On the Beach

Vintage photos today, sharing a page I made for the recent GoGoGetaway cybercrop on Facebook. Jo's challenge was to be inspired by the shape of a beach hut. 

As luck would have it, I have a beach hut die set so I went for a simple, literal interpretation of the prompt. I cut a row of beach huts from pastel-coloured cardstock, and smooshed ink onto my white background to represent the sand, before deciding to cut it down a smidge and mat the page to add more colour. I cut the pennants from the same colours of cardstock, added a strip of camera washi tape to them and fussy-cut a few shells to scatter on my sand. 

Once my title was in place I added a heart from the same sticker sheet to the page and then felt that that looked a bit random, which I hopefully solved by adding even more hearts - 10 of them in five pairs, which killed off the pack.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Shine On, Scrapberry's Summer Joy
Letters - Doodlebug
Washi Tape - American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Ink - Memento
Mist - Tattered Angel

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Beach Hut Dies

Travel Document Wallet

These month we've had a collaboration between For the Love of Pretty Paper and Paper, Scissors, Story over on Facebook. Cal Summers has offered four free classes for two mini-books, making a waterfall on a page and a 12x12 wallet.

The first project that I chose was the wallet, but I've adapted it to be 9x12, a little bigger than A4. I plan to use it for my next cruise to hold all the maps and leaflets that I accumulate at each port we visit.

The 12x12 version uses four sheets each of cardstock and patterned paper but my smaller version only needed three (so long as I cut carefully). I made the wallet from grey cardstock, and picked the blue papers from a travel-themed pad by Simply Made Crafts to cover it. 

I don't have any matching embellishments for this pad (I don't think the company produce them, just the paper pads) so I looked at a couple of other travel collections for pieces to decorate the front of my wallet.

I started with the suitcases and the frame which I backed with grey patterned paper, all from Pink Paislee's Atlas collection. I also looked at Simple Stories' Travel Notes stickers and picked out all the clear passport stamps to add to the front of the wallet. The stickers all had cities that I'm unlikely to visit in the next couple of years so this seemed like a good place to use them up rather than have them stick around in my stash forever.

Finally, I made a co-ordinating piece for the top flap on my wallet. I die-cut a ticket from the same grey paper as I had backed the frame, and looked for red, yellow and blue stickers to pull the suitcases colours up here. The pennant and car stickers are both from Travel Notes and I chose washi tape for the yellow.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Simply Made Crafts Travel Keepsakes, Pink Paislee Atlas
Frame - Pink Paislee Atlas
Stickers - Simple Stories Travel Notes
Washi Tape - Dovecraft
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
X-Cut Corner Punch

New Home Card

I'm sharing a quick 'New Home' card today. Our daughter will start her second year at university soon, and she and her friends moved into a house together this week. I was looking for a free house cutfile when I spotted a birdhouse instead and switched tacks.

I inked a grass and sky background for the card and cut and pieced my birdhouse from three papers. I was going to add five of the birds to 'live' in the house (one per person moving in) but I couldn't make them small enough and keep the details so I die-cut them instead. I then added the little row of bunting from the same seaside die set as the birds.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait and SCT Cutfile
Big Shot & X-Cut Beach Hut Dies

Let Them Eat Cake

It's been a strange year so far, and we all had our birthdays under lockdown. We didn't have any real presents, just promises of presents once restrictions are lifted, but we did each have a birthday cake to celebrate the day. My daughter made mine, I made the others and I've scrapped pictures of them all as a quartet.

I wanted a celebratory feel to the page, so chose the star wreath cutfile which I backed with pastel papers. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Whimsical
Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio
Star Gems - Papermania
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Paige Taylor Evans 'Star Wreath' Cutfile

Testing Times

Having finished sharing my 2016 album pages now, I'm returning to 2020, an album that I'm trying to keep up-to-date as we go along. Last month I was invited to take part in a survey looking at the prevalence of Covid-19 in the general population. I accepted and the kit arrived on the day of GoGoGetaway's cybercrop, so I scrapped a photo straight away with Niki's sketch.

I chose a 6x6 pad for my paper strips so that they would all co-ordinate, and found a virus cutfile that I used for the circles in the sketch.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Make & Create Grunge Dreams, My Mind's Eye Now & Then, My Mind's Eye Quilting Bee
Pearls - The Hobby House
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Sewing Machine
Silhouette Portrait
Love SVG Covid-19 Cutfile
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Collect Moments

Lottie Loves Paper is running a Summer Sketch Challenge, with nine sketches during July and August. I did the first two as they were released but then slipped behind, and this is my page for week 4. It was a collaboration and we had the option of using the 'Collect Moments' cutfile from new venture Peartree Cutfiles. 

I scaled the cutfile to be as large as I could because I was working with old, pre-printed 4x6 photos. This made it difficult to include the paper strips behind it; I tried various combinations but there was so little showing at the edges that I wasn't happy and decided to drop them entirely and just use a few labels instead. That left me with a new problem - having just the white cutfile against the background was too plain, so I created an offset and cut that in green to match my son's shirt. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Stampin' Up!
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Yes Please, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Stay Sweet, Studio Calico Heyday
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio
Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Design
Mist - Docrafts. Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Peartree Cutfiles 'Collect Moments' Cutfile
Sewing Machine
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

May All Your Wishes Come True

Earlier this year, I made a series of pages that finished off my 2005 album. I flipped through it several times in the process and, although there were a few dated pages in there and a few that I would have made differently now, I decided to leave them all alone. Starting to re-do older pages is a slippery slope that I don't want to start down. However, weeks later my mind was still being drawn back to one particular page which has so many elements that I really don't like any more (right) and I decided to pull it apart.

I cut the photo away with some of the pink paper as a mat, and I preserved as much of the pink woodgrain background (which I do still like) as possible. My new page is a scraplift of one that Shimelle made from her 'Delicate Explosion' sketch in her recent class Start with a Sketch.

The pink woodgrain reappears on the new page which I made mostly from Amy Tangerine papers which share the same pink. I've used this collection a few times recently and I'm pleased with how versatile it is and the different looks you can get by pulling out different sub-groups of colours and patterns. 

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Shine On, Pebbles Fresh Goods
Letters - Heidi Swapp
Chipboard - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine
Glitter Tape - Unknown
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Spellbinders Circle Die
Dovecraft Label Die

2016 Album Cover

My 2016 albums are done now, but there was one more task left. I use postbound or snapload albums rather than three ring albums (for reasons discussed in this post) and I have two brown albums from Pioneer which will hold these pages. These have windows in the front which I have now filled with title cards. 

My supplies were very simply chosen, using the first things that would work rather then diving through everything I own in search of the perfect pieces. I started with the background papers; these were the last two left in a 6x6 pad which was sitting on my desk, and the kraft grid sits well with the brown fabric of the albums. I then sought an alphabet sheet with flat stickers and two each of the numbers 2, 0, 1 and 6 left and stopped as soon as I found a suitable sheet from Basic Grey. 

Next up I considered washi tape, but decided to look at stickers first; turning to my OneCanoeTwo #stickerbook where I chose one with some green to match the numbers. The other main colour in the sticker was pink so I pulled some small tile stickers to add 'Part One' and 'Part Two' to the title cards. 

Since the word 'Part' is shorter than 'One' and 'Two' I added a pink enamel heart to each card. This could have been another motif or colour, but again I stopped as soon as I had something suitable rather than perfect. Finally I added a trio of green rain dots to each card and popped them into their pockets.

Coast to Coast

Last page now for my 2016 album, and it's another long distance walk for my husband. This time he and a friend were walking north to south across Devon from Lynmouth to Wembury.

An eight day walk across glorious countryside yielded a plethora of photos so I made a double page by repeating the 'Half and Half' sketch from Shimelle's Start with a Sketch class. This gave me room for twelve smaller photos in the bottom half of the page plus larger photos, title and journalling in the top half. It's also a good design for when you don't have two identical papers for the background as it can be made by splitting two different papers into 6" panels for the tops and bottoms.

Supplies
Paper - Authentique, We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit, Crate Paper Random, My Mind's Eye Collectable, Simple Stories Awesome

Letters - American Crafts

Journalling Cards - Project Life

Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, Freckled Fawn

Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Pretty My Page

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot

Dovecraft Label Die

X-Cut Pennant Die

Prom

I'm working through my remaining 2016 pages, but it really is a reminder that I shouldn't leave double pages until last. This is the fifth of six, so almost done.
This page is from my daughter's Prom which was held at a local hotel. I've gone with seven photos: I took the large one on the left outside the hotel when I dropped off my daughter and her friend; the rest are a mixture of professional photos and snaps taken on their phones.

I used last month's double sketch from Stick It Down for my page, adjusting it to suit my variety of photo sizes, and adding extra papers on the right so that the far column of photos wan't so isolated.

I mostly used papers from Amy Tangerine's Shine On collection, which I also used for Family Fun and Games last week. However, where that page was quite colourful and playful, I concentrated on the grey and black papers this time for a more sophisticated look with gold accents.

I built an embellishment cluster on each side of the page based around two cameras in different sizes; they are the same motif cut from a 12x12 paper and the 6x6 pad. The 'summer' and 'party' words on the left came from the same 6x6 paper. I finished off with some of the smaller chipboard pieces from the collection and some puffy dots in grey and black.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Amy Tangerine Shine On, American Crafts/Shimelle Head in the Clouds
Letters - American Crafts
Chipboard - Amy Tangerine Shine On
Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio
Word Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes
Label Sticker - 7Gypsies
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

MUSE

I'm sticking with my 2016 album for this page, filling in another gap with a double page from when we saw Muse at the O2 in April. 

I took a ton of photos and thought that this was going to be a photo-heavy page, but when I sorted through them there just a couple that were really much better than the rest and that I wanted to blow up large. I then added a third which wasn't quite as good but gave me a close-up of the band in action.

I was stumped for both page design and colour scheme so asked for ideas on Facebook. One lady shared a concert page where she used a cutfile and this got me going though neither my cutfile nor my colour scheme match hers at all.

I started with a black cardstock background and liberally spattered it with three colours of mist. I used a stars cutfile, backed some of the small stars with vellum, and filled some of the larger stars with die-cuts.

Supplies

Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Papermania

Paper - Sandylion, HOTP

Vellum - Crate Paper

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz

Mist - Docrafts, Heidi Swapp

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Paige Taylor Evans 'Stars' Cutfile

Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die

Woodware Tiny Star Punch

South West Coast Path Part 9

My husband and father-in-law have been walking the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path, one section per year since 2008. I'm currently working on my 2016 album which was their ninth expedition, a stretch of the north Cornwall coast.

I've made each year's pages on the same blue paper, and they are always photo-heavy which generally means a grid. This time I have three rows of 7cm high photos with stripey borders at the edges, holding clusters of die-cut and punched shapes.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Craft Creations, Scrap Within Reach Elliot
Letters - October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Efco
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Marianne Design, Echo Park

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Big Shot
Spellbinders Circle Die
Little B Arrow Die
Dovecraft Star Die

Chepstow Castle

I'm filling in another gap in my 2016 album today, with a page from our holiday in Wales at Easter. We visited Chepstow Castle one afternoon, and I had sufficient decent photos to need a double page.

It's a rough scraplift of my 'Lift Me Up' page from last year, mostly flipped from left to right, but with some of the page elements moved around to suit my new set of photos.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Glitter Tape - Unknown
Pearls - Craft for Occasions, The Hobby House
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die

Family Fun & Games

I finished off my 2005 album recently, so I'm now switching from older photos to newer ones as I move to my 2016 album and attempt to finish that one too. I've drawn up a list of missing pages, six of them, and they are all doubles.

I'm starting in the middle of the year with photos from a family barbecue at my brother's house. They naturally fell into four subgroups, which suited the 'Kicked Up Quadrants' sketch from Shimelle's Start with a Sketch class.

Supplies

Cardstock - UK Crafts

Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Shine On, American Crafts/Shimelle

Letters - Collage Press, American Crafts, SEI
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine
Washi Tape - October Afternoon

Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Big Shot
Papercraft Essentials Tag Die
Dovecraft Label Die
Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Bunting Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Capital Ring 7 - Sudbury Hill to Wembley Park

At the beginning of the year, I returned to to the Capital Ring, a 78 mile circular walk around London which I originally started from Woolwich back in 2016. 

I walked from Hanwell to Sudbury Hill in February and picked up the path again in March. I had been planning to finish it this year, but that plan is now on hold for obvious reasons.

I caught the train from Marylebone out to Sudbury Hill Harrow, an hourly service on a stumpy two-car train, and watched from the bridge above as it pulled away.

A bit of road-walking, a muddy footpath 

and a bit more road-walking took me to Harrow-on-the-Hill, where I knocked off a couple of finds for the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt. 

The High Street was upmarket, much as you would expect, with a pocket-sized village green to one side,

and a nineteenth-century fountain which has recently been restored to provide drinking water again.

The town is dominated by Harrow School, with many blue signs on the buildings which belong to them. This one in particular made me smile at boys' taxis being paired with deliveries:

I caught a glimpse of Wembley Stadium's arch across a school courtyard, and would have loved to go closer, but the 'no trespassing' signs were out in force. I can't really blame them as the number of tourists swarming around in the summer must be a constant irritation.

Heading further into town, I picked off an impressive array of school buildings:

Druries, one of the boarding houses,

the school chapel, designed by George Gilbert Scott

the library, another George Gilbert Scott design,

and the Speech Room, their main assembly hall and an events venue.

My route path continued steeply down Football Lane and then across the school's playing fields (via a permissive path).

Looking back, I could clearly still see the school buildings mentioned above, and also the parish church of St Mary's.

I then climbed over the only stile on the Capital Ring

and crossed the road beyond to join the Ducker Footpath (which takes its name from the school's swimming pool)

soon regretting my decision to wear trainers rather than walking boots today. This path runs between two fences with hospital on the left, golf course on the right and no escape in either direction. I trudged onwards as the path became more and more pond-like, eventually giving up picking my way from island to island and just wading through it all.

I eventually emerged into Northwick Park, surprising a litter-picker who probably didn't expect anyone to use that path in those conditions. In many ways it's a pretty standard suburban park with playground equipment, an outdoor gym and some playing fields,

but it does have a special view, one of the Wembley Arch curving up above the local buildings.

More squelching as I crossed this waterlogged field and thankfully moved on to a bit of pavement-walking towards South Kenton underground station which marks the end of Section 9 of the Capital Ring. 

I ducked through the underpass and embarked on Section 10 following roads and alleyways to Preston Park

where I checked my progress towards the ultimate finish point at the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. 

Leaving the park behind me, I encountered this fellow

en route to Preston Road, which was a sharp contrast to Harrow earlier in the day.

A bit more pavement-walking took me to what my guide describes as a grassy pathway,

which was an ominously squelchy introduction to Fryent Country Park. The path crossed a field, climbing steeply, and then looking back I was surprised to still have Harrow in sight.

I followed the path through sparse woodland 

and emerged by a pond atop Barn Hill

where this heron wasn't bothered by my presence in the slightest.

Finding a handy bench with a decent view,

I ate a late lunch while watching the adverts scroll on Wembley Stadium below me. The clouds rolled in and a breeze picked up so I decided to check my phone for a weather forecast; the first drops of rain fell on the screen as it loaded, so I decided to abort my walk here and head for Wembley Park station.

My walk is on hold for now and I'm not sure when I'll get back to it. Travel on public transport is permitted again and I have been on a train, but I am in no hurry to get back on the tube if I don't have to.