Amazing

I have another page from our Welsh holiday today, but we'd snuck over the border for the day and this maze is actually in England. I used this month's sketch from Sue/Miniowner for my page, though I adapted it for four photos.

The page is from the same day as the Butterfly Zoo page that I made at the beginning of the month. I felt that a lot of journalling would have spoiled that page so I decided then that the story for both pages would be on this one. I was thinking of running it down the column on the left of the sketch, but I moved it onto the background cardstock once I'd chosen to use the tree paper.

I'd already started working on this page when Shimelle posted her challenge on Monday - to make journalling the heart of your page - but it did give me confidence that filling the background with writing wasn't a crazy idea. The inspiration piece was a full sheet of writing with the layout on acetate over it, but I've just written in the space around my photo block.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm, Carta Bella Fall Blessings
Wood Veneer - The Works, Heidi Swapp
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tredegar House

I'm sharing another page from our Welsh holiday today, and using another sketch from Laura Whitaker; today it's one that she designed for Stuck?! Sketches.

I flipped the sketch horizontally, and adjusted the dimensions to suit my photos from Tredegar House, a 17th century mansion house near Newport. My background paper has a border all the way round, and the flourish in the corner means that I dropped the row of embellishments at the bottom of the sketch. I didn't have the letter stickers I needed in a suitable colour, so I stamped my title. I really wish that I could remember to do this more often, instead of as a last resort.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm, We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Pearls - Scrapberrys
Ink - Ranger

Tools
American Crafts Scallop Border Punch
Crayola Butterfly Punch
Craft Creatives Alphabet Stamps

Pentre Farm

We spent a week in Wales at Easter, staying in a cottage on this farm in Monmouthshire so I've scrapped a picture of the cottage and the adjacent church as an introduction to the holiday pages in my 2016 album. I used a sketch that Laura Whitaker designed for Imaginisce, though I flipped it horizontally as I wanted my photos to be the other way around.

I stitched the large circle on the sketch with my sewing machine, going round three times to give the circle some weight. 

There have been 12 prompts so far this year in the Scrap Like You Mean It series at UKScrappers; I've missed a few and need to go back and do them, but this page fits with the current prompt - to use a needle and thread.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm
Letters - Elle's Studio
Buttons - Mei Flower
Wood Veneer - Maya Road, Studio Calico
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Big Shot & Poppy Stamps Small Leafy Sprig Die

Divided

I'm flitting back and forth between old (2015) and new (2016) photos at the moment and this is another page for my 2015 Cruise album. 

We spent our last day in Belfast where we visited both the loyalist Shankill Road and the republican Falls Road to look at the murals painted on the buildings there. The two areas are separated by a 'peace wall' with gates that are normally open in the day and closed at night or in times of unrest. This particular gate was closed on the day of our visit but we did cross via an alternative gate where we saw the Cross of Crosses commemorating the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which brought some peace to Northern Ireland. I used photos of the gate and the cross for a page with a lot of journalling.

I based my page on the 1 April sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap. The larger photo is already there, and there was room on the sketch for my smaller photo. The three banners on the sketch became longer, narrower strips of paper on my page as I had to adjust them to fit in all the writing I wanted. 

I used butterflies for my embellishment as they are symbols of peace and hope.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Lily Bee Double Dutch, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II
Letters - American Crafts
Butterflies - Prima
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Just a Minute

I am squeezing this page in just before the linky closes on Shimelle's challenge from last week. It was to scrapbook with numbers and, at the time, I didn't have any suitable photos for it. However, last Wednesday I was going to a recording of the Radio 4 show "Just a Minute" and I realised that I could base my numbers page around that. 

There was no photography allowed in the Radio Theatre, so all my photos have actually come from the internet. I did take a couple of pictures of Broadcasting House, but they didn't come out very well. I decided on a grid, and laid out the photos, numbers and journalling in lots of small boxes. I had a scrap of cardstock with a numbers print so I used that as the basis for my colour scheme.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill, My Mind's Eye
Paper - My Mind's Eye, First Edition
Letters/Numbers - American Crafts, Jenni Bowlin
Word Stickers - American Crafts Shimelle, Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Rub-On - American Crafts Shimelle

Tools
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Woodware Tiny Star Punch

RUN

When I saw last week's sketch from Scrap Much? I was attracted by the diagonally split background. I still have some of Crate Paper's Random collection, and it includes the same peacock print in two colours so I decided to use them together. 

It's rather a bold print so I toned it down a little by spreading white acrylic paint on the page with the edge of an old credit card. I picked a few scraps from the same collection and photos of my sister and her husband after they completed a sponsored run in the Olympic Park for Sport Relief.

