Felix

Time for the last sketch from Lottie Loves Paper's Five Sketches in Five Days. It was actually Sketch 1, but I left it initially because I couldn't fit it to the photos from our cruise. 

Eventually I chose to scrap some baby photos instead; these were shared by my husband's cousin when Felix was born in August. I wanted to use blues, and soft patterns for this page, but I sorely underestimated the amount of blue patterned paper in my stash. The background is a baby boy paper, with a whale print that's hard to see in this photo. I also picked a darker blue which I cut into various width strips, tore the ends and machine-stitched to the page.

Supplies
Paper - Pebbles New Addition, Heidi Swapp No limits
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - Pebbles New Addition
Enamel Dots & Gems - Docrafts
Heart Stickers - Heidi Swapp
Mist - Mister Huey's


Tools
Sewing Machine

Harpa

Another Icelandic page, and another from a sketch shared by Lottie Loves Paper on Facebook as part of  Five Sketches in Five Days earlier this month.

My photos are of Harpa, a newish concert hall on the waterfront in Reykjavik. Its architecture is intended to reflect the basalt landscape of Iceland, and I wanted to include some close-ups of the glass panels on my page. However, having all three photos in a tight block didn't work for me so I spread them out a little and filled in the gap with an arrow die-cut.

I moved the title on my page compared to the sketch (using some ancient chipboard letters that fitted the space perfectly), and concentrated the circles of embellishment more closely together.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Echo Park We Are Family, Echo Park Winter Park, Photo Play Boarding Pass
Letters - Basic Grey
Mistable Stars - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Simple Storis
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Circle Punches
Big Shot, Spellbinders Circle Dies & Little B Arrow Die

Hungry?

I've gone back to the second of 'Five Sketches in Five Days' posted by Lottie Loves Paper on Facebook for this page. It's a great sketch for using up paper scraps, but I don't have too many of those this early in making my holiday album. 

The photo is of the 'Puffin and Whale' menu of one of the restaurants in Reykjavik. We didn't actually eat there, but the menu was interesting enough for me to want to photograph it and then scrapbook it - smoked puffin with raspberry vinegar, followed by whale peppersteak with fried vegetables.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, My Mind's Eye Hello World, Crate Paper, Echo Park
Letters - American Crafts
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Hallgrímskirkja

From Reykjavik Cathedral on the last page, I've crossed town to the much larger and newer Hallgrímskirkja for this page. It's a double, and another based on one of Shimelle's pages in her A Most Magical Scrapbook class. 

Shimelle used a long row of six 4x6 portrait photos spanning the width of her double page, but I decided on a more varied selection of sizes and orientations for my photos, and this opened up a gap for my title below the pictures on the right hand side of the page. I cut that title on the Silhouette as I have a scarcity of navy letter stickers.

The photo placement also created two open spaces for embellishment clusters in opposite corners; these are just a mix of paper pieces and die-cut shapes topped with wood veneer geo-tags.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Spots & Stripes, We R Memory Keepers
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Puffy Stickers - Fancy Pants
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Big Shot, X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die & Little B Arrows Die
Silhouette Portrait

Reykjavik Cathedral

I'm staying with Reykjavik today for this page featuring the Cathedral. The page design comes from the recent A Most Magical Scrapbook class run by Shimelle Laine. She was making a Disney album, but the prompts and page designs are pretty versatile rather than being specifically Disney-esque.

I had three photos of the cathedral, and considered stacking them in a column, but with one picture of the outside and two of the inside, I felt they would be better separated, and this design with three 4x6 photos and an extra 4x6 block worked better than the column.

Shimelle used her extra block for lots of embellishment, but it seemed like an obvious place for my title and journalling with just a little embellishment that I repeated diagonally opposite in a smaller size. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Winter Park, My Mind's Eye Hello World, Basic Grey
Letters - Echo Park Note to Self
Washi Tape - Little B, Tesco
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle, Simple Stories
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Little B Arrows Dies
Dovecraft Nesting Stars Die

Sólfar

I'm sticking with our cruise for now, and sharing a page from Iceland. Sólfar, the Sun Voyager, is a sculpture on the waterfront in Reykjavik, commissioned to commemorate the bicentenary of the city. 

The page is based on the fourth of the Five Sketches in Five Days posted by Lottie Loves Paper on Facebook at the start of the month, though I've played with the paper layers and moved the line of embellishments down below my photos.

The arrow card behind my title is an old tag from Amy Tangerine which I trimmed down a little, and then tucked the tag end into the opposite corner so that lighter kraft colour appears in two places. The map print stars are old too, and have appeared in two previous cruise albums, so I'm keen to get them used up.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, October Afternoon, Basic Grey, Pink Paislee
Letters - Basic Grey
Tag - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine
Stickers - October Afternoon, Studio Calico
Gems - Papermania
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot, Little B Arrows Dies & X-Cut Travel Dies
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
American Crafts/Shimelle Starshine Stamp Set
X-Cut Circle Punch

Hidden Talent

At the beginning of the month, Lottie Loves Paper posted Five Sketches in Five Days over on Facebook. I started in the middle, with Sketch 3 which was originally published by Page Maps back in 2012.

