Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt - June

Today's the day of the first link-up for the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt organised by Mary-Lou at Patio Postcards.

It's been a slow start here with just one photo taken earlier this month, and it was this deadline that finally got me out and about with my camera. I've not been far from home since the Hunt began so my finds this month are a mix of local nature and street furniture.

2. Something with or in a knot

6. Something in the shape of a triangle

7. Something that displays a rule(s)

8. A leaf longer than my hand

9. Something that starts with the initial of your name: Alchemilla mollis

16. Something with rough texture

17. Something naturally round

19. A stone/rock/pebble with some colour in it
Part of our local 'Covid Snake' of painted pebbles

A. An animal statue

C. Something with four sides

The hunt lasts until 30 September, so you have plenty of time to join us. Just hop over to Patio Postcards, declare your intent in the comments and Mary-Lou will include you in next month's link-up post.

18th Birthday Card

It's my niece's 18th birthday next week, but I'm sharing her card ahead of time as I want to link up with Sketch-n-Scrap before the end of the month. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't follow my blog so it should be a safe thing to do.

I used Card Sketch #172 with some cocktail-themed patterned paper as my background, adding a strip of Happy Birthday paper and topping that with an '18' panel which I raised up with several layers of cardstock.

40 Years

My 'Starting Point'

Last year, I lightened my scraps box by making some 'starting point' pages, pages that I start off from a co-ordinating pile of scraps, layered up in a pleasing way, ready for a photo to be added later.

Normally I keep these pages as they are and just add more when I finish them, but on this occasion I'd left a hole to be covered by a photo and the photo I wanted to scrap was an old one and too small for the space.

I managed to dismantle my page without damaging any of the papers; I did tear the surface of the cardstock background, but just flipped it over and started again. This time I ran the red scalloped paper vertically, cut the florals down and moved them closer together, stitched a large circle, and added lots of extra layers.

Some of the extra layers came from another moodboard challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper. Although it was a 'Sea of Green', and we had to use some green, there was no need for a monochrome page. I initially took inspiration from the various plants (hence my return to the starting point page with the floral paper), and then went back to it to see what other elements I could include, such as the stripes from the straws and some polka dot paper.

I also combined this with a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to include stitching on a page. I've seen some lovely chain-stitching on pages recently and decided to try it for myself. It does look pretty, but I'm not sure whether it was worth the extra effort over back-stitching.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Echo Park, Make & Create, Unknown Scraps
Acetate - Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - Basic Grey, 
Tag - KaiserCraft
Label Stickers - October Afternoon
Heart Brads - Advent Calendar Swap
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Design
Gems - Papermania
Ink - Memento

Tools
Fiskars Circle Template
X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch

Kingswear from Dartmouth

Up to this point in my National Scrapbooking Day (Weekend? Week? Month??) crafting, I'd been making pages that I would have made anyway for my 2005 and 2020 albums, just tweaking them here and there to fit them to the easier challenges.

However, every year there comes a point when the challenges drive the pages instead, and I've reached that point for this year. This page came from a Lottie Loves Paper challenge to use a set of step-by-step instructions, which needed a single landscape photo. I don't have many single photos these days as digital makes multiples so easy, so I went back for a trawl through my old film photo albums for something suitable. 

This photo was taken in November 1998 so I followed the autumnal feel picked out an assortment of coordinating scraps for the page. I distressed all the edges of my papers for a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper and added the line of tags on the left for a challenge from Hey Little Magpie.

I missed Lottie Loves Paper's deadline for uploading this one so I had no qualms about moving, rotating or cropping a few of the papers when I wasn't entirely happy with their designated size or placement in the instructions.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania, DCWV
Paper - Carta Bella Fall Blessings, Jillibean Soup Apple Cheddar Soup, Little Yellow Bicycle Acorn Hollow, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II
Letters - Basic Grey, Jenni Bowlin
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments, Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Dovecraft Tag Die
Woodware Tag Punch

Father's Day Cards

It was Father's Day yesterday, so I have two cards to share, made for my father and father-in-law.

