Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt - September

We've reached the end of September, the weather here is definitely autumnal now, and it's time to wrap up the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards. 

She gave us a list of twenty items and two alternatives to find and photograph between 1st June and 30th September and we've shared our progress each month. I barely got started in June, had a better July and just bagged the alternatives in August. 

September was always going to be prime scavenger-hunting time for me as we went on a cruise to Spain, Portugal and Morocco, day after day with a camera in my hand, so here are this month's finds:

1. The Rosiness of Red
Sampling the port at Croft's in Vila Nova de Gaia.

2. Stripes
The paving in Praça Dom Pedro IV, Lisbon.

3. A Framed View
Sunrise off Casablanca through our cabin porthole.

4. Wings
The 'Genio del Cristianismo' in Cádiz, Spain.

5. Pedal Power - See June

6. Glorious Green
Gardens in Vigo.

7. An Unexpected Reflection
The medieval Elvet Bridge in Durham at night.

8. A Pile Of...
Stone 'packing cases' forming a breakwater at Leixões.

9. Looks Smaller Than You
The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca (which is 210m tall).

11. Pretty in Pink - See July

12. Bells
We saw bells in church towers everywhere; these were all in Porto.
(Igreja dos Carmelitas, Torre dos Clérigos, Igreja de São José das Taipas, Igreja de Santo Ildefonso, Sé do Porto, Igreja de Santa Marinha)

14. A Trilogy of Three
Three of the four Fred. Olsen ships near Cádiz; we were on the fourth as all four ships met in the same port to celebrate 170 years of the company's involvement in shipping.

15. Out of the Blue
A helicopter in Cádiz.

17. Re-purposed
'The Bull's Head' by Pablo Picasso, made from a bicycle saddle and handlebars. This isn't my photo, but we did see this piece in the Picasso Museum in Málaga (where photography was not permitted).

Photo: Wall Street Journal

18. Currency: Coinage or Paper
This globe contains a collection of various currencies donated by the ship's passengers, which will be given to the RNLI.

19. Picture Postcard Perfect
There are so many photos I could have chosen here; this is Porto from the Ponte Dom Luis I. 

20. Mellow Yellow
The Ascensor da Bica, a funicular in Lisbon.

Fifteen out of twenty here, plus two from earlier months and both the alternatives mean that I almost completed the hunt this year. With a little more care and attention I might have managed the missing three (a field of plenty, equal portions and something that could be from a favourite book or film) but I'm out of time now.

Please hop over to Mary-Lou's blog and from there you can check out what my fellow scavenger hunters have been finding via the list of blog links.

Now, how long until the winter hunt starts...

Casablanca

I'll be making divider/title pages for each city we visited on this cruise just as I did for the last two. I had intended to use a single 6x8 picture on each one, but none of my Casablancan photos were good enough for that. I picked two in the end and printed them at 4x6 so they take up the same space as a 6x8.

I want the photo(s) on these title pages to be general views of the cities but that was tricky for Casablanca. We sailed directly into a commercial (i.e. ugly) port and couldn't see much of the low-rise city beyond it. The top photo on my page was taken across the port entrance as we arrived, and the bottom one was taken across a bay that we walked round.

I used this month's "Jump Start" sketch challenge from The ScrapRoom blog for my page. It was a good one for two 4x6 photos and the circles are a little more interesting than lots of boxes. I kept quite close to the original sketch, even to using stars and arrows in my embellishment. The biggest change was moving the title to curve it round the large circle rather than having such a long word overlap my photo.

Last week I made a 'K is for Kits' page for the Alpha Relay challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and this week I've been picked (by random number generator) to set the the next one. I chose 'V is for Vacation' and this is my sample page for the challenge.

Supplies

Cardstock - Colorset, Stampin' Up!

Paper - OneCanoeTwo Twilight, Crate Paper Snow & Cocoa, Bo Bunny Early Bird

Letters - Jillibean Soup

Stickers - Studio Calico, Freckled Fawn, Jo-Ann's, OneCanoeTwo

Gems - Papermania, Love to Craft
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's, Heidi Swapp

Tools
Big Shot
Little B Arrows Die
X-Cut Travel Die
Craft Creative Flower Punch

In Need of Some TLC

I won't be scrapping our cruise chronologically and I'm starting with our third port of call, Casablanca, because its photos fell into specific groups more easily than those from some of the other cities we visited.

One of my sets of photos is from the Parc de la Ligue Arabe and the neighbouring church, the Église du Sacré-Coeur. Both the church and part of the park were behind barriers and appeared to be being renovated, but they have a fair way to go and the impression they left on me was that the area was in need of some tender loving care.

