Photo Scavenger Hunt - Canadian Finds

We've just come back from a 16 night cruise to Ireland and Canada, though you shouldn't have missed me as I scheduled posts to cover my absence.

We visited the eastern fringes of Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia with four Canadian ports of call, St John's, Sydney, Corner Brook and Red Bay, plus one that is actually French - Saint Pierre. 

Every year, I like to take as many Scavenger Hunt photos as possible while we are on holiday, especially when that holiday is in another country. I was on 14 of the 21 items at the end of July, but for this trip the slate was wiped clean and I was starting again from zero.


St John's, Newfoundland
5. Architectural columns - the Colonial Building, seat of government from 1850 to 1959, currently being renovated.

14. A traffic signal

16. A panoramic view from above - the harbour and the city from Signal Hill.

Saint-Pierre, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (France)
11. A cellular tower or TV satellite dish

13. A merry-go-round or carousel

Sydney, Nova Scotia
10. A college or university - McKenzie College (Sydney Campus)

12. A public restroom, bathroom or toilet

14. Another traffic signal

15. A flag pole with at least three flags
This one was going to be difficult in England, and I'd hoped to find it in Canada.

Corner Brook, Newfoundland
2. An ornate door knocker, found for sale in a junk shop.

6. A metal bridge, spanning the Corner Brook Stream

8. Someone "plugged in" to social media - Some of the crew making use of the free wi-fi in the port building.

16. Another panoramic view - from Crow Hill

On Board the Ship
1. A bouquet of flowers

7. A turtle, in one of the shops.

17. Two or more people in matching uniforms - the captain and two of the ship's officers.

Having spent 16 nights at sea, I have a large number of photos for item 20 - a natural body of water. Here are just a few:

The Atlantic Ocean at sunset.

The Narrows, the harbour entrance at St John's.

The Bay of Islands at sunrise.

Corner Brook Stream

Red Bay

I'm rather annoyed that I forgot about the person walking a dog (no. 3), as we saw several Newfoundland dogs in Newfoundland itself. Also, I should have snapped a photo of the bridge players in the card room on the ship (no. 4). 

All in all, I have 15 finds from Canada, and five of them are genuine additions to my previous total of 14, bringing me to 19 with three weeks to go.

My 'missing' photos are the ticket booth and the self-portrait, so I am sure to add at least one more to this score. I nabbed one of the substitutes back in June, so even if I don't find the ticket booth, it looks like I'll complete the hunt this year.

Rinda is hosting another link up for the end of August, so please hop over to her blog and see how well everyone else is doing too.

Minibeasts Card

During a recent clear-out I came across the remnants of a kit that was probably a magazine freebie, just a couple of papers and few die-cuts.There wasn't much left, but there was enough for a quick card. I covered a card with the largest paper and cut a circle from one of the scraps to layer behind the sentiment die cut, using foam squares between the two circles. I cut several lengths of wire and stuck one end of each to a dragonfly, butterfly or frog, wedging the other ends into the foam squares to hide them and hold them in place.

Stars Card

Stick It Down publishes three sketches each month - for single pages, double pages and cards - so there is something for everyone.

You've already seen my single page, but I do like to do the doubles and the cards too when I can. This month's card sketch is something a bit different, and I think it can be interpreted in lots of ways.

I started out by stencilling my base card with two shades of blue stars. Then I added a sprinkling of gold mist and some corrugated card stars on pop dots. I wanted to bring in a third type of star and tried a few options before deciding on puffy stickers.

Supplies
Card - Craft Creations
Gold Stars - Readicut Crafts
Blue Stars - Paperchase
Ink - Ink It Up!, Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Heidi Swapp Stencil

Celebrate

Back to 2015, and I'm sharing a page inspired by sketch #86 from Sketch-n-Scrap today. I only used the right hand side, and I swapped two photos for just one. 

I wanted to pull the pink out of the photo and started from the pink Amy Tangerine paper. I was going to stick to one collection, but the other papers I have left are black, white and grey which were too boring, and orange which didn't really work with the pink. A good rummage later, and I picked a floral from My Mind's Eye as my background and went on from there. 

Supplies

Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Record It, American Crafts Amy Tangerine Plus One

Letters - American Crafts Thickers

Stickers - Elle's Studio

Brads - Fancy Pants Wonderful Day

Gems - ZVA Creative

Ink - Docrafts

Say Cheese

Have you ever used a whole packet of something on one scrapbook page? I did it here, and it's really rather satisfying to throw the empty packaging away.

I've had a sheet of Doodlebug alphabet rub-ons for ages. They were part of a prize that I won some years ago, but I don't particularly like mixed fonts and mixed sizes in a title so they'd been relegated to the back of my alphabets basket and half-forgotten. I rediscovered them during a recent sort-out and was hit by a neat solution - just use the whole sheet all together to make a block of lettering on a page.

I like to scrap school photos on letter or number backgrounds, so I picked out an old picture of my niece and nephew and used my rub-ons with navy cardstock for a good contrast against the white letters. I themed my page a little with lined paper, punched with a notebook border punch, and a few pencils, cut from a scrap of paper that's even older than the rub-ons.

PS I doodled a white border around the page after I took this photo. Sometimes you notice what's missing while writing the blog post!

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Now & Then, Cosmo Cricket Homework
Rub-Ons - Doodlebug Party Mix
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - My Mind's Eye, Teresa Collins
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Notebook Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Washi Tape Storage

My washi tape storage solution is dead simple. A couple of years ago, I altered a tin for a challenge, and my washi tape has been stored in it ever since. It's decidedly low-tech, and I need to tip them all out to get to any but the top few. However this means that I am regularly looking at my tapes, and I have a good idea of the colours and patterns that I own.

Recently though, my collection has expanded beyond the capacity of that tin, and I have little stacks on the shelf next to it, little stacks that are easy to knock over and then I have to hunt them down from wherever they roll to.

Being the hoarder crafter that I am, I not only have another tin, but I have another sheet of the bird paper. However, when I went to use it I spotted a floral from the same collection and decided to cover my new tin in that paper instead.

I used a glue stick to adhere the paper to the tin, and covered the join with washi tape (what else?). 

I'm happy that my washi tape rolls can't escape any more, I've used a tin that I was keeping 'in case it's useful', and I even have room for a few more rolls. However, I think that two tins should be my limit. They hold about 25 rolls each, and no-one needs more than 50 rolls of washi tape, do they?

Goodbye Dippy

In January, the Natural History Museum announced that they were planning to replace Dippy the Diplodocus as the main exhibit in the Hinze Hall. It feels like he has always been there, but in fact he was only moved there in 1979. I remember seeing him as a child, and making a huge papier mache diplodocus that covered the back wall of our classroom when I was in junior school.

I've also visited Dippy many times as an adult; my son was dinosaur mad as a small boy, and once the museum was made free entry we became frequent visitors, though our visits tailed off as he got older.

The route of the Jubilee Greenway passes through nearby Hyde Park so, while I was walking that stretch, I detoured to see Dippy, possibly for the last time here (though they intend to move him to another part of the museum after he's been on tour).

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Fancy Pants Childish Things, Crate Paper DIY Shop, My Mind's Eye Bloom & Grow, Basic Grey, Amy Tangerine

Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon

Wood Veneer Stars - Studio Calico

Word Sticker - Authentique

Epoxy Sticker - Ebay

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Big Shot & Ticket Stubs Die

X-Cut Small Circle Punch

X-Cut Corner Punch

James

If you're anything like me, you have a collection of useless Thickers sitting about, packs with hardly any vowels and no hope of making a new page title, but you can't quite bring yourself to throw them away. I've had an idea brewing in my head for a while about how to use some of them up, and I've finally put that idea into practice.

I picked a set of dark grey foam Thickers in the Lullaby font, and matched them to similar dark grey cardstock to make a background for my page. Lullaby is a very curly decorative font, and I thought that I would be able to fit the letters and numbers together in an interesting pattern; a more formal font would probably have been very blocky. 

The photo is an old one of my nephew when he started secondary school, and the layers behind it are a result of more stash-busting. I chuck all my paper scraps in one box as I go along, and when it's full I sort all of those scraps into co-ordinating mini-kits in order to use them up. These papers were part of a aqua/teal and grey set that I had pulled together a couple of weeks ago.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Papers - Pink Paislee, Crate Paper, American Crafts, Bo Bunny
Letters - American Crafts
Rub-On Letters - Making Memories
Mist - Docrafts
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot and Quickutz Tabs Die
Woodware Tag (as a Template)

Gift Card Holder II

Earlier this summer, we attended a family wedding where the bride and groom had asked for gift cards rather than actual presents. It's a trend that's increasing and I'm not sure I'm happy about it, but that's what we did.