I based the first card on Card Sketch #171 from Sketch-n-Scrap earlier this month, using papers from Photo Play's Boarding Pass collection with a hot air balloon sticker which I popped up on foam adhesive. I didn't have any Father's Day sentiment stickers or paper, so I printed some myself and die cut the tag.

My second card was based around a crossword-patterned shirt and tie piece from a Simple Stories cut-apart sheet. I switched to a square card for this, and filled in the background with uneven quadrants of patterned papers from a 6x6 pad. I then cut a smaller tag from my printed Father's Day paper, matted it on a scrap of cardstock and used foam squares again to attach it to the card.

'Star Trek Insignia' Birthday Card

This card might look a tad familiar if you are a follower of my blog or a visitor from Stick It Down as it's the second card that I've made from their June card sketch.

The last one featured the Deathly Hallows for a Harry Potter fan, and this time I've gone for the Starfleet Insignia as the recipient is a Star Trek fan. I cut three layers of the insignia on my Silhouette and stacked them up; the top layer has two colours and the others are plain black behind it.

My background paper has a riveted pattern, so adding gems in the corners as per the sketch didn't look right; instead I tried placing them over some of the rivet markings, and found that I needed to add a couple more before I was happy with the way they looked.

On-Nomi

Firstly, that title might need some explanation; it's a Japanese word that I first saw back in March (on a Facebook post from the TV programme QI) which translates to English as "online drinking" and captures the idea of enjoying a drink at home while chatting with your friends via video-conferencing apps.

It's something that I've been doing regularly and wanted to capture in my scrapbook as it's so different from the 'old normal' when I used to meet with these ladies in person every week. I played with various ideas for this page, which I wanted to combine with a sticker challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper as I had some coffee cup and teacup stickers lurking in my stash. I finally decided on a tight grid, with an assortment of stickers on the boxes in between our faces.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Paige Evans #Stickerbook
Washi Tape - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs
Ink - Memento

Tools
Lakeland Speckled Background Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Our Heroes

"Our Heroes" is a poem by Matt Kelly about the bravery of our NHS staff in the battle against the coronavirus. When I first read it back in April I knew that I wanted to include it in my scrapbook as part of the story of 2020, but I waited for NSD as I was pretty sure that a rainbow challenge would come up, and that was the perfect motif to accompany the poem.

Sure enough For the Love of Pretty Paper set us a rainbow theme challenge, which I tried to combine with this sketch from Hey Little Magpie.

I printed the poem to take the place of the journalling on the sketch, intending to use blocks of patterned paper in place of the photos. However I couldn't make them work so switched to vertical strips of paper, then punched strips, and eventually I rotated them to run horizontally instead and then the page came together. 

My page doesn't look very much like the original sketch after all that, but hopefully you can still see its origins.

Supplies
Paper - Junkitz, K&Company, Crate Paper, Sandylion, Bo Bunny
Letters - Simply Creative
Phrase Stickers - Tim Holtz
Flair - Imagine That
Star Gems - Simply Creative
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Notebook Border Punch
Fiskars Apron Lace Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

'Deathly Hallows' Birthday Card

I'm sharing another card today; June is peak birthday-season in our family. I made this one for a Harry Potter fan and used the symbol of the Deathly Hallows in conjunction with this month's card sketch from Stick It Down.

I chose two green papers (for Slytherin) for my background and added black gems in the corners. I cut the symbol four times on my Silhouette, three in cardstock and one in patterned paper, and layered them up to give some depth to the card. 

'The Hiker' Stamped Birthday Card

I'm sharing another card today, and it's something a bit different for me. I normally rely on layers of paper when I'm card-making but this one has none at all.

I bought a recent issue of Creative Stamping magazine purely for its 'free' gift, an A4 stamp set called The Great Outdoors, which I thought would be really useful for both cards and scrapbook pages.

I'm not much of a stamper so I kept this card simple, starting by inking a blue sky and green foreground with Tim Holtz distress inks and then stamping the trees with two colours of Memento inks and first and second impressions. I found the plain foreground to be too flat so I added a few smears of brown distress ink to break it up and then stamped my hiker and the fence post.

'Envelope of Flowers' Birthday Card

It was my sister's birthday last week but I made her card last month to allow for posting time, and I used a sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap's 8th Birthday event.

I started off with that doily and then wondered how to replicate the roses from my supplies. I decided on a die-cut envelope which I filled with leafy sprigs and punched flowers. The envelope was a little small against the doily so I layered it on a piece of card and swapped the long sentiment strip from the sketch for a square which fitted the scale of my card better.

Supplies
Card - Anita's
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Let Your Heart Decide
Doily - Dovecraft
Gems - Love to Craft
Ink - Memento, Versamark

Tools
Big Shot
Sizzix Envelope Die
Poppy Stamps Sprig Die
Craft Creatives Flower Punch
Unknown Happy Birthday Stamp

Stracey Arms Windpump

This was actually the first page that I made for our Norfolk holiday, but I've been blogging them in chronological order for the week and this one comes from our last full day. We'd moored by the Stracey Arms windpump overnight and climbed it in the morning. The Broads are dotted with windpumps like this one which were built to pump water from the surrounding marshland.

The page is dotted with pieces from two tic-tac-toe challenges from National Scrapbooking Day. I chose gold, stitching and enamel dots for Hey Little Magpie, and repeated the stitching with blue letter stickers and a border punch for Lottie Loves Paper. I also knocked off a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper by using washi tape. I then repeated several of these elements (along with the various dies used) across all my Norfolk pages to help tie them together.

Supplies
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Simple Stories Sn@p Basics
Letters - October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye, Echo Park
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Big Shot
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
X-Cut Explore Die
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Funny Faces

Mellow Yellow

I'm no fan of moodboards, but For the Love of Pretty Paper set several for National Scrapbooking Day that were easier to tackle than most. The first was 'Mellow Yellow' and we could take as much or as little as we wanted from the moodboard so long as we included some yellow on the page. 

There's yellow in the pad that I'm using for our Norfolk holiday so that part was easy. The yellow brick road in the moodboard inspired me to use a neutral brick print as my photo mat, and I added word stickers in a little column to echo the block of colour names.

Supplies
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield
Letters - American Crafts
Placemat - Jillibean Soup
Word Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Stars - MRI
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, 
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die

Life on Board

As soon as Shimelle posted the first page from her 'Some Here, Some There' sketch in her class Start with a Sketch, I knew that it was perfect for this trio of photos, and I made the page the same day (although that's a few weeks ago now as I'm posting these in the order of the photographs rather than the order of the pages being made).

This was just after National Scrapbooking Day and I ticked off a couple of challenges with the page. Hey Little Magpie set us a colour palette of light pink, dark pink, sky blue, dark green, mustard yellow and gold. As luck would have it, this floral paper from the pad I am using for this holiday contained all of the colours except gold, and that was easy to add via my lettering, glitter tape and a spattering of mist.

The second challenge was from For the Love of Pretty Paper, and was to fussy-cut some elements for the page. I cut my labels from a free printable and cut a few flowers from the top paper to include at the bottom of the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page
Phrase Stickers - Pretty Little Studio
Puffy Camera - American Crafts/Shimelle
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Pretty My Page, Echo Park, Stampin' Up!

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag Dies
Spellbinders Circle Die

An Afternoon at the Beach

This is another page from our Norfolk boating holiday, but we'd left the boat and caught the train to Great Yarmouth. I had an assortment of photos of our children on the beach, and I printed them in a variety of sizes so that the children themselves remain at a similar size from one to the next.

I combined my row of photos with a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to use a large title on a page. I cut mine on the Silhouette, adding a shell to the letters, and backed each shape with a different paper from the pad that I'm using for this holiday.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Moments
Letters - October Afternoon
Journalling Cards - Project Life Sweet
Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Sunny Days
Washi Tape - Unknown
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Doodlebug, Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Sewing Machine
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch