Curious

It's the last day of the month and I've just sneaked in another page from the June prompts in the Have I Got Scrap for You class at UKScrappers. This one was all about using strips of washi tape instead of patterned paper on the page. When I first read it, I didn't have enough co-ordinating washi tape to put together a page. Since then, I may have accumulated a few more rolls (courtesy of The Range) and noticed that I have a distinct preference for yellow, grey and aqua blue. With my colour scheme fixed, I went hunting for a single photo, picking one of my son as a baby investigating the washing machine:

With so many patterns in the tapes, I kept the other embellishments quite simple - small rows of brads and gems in matching colours.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill (Avalanche)
Washi Tape - Trimcraft, The Range, Queen & Co
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Brads - HOTP
Gems - Papermania Dew Drops

Photo Scavenger Hunt - A Windmill

Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt has been running for four weeks now, and pictures are popping up all over blogland. I've only just started collecting mine - we are going on a cruise to Norway later this summer and I hope to get most of them there. I've already earmarked a tower to visit, I hope to find both candles and stained glass in a church and we should see some spectacular sunsets at sea. 

However a few of the items will be found closer to home. One of those is the windmill (I've never seen one on Norway), which I knew exactly where to find, though photographing it was slightly more tricky. This was my first attempt, got by sticking my camera through the railings outside:

I was nice and close, but the windmill is obscured by trees. The second attempt, from the other side, involved parking the car at the edge of the slip-road between two dual carriageways and grabbing a quick photo across the fields:

The full list of scavenger hunt items is on this page, or follow the link at the top of my blog, or of course it's on Rinda's blog Gallo Organico. You can see all of this year's photos (and last year's) via the link at the top or individual posts via the 'Photo Scavenger Hunt' label below.

Happy hunting!

Build a Shelter

I've finally finished my page from Week Two of Shimelle Laine's Break It Down class at UKScrappers (lagging behind as the class is now at the end of Week Four). Every week there are six prompts that build to a complete page, but I went my own way with some of them for this week.

1. Scrap a conversation - Ignored this as there wasn't a particular conversation that I actually wanted to scrap. I decided to scrap the next set of Cornish holiday photos and see where the prompts lead me.
2. Choose your supplies - DIY Shop papers from Crate Paper, which I've used on several Cornish pages so far.
3. Make some stacked embellishments - I did do this, but after I had made the rest of the page.
4. Design a page using stacks of paper - Shimelle gave us a sketch but I decided to make a random stack under my photos and add extra strips at the top right and bottom left. At this point, I changed mybackground paper and also raided my scraps box for anything that would co-ordinate with the DIY Shop papers.
5. Block out the space for photos/journalling/title - I already had a clear idea where my page was going, the photos are the major element and I didn't feel that it needed any journalling.
6. Use your smallest stamps - I don't have many stamps, but I did stamp a flower on any clear space on the paper layers.

And here's the finished page:

Supplies
Paper - KaiserCraft Le Chateau, Crate Paper DIY Shop, Scraps inc. Basic Grey Periphery and K&Company Hannah
Letters - Jillibean Soup Alphabeans, American Crafts Thickers
Washi Tape - We R Memory Keepers
Gems - Papermania Dew Drops
Stickers - K&Co Hannah 
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Popcorn Flower Stamp (Magazine Freebie)

Rainforest Biome

Thus is my final 'Biome' page from the Eden Project in Cornwall last summer, but the Rainforest Biome was so big that it gets a double page. So often, when I do a double page I print all my photos the same size and use quite a rigid grid to fit them all in. I wanted to get away from that a bit so I chose two sizes of photo and tried to arrange them across the page in the order that we saw them. There's still some 'gridness' to the page as I couldn't help but line some of the photos up with each other but I do like the flow of it.

