It's almost Christmas and I've bought gift cards for my niece and nephews this year, but I wanted to jazz them up and make them a bit more special so I made a few of these gift card holders from Carta Bella's Hello Christmas collection. I've shared full instructions over on The Mad Scrapper blog and the collection is available in store now.
I can't believe that I forgot to share my latest blog post for The Mad Scrapper with you, one which features some of the pages I made for our long weekend in Dorset. You've seen the pages here already but that post focusses on my process for creating a series of pages from a holiday or event and shares a few hints and tips in case you are considering a similar project.
One of the reasons that we chose Dorset for our autumn mini-break was my long-held desire to visit the abandoned village of Tyneham. The village and the surrounding area were requisitioned by the War Office in 1943 to provide an area for military training; they were supposed to be given back after the war but that never happened, the buildings fell into ruin and the area is now part of Lulworth Ranges. However the village is open to the public when the ranges are not in use.
I took loads of photos so this had to be a double page (with a single to follow for the adjacent farm). I printed a map to go with the photos and used a couple of journalling cards, one on each side.
I've scrapped both of these photos previously on separate pages for my 2019 and 2020 albums (Hello Brighthelm and Goodbye Brighthelm) but now I'm putting them together for another page in my daughter's university album. Brighthelm was her first year accommodation, a house which she shared with four others.
I've used another sketch from Dotty About Flair, die-cutting my hexagons from a Pinkfresh Studio 6x6 pad. As is normal for me, using this number of different patterned papers meant that I added minimal embellishment, but I included some white puffy asterisks for a Be Colourful challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper.
I went for a couple of extra paper layers than are in the sketch, pulling the blue and green colours from the photo and adding orange as a contrast. I used a text print for my background as hinting at education, smooshed a little blue ink over it in a diagonal line and stamped a few clusters of tiny orange stars.
The large yellow rectangle of paper comes directly from the sketch, but I added extra layers both under and over it, all from the Late Afternoon paper pad by Amy Tangerine, which I am using for my Dorset pages.
I started from a cream base card and pencilled a 3" circle on the front. I daubed green ink around that circle and then made my wreath with sprigs die-cut from an old Basic Grey paper which I chose for its subtle variation in greens. I then added my butterfly and some pink punched flowers to the wreath, finishing with tiny gems as my flower centres and extras scattered around the wreath.
As we arrive in December, I think we are all looking forward to the end of 2020, but there is an annual event that starts today and runs to the end of March when everything should be closer to normal.
I'm talking about the Winter Photography Scavenger Hunt which is hosted by Eileen at A Bracelet of Days. She's drawn up a list of 20 items, bearing in mind that so many of us are still facing restrictions on our daily life, plus three alternatives if needed. Her full list is:
