Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt

It's feeling rather autumnal round here all of a sudden, summer is certainly over, and so is the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards. It's been a long one this year, with an early start, but I have to admit that the longer time-frame didn't really help me and I was still taking the last few photos yesterday.

We had twenty items to find, plus two alternatives in case any of the 20 proved to be impossible, and now it's time to share my final choice of photos. I've posted most of these before, and the new ones are marked as such:

1. An Outdoor Clock
Kings Cross Station, London

2. Single & Pretty 
A single tiny flower near Olden, Norway

3. Repetition
Harry Potter letters at the House of MinaLima, London

4. Blurred Vision
Muse at the Olympic Stadium, London

5. The Word 'Summer'
*NEW* - A last-minute photo of a scrapbook paper from Simple Stories (having failed to find anything better).

6. An Umbrella
Mine in Eidfjord, Norway

7. A Curving Path
A hairpin bend in Flåmsdalen, Norway

8. Shells
*NEW* - We haven't been to a beach this year, but I have this shell as a souvenir of a past holiday.

9. A Bridge
Tower Bridge, London

10. Something Made of Stone
The South Bank Lion, London

11. Fish 
Painted on a building in Stavanger, Norway

12. Something Crooked 
*NEW* - The Upside Down House at Lakeside Shopping Centre, Essex

13. Two Colours of The Rainbow in Any Combination
Blue and green for Lake Floen near Olden, Norway

14. A Handwritten Sign 
By the coffee stand at my local railway station.

15. A Broken Chair/Bench/Stool
One awaiting repairs in Hellesylt, Norway

(16. An Out of Season Treat Being Enjoyed - I think all our treats were seasonal. Perhaps I should have just bought a hot chocolate but I didn't think of that until too late.)

17. A Sail
*NEW* - The sails of Baker Street Windmill, Orsett

18. Something That Should Be Found In Pairs 
*NEW* - My son's shoe. He's thrown the other one away as it was worn out, but he always buys the same safety shoes for work and he kept this one in case it can form half a new pair in the future if he wears out the right shoe of a different pair!

19. A Funny or Meaningful Bumper Sticker
*NEW* - I failed on this one (despite wandering around a local car park on more than one occasion) so I bring you my office coffee mug instead.

(20. A Favourite Seasonal Scent - I'm really not sure what my favourite seasonal scent would be, or how I would capture it in a photo so I skipped this one.)


A. Bird or Bee House
*NEW* - The homes of solitary bees in a sandy cliff near my home.

B. Fresh Local Produce 
*NEW* - Fruit in a market in Bergen, Norway

So that's it for another year. Thanks to Mary-Lou for curating the Hunt again this summer, and I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next year.

Previous Posts - June; July; August

Nærøyfjord

I've made four pages from our recent Norwegian cruise far, and I know that they will be the first four in the album. However I have no plans to work on the album chronologically; I'm more likely to jump from place to place as inspiration strikes and then go back and fill in the gaps.

One of the sketches that inspired me was this month's double page from Stick It Down, a good one for five photos.

We cruised down the Nærøyfjord and  back one evening, and had to turn the ship at the end of the fjord. There wasn't much space to do that and I took photos from both the front and the back of the ship as we rotated; even then I knew that I wanted to use a trio of photos from this manoeuvre in a column on a page, just as the sketch shows on the right hand side. Then I just had to choose two more from the dozens that I took in order to complete the left side. I also squeezed an extra smaller photo in to the right side, expanding the embellishment cluster to surround it, and moving the journalling on to the opposite page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pink Paislee C'est la Vie, Pink Paislee Memorandum, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pinkfresh Studio Let Your Heart Decide, American Crafts/Shimelle Glitter Girl
Letters - October Afternoon
Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Little B Arrow Die
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp
American Crafts/Shimelle Word Stamp

Leaving Dover

Our cruise left from Dover this year, and this page marks our departure with photos of the harbour and the White Cliffs. My page is a scraplift of one by marivi at Studio Calico, which was Scraplift Challenge #17 in the Scrap Squad group on Facebook.

My photos are larger than those on the original page and I preferred them on the opposite corners, using them to start filling a 10x10 panel of white cardstock. My title's much smaller than the original and I moved away from the white on white, choosing teal blue letters instead.

With title and photos in place, I filled in the rest of the 10x10 space with a mosaic of patterns cut from 6x6 pads, and then mounted it in the centre of my background paper. My embellishment is a mixture of commercial stickers and pieces cut or punched from patterned papers.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, The Range
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pinkfresh Studio Let Your Heart Decide, My Mind's Eye Just Splendid
Letters - American Crafts, Creative Devotion
Cardstock Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio
Washi Tape - Tesco
Puffy Stickers - Bella Boulevard
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Pink Paislee
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punches

Gala Night

Shimelle's Page

Another cruise album page today, but this won't be the next one chronologically. I'm waiting on a photo order so I have to work with what I have at the moment, which means the picture that the ship's photographer took on the first Gala Night of the cruise.

My page is a scraplift from Glitter Girl Adventure 30, a video from Shimelle Laine which she published way back in 2012. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio A Case of the Blahs, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About
Letters - American Crafts
Insta-Card - Pink Paislee Atlas
Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio, Pink Paislee/Paige Evans
Stickers - Elle's Studio, Pink Paislee #Stickerboook
Enamel Dots - Echo Park
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Boudicca

Page two of my new cruise scrapbook, and I've used my Silhouette again; this time I've cut an outline map of Norway for a page about the ship and our itinerary. We sailed with Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, and all their ships' names begin with B. We've previously been on Balmoral and Black Watch; this time we cruised on Boudicca from Dover.

I'd originally intended to cut Norway from the teal paper but I did a test cut first from printer paper and really liked the look of the white on the teal as a background so I changed my plan. My two photos (bought onboard) fit nicely in the space next to the map, with an 'Itinerary' card alongside. I went with a triangle of embellishment clusters and I'm really happy to have used that compass flair on the page; I've included it in the kits for both my last two cruise albums but it didn't find a home in either of them.

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Simple Stories I Am, Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - Elle's Studio
Die-Cuts & Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio
Washi Tape & Flair - Unknown
Enamel Stars - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Big Shot
Quickutz Tab Die
Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Norway 2019

I generally make the title pages for my albums near the end, but I had a very clear idea of the page that I wanted to make this time so it's the first one instead.

Sketch by Laura Rumble for FTLOPP

I've wanted to use the Globe cut-file from the Silhouette Store for some time, and considered it for the title page of my last cruise album, but I couldn't work out how to incorporate it into the page. 

I wasn't initially inspired by last month's sketch over at For the Love of Pretty Paper but I did like the filmstrip that Laura included. It took a few weeks before I realised that I could substitute my globe for the ice cream in the sketch.

I cut the whole globe in white cardstock and inked the land masses, then cut the stand again in dark grey cardstock to layer over the white. The filmstrip is another cut-file, one from The Cut Shoppe that I manipulated to remove the original wording attached to it, and resized to suit the scale of my globe.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Craft Sensations
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Oh Happy Life, Carol Wilson Fine Arts
Letters - American Crafts
Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About
Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, Elle's Studio
Enamel Dots - Pretty My Page
Ink - Memento, Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Hero Arts Globe Cut-File
The Cut Shoppe 'The Big Screen' Cut-Files

Cruise Norway 2019 - A New Project

No sooner has one cruise album been completed than along comes another one. I finished last year's album pages a couple of days before we embarked on a new adventure, ordered albums which arrived while we were away and made their title cards on the weekend after we returned. 

Now it's time to get started on a new cruise album, though this will be a smaller task than the last one; it was a nine night cruise with six ports of call, only one of which was new to us.

I couldn't find a suitable collection for my last cruise album and pieced together a kit from an assortment of manufacturers and collections, but this time it's been much easier. Pinkfresh Studio released their Out and About collection at the start of the year and I fell in love with it immediately; the colours and motifs are perfect for me and I bought the 12x12 paper pack, the 6x6 pad, the die-cuts, puffy stickers and flat stickers.

There are only 16 sheets in the 12x12 pack though so I need some more papers to go with these (especially as I prefer to use patterned paper rather than plain cardstock for my backgrounds). I started by choosing more papers from Pinkfresh Studio, hoping that the colours would match across the collections as I was buying online rather than in person. There are a couple of 6x6 pads in this photo - I already had Let Your Heart Decide but Escape the Ordinary is a new purchase.

Out and About has certain similarities to Atlas from Pink Paislee which I had used for my Austria 2016 album. I've dug out my leftovers from that collection and will mix in some of these items (but probably not the bright green papers).

Finally I have a mixture of individual sheets from various manufacturers including Pink Paislee, American Crafts, Echo Park and Simple Stories, some old and some new. The vellum hearts and the cameras are both Shimelle papers that I intend to cut into strips to repeat throughout the album.

I've pulled out an assortment of small embellishments such as puffy stickers and enamel dots, more rolls of washi tape than are probably sensible, several alphabets and various part-packs of stickers to go with all of these papers. I'll pull other things from my stash as I go along too, and then keep them with my album kit until it's finished so that I can repeat them.

Cruise 2018 - The Albums

As I've worked on the album for our cruise to Spain, Portugal and Morocco last summer, it's become clear that this will be two albums. I kept the pages in a three-ring album (for ease of shuffling them or inserting extras) while I was making them, but I much prefer postbound or snapload for my completed albums.

I recently bought a couple of snapload albums to house these pages permanently. They have windows in the front covers so I have decorated two title cards which show which ports are in which album.

As I transferred all the pages I checked them over for anything requiring a little more adhesive, and for any spots that needed a tad more embellishment. There was one page (Balmoral) that I had originally left without any journalling until I'd finished the ones around it, and I've filled that in now:

I'd not managed to include our itinerary on either the title page or this one, so I made an extra card to slip in at the top of this one, using a word sticker from Simple Stories' Travel Notes collection, and added an arrow sticker behind it to indicate that it can be removed. I've also added the location to each ship photo.

With these two albums now completed, I'm ready to make a start on my new album for the cruise to Norway that we've just had.

Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt - Norway

We've just got back from a holiday in Norway, where I tried to find some interesting examples for the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Mary-Lou over at Patio Postcards. 

There are twenty items to find and photograph, plus two alternatives but I haven't given the hunt much attention this year and I was only on six last time I checked in. Some of these will be repeats, but I like to find as many as possible while I am in a foreign country.

1. An Outdoor Clock - On Stavanger Cathedral

2. Single & Pretty - A single flower in Olden

3. Repetition - Part of Anthony Gormley's "Broken Column" in Stavanger. There are 23 statues in total.

6. An Umbrella - Me in Eidfjord

7. A Curving Path - Hairpin bend in Flåmsdalen

9. A Bridge - In Hellesylt

10. Something Made of Stone - A picnic table in Flåmsdalen

11. Fish - Painted on a building in Stavanger

13. Two Colours of the Rainbow - Blue and Green for Floen

15. A Broken Bench

So there you have it, ten Norwegian finds to add to my UK ones. This brings my total to twelve (since some are repeats) with 24 days to go. My report card certainly reads 'must try harder' and I will be doing my best to track down what I can, while crossing my fingers for this unpredictable finds. I'll be back at the end of the month with my final tally.

Balloons Birthday Card

I'm just posting with a quick card today made using Studio Calico's Heyday collection. I started off by covering the card with a number print paper (always useful for birthdays), and then wondered what to do next, before remembering that I had the ephemera pack to match, and discovering these balloons. I stuck the larger one flat and the smaller one on foam squares, added threads to them and hid the ends behind a stamped sentiment. So quick and easy that I'm wondering whether I have any more balloons hidden away in my stash.