I have had this rainforest printed paper for ages and this was the perfect opportunity to use it, but it's quite a bold print and could easily overwhelm the photos. I decided to use large pieces at the page edges and punched squares among the photos as embellishments, then I added lots of epoxy flowers to the corners between photos and squares. Then I went back to my Mediterranean Biome page and added the same flowers in blue to that page. I've journalled on that one too now.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill (Natural)
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, unlabelled rainforest paper, Sandylion Travel Stripes
Letters - Basic Grey, Lily Bee
Flowers - WHSmith
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Dovecraft 1" Square Punch

Outdoor Biome

Back to Cornwall and the Eden Project today. I used the June sketch from Sarah's Cards with three photos from the Outdoor Biome. This biome is basically everything at Eden that isn't inside their two giant greenhouses which are known as the Mediterranean Biome and the Rainforest Biome.

I stuck fairly closely to the sketch, except that I added a couple of tags above the title. This ties in with the tags on my first page from the Eden Project, and I also used the same butterflies on both pages.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop
Letters - Authentique, Lily Bee
Butterflies - Prima
Eyelet Brad - Pebbles

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Craft Creatives Butterfly Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Office Hole Punch

Splash

I've been trying to finish a few challenges before the end of the month, but to be honest a lot of them aren't inspiring me at the moment. One that did was Sketch #35 at Sketch-n-Scrap with two landscape photos placed side-by-side. I picked two old 4x6 prints of my nephew and cropped them slightly to remove some distracting elements.

Sketch #35

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill (Dark Spruce)
Paper - Unlabelled Floral, Crate Paper Little Sprout
Letters - Crate Paper Little Sprout
Washi Strip - Crate Paper DIY Shop
Metal - K&Co Studio K

Tools
Sewing Machine

In the Beginning

Another old photo today, and I'm combining two challenges.

Challenge #142 at Scrap Whispers is to combine a colour photo and a black and white photo on the page. I don't like printing new photos in black and white, but I have an old black and white photo of my husband and his colleagues on their first day at work. He's an accountant and five of them started their training contracts at the same time. The photo was an annual tradition for the new intake. I also unearthed a passport style photo from a similar time for the colour photo.

One of the prompts in June's Have I Got Scrap for You class at UKScrappers was to use a large photo. Niki's hints for coping with them include using a subtle background, using long, narrow embellishments and embellishing over an 'empty' part of the photo.

I know that people convert colour photos to black and white so that they can use any colour scheme they wish, but I had problems finding paper that didn't make my black and white photo fade away. With each paper that I tried, I felt like my attention was being drawn to the paper, not the photo. Ultimately my pallette was mostly grey, white and blue-grey, but I did add a couple of pastel paper strips to the edges.

Supplies
Paper - Echo Park Yours Truly, Fancy Pants Winterland, Crate Paper DIY Shop, plus Scraps
Letters - Anita'a Glitterations
Ink - Ink It Up!
Number Stickers - from Stash

Tools
American Crafts Open Scallop Border Punch
American Crafts Notebook Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

The Kozak Crew

It's an unusual title, but Kozak is actually my cousin's married name, and this is a photo she sent me one Christmas of her and her family.

I made this page for Challenge 141 at Scrap Whispers, which was to scraplift a vibrant page from their guest designer Jael Calvillo. As soon as I saw her page, I knew which papers I would use for mine. These all came from an 8x8 collection pack and eight one inch strips made a perfectly colour co-ordinated square in the middle of my page. I stitched around the edges, added the single photo in place of the two that Jael used and embellished the square with brads, gems and mist.

Supplies
Cardstock - Moments Scrapbook Insert
Paper - Dovecraft Sugar & Spice 8x8 Paper Pack
Letters - Crate Paper, Fancy Pants
Brads - Making Memories, Papermania
Gems - Making Memories
Mist - Mr Huey's

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Border Punch

Cruise the Baltic Sea

I've been having an internal battle between working on my 2012 album and completing some of this month's challenges. I was trying to combine them, but that doesn't always work. Then throw into the mix the fact that there are various classes going on that I have started and not finished (or not even started) and it's no wonder that I jump from place to place like a grasshopper.

I'm making the jump today to a class at UK Scrappers called Have I Got Scrap For You which started in January. It's run by Niki Rowland and I was following her '52 Layouts' series on her blog last year, until it fizzled out around Christmas (Week 28). The new class has a similar step-by-step page each month, but also other ideas for things to try. I was re-reading the class PDFs with my 2012 album in mind, but her April prompt, about themed papers, triggered this page.

We took a Baltic Cruise a couple of years ago and I had a beautiful paper set aside for my title page. (right - with additional lettering - I nearly forgot to photograph it). I've tried to make this page several times and I've always struggled with the picture of the ship (which is just a generic ship not the one we sailed on). The obvious thing to do is to confine my page elements to the open space above the ship, but I haven't managed to lay out anything that I am happy with; the ship is always a distraction.

Having read Niki's guidance again, I was determined to finally make this page, and I actually made the slightly bizarre decision to cover the ship up completely. I concentrated the page elements in the bottom half of the page which left all the nautical wording in the open space above.

Supplies
Paper - Paper House Productions Cruise Ship, MME Follow Your Heart, Scraps
Cardstcok - Papermania
Letters - Jillibean Soup Alphabeans
Brads - Papermania
Washi Tape - Queen & Co
Sticker - Colorbok
Ship's Wheel - Ebay

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Mediterranean Biome

This is another page from the Eden Project in Cornwall last summer, with photos from inside the Mediterranean biome, one of their two huge 'greenhouses' as pictured on my 'Return to Eden' page last week.

I picked the best few photos and used another sketch from Sketch Support.

There's no journalling yet, as I've mislaid my guide book and I want to check a few things before I write it.

Supplies
Paper - Daisy D's (background), Laura Ashley, Dovecraft
Letters - Scenic Route, Lily Bee
Brads & Ribbon - from Stash

Tools
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

Before & After

"Break It Down" is a new six week class from Shimelle Laine hosted by UKScrappers, which will fit perfectly into the last half term of this school year, before the kids break up and my scrapping time is severely reduced. It's subtitled 'Six Steps to Six Layouts You've Really Been Meaning to Make', and each week there are six prompts that build into a page. Each one focuses on a different area: story & photos; colours & product choices; techniques; page design; page construction; finishing touches.

Last week's page had a theme of 'Before and After' and I decided to use photos from my daughter's hair cut earlier this year. She has always had long hair (and she still does really) but we cut 6-8" off in February. She wouldn't pose for photos, so I just have shots of the back of her head:

The six steps were:
1. Choose the story and photos
2. Use Pictaculous to pull a colour from the photos and then use Color Scheme Designer to pick a colour palette
3. Stamp to Fade Out - inking a stamp once and stamping repeatedly 
4. Place the photos front and centre
5. Construct the writing first
6. Embellish on the diagonal

Once I'd decided on photos and story, the two websites gave me a palette of peach, cream, yellow and blue, but the blue in the papers I chose is more aqua then plain blue. However all my paper is from the same collection and there is no blue in the photos so I am happy that it does all match.

I used the stamp to fade out technique with the date stamp in the bottom corner. I chose an old black ink pad so that the stamping would be a softer dark grey colour rather than the harsh black of my newer ink pad.

I had some conflict between the last three prompts. Embellishing on the diagonal meant that I wanted my photos and journalling to be concentrated in the centre of the page with the embellishment trailing across empty space to the corners. I didn't want to have my photos too close together because i took them with different zoom levels and placing them together exacerbated the difference. I decided to place the title above, below and between the photos to form part of that embellishment line. I wrote out my journalling in rough to see how much space it would take up, and adapted the width of the yellow paper so that the writing would fill the height of the aqua panel. My line of embellishments is made up of doilies, various punched shapes, wooden hearts, gems and mist spatters.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline
Letters - October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers, Making Memories Rub-Ons
Doilies - Papermania
Wood Veneer Hearts - Studio Calico
Gems - Papermanis Dew Drops, Dovecraft Pearls
Mist - Mister Huey's 
Ink - Ink It Up!
Ribbon - from Stash

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Small Daisy Punch
Craft Creatives - Tiny Heart Punch

Return to Eden

Further to my last post, I am still scrapping our Cornish holiday, but I have managed to combine that with a challenge from Sketch-n-Scrap. Their Sketch #34 shows a grouping of 4 small photos, but I have used it for a single photo from the Eden Project.

This page will be the first of five pages (I think) from our day there, so it acts as a mini-introduction to the ones that follow. The title refers to the fact that we also visited in 2004, though that time I only had three photos for one page. 

