Thursday 31 August 2017

Views in all Directions

This page follows on directly from the previous one and comes from our holiday in Austria last year. We'd caught the cog railway up Schafberg and these are some of the views from the top. 

I used another of Shimelle's 4x6 Photo Love classes for this page; the class for May was for five 4x6 photos but I swapped one out for a 4x4 instead.




Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, DCWV
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - Dovecraft, Ebay
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

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



Tuesday 29 August 2017

Schafbergbahn

Another Austrian page today, from the day we went up Schafberg, the mountain above the village of St Wolfgang which I featured on my last page. We used the cog railway, the Schafbergbahn, to get to the top, and then walked back down to the village of St Gilgen where we were actually staying.

I picked out three photos of the railway and used Sketch 134 from Sketch-n-Scrap for my page. My photos are a bit bigger so I adjusted the paper pieces to suit them.



This page came together really quickly for me; a combination of a good sketch, a pre-determined kit of papers to work with and copying embellishment elements from other Austrian pages all helped with this.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - American Crafts
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Word Sticker - Crate Paper
Enamel Dots - Pink Paislee
Washi Tape - Ebay
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

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

Sunday 27 August 2017

St Wolfgang

Well, I've managed to keep on track for two consecutive posts, and I'm sharing another page from our time in Austria last year. This one is from St Wolfgang, another village on Wolfgangsee, which we visited on the same day as Strobl (the last page I shared).

I had six photos that I wanted to include; originally five of them were portrait-oriented while one of the village from the lake was a landscape, but I decided to swap that one for a sixth portrait photo and use the June class from Shimelle's 4x6 Photo Love series. This is an older class, which ran throughout 2011, but I've used several of the layouts more than once over the years. It started out with one 4x6 photo in January and added a photo a month through to twelve 4x6 photos on a page in December.

The June class was for six photos, all portrait, lined up across the width of a double page, but slightly offset with blocks of patterned paper, and with long strips above/below the photos.


I used a strong repeating pattern for the strips above and below the photos, and three white-based papers for the paper blocks. The embellishment is a mixture of fussy-cut paper pieces, washi tape, word stickers and enamel shapes, and I journalled on paper strips placed around the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Swiss Dot
Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas
Washi Tape - Little B, Ebay, Dovecraft
Word Stickers - Crate Paper Maggie Holmes
Enamel Dots/Shapes - Pink Paislee
Ink - Hobbycrafts
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Provo Craft Alphabet Dies


Friday 25 August 2017

Strobl

I've not been scrapbooking with any consistency of subject recently, but I'd really like to get my 2016 albums finished. One hole in that album is our summer holiday in Austria; I haven't even worked out exactly which photos will be scrapbooked or how many pages I need for some of the days yet, so I've decided to have a bash at some of those pages now before I get inundated with new pictures from this year's summer holiday.

I'm starting with the village of Strobl, which we visited as part of a day exploring the villages around Wolfgangsee by lake ferry. Sorting through the pictures, I decided on using five of them, and on scraplifting a previous page

I'm using Pink Paislee's Atlas with an assortment of co-ordinating papers for this section of my album, and I've kept them in a separate box since I made the last Austrian page (eight months ago - eek!) so it was easy enough to pull them out again. 




Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts Shimelle, Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Border Sticker - Echo Park
Die Cuts - Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - Little B
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Enamel Dots/Shapes - Simple Stories, Marianne Designs

Tools
Big Shot & Poppy Stamps Small Leafy Sprig Die
Tim Holtz 'The Journey' Stamp Set

Wednesday 23 August 2017

In the Big Bath

This is my penultimate throwback to National Scrapbooking Day, when several challenge sites asked us to scraplift ourselves. Any regular reader here will now that I do this all the time, but For the Love of Pretty Paper added an extra condition - to scraplift either our first page or a very early page.

The first album that I made was back in 2008 for a Norwegian fjords cruise. I had a flick through and picked a four photo page to scraplift (which had the bonus of fitting in with a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to scrap four or more photos on a single page).

My 'new' four photos are actually older, a set from bathtime when my now twenty-year-old son was small. I split the page in the same way, but this time I matted all my photos on the 'opposite' paper. My title's bigger this time, and uses letter stickers rather than being printed on the computer. The journalling's now hand-written and has moved to the bottom, and the new page has some embellishment (though admittedly not much).




Supplies
Paper - Heidi Swapp September Skies, Studio Calico, Crate Paper
Letters - October Atternoon
Acetate & Stars - from Stash
Metal Charms - Making Memories

Monday 21 August 2017

Baby Boy Card

Just a short post today, with a new baby card that I made for my husband's cousin and her fiancé. The baby's a boy so I decided to design my card around a chipboard elephant that I had lurking in my blue embellishment drawer.

I picked Card Sketch #103 from Sketch-n-Scrap as a design that would work with my elephant in place of the flower on the sketch, and then jiggled the paper layers until I was happy with them. I moved the sentiment down and embellished with star gems, but the card was still a bit bare and the sentiment was the only gold item, so I added a strip of washi tape with gold stars, stamped some more stars around the card and spattered a little gold mist across the card.


Saturday 19 August 2017

Hello 17

We have monthly and weekly challenges in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group, and I've combined two of them here. The challenge for July was our choice of six sketches; I did a few of them and this was sketch 2. The weekly challenges are based on letters of the alphabet and we recently had G is for Gold.

This page is from my daughter's birthday when she and some friends had a sleepover. The sketch worked really well for a large photo of most of the group that one of them took, and two smaller photos that I took of the group sleeping in next morning and a few of them outside. The sketch hinted at a journalling block between the photos, but I used a number paper there and added a Project Life card further down for my writing. I embellished in the top-left and bottom-right of the page, and then added more bits around the title to create a loose line of embellishments along the diagonal. 



Supplies
Paper - Echo Park Capture Life, Chickaniddy Crafts, Jillibean Soup, Project Life Cards
Numbers - American Crafts
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico
Acetate - Studio Calico
Die-Cut - Jillibean Soup
Butterflies - from Stash
Epoxy Sticker - Jo-Ann Stores
Enamel Dots - Eyelet Outlet
Mist - Docrafts, Mister Huey's
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

Thursday 17 August 2017

He Likes a Box!

Another throwback page today; I made this one for three different National Scrapbooking Day challenges on Facebook: I used a sketch from Mercy Tiara and Creative Scrappers, a large title for For the Love of Pretty Paper, and stitched on the page for Hey Little Magpie.

Most of my NSD pages used old photos, and I picked a pair of my son as a toddler here. Small boy pages lead me to bright, primary colours, an older collection from My Mind's Eye in this case.




Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable
Letters - American Crafts
Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico
Stickers - Crate Paper, Authentique
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Doodlebug
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Dies

Tuesday 15 August 2017

Cruise Canada 2015 - The Album

It's been more than a year since I made the last page from our Canadian cruise and since then the pages have been sitting in an unlabelled album waiting for a final check and a title card.

My annual albums are a mish-mash of pages in different colours and styles and they sit happily side-by-side as they are. However, when I make a themed album with one kit of papers I like to let it sit for a while and then review it to make sure I'm happy with all the pages and the balance of embellishments from beginning to end.

Whales - Before
I never intended to let my Canadian album sit for as long as it did, but I've returned to it recently for that final review. There was just one page that I wasn't happy with; the 'whales' page was a bit bare at the top and needed more embellishment - clusters at the top of the 'discover' paper and to the left of the photos to make a triangle with the existing cluster (which I also added to).

I've kept hold of the remaining papers from the kit pending this exercise, so it was easy to pull them out and add a few more pieces.




One final task was the album cover; I'd chosen one with a window and needed to make a title piece with a design around four inches square. I worked on a larger piece of paper which would fill the pocket without moving about, and marked the part that would be visible through the window, before assembling a design around an anchor die-cut. 


This is it in place, and the album has now joined the others in the lounge rather than being stashed under my craft desk awaiting the finishing touches.



Supplies
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Die-Cut - KaiserCraft
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup, Bella Boulevard
Washi Tape - Little B
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Sunday 13 August 2017

Story Time

Back in May, we had a 'Five Sketches in Five Days' challenge in the Lottie Loves Paper Facebook group. I did three before I ran out of month and returned to them as we approached the end of July. The last one was originally published by Shimelle Laine back in 2011, but some sketches are timeless. 

I made this page at a time when a broken router meant that my computer and printer wouldn't talk to each other so I had to pick an older printed photo to scrap. These are almost all 4x6 and I couldn't find a pair that I could crop to suit the sketch so I decided to go with a single photo. 



My paper layers follow those in the sketch, but I moved the stack of papers to the opposite side and moved the title to run up the side of them. The paper collection is intended for girls, but omitting most of the pink and floral papers gave a more neutral colour scheme. The cute die-cuts were a really good match for the orange and they remind of of old-fashioned illustrations in children's books.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Simple Stories So Fancy, Dovecraft Sugar & Spice
Die Cuts - Studio Calico Heyday
Washi Tape - Dovecraft, Little B
Word Stickers - Bazzill
Puffy Stickers - American Crafts
Enamel Dots - Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot, X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die & Dovecraft Nesting Stars Dies
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Friday 11 August 2017

Purple Haze

Something of a throwback today, as I made this page in May and haven't got round to sharing it here yet. It has its roots in a walk I did in April, when I went to see the bluebells in Blake's Wood, and I both planned the page while I was there and ensured that I had the variety of photos that I would need. 


I saved making the page until National Scrapbooking Day as I was sure that there would be a song title challenge (and there was) but in the end I entered it in a tic-tac-toe challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper instead, choosing the right-hand column - no patterned paper, large photo and die cuts or punches. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I made the page exactly as I'd planned in my head; I printed my large photo on cardstock to get a softer image, machine-stitched around the edge, and layered a woodland view and a circular close-up over it. I kept the embellishment quite simple, with a chipboard swirl that I'd previously inked purple and then abandoned, plus a couple of punched butterflies and a scattering of gems.




I'll be sharing a mix of old and new pages here over the next few weeks; I have quite a few that I made for National Scrapbooking Day and shared at the time on Facebook, but I haven't blogged them yet. I saved them to fill a lull when I had one, but I've scrapped and blogged fairly consistently since then and the posts keep getting pushed back in favour of new stuff. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Teresa Collins World Traveller
Letters - American Crafts
Chipboard - Bazzill
Gems - ZVA Creative, Forever in Time

Tools
Sewing Machine
Butterfly Punch

Wednesday 9 August 2017

Happy Days

Christina's Page
This is the fourth and final page that I made for the Chinese Whispers game in the Mind the Scrap Facebook group. As always, I was scraplifting a page from Christina, and as soon as I saw hers I knew that mine would be a close copy, using insta-cards and a beach photo.

I'd imagined that beach photo being one of my children, but it appears that I've already scrapped them all so I went back to our university days and some really old photos of us on the beach at Teignmouth. There were two, so I adjusted the page slightly.




I wanted a cloud print for the background, but I couldn't find one so I compromised by painting white cardstock with mist. I arranged a grid of 3x3 cards at the bottom of the page and cut the sun and cloud from a 4x4 card. The title came from one of Shimelle's prompts for her 25 Days of Scrapbooking Words last month.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Imaginesce
Insta-Cards - Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Wood Veneer - Make & Create
Letters - October Afternoon
Labels - Sarah's Cards Printable
Washi Tape - Little B
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye
Mist - Cosmic Shimmer, Docrafts
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Travel Mini Dies
X-Cut Circle Punch


Monday 7 August 2017

Give the Boy a Spoon

I have another page from our Chinese Whispers game in the Mind the Scrap Facebook group for you today. This time Christina gave me a monochromatic page with a big block of photos. I rarely scrap black and white photos, so I knew from the start that my page would be a more colourful affair.

My starting point was to find a set of three photos that could be cropped to squares and I turned up some of my nephew as a toddler. Next step was to find a background paper; I wanted a bold print but one that was small enough to 'read' the pattern around the edges of the page.

I cropped and arranged my three photos on the page, and decided to use the fourth quarter for both title and journalling.




Supplies
Paper - Karen Foster Design, Hot Off the Press, My Mind's Eye Bright
Letters - Hobbycraft
Stickers - My Mind's Eye, Jillibean Soup
Flair - Unknown
Washi Tape - Little B
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot and Cut & Make Doily Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Saturday 5 August 2017

Tummy Time

Christina's Page
I'm scraplifting today and sharing a page from the June/July Chinese Whispers game we played in the Mind the Scrap Facebook page. I played second in this chain, scraplifting Christina's page before passing my version on to Clair, who passed to Judith.

Christina's page was a very pretty one with two portrait photos, and what I think are 6x6 papers in her layers. I seem to have scrapped most of my pairs of photos, and had to go back to 1996 for some of my nephew as a baby. However these are landscape photos so I had to play with the dimensions and layering from Christina's page.

I won a 6x6 pad from the Pink Paislee Moonstruck collection for one of my National Scrapbook Day pages and the colours worked well with my photos. However I really struggled with finding a suitable background paper; in the end I chose a plainish paper and stamped my own design. I used a star stamp with denser, darker stamping at the top and lighter, more sparse stamping as I went down the page. 




I kept the position of the title from Christina's page, choosing a mixture of script Thickers and tile stickers, and kept her arrow too.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye 29th Street Market, Pink Paislee Moonstruck
Letters - American Crafts, Shimelle
Die Cut - One Canoe Two
Enamel Hearts - My Mind's Eye
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Chalk - Readicut Crafts
Ink - Hobbycraft, Ink It Up!
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot, X-Cut Tag Die & Little B Arrow Die
Heidi Swapp Inspire Stamp Set

Thursday 3 August 2017

Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt - Local Finds

We're two months into the new Photography Scavenger Hunt being run by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards, and I'm making slow progress. Having lost my list more than once, I made a new one from a Project Life card last weekend and I'm hoping to keep hold of this one for the next two months.

I haven't been out much this month, so all of these are local finds. I missed a few (such as a barbecue for seasonal food or drink and a summer toy when we cleared some old ones from our garage) so I really need to keep my new list close to me and re-read it often.

Enough waffle, here are my July finds:

1. Something Fuzzy
This is Max the Bear; he likes having adventures and sharing them via Facebook and Twitter (but typing is hard when you only have paws).


4. A Zig Zag
The 'keep clear' markings by our local school.


10. Something Yellow
A gate in a car park.

18. A Fan
A souvenir from Malaysia.


Three finds in June and these four in July put me on seven so far, and we're half way through the hunt now. We're going on holiday later this month, and that will be prime scavenger hunting time for me, so the total should be much higher by my next post.

The full list is at Patio Postcards, and the hunt runs until 30th September, so you still have plenty of time to join in. 


Tuesday 1 August 2017

25 Days of Scrapbooking Words: 19-31 July

This is my second post relating to Shimelle's 25 Days of Scrapbooking Words prompts; you can see the first here. People have been sharing daily on Instagram or in the Facebook group Scrapbook Like a Superhero and Shimelle discussed each prompt in more detail in her original blog post.




I actually haven't been able to find old pages for all the prompts, but that means I have some new ideas for future titles.

19. Alliteration
I could have chosen any (sensible) adjective for the robin on this page, but deliberately chose to employ alliteration:



20. How Poetic
I picked a line from 'For the Fallen' by Laurence Robert Binyon for this page from the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. (The fourth verse in full is sure to be familiar to you: "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn; At the going down of the sun and in the morning; We will remember them.")



21. Change One Word
Shimelle suggests taking a well-known phrase and changing one word for a page title. Not something I've ever done, but I'll give this idea some thought. 

22. Scrapbook Standbys
I tend to avoid the kind of titles that work for almost any page (documented, memories, remember, adventure, etc) in favour of something specific to the place or occasion, but I do find these words useful as part of a longer title.


23. Then & Now
I haven't used this exact title, but it's always interesting to pair similar photos from different times, such as the first and last days of school:



24. Good Times
Another of those 'suits any page' titles, but one that has never really occurred to me to use. It feels a bit nostalgic, so it may appear when I scrap the few photos I have from school and university.

25. A Lesson Learned
I've not been able to find a page for this prompt either, but my son's just passed his driving test, so there could be one soon (if I'm allowed to take his photo).

26. A Beautiful View
A beautiful view needs a big photo to show it off properly and I printed this one at A4. The title is slightly different, but I'm sure it counts.



27. Much-Loved Quotation
I don't use quotes much as my pages tend to be quite factual. However I do like "The world is a book and those that do not travel read only a page" (which is widely attributed to St Augustine, but appears to be paraphrasing a longer passage that he wrote). I used a tag with those words on a cruise page a couple of years ago:



28. An Open Letter
Not a letter as such, but I wrote the journalling on this page directly to my daughter:



29. A Mix Up
This is one that just won't be happening on my pages. I don't like mixed fonts within a word, and I'd rather change the title (or cut what I want on the Silhouette) than employ a mixture of letter styles. Having said that, I find that having one or two words in one size and font while the rest of the title is in another one is perfectly acceptable. Looking back, I can't find a single page with more than two styles/fonts.

30. Good Advice
Another prompt that just doesn't fit with my style of scrapbooking. My pages tend to be who/what/where variety, though I'm open to considering an alternative approach. 

31. Keeping It Real
Scrapping the not so great moments - I've picked a page from Austria last year, when our children and I went on a summer toboggan run down the mountain, stationing my husband at the bottom with a camera, and he failed to take a single picture of us careering down the tracks; we just a have a couple of photos of us as we went up, so that's what I scrapped.