I've finally finished my album for last year's cruise to Greenland, Iceland and Norway. I didn't work chronologically so this page actually comes about two-thirds of the way through.
The photos are from the Botanical Gardens in Akureyri and were taken by our adult son who chose to spend his day in the town while we went on a tour. He was very proud of the fact that he'd taken lots of photos for me ready to document his visit as he doesn't normally take many pictures even on holiday.
I initially chose four photos and printed them at 4x3 but you couldn't see the details in all the green so I dropped one and went larger with the others. I have another page in this album with a column of three 4x6 photos, so I tried to make the rest of the page design as different from the other one as possible. I considered several vertical strips of paper to the left of the photos but, looking at all my scraps, I decided to use as many of them as I could in horizontal strips instead.
I've had that acrylic arrow (and some other pieces) in my project box ever since I started this album and it took a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to finally move one from box to page. We have an Alphabet Relay running in the group where we take it in turns to set challenges based on the letters of the alphabet, and this was A for Acrylic.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Winter Park, Basic Grey, Teresa Collins, Pink Paislee, Authentique
Letters - Fancy Pants
Acrylic Arrow - from Stash
Washi Tape - Ebay, Tesco
Enamel Shapes - Marianne Designs, My Mind's Eye, Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Camera Dies
Dovecraft Star Die
It's time to link up again with my fellow scavenger hunters on the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt organised this year by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards.
I only managed one find last month, but July has been much better due to a visit we made last week to Flatford in Suffolk, an area immortalised in the paintings of John Constable. In the order that I found them, these are my photos:
6. Glorious Green
I took lots of 'green' photos, but this one of the River Stour is my favourite; even the water looks green.
3. A Framed View
Bridge Cottage, as seen through the gate of Flatford Lock
11. Pretty in Pink
Roses outside one of the houses in Flatford.
12. Bell(s)
Just one bell, on the roof of a neighbouring house.
19. Picture Postcard Perfect
Tom Lott's House, from Constable's "The Hay Wain".
20. Mellow Yellow
Our parched fields after weeks without rain.
The hunt runs until the end of September, so plenty of time to join in. Why not add a scavenger hunt to your summer bucket list?
Penultimate cruise page now, and it's from the Crew Show, which is a chance for the ordinary crew members to show off their talents. It normally includes some traditional dances from their home countries, a few singers and two set pieces - on every cruise we've done the deck crew perform "In the Navy" while the engine room team do "You can Keep your Hat on" (the finale to The Full Monty (but they keep more than their hats on)).
I started this page from the second of Sue's July sketches, but adapted it for two columns of photos. The navy blue panel (two pieces actually) isn't in the sketch, but I needed it to cover the gap in the aqua map print as I have no large papers left at this stage so I'm cutting and stretching where I can.
I originally made two embellishment clusters in the places indicated by the flowers on the sketch but that was before I added my title. Having placed that on a scalloped die-cut circle I added two smaller matching circles to my original clusters and then the title really called out for a cluster of its own so I ended up with three.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Creatives
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Winter Park, Creative Imaginations, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - Jillibean Soup, My Mind's Eye
Washi - Ebay, Tesco
Stickers - Studio Calico, Bella Bouevard
Brads - My Mind's Eye
Enamel Shapes - American Crafts/Shimelle
Pearls - Hobby House
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Big Shot & The Works Scalloped Circle Dies
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Still on cruise pages, there are two more to come and then I'll be done ... just in time for the next cruise! To be honest, this one's a 'filler', I'm on an odd number of pages and so I need one more (or a gap and that would be silly).
My photos came from a Beatles-themed show one evening, and I scraplifted myself for the page design. However it's a scraplift with a twist as I am taking Shimelle's latest class, Layer on Layer on Layer, and one of the prompts is to scraplift yourself but find a way to incorporate more layers in the page.
I started out from a three year old page for Caernarfon Castle, and flipped it horizontally to suit the direction in my photos. At this stage in the album I didn't have many big pieces of paper left, but I did have plenty of 12" strips and some medium size pieces that I could cut and stretch. The new page has more layers behind the photos than the original and I substituted a series of overlapping paper strips for the single vertical piece in the original. I even got an extra layer into the background with two scraps of vellum positioned to look like one longer strip.
I used two colours of tile stickers for my title and there are three reasons why I used the red ones for the word love - they form a triangle of red with the two ends of the red paper strip; they are wider than the cream ones so can 'support' the longer words above; and I only had two cream l's left.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, HOTP, Simple Stories, American Crafts/Shimelle, Echo Park, Basic Grey
Vellum - Crate Paper
Letters - October Afternoon, We R Memory Keepers
Enamel Shapes - Stampin' Up!
Gems - from Stash
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts
Tools
The Works Roller Stamp
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Hobbycraft Heart Punch
Almost there with the cruise scrapbook, and these pages come from the Gala Buffet on our penultimate evening. The food is beautifully presented, almost too good to eat, and the buffet opens for photographs first before anyone is allowed to eat anything.