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop, Crate Paper Little Sprout, Scraps
Letters - American Crafts Remarks, October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Butterflies - Prima

Climbers

I'm still scrapping photos from our holiday in Cornwall last year, though there are lots of new June challenges that I want to get stuck into. I'm hoping that I can combine the two.

For now, it's a single page based on Sketch Support's Sketch #20 from April last year. I did play around with the number of photos and the layout of the paper panels, but the sketch was my starting point.

The photos are of our children climbing the cliffs above Trebarwith Strand on the north Cornwall coast.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts, Papermania Kraft Basics
Paper & Pennant Stickers - Echo Park This & That
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Border Stickers - Doodlebug
Ink - docrafts
Mist - Mister Huey's
Paint - Folk Art

Tools
Big Shot & Circles Die

Surf Seeker

Today's page is a little bit different from my normal style, and could have gone horribly wrong, but it didn't and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

I'm still scrapping our Cornish holiday last year and I have five photos of my daughter paddling in the sea. My original thought was to put them all in a block, but the varying amounts of zoom made them look peculiar together. I wondered about spreading them around the page and remembered a page by Mercy Tiara where she did just that. She posted it back in February but I have only recently watched her process video.

I started by spattering my page with white mist, then marked out and machine-stitched a grid on my page. I arranged the photos, adding washi tape, a piece of border and a button to each picture (though I moved the buttons around later on). Title in the middle and sub-title at the bottom. Then I dug through some ancient embellishments and scattered an assortment of gems around the page. I found some sequin stars but the colour wasn't suitable, so I punched a pile of vellum stars and spread them around the page too.

The title may not appear to fit with the photos, but we had gone to this beach for my daughter to body-board, only to find that the tide was in and there was no beach left. She had a paddle here before we moved on to another beach where she was able to body-board. I don't have any photos of that (she was too far out, just one black speck in a sea of black specks) so it's mentioned in the journalling.

Supplies
Cardstock - Core'dinations Tranquil Blue
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Craft Creations, Starform
Border - Bazzill Half the Edge
Buttons, Gems & Vellum - from Stash
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Woodware Tiny Star Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

Lanhydrock

The sketch for my last page originally came from Sketch Support; I have had a good nose around the site and it has quite a few interesting sketches even though they aren't posting any new ones.

I'm sticking with our Cornish holiday for another double page. The left side is from an old sketch at Sketch Support, which I mirrored with different proportions for the right side.

Supplies
Paper - First Edition Spring Feast, Crate Paper Random, MME Wild Asparagus
Letters - American Crafts Remarks
Ribbon - from Stash

Tools
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch

Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt

Last summer I participated in the Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Rinda at Gallo Organico. She posted a list of 21 items to find and photograph between 21 June and 21 September.

Well this year it's back, and running from 1 June to 21 September. Rinda has posted the list of photos today and it's a good mix of things that I can find easily, things that I should see on my travels and things that I will just have to keep an eye out for all summer long.

They are: 

1.   Open air market
2.   Theatre for performing arts (not a movie theatre)
3.   City Hall, Capitol or other similar civic building
4.   Aeroplane
5.   A sunset
6.   Someone or something taking a nap
7.   A sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny
8.   A tower
9.   A photo with someone or something that is clearly out of place or doesn't belong
10.  A bench that is outside
11.  An animal in a zoo, aquarium, nature preserve, etc.
12.  A cloud in the shape of something (please specify what you see)
13.  A fence
14.  A stained glass object or a mosaic
15.  A fire truck or police car
16.  A windmill 
17.  Candle(s)
18.  Your local pub/bar, coffee house or tea shop
19.  A fisherman
20. A dinosaur
21.  A photograph of you with an artistic tool or craft supply
Bonus/substitute items.  If you find any of the above items too difficult, feel free to substitute either (or both) of these items.  You can substitute up to two items, but you cannot substitute Item #21: A person wearing an outfit (or item of clothing) that symbolizes your country; A sundial

I'll post my progress here as I find them; you can see all my scavenger hunt photos via the label at the bottom of this post, or see a summary via the link at the top-right. 

Why not pop over to Rinda's blog and join in too?