Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt

This year's Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt starts tomorrow and runs until 30th September. It's organised by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards and she published the list a few days ago. She calls it 'the virus edition' and has designed the list so that it can be tackled in lockdown if necessary.

1. A favourite piece of jewellery
2. Something with or in a knot
3. Something with the colours of your country’s flag
4. A toy you play with
5. Something you have more than one of
6. Something in the shape of a triangle
7. Something that displays a rule(s)
8. A leaf longer than your hand
9. Something that starts with the initial of your name (first or last)
10. Something smaller than a paper clip
11. Something you need to throw away
12. Something that holds your favourite beverage
13. A rubber band/elastic in use
14. Something with wheels
15. Something inherited
16. Something with rough texture
17. Something naturally round
18. Something that can go in the water
19. A stone/rock/pebble with some colour in it
20. Something with the number 7 in it

Alt A. An animal statue
Alt B. Something heavier than your shoe
Alt C. Something with four sides

If you'd like to take part, then please hop over to Mary-Lou's blog and declare your intent. She'll connect us all up via a post at the end of June.

Braving Breydon Water

I'm sticking with our Norfolk Broads holiday for now, and we're actually on the water for this page. Breydon Water links the north and south parts of the Broads and can be tricky to navigate. We went through at low tide, keeping to the marked channel and it wasn't as bad as we'd feared.

My three-photo page uses a tried and trusted formula with the pictures in a column alongside a mosaic of punched squares for the 'Punch It' NSD challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper. I also punched the scalloped border strip and the column of tags by the journalling card.

My page fits the criteria for three of the Hey Little Magpie challenges and I decided to enter it for their Tic Tac Toe, using the top row of gold, stitching and enamel dots.





Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy, Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page, Simple Stories Posh
Letters - October Afternoon
Journalling Card - Project Life?
Puffy Camera - Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Pretty My Page
Enamel Dots - Doodelbug, My Mind's Eye, Marianne Designs, Echo Park
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Sewing Machine
Woodware 1" Square Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Follow the Tracks

I have another page from our Norfolk Broads holiday to share today. I am blogging them in the order they will come in the album rather than the order that I made them and this page comes from our second day. We moored our boat in Coltishall and took a trip from there to Wroxham on the Bure Valley Railway. 

I used a sketch from Shimelle's recent class Start with a Sketch for my page as its scattering of embellishments matched up with an NSD challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to do just that. I tried to combine it with a recipe challenge from Hey Little Magpie but couldn't manage to incorporate all the elements. However I did redirect it to their stitching challenge with a line of machine-stitching along the scalloped border strip.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy
Letters - Studio Calico
Journalling Card - Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Unknown
Dew Drops - Papermania
Gems - Love to Craft
Enamel Sots - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Craft Creatives Flower Punch

Life on Mars

The majority of the photos in my 'to scrap' pile for 2005 come from a boating holiday we took on the Norfolk Broads. I was planning to make the pages via as many NSD challenges as possible while using the same paper pad throughout, and hoping that they would be compatible.

I got off to a good start with the 'Griddled' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, which was just to create a page based on a grid. I had an assortment of photos from settling into our temporary home (the Broadland Mars) which I felt would work well with a quadrants design.

I was playing with a few ideas for titles until I hit on this one, and it was perfect for a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to use a quote, since they included song lyrics as one of their suggestions for possible quotes to be used.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft UK, Papermania
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy
Journalling Card - Studio Calico
Letters - October Afternoon
Word Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Die Cut - Jillibean Soup
Flair - Unknown
Washi Tape - Pink Paislee, Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye, Eyelet Outlet, Stampin' Up!
Puffy Sticker - Fancy Pants
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Provocraft Alphabet Dies
Dovecraft Label Die
X-Cut Anchor Die
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp

Spin Me Right Round

I'm really pleased to have used another of the page kits that I prepared for National Scrapbooking Day; sometimes what I get ready just doesn't fit to any of the challenges that come up. 

I'm staying in 2005 for a trio of photos of my daughter in the park. I even stuck with the title and page design that I planned in advance. That page design comes from a very old class, & Now For Something Completely Different, which ran throughout 2012 at UK Scrappers, and it's at least the fourth time that I have used the May prompts. 

My page is a feast of My Mind's Eye, with pieces from at least five of their lines, and it suits three more National Scrapbooking Day challenges. Hey Little Magpie asked us to use a quote or song lyric, and For the Love of Pretty Paper gave us a pink moodboard. I don't often use pink on my pages, so I took this opportunity to use up all my pink puffy stars in one go for a challenge from Lottie Loves Paper to feature either stars or hexagons.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Lime Twist
Letters - American Crafts, American Crafts/Shimelle
Doily - Dovecraft
Phrase Stickers - My Mind's Eye The Sweetest Thing
Puffy Stars - Pinkfresh Studio
Brads - My Mind's Eye Now and Then, My Mind's Eye Necessities
Gems, Twine & Glitter Tape - Advent Calendar Swap
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
American Crafts Scallop Border Punch

Junk Models

Having finally finished my Far East album, I've picked random old year to finish off next, and that year is 2005. I sorted through my photos before National Scrapbooking Day and assembled a few supplies, and this is the first one that I tackled. Lottie Loves Paper gave us a step-by-step set of instructions for a page, which was a different sort of challenge from the norm and one that I happily took on.

The mixed media and the circles on this page came directly from the instructions but we could embellish in any way we chose and I went with a scattering of stars, both stamped stars and puffy stickers. This was originally on an all-white background, but after a week or so I trimmed the page down and matted it on bright pink.

There are so many challenges around National Scrapbook Day that pages have to do double, triple or even quadruple duty. This one also matched up with a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to leave some white space on the page, one from For the Love of Pretty Paper to use circles AND a challenge from Shimelle to repeat a stamp (and it makes me happy that two of the three stamps that I used were designed by Shimelle herself).

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft UK, Craft Sensations
Paper - The Paper Loft, Reminisce
Letters - American Crafts
Stars - Bella Boulevard
Ink - Ranger, Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Shimelle Circle Stamp
Banana Frog/Shimelle Star Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Art Fair

I had called my 2019 album "done for now" back in February, but I knew then that there were a few possible pages that I could add. Having made one for my daughter's university accommodation, I needed to even up the pages again which I did by making one for an art fair that we attended back in November. My husband was an exhibitor and he sold a couple of paintings that weekend.

It was National Scrapbooking Day at the beginning of the month with the plethora of challenges that that involves. One that caught my eye early on was a sketch challenge from Lottie Loves Paper. I printed a photo of my husband in his stand at 6x4 rather than 6x3 as in the sketch and printed 2" circles of parts of his paintings to run in a line below it, each one matted on a pinked circle to match the sketch.

I used scraps for everything but the background on the page, starting from the stripey paper and picking co-ordinating pieces in blue, green and grey.

Supplies
Paper - Fancy Pants Country Boutique, The Robin's Nest Boys Stripe, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield Everyday
Vellum - My Mind's Eye Necessities
Letters - American Crafts
Labels - 7Gypsies
Puffy Stickers - MAMBI
Enamel Dots - Echo Park
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Big Shot & Studio Calico Pinked Circle Die
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

Balloons Birthday Card

It was my brother's birthday a few days ago, and I made him a card with the aid of this month's sketch from Stick It Down. That big circle just shouted out to be made with my 'Happy Birthday' die, and I had a rummage through my scraps box for suitable papers to go with it. I found a piece of a hot air balloon print that was the wrong shape, but it inspired me to pull out the leftovers from Photoplay Paper's Boarding Pass collection for a similar print plus co-ordinating papers.

I used three strips of paper in place of the blue strip on the sketch, and my sentiment was already on the large circle so I dropped the orange banner from the card.

Signs of Hope

This is turning out to be a strange year, but one that I shall be documenting nevertheless. Rainbows are springing up as signs of solidarity and hope and I wanted to record that aspect of the crisis. Three of my photos here are rainbows (on the school gates, in the window of a house and chalked on a footpath), the photo on the left has a felled tree with 'Hope you're OK!' chalked on it, and I like to see pairs of magpies (one for sorrow, two for joy etc.).

I arranged my five photos directly on the cardstock background (which I coloured with distress inks) with paper strips top and bottom and embellished with lots of clear stickers. I left the flowers clear but backed the butterflies with white cardstock and attached them on one side only to add some dimension.

This is the last page that I'm sharing from the chocolate-themed Easter Cybercrop at For the Love of Pretty Paper; it was for the "Wispa" challenge which was to use tiny alphas.

Supplies
Cardstock - Premier
Paper - American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Saturday, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Oh Happy Life
Letters - American Crafts, KaiserCraft
Washi Tape - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page
Stickers - OneCanoeTwo #Stickerbook
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Doodlebug, Simple Stories, American Crafts/Shimelle, Marianne Design
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger

Goodbye Brighthelm

This page is a counterpoint to the last one I shared. That one came from the day that we dropped off our daughter at her university accommodation last September, and this one is for the day that we collected her in March as the coronavirus restrictions were tightened.

The pages will be six months apart and in different annual albums so I felt no need to keep to the same style or colour scheme. The photo of our daughter's bedroom is nothing special and need not be the focus of attention so I indulged myself with a cut-file designed by Paige Taylor Evans which I backed with 6x6 papers.

I did choose to link this page to the last in terms of my title by cutting 'Goodbye' on my Silhouette and sizing it to fit around the tiles of 'Brighthelm' below it.

This was another page for the chocolate-themed Easter Cybercrop at For the Love of Pretty Paper - the "Toblerone" challenge was to use triangles; I have them in abundance in the cut-file and added a few triangular enamel shapes too.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Papermania
Paper - Fancy Pants Blizzard, Pink Paislee Moonstruck, Simple Stories
Letters - American Crafts/Shimelle
Enamel Shapes - My Mind's Eye
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Paige Taylor Evans 'Home' Cut-File

Hello Brighthelm

I've been sitting on this page for a while to keep all the Far East posts together. I made it at the end of March for a collaboration between For the Love of Pretty Paper and Quirky Kits which gave us a sketch which didn't suit any of the Malaysian photos that I was scrapping at that time, but was perfect for a couple of photos from last autumn.

The photos are of our daughter at her university accommodation (Brighthelm), taken on the day that we dropped her off at the start of the academic year. The sketch suited the mixed orientations of the photos, but I extended the horizontal papers so that the photo on the right was not quite so isolated.

I started by choosing a ledger paper for my background (since the page is education-related); this was the last whole sheet that I had from My Mind's Eye's Cut and Paste so I pulled out all my scraps from that collection too. Luckily I had enough co-ordinating pieces left to fit the sketch (and I have completely killed that collection now).

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Cut and Paste
Letters - Pebbles
Stickers - Basic Grey
Enamel Dots - Craft Consortium
Puffy Stars - MRI
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Old & New

Lisa-Jane's Page

UK Scrap Addicts only had one challenge for National Scrapbooking Day, and it was nice and straightforward - to scraplift any page by any of their design team.

The next photos in my 'to scrap' pile were a pair of 4x6 prints so I looked for a page to suit them. The current fashion for single-photo pages meant that I had to go back to December for one from Lisa-Jane Johnson. 

I rotated her page and worked with scraps from my  kit to make the closing page of my Far East album. I took these photos on the way to the airport; an old fishing jetty and the new bridge from the island to the mainland. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Swiss Dot
Paper - K&Co Hannah, DCWV Far East
Letters - American Crafts
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Camera Dies
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Smile

The Original Page

This is the penultimate page that I'm making from Malaysia, and it's a replacement for one I made back in 2012. I made the original page with four overlapping rectangles of patterned papers, but those papers don't appear elsewhere in the album, I hate all the rounded corners and the embellishment is limited to a few nondescript cross stitches. 

I started the new page on National Scrapbooking Day with a scraplift challenge from Hey Little Magpie. We had a choice of two pages from Rachel Millington to lift and I chose one with a large slanting panel filling most of the page.

I made it harder for myself because my photo was landscape while hers had been portrait, so I had to play with the positioning of the elements on the page to make it work for me. This meant running my photo off the side of the central panel and moving my embellishment above the photo rather than running it alongside. My title (rescued from the original page along with scraps of the pink paper) is smaller than hers and that opened up space for a large tag with my journalling.

I layered a second tag under that journalling tag, and with three more punched tags at the top right, I'm also linking up with Shimelle's second NSD challenge - to use lots of tags.

Supplies
Paper - DCWV Far East, Kit 'n' Craft, Crate Paper Mia
Letters - Crate Paper
Border Sticker - atd
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Design
Thread - Anchor
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Fiskars Apron Lace Border Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Big Shot & X-Cut Tag Die
Inkadinkadoo Camera Stamp

Family Snapshots

When I returned to my Far East album (a ten year old project) I divided my existing pages into four categories - done, tweak, re-work and replace. I'm almost at the end now and I'm happy with most of the existing pages but this one was missing something.

The papers I used here are unique to this page rather than repeating through the album, but I decided to run with that as they aren't far from the overall colour scheme. The embellishment is different too, so I decided to add a bit more that is more similar to that on the other pages. I moved the journalling tag back a layer which opened up a space next to the title for a small cluster of paper pieces and die-cuts. I finished that cluster with a trio of pearls, which I repeated near the original lines of thread at the top right and bottom left. Small changes I know, but I'm happier with this page now.

Supplies
Paper Echo Park Yours Truly, HOTP Asian Writing, K&Company 
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Buttons - Meiflower
Embroidery Thread - Anchor
Coin/Token - bought at Kek Lok Si
Tag - from Stash
Brad - Papermania
Pearls - Kanban

Tools
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag Die
X-Cut Camera Die

Khoo Kongsi

Wedding pages are all done now, so I just have a few more pages to make from our trip to Singapore and Malaysia back in 2009 and then I'll be done and another album can join its fellows on the shelf. We had another couple of days in Penang after the wedding but I've already made most of those pages in the past and am either leaving them alone or only adding a few extra pieces. I have one new double (this one) and two singles that I am going to re-do.

Khoo Kongsi is the Chinese clanhouse where the Khoo family (to which our bride belongs) gather to worship their ancestors. There are a number of kongsi in the city, built by the various immigrant families as they settled here in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I went for a double page for eight photos in assorted sizes. I was happy with the way I was arranging the pictures but had a real struggle with my paper layers until I finally ditched my original background and switched to the Hannah collection from K&Company. I used this a lot at the start of the album but recent pages have used other collections instead.

As I'm sure you know, it was National Scrapbook Day yesterday, though it's turned into a multi-day event now and often starts on the Friday with challenges running remaining open for a couple of weeks. 

The first challenge that I saw published this year was from Hey Little Magpie, and was to not use white cardstock. That was an easy one for me where this album is concerned and I duly avoided it for this page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill
Paper - K&Co Hannah, DCWV Far East
Letters - American Crafts
Die-Cuts/Tags - K&Co Hannah
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Design
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt

We're in May now so the extended Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt ended yesterday. Eileen at A Bracelet of Days originally published a list of twenty things to find and photograph between 1 December and 31 March, with a couple of alternatives if any of the twenty were impossible in your corner of the world. When coronavirus disrupted all our lives she extended the hunt by a month and added four more alternatives which could by found from home if necessary.

It's time to share my finds now, a mixture of photos I've shared before and new ones from the last month.

1. In the Bag
The essentials for walking a section of the Capital Ring - Oystercard, route guide and camera (February).

2. Contrast
Tree and sky (January).

3. The Way to Go
Local footpath (January). 

4. Colours
A "Twelve Days of Christmas" Snowman (December).

5. A Garden Gate
In Harrow on the Hill (March).

6. Vintage 
A 1974 Citroën van, also in Harrow on the Hill (March).

7. I Stood Here

Braving the scales after Christmas (January). I did get back to my Slimming World target weight, but who knows what havoc lockdown is wreaking.

8. 11 o'clock
*NEW* My mantle clock (April).

9. Solitary
*NEW* A stranger by the River Thames (April).

10. The Little Things
Lockdown essentials (March).

11. Industrial
*NEW* Machinery on one of the jetties on the River Thames (April).

12. Time for Tea
My hotel tea tray (March).

13. A Keyhole
*NEW* The padlock on the local school gates (April).

14. Flavour of the Month
*NEW* April means Easter and so hot cross buns, toasted and spread with butter.

15. Letters
I used this for "Vintage" previously but I'm switching it to "Letters" now as it's a lovely clear font - the old station sign at Hanwell, which was called Hanwell and Elthorne between 1896 and 1974 (February). 

16. A Barrier
*NEW* A closed flood gate on the River Thames (April).

17. A Line
A line of murals on our flood defences (March).

18. A Chain
*NEW* The chain on a swing in the park (January but not shared then).

19. An Alley
Footpath rather than alley but the best I could do under the circumstances (March).

20. Monochrome
One of the murals from 17 (March).

C: The View From My Front Door

The view from the end of my drive (March).

D: Three Colours On One Item

*NEW* A red, black and white tug boat on the River Thames (April).

E: I Am Reading

*NEW* Currently reading this collection of short stories (April).

F: The Sky Today

*NEW* The sky on 5 April.

I eventually managed to find something for all twenty of the original list, plus four of the six alternative items so I'm happy with that. 

The Winter Hunt comes to an end, but the Summer Hunt will be upon us before we know it. I look forward to seeing what Mary-Lou will test us with this year...