Crazy Golf

It's the turn of the Inky Minxes to set this week's challenge at UKScrappers, and as a new member of the team, I got to do one of the example pages to go with it. We have given out a list of 10 items (including a sketch) and we are asking people to use three or more of them. Hop over here for the challenge in full.

My chosen elements were the sketch, misting, washi tape and using themed paper for another purpose. (My background paper is from a Christmas collection.) The photos are ancient ones of my son, which I cropped down from 4x6 prints to suit the sketch. 

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Natural Stack, Papermania Kraft (for Tickets)
Paper - Basic Grey Dasher (Snowfall Holly), Basic Grey Plumeria (Velvet Bloom)
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Basic Grey Curio
Washi Tape 0 Trimcraft
Mist - Mister Huey's Opaque White
Brads - Papermania
Small Ticket - from Crystal @ Crystal's Garden
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

On the Monsal Trail

Like most scrappers, I find it harder to do double pages than single pages. In fact, I have a list of doubles that I need to do in order to fill some gaps in my albums. I'm filling one of those gaps today because of Challenge 153 at Scrap Whispers - create a two page layout with at least five photos and the title running across both pages.

My photos are from a walk along the Monsal Trail in the Peak District earlier this year and I used six of them for my double page. The trail follows an old railway line and we walked through two of the tunnels.

Supplies
Paper - K&Co Blue Awning, atd, Simple Stories Take a Hike
Letters - Simple Stories
Border Sticker - Crate Paper Restoration
Metal Embellishments - from Stash
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

In The Maze

When I got my holiday photos printed online, I added a couple of other photos to the order; they were photos of my daughter in the maze at Hever Castle and I was pretty sure that I would be scrapping them as a pair at 4x6.

I had a look through the sketches on Shimelle's blog as she frequently scraps pairs of 4x6 photos, and I picked on her Sketch 20 from June this year - a twist on patterned paper quadrants.

I chose an old collection of paper from Basic Grey. The colours in each paper are quite similar so they get lost against each other when they are layered up. However I think that laying them out in separate blocks has worked rather well.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Basic Grey Wisteria
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Basic Grey Curio
Brads - Papermania
Pearls & Ribbon - from Stash
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

Where I Work

This week's team challenge at UKScrappers was exactly that - a challenge. It was set by Team Phoenix and they asked us to scrap something we wouldn't normally scrap. This had me thinking for a while, until I decided to scrap my workplace, which I haven't done before. Their other requirements were to use Sketch 30 from Shimelle, handwritten journalling and stamping.

I did take a photo of the outside of our office earlier this year, and I pulled pictures of my colleagues off the company web-site. Then I adapted the sketch for five square photos.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop, First Edition J'Adore, Scraps
Letters - Basic Grey, My Little Shoebox
Gems - from Stash
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Woodware Flower Punch
Craft Creatives Flower Punch
Amy Tangerine Stamp

90

Challenge #154 at Scrap Whispers this week was to make a page with two focal points - two groupings (one large and one small) with 'white' space in between them. 

I'm combining this with the mid-September sketch challenge from Stuck?! Sketches as it already has the two areas mapped out.

I picked photos from my husband's grandmother's 90th birthday in January, and decided to angle my layers a little, rather than the precision of the sketch.

My favourite thing about the page is actually the small flower circles. I had some old metal rimmed embellishments with flowers set in them, two purple and one orange, which have been sitting around for far too long. I punched new flowers, backed them with cream paper and topped them with clear epoxy circles. Now they match the page, and there is a certain sense of satisfaction in throwing away empty embellishment packaging.

Supplies

Paper - First Edition J'Adore, Art & Crafts Direct

Bingo Card - Teresa Collins Timeless

Border Sticker - Crate Paper Random

Numbers - American Crafts Thickers

Label - 7Gypsies??

Metal Circles - Papermania

Gems - The Hobby House

Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools

Craft Creatives Flower Punch

A Day of Scenic Cruising

From Ålseund, we headed north again on our cruise; we had another day at sea, but this time we were close to the coast and enjoyed some great scenery. My left page is dedicated to the scenery, with photos of Torghatten, a mountain with a hole right through it, and the Seven Sisters, a series of mountains that run the length of the island of Alsten.

