Wolfgangsee Schifffahrt

I do love a German compound word, and I'll use a few of them for my page titles for our Austrian holiday. Schifffahrt means something like ship-ride and is the ferry service on Wolfgangsee (or Lake Wolfgang). My page has photos of two of those ships - Kaiser Franz Josef I is a paddle steamer built in 1873, the first ferry on the lake and still in use during the summer months, and Österreich, a more modern ship that we actually travelled on. We spent a day using the ferries to visit the other villages around the lake.

One of the prompts in Shimelle's Design Decisions class was about using grids, but her page wasn't what I expected. I think of grids meaning all the elements on the page being the same size and shape, but Shimelle put a grid of embellishments and journalling alongside standard 4x6 photos. My page is similar, but I didn't have room to journal on my grid so I moved that to the top of the page.

Supplies
Paper - Webster's Pages Seaside Retreat, Pink Paislee Atlas
Vellum - My Mind's Eye
Letters - American Crafts, KaiserCraft
Ink - Docrafts

We Are Sailing

This is another Austrian page, with a family photo taken on board the lake ferry. I worked from one of the prompts in Shimelle's Design Decisions class, but used a larger photo instead of a small one and a journalling block.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas
Vellum - My Mind's Eye
Letters - Freckled Fawn, KaiserCraft
Die Cut - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Ebay
Stickers - Anita's Glitterations, Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle
Sequins - Jillybean Soup
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Tubing Today

My daughter and I went tubing in Austria, sitting in big rubber rings and being pulled round the lake  by a speedboat. We'd never done anything like it before and it was such fun. I picked three photos and printed them at 4x6 for this page. I used a default layout for three landscape pictures, stacking them in a column, but I overlapped them slightly and used small angles to convey a sense of fun rather than stacking them in line for a more serious look.

I've made many similar pages in the past, and I normally put the title and journalling near the bottom of the page; this time I decided to change that and put them near the top. I was going to use a tag for the journalling but I found this one with the word 'Today' on it and turned it into part of my title and wrote directly on the background instead.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Happy Place, Pink Paislee Atlas, Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Tag & Instagram Card - Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - American Crafts
Washi Tape - Ebay
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Enamel Shapes - Pink Paislee Atlas
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Elektroboot

As you might have guessed, elektroboot is German for electric boat, and we hired one while in Austria this summer. It was really peaceful to be pootling around on the water in complete silence (or it would have been if the children hadn't kept squabbling over who had had the longer turn at driving).

I picked out four photos for the page, two of the children and two of shrines that we saw from the water. I wanted a casual look to the page, rather than lining up the pictures in a row or block, and I went back to the October 15th sketch from Stuck?! Sketches. 

My larger photos and the mix of orientations meant that I had to move some elements around and my page evolved as I worked, though I made sure to keep the two circles with the major embellishment clusters. 

I had cut the chevron pieces for another page but not used them and I love them here. There's not actually much from Atlas on this page but I've repeated elements like the tag and the filmstrip paper from other Austrian pages so I think it will still fit in.

Supplies

Paper - My Mind's Eye Cut & Paste, American Crafts Shimelle, Pink Paislee Atlas

Vellum - American Crafts Dear Lizzy

Journalling Card - Elle's Studio

Tag - Pink Paislee Atlas

Letters - Glitz Design

Stickers - Anita's Glitterations, Jillibean Soup, Studio Calico, Ebay

Enamel Dots/Stars - Pink Paislee Atlas

Ink - Docrafts

Mist - Mister Huey's, Cosmic Shimmer

Tools

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

Big Shot & Little B Arrows Dies

Mini Golf

Our holiday in Austria was a mixture of activities in the village where we were staying and days of exploring further afield. The activity days are somehow easier to scrap, and this page has a set of photos from playing mini golf on our last day.

I used an older sketch here - the mid-July sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap - but with an extra picture in the row that spans the page. I used a few inks and mists on the central panel - spraying yellow mist in the middle, adding diagonal spatters in gold and inking through the paper I had left from die-cutting chevrons for another page.

I cut the embellishment down to two clusters and used another woodgrain geotag (repeating the motif first used on my Gasthof zur Post page). This time I balanced it with a wood veneer camera at the top which I coloured using distress inks; that camera means that I am linking up with Rochelle Spears' November 'This or That' challenge which is to use cork or wood on a page.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, Dear Lizzy Saturday, Basic Grey Spice Market
Letters - American Crafts 
Cards - Pink Paislee Atlas, Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Sticker - Jillibean Soup
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Echo Park
Ink - Ranger, Docrafts
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

St Gilgen

St Gilgen is the village in Austria where we stayed this summer, and I scraplifted myself for this page, taking inspiration from the Jamboree page that I made a few months ago. However this time I've flipped the design horizontally and doubled the number of photos. The main picture is a view of the village from the lake, the town hall is next to it and the smaller photos are a statue of St Gilgen himself and some alpine horn players.

I've had that star vellum for a couple of years and used it on many pages, always gutting it to stretch it as far as possible. Sadly that it the last scrap that I have, cut in two to stretch it one final time. I've copied the star motif into my embellishments using three sizes of acetate stars for large, medium and small clusters which help frame the page.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Quoted, Pink Paislee Atlas, My Mind's Eye Be Loved
Vellum - Crate Paper
Letters - American Crafts
Instagram Card - Pink Paislee Atlas
Stars - Heidi Swapp
Washi Tape - Ebay
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Echo Park
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Hello Salzburg

Shimelle recently started a new class called Design Decisions and each lesson includes a sketch. I made this page from the first one, which actually had three small photos, but next up on my 'to scrap' pile was a single photo from Salzburg last summer so I made it work for that.

It's the view over Salzburg from the terrace at Fortress Hohensalzburg, which lies on the hill above the city.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Little Bee, Pink Paislee Atlas, Dear Lizzy Saturday, My Mind's Eye Be Loved
Letters - Simple Stories, Papermania
Washi Tape - Trimcraft, Ebay
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Die

Gasthof zur Post

I've no plans to make my pages from Austria in order, but this one will come fairly early in the album - it's the hotel that we stayed in. The Gasthof zur Post in St Gilgen is more than 600 years old and full of quirky touches like the vintage luggage on the landings.

I used Sketch #116 from Sketch-n-Scrap for this page, keeping fairly close to the original in the paper layers but moving the embellishments around.

I'm supposed to be working from a kit of papers for my Austrian pages, but I've already pulled in two more - the red floral and the filmstrip were not in my original selection. I cut the geotag from a Simple Stories card, and repeated its wood-grain pattern in two other places.

I've also put my Big Shot to use, cutting both the title letters and the chevrons on it.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Lagoon
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, American Crafts Shimelle
Cards - Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Washi Tape - Unknown
Sticker - Pebbles
Gems - Scrapberry's
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Big Shot, Little B Arrows Die & Sizzix Wallflower Alphabet Dies

Bürgermusik 150

It's been a while since I made a page from a sketch at Stick It Down, but their November sketch caught my eye.

Bürgermusik St Gilgen, the Citizen's Band, were celebrating their 150th anniversary as we arrived in Austria, and I have loads of photos of the various local brass bands marching through the village. 

I had printed ten photos at just less than 3" by 3" intending to use nine of them in three rows of three but this sketch changed my plans. Four photos just fitted the width of the page on a slight diagonal and I changed the spotty panels at the top and bottom to follow the same angle. I wrote my journalling between the rows of spots and added embellishment clusters to opposite corners.

I'm also linking up with Shimelle's latest weekly challenge - go big with red - as red is the dominant colour on the page. I didn't use it in large areas but it repeats across the page and a little red goes a long way. I wonder now if my title should have been red too, but that seemed too much at the time and it's too late to change it now.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Fancy Pants Country Boutique, Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - My Mind's Eye
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Word Stickers- Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Ebay
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Pink Paislee
Ink - Docrafts, Ink It Up!
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Time to Go Home

I'm jumping straight to the end of our Austrian holiday now, with a page from Salzburg airport just before our flight home. I used the same background paper for this page as I did for the page about our flight out; the two pages will 'bookend' the Austrian pages in my 2016 album.

The top photo is a general view of the airport from the roof of the terminal building; below that is a trio of our plane landing and then one as we walked out to board. Once again, the map print dictated the placement of the photos, and I repeated the tag cluster that I had on the previous page.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, Crate Paper Farmhouse, American Crafts Shimelle, My Mind's Eye Now & Then
Letters - Carolee's Creations
Tag - Pink Paislee Atlas
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Enamel Shape - Pink Paislee Atlas
Mist - Mister Huey's
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punches

Off We Go!

The first of my pages for our holiday in Austria this summer; I've started at the beginning, with photos of our plane at Gatwick, the view from above the clouds and the view as we came in to land.

No sketches or challenges here as I wanted to use the world map paper as my background and that dictated the placement of my photos and other elements. I left Europe open and marked our flight with enamel dots at the start and end.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, Crate Paper Farmhouse
Letters - American Crafts, We R Memory Keepers
Tag & Instagram Card - Pink Paislee Atlas
Enamel Dots - Pink Paislee
Mist - Mister Hueys's
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

A New Project - Austria 2016

I've been waiting on an order from the US before I start scrapbooking our holiday in Austria this summer; the first parcel got lost so it's been a long wait, but finally I'm ready to get started.

I have two approaches to scrapbooking our main summer holidays - cruises (we've done 5) get their own albums; other holidays get scrapped in the main annual albums. When I make cruise albums (or other themed albums) I gather a kit together and use that for the whole album; in contrast my annual albums are a collection of separate pages, each one made individually.

I've decided to combine the two approaches here. The pages from Austria will all be made from a kit but they will be housed in my 2016 album; using a kit will make it clear that all the pages belong together and they will form a distinct subsection of the album. I did this earlier in the year with a set of pages from our canal holiday and I feel that it worked really well.

I've chosen to base the kit around Pink Paislee's Atlas collection, which has lots of bright colours; it's travel themed but not overly so, with plenty of simple patterns. 

I have the 12x12 pad, the enamel shapes, the tags and the Instagram cards from Atlas, but they won't be enough for all the pages I plan to do. Normally with a project like this I make all the pages on the same plain cardstock background, but this time I'm going to use patterned paper for a more varied look so I've pulled in We R Memory Keepers' Quoted collection which has many similar colours, plus a number of single sheets from American Crafts, Pink Paislee, My Mind's Eye and others.

I've also pulled out a cut-apart sheet from Jillibean Soup, a labels paper from Pink Paislee, various stickers and journalling cards, plus some Simple Stories Insta-square cards and Project Life cards in co-ordinating colours. 

There are a couple of tile alphabets in that bundle, but I intend to pick the letters for each page title as I go along. I have lots of part packs in my stash (don't we all!) and I'd like to use a few up rather than buying new ones for these pages. I will be adding other embellishments (brads, enamel shapes, gems, wood veneer pieces etc) as I go along, and also intend to put both my Big Shot and my Silhouette Portrait to good use.

Family Ties

I bought a new mask a few months ago and it's been sitting on the shelf ever since, mocking me in its unused state. I've wanted to use it, but it says 'single photo page' to me, and I've been making lots of multi-photo pages recently.

While I was busy working on finishing my 2015 album, my cousin posted a single photo on Facebook that I really wanted to scrapbook. Finally I had a good photo to go with my mask. I kept the page fairly simple, inking through the mask with four colours of distress ink and layering my photo on a 'messy stack' of 6x6 papers. Once I was almost finished, I decided to cut down my page slightly and mount it on a contrasting background; I couldn't find a new background that worked for me, so I used the distress inks again with white cardstock for a co-ordinating custom-made paper.

Supplies

Cardstock - Moments Scrapbook Insert 

Paper - Heidi Swapp Wanderlust, Studio Calico Sundrifter, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society, Echo Park This & That

Letters - Pretty Little Studio

Puffy Sticker - Fancy Pants

Word Sticker - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes

Button & Heart - from Stash
Ink - Ranger, Docrafts

Mist - Cosmic Shimmer, Docrafts

Tools
Docrafts Hexagons Mask
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

Postbound / Three-Ring Album Comparison

I've always used post-bound alums, and I have no plans to change that. I like the fact that a finished album feels like a book, with all its page bound together at the spine. Double pages work well in them, with only a tiny gap between the two halves. As my pages have got bulkier, I've had to move from one album per year to two albums per year, and I discussed that in this post. The alternative of three-ring albums has never appealed to me. They feel temporary, as if the pages could be removed and discarded on a whim. Double pages either need to be firmly attached to each other, or have an ugly gap in the middle. 

However those rings do have one major advantage over posts - the ease of rearranging the pages of an album-in-progress or of adding in an extra page part way through. I don't scrap chronologically, though I do keep my albums that way, and I often have to leave gaps for pages yet to be made or move pages around to keep them in order. I realised that one three-ring album might be a useful thing to have. I can file the pages in order as I make them, and then transfer them to my usual post-bound albums once they are nearing completion, instead of having them pile up on a shelf because I can't be bothered to rearrange the album again.

So I ordered a three-ring album online, and when it arrived I was shocked at the size of it. I knew that three-ring albums were thicker than post-bound albums, but I wasn't prepared for the extra space that those rings take up. Both my current post-bound albums and this new three-ring album are from Pioneer, so I thought that I would compare the two types. 

Both empty albums - Post-bound on top

Empty, looking at the front cover, the three-ring album measures 15" wide, 12.5" tall and 3" deep at the rings; the post-bound is much smaller at 13" wide, 12.5" tall and only 1.25" deep. This means that when sitting on a shelf the three-ring album will always stick out further than the post-bound.

I've recently finished all my 2015 pages, and the 28 page protectors fit in the three-ring album quite comfortably with no real increase in size. 

2015 in the Three-Ring Album

In contrast, I actually used two post-bound albums to permanently house these pages and I used post extenders in one of them (as they didn't split evenly) to give total dimensions of 12.5" tall, 13" wide and the same 3" depth for the two combined.

2015 in two Post-Bound Albums

Overall the single three-ring album is slightly bigger than the pair of post-bound albums and it is much more unwieldy. The front cover moves slightly and the pages sometimes snag on the rings as you turn them. Since there are two post-bound albums, each one is lighter and the pages turn easily (plus those doubles do look better).

I'm really pleased that I've done this comparison because it has reinforced my love for the post-bound album. The three-ring will be useful for albums in progress (it now houses my 2016 pages so far) but I still won't be switching.

Just 3 of Us

That's it! I've done it! I've finished my 2015 album!

I've filled in the final gap with a formal photo from our cruise last summer. We've cruised a few times over the years (and cruising got me into scrapbooking) but this was the first time without our son, which gave me the page title.

I've based the page on a sketch from The Studio Challenges blog, though I flipped it and used a larger photo. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Docrafts
Paper - Fancy Pants Life is Beautiful, Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Bloom, My Mind's Eye Now & Then
Letters - American Crafts, Basic Grey
Peel-Off Stickers - 
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Scribbled Circle Cut File
American Crafts Open Scallop Border Punch
Woodware Label Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch