Catedral de Santa Ana

I've picked up my Canary Islands album with a double page for the Catedral de Santa Ana in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a page that will finish off this section of the album.

My photos fell into four sets so I divided my page into quadrants based on four paper panels of about 11.5" x 5.5" each, one each for the outside of the cathedral, the courtyard of the attached museum, the inside of the cathedral and the views from one of the towers.

I've discovered that I'm perilously low on background sheets so I'm not going to cut into anymore 12x12s that could be backgrounds, and I think I'm going to have to either find other papers or fall back on white cardstock. I did look at buying more but Care Free is an old collection now (2020), I couldn't find more in the UK and postage from Australia (where I did find it in several stores) made it unacceptably expensive.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Heidi Swapp Care Free, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow; Letters - Jenni Bowlin; Die-Cuts - Heidi Swapp, Rosie's Studio; Gems - Love to Craft

(Pages 59 & 60 for the year.)

Returning to my Canary Islands Album

We did a cruise to the Canary Islands in 2021 and my album is unfinished, pushed aside by my wish to work on newer holiday albums as they came round. I have a lull now between finishing my Mediterranean Islands album and us going on the next cruise, so I'm hoping to finish the Canary Islands before we go.

I made some of the existing pages between April and July 2022, and then returned to the album between January and April 2023 so it's more than two years since I worked on it. I've been reviewing the pages so far and the gaps that are left. We visited five islands:

Lanzarote - complete

Gran Canaria - double page needed for Santa Ana Cathedral (photos printed)

La Gomera - complete

La Palma - five pages needed (photos printed for three)

Tenerife - only the sub-title page done, others not planned, three photos printed

I've also had to re-gather my supplies. I kept all the papers in a box so that part was easy. I'm using a mix of two collections for this album - Heidi Swapp's Care Free and Jen Hadfield's Peaceful Heart - which both have peach and green colour schemes. All my papers are single-sided so I cut up the cut-apart pages at the start.

However, the rest of my supplies had been absorbed back into my stash so I've been through my original supplies post and the album itself to identify and re-assemble those. As always, if I use anything new I will add it to the kit too.

Islands of the Mediterranean

I've finished all the port pages (and a couple of others) from our Mediterranean cruise now so it's time to turn those pages into an album. 

I like to start each port with my sub-title page on the right-hand side of the album so I knew that I would need to 'even up' the pages for any port where I made an odd number of pages, either by making an extra page for the port or by slotting in a page from an onboard event. As it turned out, I made even numbers of pages for seven of the ports and I have a page from the Battle of the Bartenders that can fill the odd space after the eighth. 

Now I can turn my attention to the start of the book. I need an even number of pages before the first port, and I have already made a page from one of our formal nights which can now become page two of the album.

I had three ideas for elements on my title page: using a map print paper and highlighting the area we cruised; using a postcard with a map of our route; using a geotag cut-file to create frames for small photos of some of the places we visited. Ultimately I couldn't combine all three and the postcard got bumped to another page (see below) while I used two different cut-files from Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files here, making this page my DT post today.

Europe is in one corner of my background paper so I framed that using one frame from Polaroids x6. I then covered up the Americas with a simpler paper to split my page into two parts and give me a neutral background for five geotags from Geocache Icons which I backed with photos from our trip. I made a column behind my polaroid for our itinerary and filled in the space below with the year and a ticket cluster.

I often close my cruise albums with a page for our return to the UK port, and that page generally has a pocket to hold our Cruise Log. However, this time we sailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, the port isn't particularly photogenic and I have no photos from our arrival, so my last page is from our last port. I still want to include the Cruise Log so I've made an extra page which also includes my postcard, but I've gone for 8" by 11" and only used one side. The background was a fresh sheet but the pieces I used for the pocket were among my larger scraps.

And finally, I need a title piece for the window on the front of the album. That's around 3.5" square so obviously I used more scraps and leftover stickers. Neither the letters nor the numbers appear in the album, but I was really focusing on their size here. I needed letters small enough to fit the whole word 'Mediterranean' in the width available and then numbers that would fill the remaining space neatly. 

So that's it! Another album finished that can take its place on the shelf.

What's next? I haven't finished the album for our cruise to the Canary Islands in 2021 so I'm going to return to that one. I've enjoyed the process this year of alternating between the Mediterranean album and other pages so I'm going to continue that approach for now. We have another holiday coming up this summer but I'm hoping I might finish the Canary Islands album before that comes round.

Supplies: Cardstock - Carta Bella Gather; Paper - Heidi Swapp Sail Away, Photoplay Travelogue, Cocoa Vanilla Studio Heart & Home; Letters - Creative Devotion; Numbers - Doodlebug, Fancy Pants; Stickers - Photoplay, Heidi Swapp; Washi Tape - Vicki Boutin, Little B; Enamel Hearts - Cocoa Vanilla Studio

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

(Pages 57 & 58 for the year.)

Pages from Palma

I'm on my final port now for our Mediterranean cruise last year. That's Palma in Majorca; it was the seventh of the eight that we visited, but I haven't been scrapbooking them in order. 

Since I am approaching the end now, some of my page designs have been driven by the shapes and sizes of the scraps I have left (and I've had to pull in a couple of extra background sheets).

(The numbers are my page count for the year. I count doubles as two pages.)

51. Palma

Every port has a sub-title page, which divides my album into sections. I used lots of leftover paper strips here, layered in a row behind a single 4x6 photo of the view from our ship.

52 & 53. Caves of Drach

We did our only organised tour of the cruise in Majorca, a coach trip to the Caves of Drach on the other side of the island. We took loads of photos which I cut down to just five as I didn't want to go any smaller than 4x6, and I scraplifted an older page from Lisbon.

54. La Seu

Page design here was driven by that large yellow scrap, the perfect size to mat my two photos and leave a space for my title. The Cathedral is known as Le Seu, but I also have it's full name on a label. I think it's the first black title in this album but that felt like the right colour to use here. The camera print might also be new; it's been in the kit since the beginning but I don't remember using it before. I will have to see if I can add a few pieces elsewhere when I review the album.

55. Palau Reial de l'Almudaina

I scraplifted Shimelle for this page, following a YouTube live from last month and using up some 12" strips from my album kit. Her page used portrait photos and mine are landscape so I moved my title to run up the side of the photo block so that I still had the space beneath it for journalling.

56. Just Wander

My final page from Palma, with an assortment of photos which give a taste of the old town, but none of them merit a whole page. The WANDER word comes from an older set of travel-themed Thickers that I am trying to use up.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Set Sail, Photoplay Travelogue, Cocoa Vanilla Studio Heart & Home, Cocoa Vanilla Studio These Days, Craft Sensations Dreamy Pastels, Make & Create, Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser; Letters - American Crafts, Heidi Swapp, Cocoa Vanilla Studio; Stickers - Heidi Swapp, Photoplay, Studio Calico; Die-Cuts - Heidi Swapp;Washi Tape - Little B, Vicki Boutin; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, My Mind's Eye, Simple Stories, Twilight Crafts, Doodlebug, Hey Little Magpie, Violet Studio; Puffy Shapes - Rosie's Studio, Jen Hadfield, Cocoa Vanilla Studio

Moments Together

Sharing another page that I made at the recent Twilight Crafts Weekend Crop, which is also my first DT page of June for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used two words from Titles 1 With Offset alongside two 4x6 photos of my extended family.

The page design was mostly driven by the word print paper which I received in a mystery box, along with the floral from the same collection. 

Supplies: Cardstock - Stampin' Up!; Paper - Paige Evans Wonders, Photoplay Wicker Lane; Stickers - Cocoa Vanilla Studio, Paige Evans; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

(Page 50 for the year.)

QI

Following on from the last post, I also made a page for my 2024 album while I was at the Twilight Crafts Weekend Crop. It fills in a gap that I deliberately left at the time; we went to a recording of QI last March and I decided to wait until it was broadcast (January 2025) in case I could pinch any extra pictures at that time.

Thus my page has five photos, four that I took on the night and one from a Facebook post announcing the XL version of the show. I stacked mine in a column and placed the extra one alongside, layered on an arrow-print paper to suggest the passage of time.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Hello Today; Letters - American Crafts; Washi Tape - Stampin' Up!; Stars - Paperchase, Studio Calico

(Page 49 for the year.)