The right page has more of a mixture: the top part is about the 'crossing the line' ceremony that the entertainment staff held as we approached the Arctic Circle. The officers were put on trial in the Court of King Neptune, and once Neptune had been appeased we were free to continue our journey. We had our first sighting of dolphins that day, and although the photo itself is pretty poor, it deserved to be documented. The bottom row goes back to scenery, with a globe on one of the islands, and our first view of a glacier.

I've come to the end of my first batch of holiday photos now, so you can have a break from my Norwegian pages for a little while.

Supplies

Paper - October Afternoon Travel Girl, MME Lost & Found 3, Pink Paislee Portfolio

Letters - American Crafts Thickers, October Afternoon, Anita's Glitterations, Jillibean Soup

Washi Tape - October Afternoon, Trimcraft, The Range

Label Sticker - 7Gypsies

Brads - Papermania

Gems - The Hobby House

Button - from Stash

Tools

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Climbing Sukkertoppen

Another double page for my Norwegian Cruise album, where I am using divided page protectors. These are photos from our day in Ålesund. In actual fact, we were just across the bay from the town, as we caught the local bus to the island of Hessa and walked up to its highest point - Sukkertoppen.

The left page is the back of my Ålesund page, and has photos of the path (such as it was) and the summit:

The right hand page has a couple of photos of the views from the top, then my daughter, another cruise ship, the traditional fire-boat that accompanied our departure, and the sunset.

One thing that is definitely bugging me about this project at the moment is the size of the pockets versus the size of my photos. Both are supposed to be 4" x 6", and 6" is 15.2cm, but the photos that I had printed are only 14.9cm wide. This means that I have had to add a 'filler' strip to most of the 4x6 photo pockets. I have only had 30 photos printed so far, so I will try another developer for my next batch of pictures and see if they are the same.

Supplies
Paper - Daisy D's Butter Polka Dot, MME Follow Your Heart, MME Lost & Found 3, MME MIss Caroline, Crate Paper DIY Shop, Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, Pink Paislee Portfolio
Letters - October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Queen & Co, Trimcraft, The Range
Wood Veneer Circles - Studio Calico
Butterflies - Prima
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Craft Creatives Tiny Flower Punch

Ålesund

We've visited Ålesund before, so we didn't actually spend very long in the town this time, and it only gets a single page. The town was completely burned down in 1904 and rebuilt in the space of three years in the Art Nouveau style. I have photos of the harbour and two of the streets in the large pockets of this page; the row of smaller pockets contains three photos of statues and my journalling about them.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV Linen Closet

Paper - Pink Paislee Indigo Blue, Pink Paislee Portfolio, MME Lost & Found 3

Washi Tape - The Range, Trimcraft
Label Stickers - 7Gypsies

Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools

Big Shot & Alphabet Dies
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

7Gypsies/Hampton Art Stamp

Land Ahoy!

Back to the holiday album today, and it's just a single page, with our arrival in the Norwegian town of Ålesund. We were up on deck early enough to see the sun rise and the pilot come on board to direct us through the islands and into the harbour. 

I'm working on the back of the previous page, with six small pockets and three large ones. The watercolour map in the second pocket came from maps.stamen.com and I am grateful to thegraphicscrapper for blogging about the site earlier this year. The arrow was fussy-cut from a sheet of kraft Amy Tangerine paper and coloured with ink. The middle large photo is the island of Hessa and we walked to its highest point - more on that another day.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, Pink Paislee Portfolio, MME Miss Caroline, Amy Tangerine Yes Please
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Washi Tape - October Afternoon
Washi Paper - We R Memory Keepers
Label Sticker - 7 Gypsies
Ink - Ink It Up!

Party!

Following on from this week's team challenge at UKScrappers, I've also done the September house challenge. This one was a sketch with three photos in a central column.

I picked photos from my daughter's birthday party and busted some seriously old stash for this one. I chose the stripey paper as matching the colours in the photos and added all my 'Happy Birthday' rub-ons to it. Once the photos and title were in place, I diverted from the sketch and ran a loose line of ancient brads across the page diagonally and filled in the gaps with flowers and gems.

(There's an extra gem at the bottom left that shouldn't be there, but I'm not going to take another photo of the page.)

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Junkitz Pastel Paperz
Rub-Ons - Papermania
Letters - American Crafts Foam Thickers
Tags - Lakeland Ltd
Brads - Possibly Making Memories and/or Papermania
Flower Stickers - WHSmith
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch
Bazzill Paper Piercer
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

Photography Scavenger Hunt - The Final Finds

When I posted yesterday, I still had two photos to take for Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt and they are both photos that I could have taken a lot sooner.

Firstly, my local pub. A group of us go here for breakfast sometimes during the school holidays, because the kids eat free and they also have somewhere to play while we chat.

Secondly, the one that we probably all leave 'til last - my self-portrait with a favourite craft supply. I couldn't scrapbook without some pretty paper, and I like Crate Paper's DIY Shop collection so much that I bought it in both 6x6 and 12x12 sizes.

Finally, I drove past a local airfield this morning and I'm going to substitute this photo for the plane I took earlier in the week. It's not a great shot, but I couldn't get any closer.

You can see all my individual finds by clicking the label below, or a summary post via the link at the top-right of the page.

And, since it ends today, you can see what everyone else found via the links from this post on Rinda's blog.

Photography Scavenger Hunt - Nearly There

Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt ends tomorrow, with the official end of summer in the northern hemisphere. It's been a good one, though I am haunted by two unfound items - the cloud and the something that doesn't belong - so I'll be using the two substitute items for those.

These are a few of my finds that haven't been blogged yet:

4. An aeroplane - This should have been easy; we were planning to visit the Imperial War Museum at Duxford this summer and that has plenty of planes, but we haven't done it yet. The best I can offer is this one, taken on my walk to work on Monday.

7. A sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny - This one is on my son's bedroom door. He didn't intend it to be funny, but when I first read it I laughed out loud.

19. A fisherman - in the grounds of Hever Castle when we visited.

Substitute - A person wearing an outfit (or item of clothing) that symbolizes your country. Time to embarrass my son again; this is him on 'British Night' on our cruise.

I just have two left: my local pub/bar, coffee house or tea shop, plus the self-portrait. I need to take those tomorrow and I'll be done.

You can see all my individual finds by clicking the label below, or a summary post via the link at the top-right of the page.

Last Walk of Summer

It's been absolutely ages since I last did a Weekly Challenge at UKScrappers but I've joined a new team there and resolved to do more of them in future. They generally have three parts to them and the September Week 3 challenge elements were a sketch (originally from Inspired Blueprints), square photographs and a theme of the seasons.

I chose photos from a couple of weeks ago, just before the weather turned all wet, windy and autumnal. I had three pictures that I wanted to use, two of my daughter and one of a field of wildflowers. I decided to print the flowers on thin card at A4 size and use them as part of my background. I haven't done this for a long time either, but I do like the softer look that you get by printing on card rather than photo paper.

Supplies
Paper - Bo Bunny Sea Foam, K&Co Paper Doll
Letters - Basic Grey
Ribbon - Doodlebug 
Flowers - Dovecraft
Brads - Making Memories
Leaves -  Part of a Prize from Crystal at Crystal's Garden

A Tale of Two Mugs

A change from 12x12 pocket scrapping, to 8x8 today as I share a page that I made in response to Challenge 152 at Scrap Whispers - Scrap the Everyday.

I've been pondering a page about my two identical coffee mugs that I use at home and at work, but the rest of the family can't see why I would scrap something like that. It doesn't seem to fit with my ordinary albums so I decided to use the smaller size and start a new album of things that I scrap 'just because'.