I picked a couple of photos of my son learning ballroom dancing on our cruise, and flipped the sketch horizontally to suit the direction of travel in the photos. I'm doing the whole album on kraft cardstock so put the spotty paper behind the other page elements to break up the expanse of kraft.

My page morphed away from the sketch as I worked, as I moved things around the page, but hopefully you can still see where it started from.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, We R Memory Keepers
Letters - Fancy Pants
Die Cuts & Sticker - Photo Play Boarding Pass
Cork Stickers - Freckled Fawn
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch
X-Cut Corner Punch

Gilwell 24

The page I scraplifted.

This was the fourth and final page that I made in the recent Scrap Whispers game at UKScrappers. We've passed a scrapbook page from one person to the next and scraplifted it in turn, and I was last to play in this chain.

I initially picked a single photo for my page, but then decided that I could squeeze in a few small ones as well. They come from Gilwell 24, 24 hours of scouting activities held each summer in Gilwell Park, which my daughter and her friends attended earlier this year.

I kept the inked background, the two paper panels, the placement of the large photo in the corner, and the scattering of embellishments, but this is by no means a faithful copy of the page I was given. 

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye 29th Street Market, My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus
Letters - Chatter Box, Basic Grey
Butterflies - Prima
Pearls - The Hobby House
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

A Scraplift Starting Point

Jan's Page

Something a bit different today, as I'm sharing an unfinished page. I sometimes make these 'starting point' pages in order to kill a kit or collection, but this one came from the recent game of Scrap Whispers at UKScrappers. 

The third page that I was given to scraplift had these lovely sprays of flowers on the diagonal, which drew me to a large scrap of Teresa Collins paper with a floral that was perfect for fussy-cutting. 

However, having ploughed through 30 years of photos I had to conclude that I didn't have any photos to work with the pinks and green of that scrap, and I reluctantly decided to proceed without one for now. I tracked down some matching paper papers from two 6x6 pads and layered them in the middle, tucked my flower sprays into opposite sides, added swirls of gems and spattered the diagonal with silver mist. Looking back at Jan's page, I realised that I had forgotten to stitch that circle, an element I'd intended to keep, and added that too.

I really like this page with its soft colours and delicate flowers; I hope I take a suitable photo before too long, and I have silver letters ready for a title once I get that far.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Teresa Collins Something Wonderful, We R Memory Keepers Love Notes, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society
Gems - ZVA Creative
Mist - Mister Huey's
Thread - DMC

Wet & Wacky

I'm stepping away from the cruise photos for a brief interlude caused by the game of Scrap Whispers that's just finished over at UKScrappers. The game involves passing a page from one person to another in turn with each one scraplifting the person before them to produce a chain of related pages. 

The page that I received from Craftpopsy at the start of the second week was a lovely mixed media piece that I knew just wouldn't fit with the other cruise pages, so I had to switch to something else. I don't have very many single photos left, and nothing that I wanted to crop and scrap in this style, so I mulled it over for almost a week before I got going with this page. 

My daughter is an explorer scout and her leader recently posted some photos on Facebook from an outdoor games evening. They weren't great quality, and I might not ordinarily have scrapped them, but they were a good subject for the playful nature of that run of circles. I decided to use two of them and picked a 6x6 pad with some soft greens, yellows and aquas for my circles.

I started the right side page with distress inks and the packaging technique, smooshing a mix of ink and water on to the page, used a stencil for a grid of dots (which mostly got covered up) and flicked three colours of mist over the top. On the left, I changed Craftpopsy's hearts to stamped stars and coloured them in with the same distress ink. I cut and layered up my circles before stamping asterisks on and around them, and adding tiny pearls. Finally I spattered another colour of mist over the circles and doodled a border around the right side of the page which was feeling unfinished. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - My Mind's Eye Bright 6x6 Pad
Pearls - The Hobby House, Kanban Crafts
Ink - Hobbycraft, Ranger, 
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer, Maya Road

Tools
Banana Frog 'Circus Stories' Star Stamp
American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Asterisk Stamp
Dreamweaver 'Background Dots' Stencil

Now & Then

For the last month, we've been playing a new game of Scrap Whispers over at UKScrappers. The idea is similar to that of Chinese Whispers, but with scrapbook pages. We played in teams of four and each passed a scrapbook page from one person to the next, scraplifting it in turn to make a chain of related pages.

Shimelle's Page

I started my chain with a page scraplifted from one of Shimelle Laine's 'Friday Live' videos on Facebook. The pair of vertical 4x6 photos was exactly what I needed for a 'Now & Then' page from the Briksdal Glacier in Norway.

We first visited the glacier in 2008 and knew that the ice had retreated substantially since then so I had planned a comparison page even before we went away, and this was the first page I made when we came home.