My page design came from Shimelle's class A Most Magical Scrapbook and I used it previously for a page from Reykjavik on our last cruise, but this time I squeezed an extra photo on to the page.

Supplies
Paper - OneCanoeTwo Twilight, Bo Bunny Early Bird, KaiserCraft Full Bloom, My Mind's Eye, Pinkfresh Studio
Letters - American Crafts, Basic Grey
Vellum Stickers - Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs, Echo Park
Gems - Papermania, Love to Craft
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch
Craft Creatives Flower Punch

Balmoral

No, not the Queen's home in Scotland, but a scrapbook page about the ship that we cruised on earlier this month. We'd been on her before, back in 2013, but having taken two cruises on Black Watch since then we were ready to go back to her.

I took photos of the Balmoral in every port where I could do so, six in total. Of these, four pictures were very similar, one was a rear-view and one was only the front part of the ship. I decided to work with the four similar shots and sketch #160 from Sketch-n-Scrap, which I rotated to suit the orientation of my pictures.

The current Alpha Relay challenge letter over at For the Love of Pretty Paper is K is for Kits - to use a kit, either bought or made up yourself. Since I'd already aassembled a mega-kit of papers for this album I would have been crazy not to join in. 

I'll journal on the card at the bottom once I've made the title page for this album. Right now, I think that this will be page two, so it makes sense to have what I write here follow on from the first page once I've done it.

Supplies
Paper - OneCanoeTwo Twilight, Simple Stories Posh, Crate Paper Snow and Cocoa
Journalling Card - Project Life
Die-Cut - OneCanoeTwo
Stickers - OneCanoeTwo, Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Pretty Little Studio
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Stampin' Up!
Puffy Stars - Pink Fresh Studio
Gems - Papermania
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Cruise Iberia 2018 - A New Project

Unless anything untoward has happened, we are currently on our way home from another cruise; this time we went south to Spain, Portugal and Morocco, two new countries to me and all new for my husband, though it's about thirty years since I was last in Spain.

Of course a new cruise means a new cruise album and I've been collecting papers for this project for a few months, mostly in the summer sales but also pulling papers from my stash. While researching our destinations I realised that many of the towns that we would be visiting have lots white buildings with terracotta roofs and I decided to build up a kit of papers starting from that terracotta colour.

I couldn't find a whole collection that I liked that I felt would work for this, but I used a few sheets from OneCanoeTwo's Twilight collection in terracotta, soft blue-grey and navy as my starting point, added a few more from Creekside and worked from there. 

I next looked at single colour prints, selecting some in terracotta/peach/coral shades. They don't all work together but they'll be spread throughout the album and mixed with other colours and patterns. 

I also looked at the other side of each paper which gave me some more colours and patterns, and enabled me to pull in coordinating papers from the same collections or similar collections from the same manufacturer.

I repeated this with navy and blue-grey papers and also added some grey or black and white prints.

Then looked at the other sides and selected matching papers from the same or similar collections.

One colour that kept recurring in these sets (that wasn't in my initial selection) was aqua, so I picked out a few more aqua papers including some from Bo Bunny's Early Bird collection which mixes coral, aqua and navy.

Throughout these choices I tried to keep two rules in mind: the papers should be white-based rather than cream-based where possible and they should be 'clean' patterns rather than distressed ones. I have a huge mish-mash here from seventeen manufacturers and they don't all mix with everything else but I should have sufficient variety to combat the monotony of sticking to one collection only for a whole album. I've also included vellum and cardstock in my kit but not photographed it here.

I made my last two cruise albums on plain backgrounds throughout (grey then kraft) and there were positives and negatives to that approach. On the upside, it was one less choice to make each time and plain cardstock is relatively cheap and easy to obtain. On the downside, it could get tedious and I felt that I had to cover a lot of that cardstock where I might have left a patterned paper on display. Therefore I'm planning to use some of these papers as backgrounds, and probably do some pages on white cardstock. I think this will also allow me to make a greater variety of pages via mixed media, stitching and cut-files, none of which appear in my previous cruise albums.

I've added six 6x6 pads to the mix, but only one of these is new. The first two pads from My Mind's Eye should work well though they are already well-used. Only some of the Moonstruck and Creekside papers will be any good, and although I've included my few remaining sheets of Hello World (because it's travel-themed) it's cream-based and I'm not sure whether I will actually use much of it. My new purchase is the Let Your Heart Decide pad from Pinkfresh which I chose for the clean designs, good colour mix and plenty of white.

I have also pulled out lots of tags, insta-cards and Project Life cards to use for journalling and layering, including travel-themed pieces from My Mind's Eye and Pink Paislee. Nothing in this pile is new, and some are pieces that I'd just like to see used up.

My stickers are a mix of old and new. I'd like to use up some of the Echo Park and Jen Hadfield stickers but they're not the best colour match, and although the Dear Lizzy stickers match colour-wise a lot of those are too random for me. However I have a better chance of using them if they are in the kit than not. The Pinkfresh puffy stars are new as are the Pink Paislee washi strips and the travel-themed Thickers from Crate Paper. On the right, I've pulled in all my OneCanoeTwo stickers as one of their collections was my initial inspiration for this kit.

More stickers now, mostly smaller ones including words and icons. Several of these were bargains in Studio Calico's sale at the start of the year including a set of clear date labels for the month of September which will enable me to date my pages consistently but unobtrusively.

I have fewer ephemera pieces than stickers, the main ones being from Pink Paislee and OneCanoeTwo. Returning to the travel theme, I have cork geotags and rub-on geotags from Studio Calico, acrylic pieces and flair that didn't make it into the pages of my last album, and globes in both chipboard and wood veneer. The placecards and confetti are more pieces that I really want to see used up.

I've bought a few new alphas, but intend to use the part packs that I already have where I can and also to cut some titles on my Big Shot or Silhouette as I go along.

I will of course be using enamel dots, gems and washi tape throughout the album. I've bought a couple of new packs of enamel dots but will mostly pull them from my stash for each page. I'll use mist too (a new coral one alongside existing colours) and I think I'll be inking my paper edges in grey this time. Finally, I'll be using my dies, punches and stamps for pieces that I can keep repeating without any fear of them running out. 

Inspired by Triangles

I recently saw a scrapbook page on Facebook which used a triangles cut file background. It's a commercially available file (DIY Quilt from The Cut Shoppe), but I was sure I could create something similar for myself and decided to give it a go.

I have a Silhouette portrait which is only 8" wide so I couldn't make an exact replica, but I came close and used pages from a 6x6 pad to back it with. I layered the cut piece over my 12x12 and added a torn paper strip to the join

I don't know what page I will use this for yet. I really made it for the challenge of creating the file and the joy of playing with pretty paper.

The page that inspired me, and the DIY Quilt cut file are on this link: https://thecutshoppe.blogspot.com/2018/08/best-kid-tarrah-mclean.html


Supplies
White Cardstock
Paper - Studio Calico Sundrifter, Studio Calico Heyday

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

On Latrigg

I'm going back to our Easter holiday in Cumbria now as I printed lots of photos when we came home, but still haven't scrapped them all. These three came from a quick walk we did on Latrigg above the town of Keswick. 

It's another page for the Summer Fiesta challenges in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group. We joined up with UK Scrap Addicts to share their August tic-tac-toe board and added the additional requirement of including water on the page. My water is the lakes in the photos and I used the middle row of the tic-tac-toe board - arrows, circles and washi tape.

The papers are part of a kit I put together for Shimelle's Clear the Desk class and my layout is scraplifted from one of the pages in that class.

Supplies
Paper - October Afternoon 9to5, My Mind's Eye Collectable, Bo Bunny Olivia
Letters - October Afternoon, American Crafts
Cards - October Afternoon 9to5
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Circle Stickers - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Eyelet Outlet, Pretty My Page, Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

SWCP 7

The last page for my 2014 album is one that I so often leave until last. Every year since 2008 my husband and father-in-law have walked a section of the South West Coast Path, a 630 mile journey from Poole in Dorset round to Minehead in Somerset, and in 2014 they walked round the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. 

I find the pages from these walks to be difficult to make as there are a large number of photos and since I wasn't there I don't know which ones are important to them and I don't know the details of their week. Some years my husband writes blog posts which I can use, but he didn't do any for 2014 so there's minimal journalling on this page. I took most of my inspiration from the 2015 page that I've already made, which led me to a huge grid filling most of the double page. I printed all the photos at the same height and filled in the ends of the rows with cards for journalling and embellishments. I couldn't find any letter stickers the right size and shape to have my title fill the space available, so I cut that on my Silhouette. 

I'd already started to prepare this page when a FTLOPP Summer Fiesta challenge was set to use a blue background paper with the theme of the sea. I use the same blue background paper for the SWCP page every year, so this was the perfect challenge and came through at the perfect time for me.

Supplies
Paper - Craft Creative, My Mind's Eye, Daisy D's, Pink Paislee
Letters - October Afternoon
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments, Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Unknown
Puffy Sticker - Jillibean Soup
Enamel Shapes - Marianne Designs, Stampin' Up!

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
X-Cut Circle Punches
X-Cut Corner Punch