Supplies
Paper - Dovecraft Sugar & Spice
Ribbon - Part of a Prize from Scrap Whispers
Letters - Mustard Moon, Fancy Pants
Staples - Making Memories

Two Days at Sea

It's a long way from Southampton to Norway, especially when you're chugging along at about 14 knots, so the first two days of our cruise were spent at sea. There were plenty of things going on to keep us occupied including craft classes, dance lessons and lectures from guest speakers. There was a great kids' club onboard so our children were entertained too. We also had our first formal night, the Captain's Welcome Aboard Cocktail Party.

 This double page has an assortment of our activities from those two days, in rough chronological order. I do have one blank space, with a couple of options for filling it, but the photos are more generic and I haven't decided which to use here and which to use on a later page.

And here are the two pages separately:

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Linen Closet Stack
Paper - Pink Paislee Portfolio, Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, MME Follow Your Heart, Echo Park Yours Truly, 24 Heures37 Eiffel Avennue
Vellum - from Stash
Number - American Crafts Foam Thickers
Letters - October Afternoon, Basic Grey
Washi Tape - October Afternoon, Trimcraft, The Range
Brads - Papermania
Button - MME Lost & Found 3
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico Atlantic
Gems - Dovecraft
Label Stickers - October Afternoon
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico Atlantic

Tools
Big Shot & Filmstrip Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp (for Pencil)

Photo Scavenger Hunt - Civic Buildings

I had the list for Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt with me all the time in Norway, and I thought that I would find my civic building there. First stop was Ålesund, and it has a truly ugly town hall (or radhus):

If this was the best that Norway had to offer, then I would be photographing the local council offices when I got home. Luckily, Kristiansund had a much more picturesque town hall for me the following week:

You can see all my individual finds by clicking the label below, or a summary post via the link at the top-right of the page.

Leaving Southampton

Having added a 6x12 page protector to my Norwegian album when I made the last page, I was faced with a page-and-a-half to fill with photos from sailing out of Southampton. I decided to use the 'half' as a large title block and concentrate my photos and story in the divided page. This time I used one with a 4x12 pocket at the top with four 4x6 pockets below.

There were five cruise ships leaving Southampton that day, three from P&O, one from MSC and our own. I have shots of the other ships in the first two pockets, then a view of the yachts in the River Hamble. We were the third ship to leave, so I have a photo of Opera and Aurora ahead of us and finally a photo of the Spinnaker Tower which told us we were passing Portsmouth just before we went inside for dinner.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Studio Calico Atlantic, Love Letters
Letters - Papermania, American Crafts Thickers, Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - October Afternoon, The Range
Labels - 7 Gypsies
Gems - Dovecraft

Tools
Big Shot & Alphabet Dies
American Crafts Scallop Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Balmoral

I finally ordered my first batch of 4x6 holiday photos, so I can share a series of pages from my Norwegian Cruise album with you. I am doing this album with divided page protectors and printing smaller photos at home, but getting the 4x6's professionally printed. I shared the title page back in August and I'm using the 'back' of it for my next page, all about the ship - Fred. Olsen's Balmoral. I wanted to include the Pocket Ship Guide, but it's too big for any of the pockets so I used an additional 6x12 page protector and stitched a vellum pocket for it. There were two of these in our cabin, and as soon as we saw them my husband said "I suppose you want to keep one for the scrapbook."

The top two pockets are my title and a photo of the ship taken in Kristiansund. The middle row has a photo of the ship's bell, her history, her vital statistics and my cruise card. The bottom row has a photo of our cabin and our first impressions of the ship (our favourite of the five we've been on).

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, Pink Paislee Portfolio, MME Lost & Found 3, MME Follow Your Heart
Vellum - from stash
Letters - docrafts
Washi Tape - The Range, October Afternoon
Ribbon - from stash
Brads - Bazzill
Chipboard Button - MME Lost & Found 3
'Cabin' Sticker - Flair Designs

Tools
Sewing Machine
Scalloped Circle Punch

Photo Scavenger Hunt - Police Car & Theatre

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt is coming to an end soon, so it's really time to go out and get photos of those items that I know where to find but haven't photographed yet.

I've seen plenty of fire engines and police cars this summer, but I've usually been driving. On the rare occasions that I've had both a passenger and a camera in the car we haven't manged a photo of either yet. So, first stop on my walk was the police station, with an array of cars parked at the back:

Then down the road to our local theatre. This building houses the library and museum as well, as can be seen from the banners outside:

You can see all my individual finds by clicking the label below, or a summary post via the link at the top-right of the page.

Photo Scavenger Hunt - A Sundial

I'm running out of time now on Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. Just a couple of weeks and it will all be over. Some of them are still causing difficulties (like the cloud...) so I think I am going to need to use at least one of the bonus/substitute items. This one is a sundial that I spotted in the grounds of Hever Castle in Kent.

I hope the weather is fine tomorrow; I'm planning a trip to get a civic building, a theatre and a police car. And I might find a funny sign or see a good cloud along the way. 

You can see all my individual finds by clicking the label below, or a summary post via the link at the top-right of the page.

08:17

This might be the quickest page I've ever done - in terms of getting the photos from camera to scrapbook. Yesterday was my son's first day at college; he has to travel by bus and there is one bus a day that goes from the stop opposite our house direct to the college. At other times he has to change buses or walk part of the way. I knew that he wouldn't be agreeable to a 'First Day of College' photo-shoot so I sneaked a few pictures of him waiting at the bus stop, totally oblivious to me at the bedroom window.

I tend to use either letter or number paper on school pages, so I went for a number paper from Crate Paper DIY Shop. While pulling that, I spotted the background paper with the 'today' allover print and decided to stick with DIY Shop for two single colour patterned papers to complete the layout. I'm loving this collection (and loving that I'm using it). 

I used the September 1st sketch at Stuck Sketches for my page. I've recently discovered this blog, and like what I've seen so far. I may go back and use some of their August sketches too.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop
Numbers - American Crafts Foam Thickers
Washi Tape - October Afternoon
Staples - Making Memories
Chevrons - Photo Corners from Stash

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter

Photo Scavenger Hunt - A Dinosaur

I wasn't sure where I was going to find a dinosaur this summer for Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt, then last weekend during a game of Monopoly my son rejected all the normal playing pieces in favour of using an axe-wielding dinosaur instead:

Strange but true.

You can see my individual Scavenger Hunt posts by clicking the label below, or a summary via the link at the top right of the page.

DIY David

Today I'm sharing a page I made with Sketch #38 from Sketch-n-Scrap, which was originally posted on 1 August. I really liked the overlapping rectangles in the sketch and picked my photos quite quickly - my son assembling his first flat-pack furniture - but took longer to choose paper due to the sheer amount of brown in the photos. Turquoise seemed to be the best match and I have papers from three collections on the page. The finishing touch for the DIY theme was the brads that look like screw-heads that I won from Crystal at Crystal's Garden as part of Sketch-n-Scrap's birthday celebrations earlier this year.



There's nothing like viewing a page on the computer screen to make you realise that you've forgotten something. In this case, it's my journalling and I have done it now.

Supplies
Paper - K&Co Mira, Crate Paper DIY Shop, Crate Paper The Pier
Letters - American Crafts Foam Thickers
Border Sticker - Crate Paper Farmhouse Collection
Brads - from Crystal @ Crystal's Garden
Cogs - Scrap Revolution
Staples - Making Memories

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Rebecca & Red

It's 'Big Reveal' time over at Scrap Whispers again. Over the last two months, three teams of people have been doing a chain of scraplifts, all starting from the same page by guest designer Mary Eason.

I was last to play in Rosey's team and I received a page from Angie to scraplift. I wondered how far it had already changed from Mary's original and set to work. In the end I didn't stray far from Angie's page at all; I kept the same page layout and a similar 'two-way' title, but I did drop all the stamping.

You can see the whole of the three chains on the Scrap Whispers blog: Team Georgina; Team Rosey; Team Nilsa.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Random
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Flowers - Great Expressions
Ink - docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Heart & Scallop Border Punch
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
MME Ampersand Sticker used as Template