On the morning of the wedding, my husband asked if I could 'do something with it to make it a bit more special' and I remembered the gift card holder that I made for my mum last year following a tutorial from Fiona at Staring at the Sea.

The wedding colours were cream and red so I went with along with those for my gift card holder, choosing a red 'love' print with cream cardstock and gold ribbon. I played about with the dimensions of the card for one a little larger than Fiona's, and used some ancient rub-ons both on the outside and also inside the card.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill?
Paper - Paper Adventures
Rub-Ons & Ribbon - Unknown

Tools
Fiskars Apron Lace Border Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

Let's Go!

This page marks a first for me, the first time that I have completed all three Scrappy Friends challenges in one page. Brenda, Rochelle and Kelly join forces each month to set three interlinked challenges from which you can do one, two or all three in one page.

Brenda set a two-photo sketch but I replaced the smaller photo with a card from Simple Stories. This card set the colour scheme for my page, and also provided a 'home' for my main embellishment cluster.

Rochelle gave us a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge and I picked the middle column - anything that flies (the butterflies), a camera (or six cameras) and four or more patterned papers.

Finally, Kelly had a word challenge - to use one or more of a selection of summer words somewhere on the page. My photograph is of my daughter and her friends just before they went into a theme park, so I have the word 'Friends' on the heart and also in the journalling.

Finally, I'm linking up with this month's stash challenge at Scrap Our Stash, where the team asked us to create a page using items for each of the letters in the word PAPER. I have Punched shapes, Aqua letters, Prima butterflies, Enamel dots and a Round shape.

Supplies
Paper - Studio Calico Snippets, My Mind's Eye Record It
Cards - Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Letters - Studio Calico
Butterflies - Prima
Heart - Pretty Little Studio
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico, Doodlebug
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Tabs Die
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

A Hug from Nanna

I've been scrapping a mish-mash of stuff recently, and today it's an older photo that my cousin sent me of her son and our nan.

I used the 1 August sketch from Stuck?! Sketches and the border at the top made me think of an Amy Tangerine paper that I have, though the paper has a border all the way round. Funny the connections that our brains make. Then I picked The Pier 6x6 pad because my Nan lived at the seaside at the time (even though there's no hint of that in the photo); my brain doing strange things again.

I was originally going to stitch the circles from the sketch, but then I noticed the splodges and decided to stencil a circle of dots. Once done, the stitching seemed superfluous, and dropping it meant that my title could sit in the space above the photo. 

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Amy Tangerine Plus One, Crate Paper The Pier
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Authentique Petite Type
Washi Tape - Papermania
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Heidi Swapp Stencil
Big Shot & Concentric Circles Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

An Unexpected Find

It's been a few months since I joined in with one of Miniowner's sketch challenges. They always go on my 'to do' list, but sometimes I run out of month, and then new sketches come along. I've been sorting through my 2015 photographs recently, and when I saw this month's sketch I knew which photos I wanted to use.

We took a short break in the Peak District at the start of the school summer holidays, and when we stopped in Disley for some shopping I spotted Barney Storey's gold post box by the main road. The Royal Mail painted more than 100 post boxes gold in 2012 to celebrate our Olympic and Paralympic gold medallists but there aren't any near us and this was the first we'd seen.

I had a scrap of gold pattern vellum that I intended to incorporate, even before Scrap Much? posted their colour challenge for this month; it's a simple one - to use gold, preferably in a significant way. I think gold vellum (and gold mist) for one our gold medal winners is significant, don't you? 

The bottom part of the page came together quite easily but I couldn't find a patterned paper that worked as a background. I assembled the other layers and tried them against a variety of papers but had to settle on plain cardstock (sprinkled with mist) in the end.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts Amy Tangerine, American Crafts Dear Lizzy, Scenic Route
Vellum - My Mind's Eye Necessities
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Washi Tape - Unknown
Stars - Paperchase
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts, Mister Huey's

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

Stick It Down - Tattershall Castle

I'm back with another page from a Stick It Down sketch today, a double, but it's not from the current sketch. This is July's, but I decided to stitch the circles, plus extra smaller ones; it took a while and I didn't finish it before the end of the month. I added translucent yellow circles to the stitching, they aren't really as obvious as appear to be in the photo.

My photos are more old ones - Tattershall Castle is in Lincolnshire where we holidayed in 1999. That title needed lots of As, Ts and Ss so I cut it on my Big Shot rather than depleting a set of letter stickers. I balanced it with the row of asterisks, which were suggested to me by the stars on the sketch, although they are in a different place.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Basic Grey Aged&Confused, My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm
Washi Tape - Efco
Thread - DMC
Circles - KaiserCraft Droplets
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Big Shot & Sizzix Alphabet Dies
Fiskars Circles Template

Stick It Down - Our American Cousins

It's the fifth of the month, so time for the DT single pages to be unveiled over at Stick It Down. The diamonds on Purvi's sketch made me think of using my new hexagon stamp. I wanted to work on a subtle pattern, rather than plain cardstock, and picked a diagonal stripe from Dear Lizzy, which helped with lining up the stamping.

My photos are annual school pictures of my cousin's children; they live in the US which lead to my title. The bubble/circle paper is the branding strip from the Dear Lizzy paper, and it set the colour scheme for the layers behind the photos.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Dear Lizzy Fine & Dandy, My Mind's Eye Find Your Wings and Fly, 
     MME Now & Then, Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Letters - Studio Calico, JoAnn Craft Essentials
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Odea-Ology
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Washi Tape - Trimcraft, Papermania
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Studio Calico Hexagon Stamp
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Missed It!

I posted this month's Scraplift Challenge on Saturday, and today I'm sharing my own version. This page is one of four that I made for the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002; it's the first one chronologically, but the last one that I finished.

The Queen travelled to a Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral in the Golden State Coach and we joined the crowds at Ludgate Hill to watch the procession go by. It actually moved quite quickly and I missed photographing it as it passed, hence my title.

I chose to scraplift 'Wild Camp' as I wanted two definite areas of the page for two aspects of the story. The top part has a few cropped photos showing what I did manage to capture on film; the bottom part has a photo of our daughter, aged almost two, who slept through the whole event and definitely 'Missed It!'

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Bazzill, American Crafts
Paper - Papermania Portobello Road, Glitz Design Hello December, Bo Bunny Ambrosia, Crate Paper
Letters - American Crafts, Dear Lizzy
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Stars - Papermania
Pearls - Craft for OccasionsWashi Tape - Papermania
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & Filmstrip Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch

July Scraplift Challenge Winner

Thank you to all the four ladies who entered my Scraplift Challenge last month. I've added them to the three I received for June and picked my favourite from all seven to win a small prize. There were some great interpretations of my pages but my overall favourite was the July entry from Pol Prince.

Congratulations Pol! Please email me to claim your prize.

This puts me in something of a quandary because I also picked Pol's page for June and she is already my Guest Designer for the current month. I'd ideally like a new guest for September so I decided to pick a name at random. Your names went in to a hat and I pulled out 'Furrypig'. Therefore I'd like to invite her to be my guest next month. If you are willing Furrypig, please email me and I'll let you have the next page.

Remember there's a new challenge and a new prize up for grabs this month. I'll be sharing my version tomorrow as always and I look forward to seeing your pages too.

August Scraplift Challenge

This month's Scraplift Challenge has its roots in a series of pages that I made in June for the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations. I scraplifted myself for two of them and they became my July and August challenges.

My challenge for this month is to scraplift Wild Camp, a page I made in 2013 with a split background.

My guest designer this month is Pol Prince, who has done my last few challenges and produced some lovely pages. She hasn't disappointed this month, rotating my layout for one about her daughter. 

I'll be announcing my June/July winner tomorrow, so we need a new prize for this month. If I get five entries this month then I'll award this collection of Studio Calico paper and assorted embellishments to the creator of my favourite page; if not, I'll roll it over to September and choose from both months.

Now I challenge YOU to make your own version of my page, taking as much or as little from it as you like, so long as I can see a likeness between the two. Post it somewhere online and link up to the gadget in my sidebar. Paper pages only please; entries close at 10pm (BST) on 31 August.

Happy scrapping, and I look forward to seeing your pages.