It seems that one thing I can't account for was the change in lighting/camera as the old photo is rather browner than new, and the true colour is probably somewhere in between.

When I collected my supplies together for this album, I had a plan of repeating this globe stamp from Shimelle throughout the album, and filling it with various papers to match the different pages. I hadn't originally intended to add the word stickers, but having added one on this page, I've repeated them on all my globes so far.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Winter Park
Vellum - My Mind's Eye Necessities
Letters - American Crafts
Numbers - Basic Grey
Puffy Stickers - MAMBI
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Tesco, Little B
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's


Tools
Big Shot, X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die & Spellbinders Circle Die
Shimelle Starshine Stamp Set

"Happy Birthday" Cards

I need to make cards for two teenage boys this month, something I always struggle with, but I was struck by the simplicity of this month's card sketch at Stick It Down.

I turned to my Silhouette for this one and manipulated an alphabet cut file  from Just Nick to give me an outline of the word 'birthday' which I could back with scraps of patterned paper.

Both the card and the word are white cardstock so I used an ink applicator and distress ink to apply some colour to the card, and I also spattered it with silver mist. Having made one, I moved on to a second, and then a third. 

This is such an easy design to repeat and suitable for any age; I think I need more card blanks in this size!

Amateur Photobomber

I love the start of a new album. I have lots of photos to scrapbook, and I'm not working in chronological order, so I can just pick and choose my pictures to suit any sketch challenge that takes my fancy. 

First up this month is one from Let's Get Sketchy, which I paired with a photo of our daughter, taken in Greenland. She was trying to photobomb me by jumping up into the bottom of the shot, but the result was a natural photo of her, probably better than one I'd have got if I asked her to pose for me.

I'm also linking up with the tic-tac-toe challenge at Scrap Our Stash where I've picked the bottom row - mini alphas, American Crafts (the larger letters) and die-cuts (both bought and cut by me).

I'm doing all of this album on kraft cardstock, so I need to brighten up the pages with lots of patterned paper. Hence I started this page by adding the large piece of spotty paper behind the main sketch elements. If I'd had a 'prettier' background then I'd have left it on show.

I extended the design to the right with a journalling box, and added an extra paper strip to act as a 'shelf' for the photo and journalling. No hot air balloons on this trip, but I've used them on the page anyway as they say 'carefree' to me and fitted the feel of the page. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Dots & Stripes Travel, Simple Stories, Pink Paislee
Letters - American Crafts, KaiserCraft
Balloon Sticker & Die-Cut - Photo Play Boarding Pass
Washi Tape - The Range
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Puffy Stickers - American Crafts/Shimelle, Jillibean Soup
Enamel Dots/Stars - American Crafts/Shimelle, Simple Stories
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Travel Dies
X-Cut Camera Die

Olden

This is the last one of the 'chapter dividers' for my new cruise album, one for each port, following a similar design each time. I worked on the last two simultaneously in order to make sure I had a balance of positions and colours of the different page elements across the five very similar pages. So far Tasiilaq was the only one where I had my main patterned paper at the bottom, so I made sure that I repeated that here. 

Supplies

Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill

Paper - Photo Play Paper Boarding Pass, Pink Paislee Memorandum

Journal Card - Project Life Summer

Word Sticker - Tim Holtz

Enamel Dots/Stars - Echo Park, Marianne Designs, Simple Stories

Pearls - Scrapberry's

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Daisy Brush Script Letter Set

Big Shot

X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Little B Arrows Dies

Spellbinders Circle Die

X-Cut Travel Dies

Quickutz Tab Die

American Crafts/Shimelle 'Starshine' Globe Stamp

Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Compass Stamp

X-Cut Corner Punch

Ålesund

Back to the cruise album today, with another 'chapter divider' page. I'm making five of these, one for each port of call, all based on the same page design but flipped horizontally, vertically or both to suit each 6x8" photo, though this one actually kept the original design of my page from Reykjavik.

This page is for Ålesund, our fourth stop, and the photo was taken part way up the hill above the town. I picked out papers for both this one and the next at the same time as I've cut into lots of different papers so far, I didn't want to repeat one in these five pages, and I was running low on new patterns. In fact, the check paper here is taken from the 6x6 Boarding Pass pad and pieced together as this pattern doesn't appear in the 12x12 collection pack. 

I decided to cut all the port names using the same font on my Silhouette, a font with very little punctuation, which gave me a small problem here with cutting the ring that goes above the A. Luckily, after a few attempts, I was able to manipulate the O into something that would work.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Paper Boarding Pass, Echo Park Dots and Stripes Travel, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Journal Card - Heidi Swapp
Word Sticker - Tim Holtz
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Docrafts, Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Daisy Brush Script Letter Set
Big Shot
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Little B Arrows Dies
Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Travel Dies
Quickutz Tab Die
American Crafts/Shimelle 'Starshine' Globe Stamp
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Compass Stamp
X-Cut Corner Punch