Happy Mother's Day if you are celebrating today.
I used Sketch #142 from Sketch-n-Scrap for a card for my mum this year, swapping out the stars of the sketch for butterflies. The largest one is a die-cut and the smaller ones are clear stickers which I put on white cardstock and then cut out. I was going to use a paper or washi strip across the card but found another sticker with more butterflies along its length and used that instead, which caused me to move the sentiment up above the sticker.
I have a birthday card for you today, a fairly simple design based around a very useful die and Sketch #141 from Sketch-n-Scrap earlier this month.
My card's intended for a man so I picked 6x6 papers in blue, green and yellow for the banners, running them from the very top of the card and dropping the flower from the sketch. I tried a few varieties of star stickers instead of the flower but in the end I preferred a slightly plainer card with just a sprinkle of mist to finish off.
I'm jumping back to Vigo (Spain) in my cruise album now, as our visit there was shorter and we took fewer photos there than in Lisbon so the scrapbooking is going to be easier.
This page has three photos from Casco Vello, the oldest part of Vigo, which I split to put the street photos together, slightly apart from one of the main church. My page design came from one of Shimelle Laine's page in her Layer on Layer on Layer class last summer.
Supplies
Cardstock - The Range
Paper - Prima Zella Teal, My Mind's Eye On Trend 2, Pebbles Floral Lane, Crate Paper Snow and Cocoa
Letters - Simple Stories
Stickers - OneCanoeTwo, Pinkfresh Studio
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, My Mind's Eye, Pretty My Page
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Hobbycraft Star Punch
X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch
Another page from Lisbon today. The city is built on a series of hills, with different areas being linked by trams and funicular railways. My photos are from the Ascensor da Bica and I used Sketch #172 from the beginning of the month at Sketch-n-Scrap.
I combined the sketch with a 'Grab 5' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper which was part of a recent mini cybercrop; our five items were 6x6 papers, sequins, small word stickers, yellow and wood veneer pieces.
It was the inclusion of yellow that steered me towards these photos as there's not much yellow in this album. I have used it for the photo mat and a ticket in the embellishment but I've mostly stuck with my blue and coral colour scheme.
I've been stamping again; it's quite fun finding places to add stamping on a page and this time I stamped and fussy-cut the ticket in my lower embellishment cluster.
Supplies
Cardstock - The Range, Bazzill
Paper - OneCanoeTwo Twilight, OneCanoeTwo Creekside, We R Memory Keepers Love Notes, October Afternoon
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Teresa Collins, Pretty Little Studio
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Ink - Memento, Versamagic
Mist - Docrafts
Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
X-Cut Circle Punch
Heidi Swapp 'Inspire' Stamp Set
Shimelle/American Crafts Word Stamp
Back to my cruise album now, and the title page for Lisbon. This one's based on the March single page sketch from Stick It Down, though I changed the four smaller photos out for a 6x8 print on my page and moved the title below it.
I was happy to see the angled papers on this sketch, as that is something that I need to repeat in this album. I chose circles rather than flowers as they are another element that I want to repeat but I moved them around as I preferred them to follow the lines of the paper.
This month we are focusing on using our stamps more at both For the Love of Pretty Paper and Stashbusting on Facebook, and I've used two on this page. The compass is one that I've used on the background of many a travel page, and the trio of stars is just a really useful little filler.
Supplies
Paper Studio Calico, OneCanoeTwo Creekside, Simple Stories, We R Memory Keepers, Pinkfresh Studio
Vellum - My Mind's Eye
Letters - Hobbycraft
Cork Shapes - Studio Calico
Date Sticker - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle, My Mind's Eye
Ink - Memento
Mist - Maya Road, Docrafts
Tools
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp
Earlier this week I blogged my walk of Section 5 of the Capital Ring, and today I'm scrapping three photos of the view from Richmond Park to St Paul's Cathedral. When I printed them, I'd imagined lining them up across the page with borders above and below, but then Scrap Our Stash published a sketch challenge that had me rethinking that.
I've rotated the sketch and moved the row of photos nearer to the middle, which frees up space for two papers to make up the square in the background which as per the Snoopy cartoon. I've also used green embellishments with a star sticker, a label die-cut and some enamel dots.
Since I had three photos, I decided to combine this with a GoGoGetaway cybercrop challenge to use the 'Power of 3'. I have three photos, a three word title, three patterned papers, three arrow circles, three groups of three enamel dots, three pops of green in my clusters and I used a stamp with three smiley faces.
Supplies
Paper - Fancy Pants Winterland
Letters - KaiserCraft
Sticker - Studio Calico
Die-Cut - October Afternoon
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Simple Stories
Gems - Papermania
Ink - Ranger
Tools
Silhouette Portrait & SCT Circles Cut File
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die
For various reasons, it's been a very long time since I last walked a section of the Capital Ring, the 78 mile orbital walk through London's suburbs. I'm picking it up again and would very much like to complete it this year.
Last time out was my fourth walk but I completed Section 5 (of 15) as I'm trying to do the ring in 10-12 even sectors rather than the official fifteen sections that vary between 4 and 8.5 miles.
The Wimbledon to Richmond section has few transport links, and is the longest that I will have to tackle in one go at 7 miles (plus the distance to/from the stations). Train and tube took me to Wimbledon Park, home of the tennis championships, where I was greeted by the familiar Capital Ring logo.
The park was a patchwork of tennis courts, football pitches and children's play areas, nothing particularly photogenic and I didn't think to take one for this post as I passed through. It was only after I left the park and was following a road around the perimeter that I could see the lake and wilder areas.
A couple of streets later I entered Wimbledon Common, home of the elusive womble and followed a wide path through the woods
before emerging near Wimbledon Windmill, the last remaining hollow post flour mill in the country.
A quick check of the distances done and still to come,
then back into the woods and downhill to Queensmere Lake:
Uphill again, and then the path skirted round the edge of a golf course, where it was strange to see the immaculate greens surrounded by the woodland of the common.
Leaving the common and the golf course behind, I followed the Beverley Brook
past playing fields
and on to the A3, my first major road crossing of the day.
I was surprised to find a pegasus crossing (for horses) alongside the pedestrian crossing,
but the reasons for this became clear as I passed a livery stable
and immediately entered Richmond Park via the Robin Hood Gate.
The path headed gently up the side of Spankers Hill,
and it was only when I looked back that I could see how high I'd got.
Over to my right I could see White Lodge, home of the Royal Ballet School, in the distance.
Dropping down again, the path passes between two lakes which form Pen Ponds,
best seen while looking back from the next hill.
Turning off the main path close to Sidmouth Wood, I paused for lunch by an old oak tree which reminded me of JK Rowling's whomping willow at Hogwarts
and admired the view of where I'd been.
Pushing on, I crossed Queen's Road into another part of the park and paused at a viewpoint which looks out over the Thames and the Surrey Hills, but the lighting was all wrong at this time of day and using the nearby trees to block out the sun lead to an almost monochrome view of layered skylines.
Staying on high ground, I skirted around Pembroke Lodge Gardens (behind the fence/hedge on the right)
and then diverted away from the Capital Ring, into the Gardens and up to Henry's Mound, where legend has it that Henry VIII waited for a signal that would tell that Anne Boleyn had been executed so he was free to marry Jane Seymour.
The view from the front of the mound is a good one, out over Twickenham and the Thames,
but is was the view from the back of the mound that fascinated me, a protected view of St Paul's Cathedral 12 miles away in central London,
visible through a gap that has been maintained in Sidmouth Wood since at least 1710. I could only see a hazy shape with the naked eye (much like the middle photo above) but a telescope or camera zoom revealed the dome much more clearly.
I returned the path and descended the hill, finally leaving Richmond Park via the Petersham Gate. A couple of streets away, I entered Petersham Meadows (bordering the River Thames) hoping to keep my feet dry today.
The meadow path met the Thames towpath close to a large plane tree, one of the Great Trees of London.
There were originally 41 of these on a list drawn up after the Great Storm of 1987, with 20 more tress being added to the list in 2008.
I followed the river along towards Richmond Bridge,
with gulls whirling overhead ('Flight' for the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt),
and passed a 'Legible London' sign which reminded me that this tranquil riverside spot is still part of that great city
before turning away from the water, up to Richmond station and three trains home again.
More old photos today, as I tackled a recipe challenge from the GoGoGetaway cybercrop a couple of weeks ago. This one called for two photos, and I had nothing on hand from my cruise album so I went back through my old photo albums and picked a couple from my cousin's first wedding. This was in 1988 and I was a teenager with a film camera so the quality of my photos wasn't great, but was probably normal for the time. I had put four photos in the album but two of them were blurry so I just used the other two for this page. They were poorly framed, but a bit of careful cropping has improved their composition.
Apart from the two photos, the other challenge ingredients were a full sheet of cardstock for the background, six pieces of different patterned papers, ten pieces of ephemera or stickers, eight enamel dots or sequins, a title and journalling.
I based my page on the mid-month sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap (which somehow managed to show up in my Blogger Reading List early even though it was unpublished) though I veered off course as I worked. I wanted to show lots of that pretty floral paper so extended it to the full height of the page (though its width was limited by a piece I'd previously cut from it) and I added extra layers of paper behind the photos. I swapped the photos over compared to the sketch because of the direction that the couple are facing in the one on the left, and moved the title as it fitted so neatly above the photo on the right.
Ten pieces of ephemera or stickers had seemed like a lot, but when you start to build three clusters they don't go very far, and I cut some of mine into two or three pieces in order to spread them further. I fulfilled the recipe with the page as it stands on the left here, but I wasn't completely happy with it and continued with a bit more.
The eight enamel dots from the recipe irked me because they didn't split evenly across my clusters, so I added four more. I also added a line of floral stamping to soften the edge where the floral paper meets the cardstock background.
This was the final finished page
which earned me another 9.5 points in Calvinball 2019. The rules are mounting up now but this was on Day 3 so I scored points for the page, a star, enamel dots, the colour green, floral paper, old supplies, handwritten journalling, stickers, this blog post and sharing on Facebook.
Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - K & Company
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Die-Cuts & Flowers - Unknown
Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Enamel Dots - American Crafts/Shimelle, Echo Park
Ink - Memento
Mist - Tattered Angels
A little while back I made a pile of 'starting point' pages from my scraps box, and it didn't take long for me to use up the first one. I was actually looking for photos for another of these pages when I found a pair that would work better with this one.
The pictures are from 1990 when I was at university and a group of us went to the beach one afternoon, where someone dared one of the group to swim in the sea ... in March.
I matted the photos on a scrap of cardstock and added an extra paper layer (also a scrap) behind them to give my title a calmer background to sit against. The circles of stars are one die-cut cut into three pieces and I added more stars to each piece.
Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts/Shimelle, Lily Bee Design, Echo Park Note to Self
Letters - Fancy Pants
Die-Cut - Jillibean Soup
Word Sticker - Cosmo Cricket
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Stars - MRI
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer
Tools
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Dovecraft Star Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Happy Mother's Day if you are celebrating today. 
