up with a wide strip of paper in between. The spots were a good match for my photos, despite the fact that they actually come from a winter collection.

I don't embellish my pages very much, but I wanted to use the blue shell pin that I made ages ago. This lead to the clusters at the top right and bottom left of the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Pink Paislee Snow Day, Imaginisce Sole Sisters, Far and Away Pool Water
Letters - Pebbles, Authentique
Label Sticker - Crate Paper Restoration
Gems - Dovecraft
Word Stickers - from Stash

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Small Star Punch

1 Today

Last week's weekly challenge at UK Scrappers had the usual three elements - to use a colour scheme that it is unusual for you to use, to use up some scraps and to do something 'arty'.

Looking through my recent pages, I don't use pink much so I pulled out an old photo of my cousin's daughter, my pink scraps and an assortment of pink embellishments. The 'arty' part was the spatters of pink and white paint on my background (which don't actually show too well in the photo). I also inked the chipboard number to match my chosen colour scheme.

Supplies
Paper - Creating Keepsakes (Background) + Scraps
Butterfly Pin, Ink, Flower, Pearls & Chipboard - from Stash
Letters - docrafts

Corfe Castle

I've been concentrating on 2006 recently; these photos are already printed and limited in number so it's easy to pick them for Shimelle's class prompts.

Staying with 2006, but deviating from the class for a while, this double page comes from last year's 4x6 Photo Love series, and is a layout that I have already used a few times. It's the May class for five photos, but I've squeezed in a sixth in a slightly smaller size.

Supplies
Paper - K&Co Peabody, First Edition Spring Feast, Paper Adventures Primavera Stripes
Letters - American Crafts Felt Thickers
Washi Tape - We R Memory Keepers
Ink - Papermania

Tools
EK Success Corner Punch (for Scallops)
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Happy Campers

This is another page from Shimelle's Scrapbook Remix class, a scraplift of one of her example layouts. The actual prompt was about using floral patterns on the page, but mine took another direction...

I had a couple of photos of our children on a camping holiday, but no photos of the tent or the campsite. I decided to use a paper with tents and trees to set the scene, but confine it to the background of the page so that it didn't overwhelm the photos. However I gutted the paper so I have a smaller piece to use elsewhere (and the corresponding photos identified). Both the title and the tree are old supplies that I am pleased to have used up.

Supplies

Paper - Karen Foster Campground, MME Howdy Doody + Scraps

Rub-On Title - Royal & Langnickel

Tree - Jolee's Boutique

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Swing

Following on from the CyberCrop at UKScrappers, I've joined a team of scrappers and I'm entering the weekly challenges there. These challenges are always made up of three elements and for the November Week 1 challenge these were to use a PageMaps sketch, to add some bling to the page and to use a title of five letters or fewer.

The hardest part of this for me was actually the title; I had plenty of pairs of photos that I thought I could adapt the sketch to suit, but I couldn't come up with short titles. I eventually chose an old photo of my son on a swing.

The photo itself is quite sombre with the dark rubber surface below the swing, so I wanted to get some bright colours on the page. I chose the red paper first, and the black comes from the same collection, but I adjusted their positions in relation to the sketch as I didn't want my photo to overlap the black. I pricked through an offcut of the black paper and stitched through the holes to make the 'wheel' motif at the top left, echoing the circle on the sketch without being a direct copy. My bling is the row of black pearls, taking the place of the ribbon in the sketch, which I extended to the left of the photo.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - K&Co Daydreams, Sandylion
Letters - Papermania
Gems - Crystal Stickers
Ink - Ink It Up!

Railway Children

An extreme version of the patchwork idea is to combine four patterns in quadrants on the page. This is something that crops up from time to time on Shimelle's blog, and I've made a few quadrant-based pages in response to her prompts in the past, including Little India and Montmartre.

I stuck to one collection each time on my previous pages, but the aim of this class is to mix our papers for a new look. I started from the stripy paper, turned it over for the aqua spots, and found co-ordinating papers in my scraps box.

After taking this photo, and seeing it on the computer monitor, I moved the word 'railway' over to the left a bit, but I haven't taken a new picture.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Paper - Crate Paper Little Sprout, Crate Paper Mia + Scraps 

Letters - Pebbles

Journalling Tag - Making Memories

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

EK Success Corner Punch

Breakfast Time

I've taken the little stack of paper strips from my last page one step further here, with a stack of much larger strips behind my photo. However, this time they are all papers from the same collection as this was far and away the easiest way to match the colours.

The photo is one from a camping trip a few years ago; it was taken early one morning when we were on our way to the village shop to buy the food we needed for our breakfast.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts (White), DCWV (Brown)
Paper - Dovecraft Suger & Spice Collection
Letters - Crate Paper Little Sprout

Reunion '06

One way that Shimelle has suggested for combining different patterned papers is take inspiration from patchwork quilting. I have done a couple of patchwork pages recently as part of the UKS CyberCrop (Banana and Baby James), plus a couple of older pages using squares and strips of paper scraps (Chelmorton and Fort Canning Park).

I decided to copy one of Shimelle's pages where the patchwork is a much smaller element of the page. I used a single photo of the cottage where we stayed for our annual reunion of university friends in 2006. I'm not sure how many of these holidays we've done, but it's more than 15; they are a great way to stay in touch with people that we do only see once a year.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Daisy D's Butter Polka Dot + Scraps

Journalling Card - Jillibean Soup

Letters - Crate Paper Little Sprout

Zig-Zag Peel-Off, Button & Thread - from Stash

Tools

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Scouts on Parade

The next prompt from Shimelle's Scrapbook Remix was about the 'B' sides of our patterned paper, the smaller, quieter patterns that are easier to mix together. She challenged us to find one of our own pages that we like and re-create it using 'B' sides.

I picked out a few possible pages, and found that they all had a landscape photo or a pair of portrait photos. Maybe that should tell me something about my scrapping habits, but I don't know what. Anyway, I decided to re-create Schoolboys, a page that I made in June, using a photo from the scouts' Renewal of Promise ceremony earlier this year. All of the papers were 'B' sides except the yellow but that is still a quiet pattern.
.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Snowfall, Basic Grey Plumeria, Fancy Pants Papa, Echo Park This & That + Scraps
Letters - Echo Park This & That
Border Sticker - Crate Paper Restoration
Gems - Crystal Stickers
Transparency (over Journalling) - Basic Grey Plumeria

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Buried Alive

Another colour-based page from Scrapbook Remix; this time I was trying to make a multi-coloured page. I took my colours from the stripy paper but I didn't manage to find any other paper that had more than one of the colours. I  think that I will give this another try with a different set of colours at a later date.

The photos are from a beach trip in 2006 when my son wanted to be completely buried in the sand.

Supplies

Paper - MME Miss Caroline, Echo Park This & That, Crate Paper Gravity, KaiserCraft Seaside, Basic Grey Perhaps

Letters - Doodlebug

Ink - Dovecraft

Tools

Fiskars Apron Lace Border Punch

Orienteering

This is a re-work of an old page. I do try to leave my older pages alone, but I store my pages chronologically and I've made the neighbouring pages more recently so this one stuck out like a sore thumb. I originally made it with just three colours of cardstock, and no patterned paper at all.

I added an offcut of patterned paper and a couple of strips of washi tape behind my photos and moved the original title block and embellishments closer to them. Finally I journalled directly on to the background where previously there was no journalling on the page. It still looks like an early page, but I am happier that it 'fits' in the album better now.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - October Afternoon Walk in the Park
Washi Tape - We R Memory Keepers

Hampton Court Palace

A second page from Shimelle's colour prompt, this time using two colours. I paired a set of photos of Hampton Court Palace with the green and coral floral paper, then added more from my scraps. The background is actually a San Francisco paper that I got in a job lot; the brick edge matched my colours and the brickwork of the palace. 

Supplies
Paper - Paper House Productions San Francisco, K&Co Hannah, Bo Bunny Sea Foam Dot
Vellum - Paper Adventures
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Tag - K&Co Hannah
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Gems - Crystal Stickers

Tools
EK Success Corner Punch

Great Grandmother

Shimelle Laine started a new scrapbooking class called Scrapbook Remix last month. I signed up for it, but I've been busy with the UKS Cybercrop until now. We're in the third week of the class 'live' but I've gone right back to the first prompt to put her ideas into practice. We started off with ideas about colour and the first page I've done is monochromatic - shades of blue for my (then) new-born son and his great-grandmother.

The page is a scraplift of one of Shimelle's class pages (but you'll have to join in to see the original). I've added a small tag at the left of the photos which pulls out with my journalling, explaining the relationship. After all, my son has potentially four great-grandmothers.

Supplies
Paper - Pebbles New Arrival, Sandylion Blue Gingham, Sandylion Snowfall, K&Co Sea Glass + Scraps
Vellum - Paper Adventures
Letters - Fancy Pants Wave Searcher
Buttons - Papermania

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Sleepover?

This page is one of a pair from my daughter's birthday. I made the first one, Pizza Party, back in June and wanted to use the same papers for her sleepover. The photo's colours aren't a good match for the paper but, by adding some pink cardstock to match the flowers in the patterned paper, I think that I have managed to make them work.  

Supplies
Cardstock - Chartwell Studio (White), Bazzill (pink), Papermania (red)
Paper & Embellishments - Imaginisce Sole Sisters
Letters - Unlabelled from Stash

Tools
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
Woodware Label Punch

Hold on Tight

This is my final page from the UKS CyberCrop; the final class was A Clean Sweep from Fizzydrink, and it was another page about using up our scraps. She showed us how to made chevrons from scrap strips but unfortunately mine went wrong and I wasn't happy with them. I will try again, but in the meantime, here's a page I made inspired by Fizzydrink's chevrons. I did use scraps, but mine were a little bit bigger than hers:

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV?
Paper - Pink Paislee Prairie Hill, Crate Paper Gravity
Letters - Doodlebug
Thread - DMC

Tools
Fiskars Circle Template

Snake

We were promised that the last two CyberCrop classes would help us to use up our leftovers, and this was certainly true for Take a Letter from Nerlly. She encouraged us to use up our leftover letters by making our journalling jumbo sized and using random letters wherever we could.

I have realised that I don't tend to use multi-coloured letters in my page titles so I decided to try and use some of them up via this method. I picked blue and green tile letters and an old photo of my son, and I decided to stamp the remaining letters of my journalling:

Supplies
Paper - MME Miss Caroline Howdy Doody + Scraps
Stickers - Crate Paper Season Collection
Letters - Lakeland
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Pebbles ABC Stamps

Penguin Bay

This was the final challenge page that I was trying to make while they were 'live' but I didn't manage to finish in time. It was for Saturday's Animal Farm challenge where we simply had to feature an animal on our page.

I chose to scrap a group of penguins that we saw at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary this summer and decided to use a column of three 4x6 photos with a border sticker for speed (even though I ultimately missed the deadline).

The word sticker came from the same collection as the border, and I decided to use it here as the main reason that the seal sanctuary had penguins was to raise awareness of their plight in the wild. I thought that the Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow message fitted with this (and I've never even had a half-chance of using it before).

Supplies
Paper - Sandylion Sand, MME Follow Your Heart 6x6 Pad
Border & Word Stickers - Crate Paper Restoration
Ribbon - Papermania
Letters - American Crafts Remarks

Hot Chocolate Break

The madness of the UKS CyberCrop is now over, so I will be returning to just one blog post per day. I still have a few challenge pages from the crop to share here, and there are two final classes today.

Tuesday's challenge came from CraftyPrincess and was called Paige Tooner. In the Paige Toon book 'Pictures of Lily' the main character Lily has a passion for photography and takes photos of what she sees while she wanders around her new home town so the challenge was to take a wander and snap a photo or photos to use on our layout. The weather has been too poor for a good walk, but we went ice skating that day and I took a phone photo of the children drinking hot chocolate at the rink. I actually designed the page in my head that afternoon but it took me until yesterday to get it down on paper:

Supplies
Paper - gcd studios - Hot Cocoa
Vellum - Robin's Nest
Letters - Woodware Chippies (inked), Bo Bunny Et Cetera, Doodlebug
Ribbon - Anita's
Ink - Ink It Up!

Rebecca

The third challenge today is Time's Arrow, where we were asked to produce a layout backwards, to think about the normal way we make a page and to reverse the steps.

I normally start from my photos, then choose my patterned papers, my background card or paper, my letters and any embellishments. Today I started from one particular embellishment, a square overlay that I have had sitting on my desk for a while and that I want to use up. Then I chose two white ribbons and white lettering, but I couldn't get any further until I had my photo. Having chosen one of my daughter as a baby, I chose my background paper before the other papers.

When I make the page, I normally start from the background and work my way up in layers, with the embellishments last. This time, I started from that overlay and worked my way down to the background:

ending up here:

Supplies
Paper - Colorbok Pastel Floral, HOTP Garnet Sarabook
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Overlay & Ribbons - from Stash

Ports of Call

Next up is Treasure Island - a challenge to use a map on a page or card. I made an early page in my Baltic Cruise album, with a map of the area and a single photo from each city that we visited. I chose a paper with a border that I think is reminiscent of the edges of old maps, but no additional papers as I didn't want to detract from the simple grid layout, or cover up any more of the background paper.

Supplies
Paper - Unlabelled
Letters - Making Memories
Ink - Ink It Up!
Thread - from Stash
Map - downloaded from www.geographicguide.com