Love Locks

I made this page a few weeks ago for the team scraplifting game at Scrap Whispers, but I had to keep it a secret until the 'Big Reveal' at the end of the game. Three teams of scrappers start from the same page and each player scraplifts the page made by the player before her, without seeing any of the other pages in the chain. The three final pages can be quite similar or very different depending which elements each player takes from the page before theirs.

This time I was scraplifting Susi's page from her trip to London, and I chose to make a page from my visit to Paris. These are the 'love locks' on the Pont de l'Archevêché.

This is Susi's page (right). I used two photos in the same space as her one photo and similar placement of patterned paper. I kept her circles of brads which link nicely with the metals of the locks in my photos. I changed her pennants for a small piece of Paris map paper, with a tiny red brad to mark the location of the bridge. I moved the title as it leads directly into the journalling, and ended that journalling with a sub-title. I did consider adding some hearts like Susi did, but I thought that they would just get lost against my patterned paper background.

You can see all three chains of pages on the Scrap Whispers blog: Georgina's Team; Nilsa's Team; Rosey's Team.

Supplies
Paper - First Edition Spring Feast, K&Co Hannah, October Afternoon Travel Girl, Unlabelled Hearts Paper
Letters - MME Lush
Brads - Dovecraft, Papermania
Washi Tape - American Crafts
Ink - Ink It Up!

# Eletour

I love it when two sites set the same, or very similar, challenge. Two birds with one stone. The mid-month challenge at Scrap Our Stash is a sketch with the additional requirement of creating your own background. Meanwhile Challenge #176 at Scrap Whispers is 'Let's Get Messy'.

I thought that the sketch would work with some photos of the Elephant Parade, a national tour to raise awareness of the plight of the Asian elephant. The elephants, 31 statues painted by artists and celebrities, are currently on display at my local shopping centre. However I had trouble choosing just three photos and my finished page looks quite unlike the sketch.

I chose grey cardstock as my background (reminiscent of elephants in the wild) and made circles with a lid and some modelling paste (as seen in a tutorial by Stephanie Bryan at shimelle.com recently); the circles came from the sketch and I intended to keep them in the centre of the page, but once I started I covered my background in them. I then used a hexagon mask with mist in the centre of the page, but it didn't work very well and is now mostly covered up. I finished my background by stamping doilies in some of the circles to add some colour to the grey and white page. Having failed to pick just three photos, I chose six and made a patchwork of papers to go behind them, running my title between the two rows, and tucking various punched shapes in around the edges.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill?
Paper - Crate Paper The Pier 6x6 Pad, Crate Paper DIY Shop, Scraps
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Doilies - Dovecraft
Wood Veneer Pieces - Studio Calico
Gems - Dovecraft
Washi Tape - Efco
Modelling Paste - Farrel & Gold
Ink - Ink It Up!
Mist - Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Studio Calico Doily Stamp
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Daisy Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Island Escape

This is another page from Norway, scrapped with the May Week 1 sketch from Let's Get Sketchy, but with the papers behind the photo straightened up. I did start with them at an angle but they bugged me so I straightened them up on my page.

The photos are from our first port of call on a cruise last summer - Ålesund - but it was a town that we'd visited before so we looked further afield for something to see or do, eventually deciding to catch a bus to the adjoining island of Hessa (top photo) to walk/climb to its highest point, Sukkertoppen. 

I've decided to do all the Norwegian pages in my 2013 album on kraft cardstock as it's easy to repeat and will add some uniformity/continuity to that section. I've repeated a few of the papers from the last page too, including narrow strips from the map print paper.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania Kraft Basics
Paper - K&Co Hannah, Unknown Map Paper, Simple Stories Awesome, Basic Grey Sultry
Letters - Basic Grey, All My Memories
Sticker - Simple Stories Take a Hike
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Flowers - Great Expressions
Ink - dovecraft, Ranger Distress Ink

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

On Top of the World

I'm combining two challenges today. First up is Challenge #172 from Scrap Whispers called 'You Choose'; we were asked to take three features from an inspiration layout from Christina and use them on our own pages. Her page was very different from the ones I make, but there were plenty of details to choose from. I picked machine stitching, date stamps and book paper.

I based my page on Sketch #56 from Sketch-n-Scrap, though I used four photos and more paper layers and moved the title and journalling.

The photos are from Ny Ålesund in Svalbard, the most northerly permanent settlement in the world. We visited there on a cruise of Norway and Svalbard last summer. I am doing an album for the holiday of course, but I'm also making a page for each port of call for my main 2013 album.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania Kraft Basics
Paper - Unknown Map Paper, K&Co Hannah, Glitz Designs Beautiful Dreamer, Simple Stories Awesome
Letters - October Afternoon, Basic Grey
Frames/Stickers - Authentique Natural
Washi Tape - American Crafts
Compass Die-Cut - atd
Anchor Button - from Stash
Ink - docrafts, Ranger

Tools
Sewing Machine
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

"Happy" Cards

We're coming to the end of another round of challenges over at Scrap Whispers, and I haven't done any of them yet. With just over a week to remedy that position, I started with Challenge #173 - make a card for a happy occasion. 

May and June are busy birthday months in our family and I have loads of cards to make at this time of year. The first May birthday is my brother's and I sought inspiration in the card gallery at UKScrappers, finding a '10 Minute Card' from Jimjams, which I adapted with a change of colour and a change of motif. It took me considerably more than 10 minutes, but I'll be quicker next time. I think that there will be a next time as it's a design that could easily be repeated with different colours and shapes.

Since I used so many circles on this card, it fits perfectly with another challenge in Sketch-n-Scrap's Birthday Bash. This was hosted by Darcy at Our House of E and she simply asked us to use circles on a card or layout. 

Also this month, it is my brother and sister-in-law's wedding anniversary, so I adapted an old card design made with paper strips for them. I went monochrome with plain and patterned coral paper teamed with a cream base card and an old cream heart from Hobbycraft. 

And the next birthday will be... mine!

Magical Parade

This month Sketch-n-Scrap are celebrating their second birthday with a month of challenges from members of their design team. I remember taking part in their first birthday bash and it doesn't seem possible that a year has passed since then.

This year the first challenge is being hosted by Kerry at Scrapbooking - for the Love of Paper; she gave us a tic-tac-toe grid and asked us to use any three elements from a row, column or diagonal. I chose the right hand column - doily, tags and yellow - as I thought that these would work best with the final page that I wanted to make from our trip to Disneyland Paris.

This page was going to be a double, with lots of photos from the parade at the end of the day. I recently came across Stick It Down, a blog that has double page sketches, and bookmarked a page of them for future use. There are only a few at the moment but they are adding one each month. This is April's. I changed the square photos to rectangles, and once I had them laid out on my page I rearranged them slightly, as it felt like there was too much on the right-hand side.

Returning to Kerry's challenge, I used doilies and tags in the embellishment on either side. I had several yellow butterflies in my patterned paper, but I managed to cover most of them with the photos. The two that you can clearly see have been fussy cut and layered over cream ones on the paper. I stuck the bodies flush to the paper and lifted the wings up on my thinnest foam squares.

Supplies
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Sandylion Pink Gingham, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, Scrappy Cat Butterfly Dreams,
      American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan
Letters - American Crafts, Echo Park
Doilies - Dovecraft
Tags - Lakeland
Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time
Ink - Ink It Up!

Disneyland Paris

While I was still in 'Disneyland mode' after the last page, I decided to pull together a page that has been brewing in my head. This one will come first in my album and has photos of the park entrance and the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle. The mixture of one landscape photo and one portrait photo can be tricky, but I matted them together and used a postcard that I bought (raised on foam squares) to fill in the gap and to serve as my title.

I'm keeping to the same pastel colour palette for all my Disneyland pages, and repeating the mason jars, gems and rub-ons.

Supplies
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Studio Calico Snippets, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, 
   American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan
Border - Bazzill Half the Edge
Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time + some from stash
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Space Mountain

I discovered a new challenge blog last week, and by new I mean 'brand new' rather than 'new to me'. Scrap & Play posted their first ever challenge, a sketch, just a few days ago.

I had a couple of landscape photos from Space Mountain at Disneyland Paris that I wanted to scrap but those in the sketch are portrait; I considered rotating the whole sketch but I preferred my paper strips to run horizontally so I just jiggled things a bit to make them work.

The basis of the layout is those three paper strips, which links this page nicely with this week's challenge at shimelle.com, where Relly Annett-Baker has taken over the reins while Shimelle is on maternity leave. Each week Relly is taking inspiration from one of Shimelle's old pages and this week she has challenged us to use paper strips on a page.

I've already made one page from Disneyland (Meet the Characters) so I kept to the same colour palette and repeated the lettering, mason jar, rub-ons and gems from my first page. I'd layered the papers on that page, so I overlapped them here rather than having separate panels as in the sketch.

Supplies

Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Karen Foster, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, Echo Park Sweet Summertime, 

    American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan

Letters - American Crafts Thickers

Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time

Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools

Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Hobbycraft Star Punch

Shakespeare's Globe

It's been a while since I did a weekly challenge from UKScrappers, and when I do them I tend to leave them to the last minute - this page, for April Week 4, is due by tonight. Alli gave us a sketch, and asked us to scrap something we love, and to use inking and stitching (real or faux) for full points. I thought the sketch would work well for our visit to the Globe Theatre last month, so I dropped the love criterion. I'll only score 20/30 points for my team but that's better than nothing. 

I followed the sketch, but I altered the photo sizes and placement slightly. I inked the edges of all my papers and there is faux stitching on one of the vertical strips.

Supplies

Paper - K&Co Life's Journey, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society 6x6

Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Basic Grey Hopscotch

Tag - KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society

Photo Corner - K&Co Life's Journey

Ink - docrafts

Now I Can Reach

It's been a slow start to the month scrapping-wise and despite today being National Scrapbooking Day I'm not feeling super-creative at the moment. I have a long list of NSD challenges in front of me and I haven't even started one yet.

The page I am sharing today was made with the 1st May sketch from Stuck Sketches. I concentrated on the main photo-title cluster for my page and dropped the smaller part of the sketch, moving my journalling below my photo. The photo is of my son, then aged 5, on a mini obstacle course. We used to visit this play area every summer and he hadn't been able to reach the top chain the year before.

My background paper came in a kit and I've had it a long while as I've always found it to be too bright when I've tried to use it. I finally realised that I could tone it down a little with a really thin layer of white acrylic paint, which I spread out along two sides with an old credit card. It's caused the sides of the page to curl up, but I think it will flatten down in the page protector.

While I was assembling the page, I realised that it nearly met the criteria for the latest Stash Challenge at Scrap Our Stash - something old, something new, something fussy cut and something blue - a little more work and I had all four. My something old is the Jillibean Soup background and die-cuts (Summer 2012); something new are the floral and red papers from a 6x6 pad that I bought last month. I fussy cut the small grey chevrons from a Studio Calico paper, and something blue is obviously the blue paper.

Supplies
Paper - Jillibean Soup Macho Nacho Soup, MME Bright 6x6 Pad, Studio Calico Snippets
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Dies-Cuts - Jillibean Soup Macho Nacho Soup
Border - Bazzill Half the Edge
Stars - Studio Calico
Paint - Wilko
Mist - Mr Huey's
Ink - Ink It Up!