Cocktail Night

This is the last page for this cruise album, and it feels quite strange to have finished it so quickly (just over three months) when my last one took almost a year (albeit for a longer holiday). 

I used the Christmas Day Scraplift from the Scrap Squad group on Facebook, a page originally made by Damaris Velazquez for Paper Issues.

Being the last page to be made, I knew exactly where this page will go in the album and, by chance, I could work on the back of an earlier page so I didn't need to find a 12x12 background paper. I've taken the diagonal paper much wider on my page, using an offcut from another page (Home Again), and layered my photos on an assortment of paper scraps rather than the ephemera of the original. 

I have some stickers and die-cuts left so I'll go through all my pages again in the next few days to see if there is anywhere that I can add a few of them. I also have a roll of heart washi that I've used on quite a few pages, but I'll be trying to add that to some more and use it all up.

I now need to catch up with the pages in my 2019 album (and hopefully finish that one too), and then I'll be turning my attention to a very old unfinished project - an album for a trip to Singapore and Malaysia that we took back in 2009.

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pinkfresh Studio Everyday Musings, Echo Park Summer Dreams, Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - Tim Holtz
Stickers & Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Marianne Designs, My Mind's Eye
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Circle Punch

Sunnylven Church

Last page from Hellesylt today; this is the local church which serves the people all around Sunnylvsfjord, not just those in the village. I partly scraplifted one of my older pages (Lava Labyrinth) though it's not a carbon copy.

It's another page made with leftovers from other pages; even the background has been cut and stretched with the stamp print paper covering up the gap. At this stage I have only one whole sheet left from the Out and About collection and I'm saving that for a summary page in my main 2019 album.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pinkfrsh Studio Out and About, American Crafts/Shimelle Head in the Clouds, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio
Enamel Dots - Echo Park
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Hellesyltfossen

Three pages left to go now in my Norwegian Cruise album, and two are from our afternoon in Hellesylt, our second port of call and the only one that we hadn't visited before. The main attraction in Hellesylt is the waterfall, which plummets noisily down the rocks in the middle of the village.

I printed three photos of the waterfall taken from different distances and stacked them up in an overlapping column next to a smaller photo of us on the bridge at its foot.

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Everyday Musings, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Echo Park Summer Dreams, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Saturday, We R Memory Keepers Quoted, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts, Basic Grey
Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio, Pinkfresh Studio
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die
Dovecraft Square Punch
X-Cut Circle Punch

A Box of Promise

Our son would like a new board game for Christmas, but production has been delayed and it won't be released until sometime in 2020; that means that we gave him a promise to buy it later for Christmas, and I made a small box to contain that promise so that he would still have something to open today.

It was a simple box to make, being a free design from the Silhouette store (Snowflake Box - Design 309553), which I resized and cut in two colours of cardstock. My blade's getting worn now and it didn't cut all of the design, so I left part of it just as an outline.

A piece of advice - should you choose to cut this box (or any other 3D design), I'd suggest that you use cardstock with a coloured core. My red cardstock had a white core which is really obvious around the edges, though it was also quite useful where the design didn't cut fully as you can still see the outline.

Flåm Kyrkje

I'm going back to my cruise album today, as I have now received the last batch of photos. This included a 5x7 print of Flåm Church, which replaces the 4x6 that I had previously; when I started making this page, I found that the actual church on the 4x6 print was too small in comparison with the interior photos and the page felt unbalanced, so I went for the larger size on my next order.

Glitter Girl's Page

Flåm Church dates from 1670 and is in the old village, a few kilometres inland from the modern, tourism-focused area next to the fjord. The interior is completely made of wood, with paintings of trees and mammals around the walls.

My page started out as a scraplift from Glitter Girl Adventure 136, but it morphed a little, as so many of my pages do. I have fewer layers, most of which are scraps and off-cuts from other pages in the album, and I moved my title as the open area there on my page was the obvious spot to use.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Shimelle Head on the Clouds, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pink Paislee C'est la Vie, Pinkfresh Studio A Case of the Blahs, Echo Park Summer Dreams, KaiserCraft Finders Keepers, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Saturday
Letters - American Crafts
Puffy Stickers - Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag and Label Dies
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
X-Cut Circle Punch

BBQ Fun

I have four pages left to go in my cruise album, so I should get it finished by the end of the month, which is marvellous as the last one took me almost a year to complete. However, I am waiting on a delivery of photos for those last four pages so I can't make them yet.

While I've been concentrating on the cruise album, I've been neglecting the rest of 2019. This was going to be the year that I kept up with scrapping the year as we went along, and I was fairly good at that until August when I was scrapping summer photos, but nothing since.

I have a list and a plan, and even some photos printed, so this page is from July when we had a family barbecue at my brother's. The photos are from the many-a-side volleyball and badminton games that we played, and I used Scraplift #29 from the Scrap Squad on Facebook, which was a page by Sara Epsy for Page Maps.

I chose a triangle-print paper for my background, but it's the only one that I have from that collection so the cream was hard to match. However the design of the page meant that I could cut a strip from it and turn it over, while the red print covers the gap. I do have the matching enamel dots so I took the opportunity to add all the triangular ones here, copying the row of wood veneer triangles on the original page but moving them up slightly.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Hooray!, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Sunny Days
Enamel Triangles - My Minds Eye Hooray!
Washi/Glitter Tape - Tesco, Unknown
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label & Tag Dies
X-Cut Camera Die
X-Cut Circle Punch

Chocolate Tin Makeover

I generally get my photos printed in batches and then keep them in separate envelopes (one per planned page) until I scrapbook them. Until recently, those envelopes have sat in an untidy pile on my desk, threatening to topple over at any moment, but a couple of weeks ago I rediscovered an old tin which was once filled with chocolates, a tin that I hadn't thrown away because it looked like it could be useful, but it hasn't been useful for the past three years judging by the 'best before' date on its base.

I've been trialling it as a photo storage tin, a home for my teetering pile of envelopes and it's working well. I wasn't sure at first, but now that I am thinking of it as my photo tin rather than just a tin I know that this is a permanent change, and I decided to decorate the top.

I chose the letter stickers first - old ones that I don't generally like for titles as the letters are a mix of upper and lower case (though that didn't bother me here), and then went through my scraps box for a piece of paper that was large enough to cover the lid and that would work with both the cream tin and the black letters. I found this spotty one, added a strip of washi tape and stuck down my letters before finishing off with the last of a pack of black pearls.

Flåmsdalen

Another page from our day in the Flåm Valley, and this one has a single landscape photo of the view as we descended from Dalsbotn to Håreina and the land flattened out ahead of us.

The page came together quite quickly as I just worked with offcuts from previous pages and layered them up as they were. I've used the quote paper a few times but mainly in quite small pieces so I wanted to use a piece large enough that you can read all of the words in the quote even if they don't all run together in one go. It's from Jawaharial Nehru and reads "We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio A Case of the Blahs, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pinkfresh Studio Let Your Heart Decide, Simple Stories Posh, We R Memory Keepers Quoted, American Crafts Shimelle
Letters - Hobbycraft
Stickers & Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Echo Park
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Follow the Flåm Valley Road

I hope you read that title to the rhythm of 'Follow the Yellow Brick Road' as that was what was in my head as I made the page. On our day in Flåm, we caught the train up the valley and walked back down, following the only road, the Flåmsdalsvegen, or Flåm Valley Road.

I have a few individual pages for major sights on the walk, but this is more of an overview, a double page with six portrait photos in a staggered line across the page, a design from Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love class.

I'm coming to the end of my album now, about five pages to go, and I still have quite a few stickers and die-cuts left from the Out and About collection so I tried to use as many as I could here, scattering them across the page above and below the photos.

Supplies
Cardstock - The Range
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - Elle's Studio
Stickers & Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Stydio Out and About
Washi Tape - Dovecraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Echo Park
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Geirangerfjord

Back to my Norwegian cruise album now, and a page that actually comes before the last two I made. Those were for the Seven Sisters and The Suitor waterfalls, which lie on opposite sides of Geirangerfjord. This page is for the fjord itself, with the main photo showing our first glimpse of the waterfalls and the smaller photos below to give an idea of the size of the fjord towering over our ship.

My page started out as a scraplift of a page in my last cruise album (Sailing into the Sunset) but it evolved a bit so the likeness may not immediately be apparent. (Note that they both have the same spotty paper at the top though, as I transferred suitable papers from the old kit of supplies to the new.)





Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Stargazer, OneCanoeTwo Twilight, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine
Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio
Puffy Stickers - American Crafts/Shimelle
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Marianne Designs, Pretty My Page

Tools
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag Die
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Circle Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Birds Birthday Card

I've not made a card for a while as most of our family birthdays fall in the summer months, but my sister-in-law was a winter baby and it was her birthday last week.

I chose a sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap's Monthly Challenges group on Facebook, a floral paper from Dovecraft and a couple of cardstock offcuts to make this card for her. There was an additional challenge to repeat a motif from one of our papers within the icon circle on the sketch, so I punched out and repeated one of the birds from the background paper.

Stick It Down - Buttermere

Back in October I created a cruise page (Rain Stops Play) using a double page sketch from Stick It Down, and from that they picked me to be their double page guest designer for this month. 

The December sketch is one for eight square photos, but I adapted it for three landscape 4x6 prints with seven 3x3 squares, a set that were already printed and waiting in my 'to scrap' pile. These were from April last year, when we spent a week in Cumbria and did a circular walk around Buttermere on Easter Sunday. 

My first couple of paper choices were outdoors-themed but were too brown; the photos just got lost against them. I switched to brighter papers, an old collection from My Mind's Eye, with three differently patterned multi-coloured papers for the stripes on the right and the triangles on the left side. I also switched from trees to more generic triangles for my page because I thought that they could represent mountains (and I had no reason for trees).

Stick It Down have three sketches each month, for single and double scrapbook pages plus a card sketch, so hopefully there's something for everyone. Why not pop over, take a look and link up your creations too?

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Necessities
Puffy Stickers - MAMBI, Elle's Studio
Washi Tape - Unknown
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Circle Punch

Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt

It's December, and that means that it's time for the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Eileen at A Bracelet of Days. 

She published this year's list on Sunday, and as normal there are 20 items to find, with two alternatives that can be substituted if necessary. 

Here's the list:

1. in the bag
2. contrast
3. the way to go
4. colours
5. a garden gate
6. vintage 
7. I stood here
8. 11 o'clock
9. solitary
10. the little things
11. industrial
12. time for tea
13. a keyhole
14. flavour of the month
15. letters
16. a barrier
17. a line
18. a chain
19. an alley
20. monochrome, i.e. varying shades of the same colour

Alt A. chequers or chess
Alt B. a community market

I like that several of them are more vague rather than having to find a specific object, and a few will require a bit of thought about what I want to photograph.

The Hunt is open to all and runs until the end of March with monthly link-ups on Eileen's blog. If you fancy joining us, please just pop over and leave a comment there.

The Suitor

The Suitor is another waterfall, found on the opposite side of Geirangerfjord to the Seven Sisters (from my last page). Legend has it that the Seven Sisters danced playfully down the mountain while the Suitor flirted with them across the fjord. He proposed to each sister in turn but they all refused him and he turned to drink in despair.

I printed three portrait photos of the waterfall, all at 4x6, and lined them up across the full width of the page with strips of camera paper above and stripey paper below. They were both in shades of aqua/teal, but I hadn't been intending this to be a monochrome page so I added torn strips of yellow washi tape for contrast.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Shimelle Head in the Clouds, American Crafts/Shimelle Glitter Girl, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About
Letters - Creative Devotion, Simply Creative
Sticker - Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Pretty My Page, Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch