Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt

Any regular reader of this blog will know that I take part in the Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Rinda at Gallo Organico each year. 

Last year Eileen (In my Playroom) and Joy (Daisy Row) joined forces to run a winter version which I thoroughly enjoyed. Happily it's back again this year, running from 1 December to the Spring equinox on 21st March. 

As with the summertime hunt, there are 21 items to find, with a few alternatives in case they are needed. The full list is:

1.   A robin redbreast
2.   Tinsel
3.   Outside lighting
4.   A star
5.   A snowman
6.   A puddle
7.   Berries and/or nuts
8.   A wreath
9.   A tree that has lost all its leaves
10.  A windy day
11.  Your favourite pudding
12.  A fancy button
13.  Street art
14.  Afternoon tea
15.  Candle light
16.  A chimney
17.  A ladder
18.  An arrow
19.  A fountain
20.  Cutlery
21.  Your own handwriting (this one is compulsory and cannot be substituted)

Alt A.  A supermarket trolley or basket, filled with shopping
Alt B.  An animal statue
Alt C.  Metal railings

One month gone, and these are my finds so far:

3. Outside lighting - a house that I pass on my way home from work. 

It's the only one in the street that's decorated so it really stands out:

4. A star - on our Christmas tree

6. A puddle - in the Lake District

7. Berries (and/or nuts)

8. A wreath

9. A tree that has lost all its leaves

16. A chimney

Alt C. Metal railings

Most of these photos were taken close to home, so I've done the easy outdoor ones now. I should have done the tinsel, the candle light, the cutlery and the shopping trolley, but I haven't yet. I spotted an animal statue recently when I didn't have my camera with me, so I shall return to take that photo. 

A few items on the list are going to need some luck or some travelling. We have a robin who generally winters in our garden so I'm hoping to photograph him. I know a couple of places for good street art, and a few for fountains. A snowman? Unless the weather co-operates I don't think that will be a real one this winter.

There's still plenty of time for you to join in too. Hop over to Joy or Eileen who are hosting an end-of-month link-up where we can share our progress so far.

A Year with 'Stick It Down'

I'm coming to the end of a year on the single page Design Team at Stick It Down. The twelve sketches that I have worked with came from a number of designers and varied widely, from sketches I would have chosen to work with anyway through to some more challenging layouts. I've enjoyed the variety and the challenges but Ashley has decided to refresh the team for 2016.

Let's take a look back at my year with 'Stick It Down':

January - Teachers

February - David & Friends

March - Messing About on the Water

April - Sunset

May - Escape in a Book

June - The Day Brian May Came to Palmer's College

July - Sharing

August - Our American Cousins

September - Alex

October - Black Watch

November - Pole of the North

December - Humpty David

This was my first DT role, and I'm grateful to Darcy who gave me that opportunity, and to Ashley who extended my original term, but all good things come to an end.

Go Gina!

We might be fast approaching the end of the year, but I've only just bought my albums for my 2015 pages. I've put away my pages from January to July and identified a few gaps.

One of my missing pages is from April, when my husband and I went to watch the London marathon and support our friend who was running. We were stationed at Canary Wharf, ready to hand over supplies of Kendal mint cake to keep her going.

I picked an arrows background for the sense of movement, and the numbers paper because the random print looks a little like the crowd photo and numbers are an significant element of the day. I have a pack of chipboard pieces that I am trying to use up, and two of them matched the colours of the page so I used them here, finishing off with a few gems and some gold mist.

PS Looking at this, I've forgotten to stitch the chipboard pieces in place; I hate the empty holes, so I'll be doing that next.

Supplies

Paper - Amy Tangerine , Simple Stories So Fancy, Chickaniddy Crafts

Letters - American Crafts

Chipboard - My Mind's Eye

Gems - Papermania Dew Drops

Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot & X-Cut Gift Tag Dies

Christmases Past

Merry Christmas!

No new scrapping today, but I thought I'd look back over Christmases past, via the scrapbook pages I've made:

Last year, my children were camera-averse, so I have no photos from Christmas day, but I marked the season with a quartet of London trees:

and a page from my Nan's Christmas party:

My children hadn't been keen on photos the previous year either, but I compromised with photos of the stocking-opening before I put the camera away for the rest of the day.

Back to 2012 now, and I made a 12-photo page with all aspects of the season:

Two pages again in 2011, but only one has those camera-shy kids and I remember cajoling them to smile for the photo in Trafalgar Square:

The other had my Christmas baking, and I've made some of these treats again in the last few days (though the mince pies have been replaced by Mary Berry's mincemeat streusel):

My last page is from 2010, when our children were happy to both decorate the tree and let me take photos of them. (Last year they only put on the 'special' decorations, not the plain baubles, and this year I've done them all.)

Merry Christmas, and I should be back with some new pages soon.

Gift Card Holder III

Christmas is almost here and, in a reversal of the recent trend, I've done most of my shopping in store rather than online this year. My nephew requested a Game giftcard, and I duly obliged, but it didn't come with a card to write in.

I've made two previous gift card holders from Fiona's tutorial at Staring at the Sea, and she came to my rescue again this week. (You can see them here and here.) I decided to go 'boy' rather than 'Christmas' and used kraft cardstock, paper from Simple Stories and twine instead of ribbon.

I make my cards a little larger than the ones in Fiona's tutorial and I had to re-work out the measurements for scoring as I didn't note them down last time. This time I have, and I'll include them here if anyone is interested (and so I can find them again). I started from a 6"x12" piece of cardstock and punched one end, which brought it down to about 30cm in length. Starting from the unpunched end, I scored at 8cm, 11cm, 14cm and 22.5cm, which gives a final card size of 15cm x 8cm. (Sorry about the mixed measurements; it must be my age, but I find myself able to switch between metric and imperial with ease. Cutting down a 12" paper to 30cm makes sense to me!)

At the Apothecary

Three of the four buildings on my last page are now museums, and one of the houses has a small apothecary display. I love looking at old medicines and their labels, so this had to have a page in my album.

The layout is another scraplift, this time of one of my Paralympic pages - Table Tennis - though I flipped it horizontally for this version.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Trimcraft
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Downtown

I'm still plodding on with my holiday album, though I am feeling the pull of other projects. I have a few pages left to make from St John's, but I'm moving on to Sydney (Nova Scotia) now. The city was founded by the British in the 1780s and the oldest buildings are in the Downtown area, near the port. 

My page has photos of four of those buildings, two churches and two houses. I was originally planning to make a page with four quadrants, but I couldn't make it work so I scanned my old pages for inspiration and hit upon one for Happisburgh Lighthouse which I decided to scraplift.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Hot Off the Press Ivory, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - American Crafts
Enamel Dot - Trimcraft
Pearls - My Mind's Eye
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Government House / Court House / Colonial Building

Three mini-layouts in one page today, with photos of the major government buildings in St John's. Government House is the official residence of the Lieutenant-Governor; the Court House holds the Supreme Court of Newfoundland & Labrador; the Colonial Building used to be the seat of government and is being refurbished before it opens as a museum.

None of the buildings really 'deserved' their own page in my holiday album and a standard three photo page didn't feel right, so I partitioned my page and made three similar mini-layouts (each 9.5cm by 29.5cm).

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Bazzill
Paper - My Minds Eye Chalk Studio II, Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Doodlebug Petite Prints
Letters - American Crafts Shimelle
Washi Tape - Tesco
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Simple Stories, Trimcraft
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Stamps

My Sketch World - Christmas Card

Back in October, I made a quartet of cards for World Card-Making Day based on sketches at My Sketch World and I was stunned to receive first prize for my efforts. As part of that prize, Lucy invited me to guest for two card sketch challenges.

This is the second sketch and since it's December we have a Christmas theme. I chose a 6x6 paper pad from KaiserCraft and a little holly sticker for my main embellishment. Part way through I decided to switch from a rectangular card to a square one so that my circle would have an even border. I cut a banner from one of the papers but my sentiment sticker was lost against it so I die-cut a tag as an additional layer. The card didn't seem quite finished so I had a rummage for something else to add, coming up with the star stickers which I scattered along the diagonal.

Supplies
Card - Craft Creations
Paper - KaiserCraft Christmas Collections 6x6 Pad
Stickers - Papermania, Gold Label, WHSmith
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Tag Die

Tiedyetastic

This page is something a bit different for me. My daughter and her fellow Explorer Scouts had been doing tie-dye and their leader posted some photos of the results on Facebook. I decided to try a messy multi-coloured background to imitate the way that colours run into each other in tie-dye.

I mixed several colours of ink with water and 'smooshed' them into a plain piece of white cardstock using plastic packaging to spread them around. This worked best with Ranger distress inks, was acceptable with Hobbycraft ink and an abject failure with Papermania inks.

I stamped over this with a bubble wrap stamp, used modelling paste and a circles mask for a bit of texture, and spattered two colours of mist across the diagonal. Messy stuff over, I cut down my page slightly and matted it on a diagonal striped paper. I don't normally like multi-coloured titles but it seemed to be the right thing for this page. My title was originally going to be the slightly clearer tie-dye-tastic, but I found a cursive font and decided to join up all the letters.

Supplies
Cardstock - Quirky Kit
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Quoted, My Minds Eye Just Splendid
Letters - Echo Park
Ink - Ranger, Hobbycraft, Docrafts
Mist - Maya Road, Docrafts
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Washi Tape - Tesco
Gems - ZVA Creative, Forever in Time
Modelling Paste - Farrel & Gold

Tools
KaiserCraft Bubble Wrap Stamp
Heidi Swapp Confetti Mask

A Grey Day in Saint-Pierre

This is my final page from Saint-Pierre and it's a double, collecting together all the minor sights of the town in much the same way as I did for Killybegs. I've scraplifted myself for this page, basing it on one I did for Whitby at the beginning of last year.

I managed to use up a really old sticker which has a camera and the words 'le clic' on it, since Saint-Pierre is French, and I matched that with a new wood veneer camera on the opposite page. I also have an old pack of gems that I usually find are too bulky to use, but they fit the inside of the camera quite well.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Tesco
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Gem - Doodlebug
Enamel Dots - Papermania, Trimcraft

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Le Phare de la Pointe aux Canons

I'm still in Saint-Pierre for this page, as you might have guessed from the French title. I've already made a page from the Pointe aux Canons, the site of an old fort, and this lighthouse shares its name. It lies at the entrance to the harbour and at the end of a causeway.

I used Brenda's December sketch for my page; it's one part of a trio of 'Scrappy Friends' challenges, but I didn't combine the others this month as the wintry colours and words just don't suit my holiday album.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye, October Afternoon Travel Girl
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Frame - atd
Epoxy Sticker - Ebay
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Little B's Arrow Dies
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Stamp Set

Saint-Pierre

Saint-Pierre was the third stop on our cruise this summer; it's a small island off Newfoundland, but it's a French overseas territory, not part of Canada. We moored a little way outside the town itself, and I've used photos of the town from the mooring for an introductory page. I'm making one of these for each port to divide the pages in my album into distinct sections for each place.

I picked the latest sketch from Stuck?! Sketches for my page, but I'd already printed my photos and they were too wide to follow the sketch exactly so I juggled a few pieces around to make it work.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Wallflower Alphabet Dies
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp Set
Heidi Swapp 'Inspire' Stamp Set

Stick It Down - Humpty David

The new month brought three more sketches from Stick It Down; whether you prefer single pages, double pages or cards there is a sketch for you there. Today it is the turn of the single page team to share their creations with you. 

I picked an old photo of my son as a toddler and paired it with a new paper pad badged under the Recollections brand as Awesome Boy, but which I recognise as originally being Simple Stories' Awesome collection. I had bought some of the individual papers on two previous occasions as they are great for outdoor photos as well as boy photos, and I couldn't resist the pad when I saw it. Everything on the page apart from the cogs, the letters and the wood veneer pieces came from that paper pad. I fussy cut the stars and die cut the labels from some of the papers.

In case you were wondering, David wasn't in any real danger of emulating Humpty Dumpty as his dad was behind the wall, with a firm hold on his reins.

Supplies
Paper - Recollections Awesome Boy/Simple Stories Awesome
Letters - American Crafts
Cogs - from Stash
Wood Veneer Stars - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Jelly Bean Row

I posted this month's Scraplift Challenge earlier this week and, as always, I've taken on the challenge myself. I picked a four-photo page because I wanted to show off a selection of the brightly-coloured houses from downtown St John's, affectionately nicknamed Jelly Bean Row.

My original page, Up to Their Necks In It!, had a much more subtle background, but I wanted to play with the idea of the rows of coloured houses this time. I moved the journalling compared to the last page, and this allowed the introduction of a third embellishment cluster.

I have to say that I am loving these Thickers (the Fitzgerald font). The letters are nice and skinny so fit in small spaces, and there are loads of them. Having said that, I have now started my second pack because I've used all the L's and N's in the first.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, October Afternoon Travel Girl, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - My Minds Eye
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Washi Tape - Tesco
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

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

December Scraplift Challenge

Welcome to my final Scraplift Challenge of 2015. It's been interesting, but I've decided not to carry on with these challenges next year. You'll have to keep following to find out what I do instead.

My final challenge is a four-photo page, Up to Their Necks In It!, but it would be easy to use 2 4x6 photos, one larger photo or perhaps a collage if that is what you prefer.

My guest designer this month is my October challenge winner Natalie. She's rotated the page, replaced one photo with a card and re-interpreted my background layers for a lovely bright page featuring her cute little boy.

As always, I've done the challenge myself, and I'll be sharing my new page with you on Thursday.

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, please link back to my blog and link up to the gadget in my sidebar. Paper pages only please; entries close at 10pm (GMT) on 31 December.

I've a new prize for a new month and, even if I have fewer than five entries this month, this one will definitely be awarded because it's the last challenge so it can't be rolled forward. It's December so I've chosen 6x6 Christmas papers from KaiserCraft, plus a few other seasonal pieces.

Full challenge rules are here. Now, get scrapping!