When I first saw this month's double page sketch from Stick It Down, I thought it would be perfect for this set of photos, but I soon discovered that a good proportion of my pictures were portrait rather than landscape in orientation. This wasn't actually too much of a problem and I managed to re-work the block of photos to suit them, and arranged the remainder in a loose 'C' shape on the other page. Not an exact copy of the sketch, but I think you can see it there (even if I did decide to swap the two sides over).
That strip of vellum doesn't appear in the sketch at all but I added it for three reasons - firstly having something that spans both sides of the page helps to tie them together and makes it clear that this is a double rather than two singles. Secondly, I'm working with plain cardstock backgrounds in this album and the left side was too stark without something to cover at least part of that vast expanse of kraft. Thirdly, without it, the photos were 'floating' on the left side of the page; having them all touching the vellum 'anchors' them in place.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Papermania
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass
Vellum - Crate Paper Boys Rule
Letters - Simply Creative
Mistable Stars - Studio Calico
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - American Crafts
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Stampin' Up!
Pearls - Craft for Occasions
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Time to fill in a few gaps in the album now, so I'm going back to Ålesund for a missing double that I skipped over previously. We walked along the ridge above the town that day, and I have a collection of photos taken from the official viewpoint. It seems that many visitors don't venture much further than this, but they really should.
My page design was lead by the sizes of the scraps that I had left - I cut the stripe in half horizontally to span the two pages, and layered the green print over it at the size it was. I needed to fill in the two sides of the page and picked scraps of the plaid print (cut and stretched on the left) and a 6x6 paper with tags. I repeated the tag in a larger size from the ephemera pack and tucked my journalling under it.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Basic Grey
Letters - American Crafts, We R Memory Keepers
Mistable Stars - Studio Calico
Puffy Stickers - American Crafts
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug
Washi Tape - Ebay
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Die
My niece turned sixteen last week and, of course, I made a card for the occasion. My usual source of card sketches is Sketch-n-Scrap and they'd just published their first sketch for this month.
I wanted to work with the theme of 'Sweet 16' and managed to find a few pieces from American Crafts' Sweet Shop collection (a magazine freebie). The sweetie jar print was just perfect for the main pattern on the card, and I dropped the star from the sketch in order to show as much of it as possible.
I'm approaching the end of my cruise album now. I've written a list of the pages that I still need to make, and I was surprised at just how short it is.
One photo that definitely needs to be included is the only one from the whole holiday that has the four of us in it and was taken by the ship's photographer on formal night. The original is 8x10, but I scanned and reprinted it at 4x6 to fit better with the rest of the photos in my album.
I've been re-watching the videos from Shimelle Laine's older classes recently, and this page is based on an L-shaped design from Ready, Set, Scrapbook. The suitcase print is one that will probably only appear on this page, but I'm happy with that. It's from the main collection that I'm using and matches the colours on my other pages so I don't think the different print will really be noticeable as people flick through.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Vellum - My Mind's Eye
Letters - October Afternoon
Wood Veneer - The Works
Washi Tape - Little B
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts, Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
This page actually comes earlier in the day than the last two, but I needed to get 'warmed up' on a couple of single pages before tackling a double. These photos come from the 'geothermal field' at Námaskarð, an area with mud pots, steam vents and boiling springs where the soil is too hot and poisonous for anything to grow. We had to be careful where we walked as the surface temperature reaches 80-100°C in places.
The photos needed a mat and looked best on black cardstock, so I cut two 9" wide boxes to sit in the middle of my page. I didn't like the look of the plain cardstock around the edges of the photos, so I filled in those areas with a mosaic of green papers which I've used elsewhere in the album. The blue is a new paper, making its first appearance, but I have an offcut that I will be sure to use elsewhere. I only had one sheet so I've cut and stretched this to look larger and covered the gap with the stripe on each side.
I kept the embellishment simple with clusters in two opposite corners; I found the chipboard clouds when I was looking for something else and they were reminiscent of the smoke and steam we saw so had to be included.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - October Afternoon Treasure Map, Photo Play Boarding Pass, My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey
Letters - Simply Creative
Border - Bazzill
Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts
Clouds - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle, Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
This page comes immediately before the last one I made from Iceland; it's also from Dimmuborgir Nature Reserve and is an overview of the 'lava labyrinth' there, an area of caves, stacks and crags formed about 2300 years ago and a landscape unique to Iceland.
I scraplifted myself for this one, a copy of my introductory page for St John's in Canada on another cruise, though I varied it slightly and the two pieces of woodgrain paper that I used give the page a slightly L-shaped design this time.
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Authentique Anchored, Simple Stories, Crate Paper, Basic Grey
Journalling Card -
Letters - October Afternoon, Basic Grey
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Enamel Dots - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