I chose RUN for the main part of my title and I used silver Thickers because there is a mirrored/metallic RUN sculpture in the Olympic Park (near the Copper Box Arena). The only link between the two is in my head, and anyone looking at my album probably won't spot the connection, but once I had that idea I couldn't turn away from it. I completed my title with KaiserCraft's new tiny alpha stickers, and they really are tiny.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Random
Letters - American Crafts, KaiserCraft
Stickers - American Crafts Shimelle, Elle's Studio, Anita's Glitterations
Enamel Dots - Echo Park
Ink - Docrafts
Paint - Wilco

Tools
Big Shot & Stars Die
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
X-Cut Corner Punch
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

Go Wild

I've reached that time of year when I am torn between scrapping this year's photos and finishing off my albums from last year. Right now this year is winning, and I've scrapped a trio of photos from my husband and daughter's first wild camp of the year which they did last month.

I had three 4x4 photos, and my initial impulse was to line them up across the page with borders above and below, but that felt too confined so I looked for a sketch with less rigidity in the design and found the first April sketch from Let's Get Sketchy. It's a two photo sketch, but I liked the layers and the circles so I decided to see what I could do using three photos instead.

I also tackled Shimelle's currently weekly challenge - to scrapbook with vellum. I used a sheet of vellum as the largest of my layers and I added a squares pattern to it using ink and a mask.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit, (Unknown Background)
Vellum - The Works
Letters - American Crafts
Flowers - KaiserCraft
Pearls - ScrapBerry's
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Poppy Stamps Small Leafy Sprig Die
Creative Expressions "Grid" Mask
Kreaxions Circle Cutter

International Murals

I have lots of pages whizzing round my head at the moment, but I'm waiting for an order of new photos to arrive before I can pin them down on paper. In the meantime, I'm returning to my cruise album from last summer. It was mostly a Canadian cruise, but we also had stops in Ireland on the way out and back. Our final port of call was Belfast and we used the local buses to look at the various murals around the city. I'm still thinking about how I'm going to scrap my photos of the Loyalist and Republican murals, but I'm starting with a simpler set of pictures - some of the murals on the International Wall.

I laid them out with scraps of patterned paper so that my page looks like a wall (or that was my aim anyway). I punched circles from a map paper to use in my embellishment, picking Europe (where we are) plus North America and the Middle East (which link to some of the murals).

I decided on all black titles for this album, but I'm running out of some vowels now. I used my last 'a' in this font for Murals and I completed my title by cutting 'International' on my Silhouette Portrait.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, Bazzill Basics
Letters - American Crafts
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Stars - from Stash
Ink/Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Little B Arrow Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Readership Survey & Giveaway Winner

I posted a Readership Survey and a Giveaway two weeks ago to mark my one thousandth blog post. The main thing that I've learned from it is that my readers either don't like or can't be bothered with surveys. Despite my blog averaging 30+ page views per day, only a handful of people completed my questionnaire in the week that it was open, and only one left a comment on the post.

My Giveaway winner is Natalie Nelson. Please email me (or drop me a PM via Facebook) with your address and I'll put a bundle in the post.

I'd hoped for more feedback in order for me to decide the future direction of my blog. Passing this milestone has made me think about why I blog, and my main thought is "Is it for me or for you?"

I've been posting on alternate days for more than a year, but lately this has been harder to achieve; sometimes I've felt that I am crafting to a deadline just in order to provide the next blog post and it's taken some of the enjoyment out of it. 

I had wondered whether to carry on with the walking posts, since this is primarily a scrapbooking blog, but one thing that did came out of the survey was that people do read/enjoy those posts, so they will continue.

I will still be here, I am still crafting, I will share my walks, but I think that the blog posts will be less frequent in future. I'm not making any promises or commitments, let's see how April goes.

Butterfly Zoo

This week's challenge from Shimelle was to use this sketch for a page. We've recently returned from a holiday which included a visit to a butterfly zoo, and I thought that the circles on the sketch would be perfect for some of my butterfly photos.

I picked my floral paper first, one that I really like but it's been so hard to match its colours to other papers, even those in the same collection. That wasn't a problem here as I just used neutrals with it.

I used my Silhouette Portrait to cut a series of interlinking rings to act as frames for my butterflies, and used it again for my title, layering the script word 'Butterfly' over the blockier 'Zoo'. The three brads have been sitting on my desk for a while in an effort to finish off the pack.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop, We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Brads - Papermania
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
American Crafts Notebook Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp