Firestarter

I seem to do more challenges from Facebook groups, and less from blogs these days. Sarah at Lottie Loves Paper posted 'Five Sketches in Five Days' during May and this page came from the first of those sketches (originally published at Sketch Savvy).

I flipped through my 2017 photos for some that would fit the sketch, and picked a couple of my daughter and her friend at Explorer Scouts, chopping wood and lighting a fire as part of their survival skills badge. I used a woodgrain background with papers from Simple Stories' Awesome collection, designed for boys but I find it useful for outdoors and camping photos.

Supplies
Paper - Jillibean Soup Apple Cheddar Soup, Simple Stories Awesome
Enamel Dots/Triangles - My Mind's Eye, Trimcraft
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
X-Cut Circle Punch

Art Attack

Cindy's Page

This is the fourth and final page from the game of Chinese Whispers that we played recently in the Mind the Scrap Facebook group. This one started from Sarah and I was last to play, scraplifting Cindy's version as always. 

I chose to scrap a couple of photos of my husband and our friends' son painting together on holiday. I'd already printed them at different sizes but I added a piece of patterned paper to them to make a photo block similar to the one on Cindy's page. I backed it with strips of patterned paper from a 6x6 pad and switched it to the opposite side of the page to suit the direction that the people are facing in the photos. 

Since it's a page about painting, I decided on an inky background for my page and used a variation on the packaging technique. I inked up a piece of 12x12 acetate using colours to match my papers, spritzed it with water and smooshed the colour around before laying my cardstock on top. I cut a set of icons on my Silhouette to match Cindy's snowflakes, and spread them around the page as she had, but I preferred them in clusters. I cut my title on the Silhouette too, and moved it to the side as I had more space there.

These were the pages that came before Cindy and me - inspiration from Missy Whidden, Sarah's version of Missy's page, and Jo's lift of Sarah's page:

Mine is so different from that starting point, but the progression is clear to see.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV, American Crafts
Paper - My Mind's Eye Quilting Bee
Sticker - Cosmo Cricket
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger, Memento, Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Paper Issues 'Circle Fun' Cut File

Dinosaur Court

I'll admit that I was initially flummoxed when I received Cindy's page to scraplift in the third week of our Chinese Whispers game at Mind the Scrap as it's not my normal style. I left it for a few days hoping that my subconscious mind would work on the problem and decided to break the page down and take some of its elements rather than make a faithful copy.

The first step was to find a similar shaped photo - long and narrow - and I picked one of the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park. It had been my Facebook cover photo for a while so I knew it would suit that shape. The subject made me think of Basic Grey's Archaic collection, which has a dinosaur print, but I knew that I had killed it with a 'starting point' page sometime last year. That page had a row of layered scraps across it and I hadn't used it yet, so could this be my chance? I dug it out (complete with the remaining scraps including some tiny pieces of dinosaur paper) and decided that this would work perfectly if I added some spotty vellum above and below the papers.

I removed the smaller pieces that I had stacked on the left, and added more paper pieces to the right. I matted my photo, and cut a couple of tags from the dinosaur print paper. Having positioned the photo (which is actually a pocket with four more inside) I surrounded it with the tags, more scraps, stickers and chipboard frames, throwing everything I could find at the page. 

It's not an exact copy of Cindy's page, but it's definitely related; not my usual style, but I really like it. That's one thing I love about playing Chinese Whispers with scrapbook pages, the way it forces you to do something a little differently.

These are the pages that came before Cindy's and mine, Jo's inspiration page and her own copy:

Sarah followed mine, and this was her version:

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Basic Grey Archaic
Vellum - American Crafts
Letters - My Mind's Eye
Stickers - Basic Grey, Tim Holtz
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Let's Bake

This page is the second one that I made in the Chinese Whispers game that we have been playing in the Mind the Scrap Facebook group. I played second in this chain and was scraplifting a page from Cindy.

I took the multi-coloured circle in another direction. I've had a hankering to make a rainbow page made up from lots of bits and pieces - stickers, die-cuts, gems, buttons, etc. and this was the perfect opportunity to put it into practice.

I marked out an 8" circle on my page and divided it into six sections, then stitched the inside and outside edges with six colours of embroidery thread and filled in the middle with an assortment of pieces from my embellishment drawers (which I sort by colour).

The photo is from a recent holiday when I was baking with our friends' son. I matted it on a couple of layers of paper and placed it on the same side of the circle as Cindy had hers, but closer to the middle to show as much of the circle as possible. I couldn't put my title on the circle as Cindy had, so I ran it along the side of my photo. I love these puffy letter stickers; they are smaller than Thickers and have more dimension than flat stickers making them really versatile and I shall be buying more.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye
Letters - American Crafts
Thread - DMC
Embellishments - My Mind's Eye, Jillibean Soup, Paperchase, Studio Calico, Doodlebug, Trimcraft, Dovecraft, Crate Paper, Pebbles, Teresa Collins, Making Memories

Tools
Fiskars Circle Template
Paper Piercer

Run London 2017

I'm a member of the Mind the Scrap group over on Facebook where we've recently been playing 'Chinese Whispers' with scrapbook pages, passing a page from one to another and scraplifting it to produce a chain of related layouts. We played in groups of four, each picking a starting page or sketch and passing it round the group in turn so we each had a go at each design.

I wanted a layout with one main photo and space for lots of minor photos in order to scrap this year's London Marathon which one of our friends was running with one of her friends. My plan was to show all the different groups of people who were taking part, but to focus the attention on one main photo of 'our' runners. 

I eventually decided to scraplift one of my own old pages, from the Flåmsbana (Flåm Railway) in Norway. This was the original page (from December 2011), with only four photos and hardly any embellishment, but with plenty of scope for changing it to suit my current purpose. 

There's not a lot of colour in my photos; they're predominately grey but the reds and blues led me to a spotty paper from Photo Play, and I picked a grey triangle print as a neutral background. It needed livening up though, so I smooshed some ink and water on it using the 'packaging technique'; this gave me some colour behind my circle of photos without adding any large layers of paper.

More embellishment this time, an indication of both the change in my scrapbooking style and their general availability. I sort most of my embellishments by colour and that was really useful here as I picked out an assortment of pieces from different manufacturers and used up some older bits like the pinked chipboard circle. 

I passed my page to Sarah, who passed her version to Jo, who passed to Cindy; these were their pages.

Supplies
Paper - Pebbles/Jen Hadfield,  Photo Play Paper, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye
Letters - Hobbycraft
Die Cut - Jillybean Soup
Stickers - Elle's Studio, Jillibean Soup
Chipboard - Making Memories?
Enamel Dots/Stars - Marianne Design
Ink - Docrafts, Ink It Up!
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter and Circle Templates

Rockin' Robin

Another NSD post today, but I have something a little different coming up for the rest of the week. 

This page came from Challenge 7 at For the Love of Pretty Paper, which was essentially a repeat of Challenge 4 - watch three YouTube videos, pick one and scraplift it. I chose Rebecca's page with a single photo on a diagonal split background.

I took a photo of a robin when I was walking the Capital Ring a couple of months back; it's been my wallpaper on my PC since then and I decided to scrap it using papers from my last Quirky Kit which were the perfect colour to match the robin's red breast.

Supplies
Paper - Jillibean Soup Bowl of Dreams, Pinkfresh Studio Dream On, Amy Tangerine Ready Set Go
Vellum - American Crafts
Doily - Papermania
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Tags - Lakeland
Die Cuts - Jillibean Soup
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico, Quirky Kits
Sticker - Crate Paper
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Efco
Twine - from Stash

All Gone

UK Scrap Addicts and For the Love of Pretty Paper gave us two sketches for National Scrapbooking Day, a single and a double. I shared my page from the double sketch a few days ago, and now it's the turn of my single page. 

I went for an older photo as those tend to be singletons and picked one of my son in his highchair. I started my background by using a mask with yellow mist, then sponged blue ink through a stencil in three areas, and spattered the diagonal with gold and teal mist. A few paper layers, an embellishment cluster, a smattering of enamel dots, and the page was done.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Bright
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Die Cuts - Jillibean Soup, Amy Tangerine
Stickers - Anita's Glitterations
Enamel Dots - Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's, Cosmic Shimmer, Docrafts

Tools
That Special Touch Mask
Heidi Swapp Stencil

Birthday Wishes

I still have plenty more pages to share from National Scrapbooking Day, but I'm going to mix them in with other things. Another annual May event is Sketch-n-Scrap's Birthday and this year they have six extra sketches to celebrate the occasion. The second one was a card sketch, and it popped up just as I was thinking about making my brother's birthday card. 

I picked an older 6x6 pad, which is mostly down to scraps now, and pieced the background together, then added the glittery circle, sentiment, star and gems.

Start Them Young

The third NSD challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper was set by UK Scrap Addicts and was a two-in-one; they gave us two sketches to work from, a single and a double, and with two prizes on offer we could do both. 

I started with the double page sketch which I thought would work for an old set of theme park photos which I have tried and failed to scrap previously. I had five photos, and cropped four to squares, leaving one as landscape to take the place of two of the photos on the right of the sketch. Once I started laying out the photos though, I started veering away from the sketch a little.

My first decision was not to overlap the photos on the left, and to have them in two columns; then I moved up the paper on the right so that the photos there would be at the same height as the single one on the left, and I extended that paper panel to the full 24" of the double page. The paper on the left morphed too, into a panel covering about half of the left page, butted to the edge rather than being in the middle. My final change was the addition of a second circle; I had up to four on here at different times, but settled on two in the end.

The stripe and number papers are from the only Studio Calico kit that I've bought (June 2016) so I've also linked up with Mercy Tiara's 'One More Try' challenge - to use an old kit or collection. I was very disappointed with that kit as the papers really didn't fit together very well; I've mostly used them individually, but these two did match. The bright colours are perfect for a theme park and the number print links with my title. My son was less than a year old and my nephew was only two. They had a great time on the smaller rides and we adults did the bigger ones when they napped.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Studio Calico, Creating Keepsakes
Letters - Hobbycraft
Clouds - Quirky Kits
Stars - Studio Calico
Hearts - American Crafts
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Mist - Mister Huey's, Maya Road

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter

The Eye at Night

The second NSD challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper (though not the second page I made) was a scraplift, from a choice of the pages made in three YouTube videos. I picked Maria's page - I was struck by the large frame and a page design that showed off lots of the background paper.

I really wanted to stick with a single 4x6 photo for my page, and picked one of the London Eye which I took earlier this year which I paired with a skyline paper from Basic Grey Mon Ami. Having picked that I realised that I could combine the scraplift with a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to use black, white, grey and one other colour. 

There are is a red paper in the Mon Ami collection, but it's an orangey-red and the Eye is a pinky-red in my photo so I used cardstock for my frame. Luckily Maria's design didn't need a lot of papers and the monochromatic challenge meant that I could just use grey behind the red photo mat. I turned those layers into a pocket and my journalling is tucked inside, with an embellishment cluster attached to it to use as a tab. 

I moved my title so that it wouldn't obscure the skyline paper and found that I have hardly any small black letter stickers. I turned to some old rub-ons and was pleasantly surprised to find that they rubbed on really easily despite being about eight or nine years old.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Colorset
Paper - Basic Grey Mon Ami
Letters - Making Memories
Label Stickers - Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Corner Punch
Card Factory Roller-Stamp

Teletubbies

I made a small stack of pages from National Scrapbooking Day challenges; I've posted a lot of them in various Facebook groups and I will be sharing them here too, but not in the order I made them. This one needs a blog link to enter the challenge so it's leapt to the top of the list.

The creative team at UK Scrap Addicts recently played 'Chinese Whispers' with a scrapbook page, passing it from one member to the next and each scraplifting the previous page in turn. They shared all the pages on Saturday and challenged us to pick one and scraplift it. 

I actually chose the first page in the chain which was made by Maria; she scrapped about a film and I've chosen a TV programme for my page, to combine this with another challenge in the For the Love of Pretty Paper scrapbooking group on Facebook - Use a song title, song lyrics or film title or scrap about music, TV or films in some way.

I was flipping through one of my old photo albums looking for a different picture entirely when I spotted this one and decided to write about the love that my son and nephew had for the Teletubbies and the hunt my sister and I had to find the toys one Christmas, rather than specifically about the photo itself. I cut the title on my Silhouette by tracing a colouring page image.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Colorset?
Paper - The Paper Loft, plus Scraps
Die Cut - Simple Stories
Brad - October Afternoon
Stickers - Papermania, Paperchase
Inks - Ranger, Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

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

How Far?

I spent most of National Scrapbook Day (or should that be weekend) in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group, where the fun kicked off at 5pm on Friday. Our first challenge was an easy one - to make a layout with a spring or summer theme. Having come back from holiday a few weeks ago, I have loads of new spring photos to scrap; it might be hard to tell the season from some of them but I picked a set which included some adorable new lambs.

With no other restrictions, I went looking for a sketch and picked NSD Challenge #2 from Scrap Our Stash, which was to use this sketch from The Scrap Room and also to use flair on the page. I don't have much flair, but I found a cloud one which was a pretty good match for the cloud paper in a recent Quirky Kit.

I faffed for ages picking the other papers and then couldn't get them settled with the angles on the sketch. Eventually I straightened everything up and moved one of the circles to the bottom, and it all worked much better for me that way. 

The photos are from a walk to the local pub for Sunday lunch and the title refers to the length of that walk, which my husband claimed was three miles and it was actually four. Not much difference you might think, but it was hard for the shorter legs, injured ankle and general unfitness of some of our party.


Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pebbles, My Mind's Eye, Paper Adventures
Letters - American Crafts
Flair - Imagine That Papercrafts
Butterfly - Jillibean Soup
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins, Freckled Fawn
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates

Walkies - FTLOPP Blog Hop

This post is part of the National Scrapbook Day Blog Hop hosted by

 the Facebook Group “For The Love Of Pretty Paper”

If you are following the hop you should have arrived here from UK Scrap Addicts. To be in with a chance of winning the Blog Hop prize you will need to comment on this post (and on all the blogs in the hop) and, when you have completed the hop, return to the Blog Hop thread on “For The Love Of Pretty Paper” and leave a comment to let us know you have been all the way around the hop. Visitors who leave the same (or seen to be the same by the Organisers) comment on all the blogs will not be eligible for the prize. The closing date for Blog Hop entries is Monday 8^th May at 10pm. Only UK addresses are eligible for the prize due to postage costs. Good Luck!

After your visit here please hop on to Gemma Steele. If you lose your way or you want to start at the beginning of the hop you can find the complete list on the Facebook page here or at the start on Fiona’s Blog. 

The theme for the Blog Hop is “Favourite Technique” and I chose machine stitching. I do love a hand-stitched circle on a scrapbook page, but it can be really time-consuming to mark out a shape, prick all the stitching holes and then do the sewing itself. Machine-stitching is a quick and effective substitute, but for me it has two drawbacks - firstly I can't stitch an even circle with a machine, it always goes wobbly, and secondly the thread is finer than embroidery floss and doesn't have the same impact. My solution to both of these issues is simple - go round the circle three times, any wobblyness on the first pass can be evened up on the second and third, and those three lines of stitching have greater visual impact than just one.

For this page, I laid out my papers and photo, then placed a circle template over them to get their position right before sticking them down. I used a pencil with the template to mark out my circle, stitched round it three times and rubbed out the line.



Then I finished the page with title, embellishments and journalling:

My photo is one of some friends and their dogs on the beach in Northumberland last month. I wanted to use the shell paper and tried various other papers with it before I chose the triangles for the large panel. That's actually two pieces from a 6x6 pad, and I used the same pad for the rest of the paper layers. I fussy cut two cameras from a Maggie Holmes paper, in pink and grey, and the pink one looked better, so I went with pink, black and white in the embellishment clusters with washi tape, enamel dots and word stickers. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Love Notes 6x6, Carta Bella Ahoy There, Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Chasing Dreams
Letters - Making Memories
Tag - American Crafts
Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Ebay
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Templates

Bamburgh Castle

The madness that is National Scrapbooking Day is about to hit us, but first there are the 'normal' May challenges to tackle. I started the month with a page from our holiday to Northumberland last month and used Sketch 'n' Scrap's sketch #128 with my photos of Bamburgh Castle.

Most of my photos are landscape, and I considered rotating the sketch, but then I decided to use four and print two of them smaller. I tried the photos against a few colours of cardstock before choosing this brick red for my photo mats and title (which I cut on the Silhouette). The other papers came from a 6x6 pad which incorporates the same red, and I sorted through my embellishment drawers for coordinating bits and pieces to make up the cluster at the bottom of the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Authentique Nestled, Crate Paper Portrait
Embellishments - Various, from Stash
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Poppy Stamps Small Leafy Sprig Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

A Walk in Blake's Wood

Last Tuesday had long been earmarked for walking another section of the Capital Ring, but a Facebook post from the National Trust promoting the bluebell woods of East Anglia soon had me changing those plans and I headed off to Blake's Wood near Chelmsford for a woodland wander instead.

I normally share my walks in moderate detail, with the photos in order, but this one was a bit different; despite printing out a route from the National Trust website, once I'd parked the car I just headed into the woods in search of the bluebells, and I forgot to start the Map My Walk app up. 

This was my first glimpse, from the edge of the car park. 

Heading into the woods, the bluebells just kept getting better and better as I walked:

As my feet wandered, my thoughts wandered too; thinking about scrapbooking the walk I realised that I needed some close-ups too.

I followed the paths round in a loop and found myself back at the car park all too soon, so I set out again, into a different part of the woods, and this time I did start the Map My Walk app.

Nothing much to say about the route, so I'll just share a few more bluebell pictures.

I'll admit that I thought a bit more about scrapbooking while I walked; I planned the whole page in my head as I went along and decided that there was one more photo that I needed:

I'm going to print this photo on cardstock as my background (printing on cardstock gives a softer image than printing on photo paper) and layer a 4x6 print of one of the woodland views over the top or bottom edge, next to a smaller print of one of the close-up photos. I've even decided on a title - Purple Haze - but since this is a song title I'm not going to start the page before National Scrapbooking Day (6 May this year) as I'm expecting a song title challenge to be set then.