Castillo de San José

I've said before that I'm not scrapping our Canary Islands holiday in order, just making pages as inspiration strikes. My starting point for this page was another sketch by Lisa Sikorski at Scrap a Sketch.

I had four photos from the Castillo de San José in Arrecife, an ex-fortress turned art museum; at 3x4 they were larger than those in the sketch and a mix of landscape and portrait but the sketch was quite adaptable.

I matted the photos on cardstock and filled in the extra space next to the portrait photo with a strip of patterned paper which became the backdrop to a floral embellishment cluster, and I actually followed the sketch quite closely for a butterfly-based cluster at the top left. I added a trio of nuvo drops to each cluster but they looked quite sparse so I upgraded them to a trio of trios; I think that may have been too many dots but they're done now.

I had too much journalling for the small strips on the sketch and tried it with a number of longer strips below the left photos but they didn't look right. After a bit of pondering I turned the journalling sideways and wrote on the torn paper strip at the left of the page.

Supplies

Cardstock - American Crafts

Paper - Heidi Swapp Carefree, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart

Letters - KaiserCraft

Stickers - Studio Calico, Heidi Swapp, Jen Hadfield

Puffy Hearts - Rosie's Studio

Washi Tape - Unknown

Dots - Nuvo Drops

Ink - Ranger

A Quick Dip

I'm not making my cruise album pages in chronological order and will be jumping about as inspiration strikes. Today I'm on the beach in Gran Canaria for a page that started from a sketch by Lisa Sikorski at Scrap a Sketch, but took on a life of its own.

Right from the start, this was going to be a two-photo page and I added the smaller photo on a tag alongside the large one from the sketch. I laid out the paper layers as per the sketch but they didn't work for me so I jiggled things, removed one of the papers and added some horizontal strips as a 'shelf' for my photos to sit on. 

I added a journalling card which wasn't part of the sketch, moved the title from its original position because of my second photo and moved the floral clusters too. As I said, the page took on a life of its own, but sometimes when that happens you just have to go with the flow.

Supplies

Cardstock - American Crafts

Paper - Heidi Swapp Carefree, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow

Letters - Studio Calico

Ephemera - Rosie's Studio

Cork Arrow - Studio Calico

Stickers - Studio Calico

Washi Tape - Unknown

Gems - Love to Craft

Ink - Ranger

Mirador de la Hila

I'm staying in La Gomera for another cruise album page. We walked up to a viewpoint above San Sebastian and I have two photos, a large one of the view and a smaller one of us and the harbour below.

I picked a background paper with four distinct colour blocks and followed that with a design of four rough quadrants with the photos in opposite corners. I filled the rest of the top row with a tag cut from one of the papers in my kit and made a larger tag for the opposite corner to hold my title and journalling.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Heidi Swapp Carefree, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart

Letters - American Crafts, KaiserCraft

Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield, American Crafts/Heidi Swapp

Puffy Hearts - Rosie's Studio

Chipboard - P13

Washi Tape - Unknown

Dots - Nuvo Drops

Ink - Memento

San Sebastian - La Gomera

When I make a cruise album I divide it up with a section for each port of call, and each section starts with a 'sub-title' page. I've started with our third port of call, San Sebastian in La Gomera, for the simple reason that I only had a few photos to choose from.

I used one of last month's sketches from Sketch-n-Scrap as it's a versatile one that I can repeat for all the ports with a change of papers.

I made my paper strips longer than those in the sketch so that my title would sit on them rather than at the foot of the page. I used letter stickers for the port/town and cut the island name on my Silhouette. I plan to vary the stickers for the town each time and keep the island in the same font each time.

The flower on the sketch became a cluster of pieces built around a tag, and I'll create similar clusters for the other sub-title pages.

Supplies

Paper - Heidi Swapp Carefree, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow

Letters - Jenni Bowlin Studio

Ephemera - Heidi Swapp

Cork Stickers - Studio Calico

Washi Tape - Unknown

Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Simple Stories

Ink - Memento

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Canary Island Escape

An eight day Scrap into Spring Cyber-Crop starts today in the Twilight Crop and Craft Facebook group, eight days of challenges, games and live scrapping sessions.

As you can see, I'm setting the first challenge and I decided to go with a number-based recipe.

My sample page for the challenge is the title page for my new cruise album. I took the Where Shall We Go? cut-file from Jenny Wren, removed the lettering and backed it with three photos of our ship, layering the cut-file over the map. I then used a a 6x12 washi map sticker to create the half-and-half background, with a strip of washi tape along the join.

For embellishment I needed to use the four ephemera, five stickers and six small things from the challenge. I used a couple of cork chevron stickers to point to the Canary Islands on the map and created three embellishment clusters which easily exceed the minimum quantities that I set. Those cork chevrons are something that I've pulled and not used in previous albums so I'm glad I've got them on the page now and hope I will repeat them (and the hearts) across the album.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Heidi Swapp Carefree

Letters - Pinkfresh Studio

Washi Sheet - 49 & Market Vintage Artistry Anywhere

Ephemera - Heidi Swapp, Rosie's Studio

Stickers - Studio Calico, Heidi Swapp, Freckled Fawn, Tim Holtz

Washi Tape - Unknown

Gems - Love to Craft

Ink - Memento

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

A New Project - Canary Islands Cruise Album

I recently finished the album for our cruise round Scotland last August, and it's already time to move on to the next cruise album as we picked up a late booking deal to the Canary Islands in November. We visited five of the islands including La Palma where the volcano Cumbre Vieja was erupting.

I started choosing papers for this album by looking for a coral-based collection and hit on Heidi Swapp's Carefree, which is more peach than coral but had the right feel for me. I bought the 12x12 pad, the sticker booklet and an ephemera pack; the pad contains some cut-apart pages and all the papers are single-sided so I've already pulled out the cut-aparts and cut them up.

I can't stick to just one collection though, so I've also chosen the 12x12 pad from Jen Hadfield's Peaceful Heart collection, again removing and cutting up the cut-apart pages. Some of the more-themed papers won't work with Carefree but there are enough that will.

Finally in terms of paper I have a few sheets from Storyline, another Heidi Swapp collection with a similar feel, and 6x8 pads from OneCanoeTwo and Paige Evans, although, again, not all of the 6x8 papers will be a good match.

Moving away from paper, I have assembled a mixture of old and new stickers, chipboard and ephemera, including two sheets of washi stickers from 49 and Market that I bought for the Scottish album and didn't use.

I've pulled a few sets of alphabet stickers but I will mostly choose these as I go along, as well as using my Silhouette or Big Shot for some of my titles. I've got an assortment of journalling cards and more washi tape than I will probably use in the end. After I've made a few pages I'll know which tapes I'm drawn to and which ones I might end up rejecting and returning to my stash.

Finally, I have an assortment of travel-themed stamps, a globe die and a stencil which I can repeat across the album without fear of running out.

I'm sure to add more pieces once I start making pages; in particular I have no enamel dots, gems or mist in this selection. Each time I use something I will add it to my kit so that I can repeat it on further pages. It's a strategy that I've been using with travel albums for some years and a method that works for me.

Spring Chicks

I'm back with another project for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. This time I took the camera from the Hobbies Elements 2 set and used it as a large embellishment on my page.

I had four 3x4 photos of cygnets, goslings and coot chicks in our local nature park and I cut the camera at the same size to fit a rough grid. 

I backed the camera with patterned paper, picking colours from the photos. However, just taking my colours from the photos would have given me quite a dull page. I looked in my scraps box for colour inspiration and found a stripe and a green from the same collection. I then pulled orange, blue and brown papers to match the stripes. 

I layered torn strips on the right, matted my photos on the four colours and butted up four 3" strips on the left of the page. I then made up three embellishment clusters from punched and die-cut shapes using the same papers again.

Supplies

Paper - Make & Create Grunge Dreams, Scrap Within Reach, Simple Stories, Bo Bunny

Letters - Pinkfresh Studio

Word Stickers - Pretty Little Studio

Enamel Dots - Papermania, Freckled Fawn, Eyelet Outlet, Simple Stories

Ink - Memento

Paint - Golden

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Big Shot

X-Cut Camera Die

Dovecraft Label Die

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.