Finishing My Canary Islands Album

In April 2022 I made the title page for my Canary Islands album and now, more than three years later, I've made the last. I generally end an album with a photo of the UK port as we return, sitting on some sort of pocket that holds our Cruise Log. This time I do have both of these elements, but this was a cruise during the pandemic, with all the restrictions that that entailed. I've largely ignored that fact as I made the album, but I have touched on it here with a paragraph of journalling on the left of the page. My pocket is much larger than usual as I have included some of the correspondence we received regarding Covid restrictions as well as the normal Cruise Log.

I've also made the title card for the front cover of the album:

Another album finished, so I will be going back to my 2025 annual album next, before we go off on another adventure.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Care Free, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow; Letters - Hobbycraft, Tim Holtz; Die-Cuts - 49 & Market, Heidi Swapp; Stickers - Heidi Swapp; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Star - Freckled Fawn; Gems - Love to Craft

(Page 77 for the year.)

Pages from Tenerife

Today I'm sharing the pages from the last port of our Canary Islands cruise from 2021. That was Santa Cruz on Tenerife. I'd already made the sub-title page; they mostly follow the same design in this album, with a 5x7 photo of the town matted on a 6x8 paper and layered over four vertical strips:

(The numbers are my page count for the year.)

70 & 71. Mount Teide, Ucanca Plain & The Roques of Garcia

A long title, but I put it in three fonts on three parts of this double page. I pulled in two new 12x12 sheets to create a half-and-half background; neither appears elsewhere but I have plenty of pink and a blue woodgrain elsewhere and all the other papers are repeats. The photos are all from a coach trip that we took to see Mount Teide, the highest point on the island (and in Spain as a whole).

72. Plaza de España

This is the main square in Santa Cruz, with a large pond and a memorial to the dead of the Spanish Civil War. I chose one of my last few remaining patterned paper backgrounds and gave each photo its own offcut of paper to sit on, while tucking in a few more scraps around the edges.

73. Iglesia.../Ermita.../Ermita...

We saw three churches in our brief look round the town, but didn't go inside any of them. I was originally only going to scrap the largest, but I only had one decent photo of it and the other two churches were quite cute so I've included all three on separate panels, a half-page and two quarters. I titled each part rather than the whole page.

74. El Auditorio de Tenerife

I'd started this page when I was last working on this album, and was clearly feeling the lack of remaining background papers even then, as this one is white cardstock that has been sprayed and stencilled and is badly warped, but I'm hoping it will flatten out in the album. I'm sure it was based on a sketch or scraplift but I don't recall whose. 

75. Castillo de San Juan Bautista

This page was loosely based on Shimelle's YouTube live video from 19 May, with a paper strip down the right side and stencilling on the background. The Fortress of St John the Baptist is a 17th century fort, built to protect the harbour. I printed two photos, with the second one showing how it is now overshadowed by the new Auditorio above.

76. La Recova

La Recova is the alternative name for the Market of Our Lady of Africa, and much shorter for a title. I arranged my photos on one of my largest scraps, then layered it over a couple more and tucked in a branding strip on the left. The right looked a little sparse so I punched a line of circles and tucked them in with a few puffy dots. This is something I did for a page from La Palma, and now it repeats later in the album. 

So that's all the pages from the last port done, and I've made all the onboard pages too, so just the return to Southampton and my front cover to go now.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Heidi Swapp Care Free, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow, Heidi Swapp Storyline Chapters, Make & Create Grunge Dreams; Journalling Cards - Project Life; Letters - American Crafts, Heidi Swapp, Doodlebug, KaiserCraft, Webster's Pages, Hobbycraft, Glitz Design; Die-Cuts - Heidi Swapp, Rosie's Studio, 49 and Market; Stickers - Heidi Swapp, Rosie's Studio, Studio Calico, My Mind's Eye; Gems - Love to Craft; Puffy Dots - Jen Hadfield; Enamel Shapes - Latech, My Mind's Eye, Rosie's Studio

Beer Fest Bands

Today I'm sharing my first DT page of the month for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used three lines from cut-file 515 Scallops Strips as 'shelves' for my photos from Thurrock Beer Festival last month.

All the papers except the background were leftovers from my 2017 Nordic Cruise album which have been languishing in my scraps box since I finished it. The stripe caught my eye first and a quick rummage turned up the others to match.

Supplies: Paper - Reminisce Be Kind, Bo Bunny Early Bird, Echo Park Winter Park, Echo Park We Are Family; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Label Sticker - Heidi Swapp; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, My Mind's Eye

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 69 for the year.)

More Parkrun Pages

I have a couple more parkrun pages to share today. These are both 8x8 and bring my parkrun album up to date. I'm making/sharing them in pairs to keep my page count for the year even as I count these as half-pages.

67.5 Thornbury

I ran at Thornbury on the weekend of the Twilight crop in May. My page is based on a challenge from Scrap Squad for their Birthday Cybercrop.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Label Sticker - October Afternoon; Enamel Shapes - Shimelle

68. Orpington

We ran at Orpington last month to collect an 'O' for the parkrun alphabet challenge. All the papers on my page are from my scraps box, even that filmstrip piece.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV, Paper - Paige Evans Turn the Page, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline, My Mind's Eye Just Splendid; Sticker - Teresa Collins; Washi Tape - Ebay; Enamel Shapes - My Mind's Eye, Altenew

Brighton Marathon

I'm filling in an April gap in my 2025 album today, a page for my husband running the Brighton Marathon. My daughter and I moved around the course providing snacks and encouragement, but also taking photos of his progress. I have eight photos from the points where we saw him, which I lined up in two rows with the distances on them. I filled the space below with pieces from a 6x6 pad and layered journalling strips over them. 

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Pebbles New Arrival, My Mind's Eye Just Splendid; Letters - Simple Stories; Washi Tape - Dovecraft, Unkown; Enamel Stars - Latech

(Page 67 in my count for the year.)

Parkrun Pages

We've passed the half-way point of the year, which feels more than time to catch up with my parkrun album. This is on volume 3 now - the first was an album/journal which tracked my first year (2018) of parkrunning week by week as I moved from walking it, through mixed running/walking, to finally regularly running 5km. After that initial year, I've just recorded our milestones, tourist runs and other significant events: volume two covers 2019-2022 and volume three 2023 to date. These pages are 8x8 and I count them as half-pages in my page count for the year.

65.5 Basildon 500

We've done Basildon parkrun a few times as they generally meet on Christmas Day while our own Thurrock run is closed, and we went again in January to help celebrate their 500th event along with my sister and brother-in-law.

I used the Doodled Border cut-file from Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files for my page, which is my first DT project of the month.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV, Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Escape the Ordinary; Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio; Washi Tape - Vicki Boutin

66. Ingrebourne Hill

This new local parkrun started in December and immediately became our NENDY (nearest event not done yet); we gave it a few weeks to bed in before we visited in February. I started this page for an NSD challenge which combined a sketch and Grab 5 from Scrap a Sketch, but I've only just finished the journalling. The five items required were ribbon, ink, washi, stamps and blue.

Supplies: Paper - My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm, Simple Stories Awesome Boy, Washi Tape - Vicki Boutin

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 from La Palma

Having made my only missing page from Gran Canaria, I've completed three of the five Canary Islands that we visited in 2021 and I'm moving on to the island of La Palma.

Three of these pages are from a ship's tour we took to see more of the island. It's rare for us to do that but the Spanish public transport websites didn't fill me with confidence that we could make a similar trip by ourselves. 

My paucity of background papers remaining mean that I pulled in an extra paper for one of the single pages and used white cardstock with ink and a stencil for the double.

(The numbers are my page count for the year.)

61. Plaza de Espana

I'd already printed three 4x6 photos, so I fell back on an old design favourite, lining them up in a column next to a stack of paper scraps from the rest of the album. I often put the photos on the left when I do this, so I've moved them to the right for a change and added a trio of tags on the left. 

62. Nuestra Senora de las Nieves

First stop on the tour was the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, patron saint of the island. It's quite plain on the outside but a riot of gold decorations on the inside.

63 & 64. Caldera de Taburiente

The main purpose of our tour was to visit the Caldera de Taburiente National Park, a crater formed by the collapse of a trio of volcanoes around 525,000 years ago. I went for a double page, originally printing 10 photos but culling two before I finished. I used four 6x8 paper across the double page, a decision sparked by seeing how nicely the printed design on the right-hand paper sat with the two 3x4 photos.

65. Cumbre Vieja by Night

We were on La Palma at the same time that a volcano was erupting (though well away from it) and we sailed past it in the evening. I've already scrapped a daytime photo and I decided to scraplift the page for the nighttime version. I wouldn't normally use the same page design twice in an album but I thought it would subtly tie the two together. They aren't completely identical as I have a larger photo this time and a different mix of papers.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Shimelle, Heidi Swapp Care Free, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, OneCanoeTwo Willow, Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets; Letters - KaiserCraft; Stickers - Heidi Swapp; Journalling Card - Project Life; Glitter Tape - The Works; Washi Tape - Little B; Puffy Shapes - Shimelle, Elle's Studio, Rosie's Studio; Cork Geotags - Studio Calico; Enamel Shapes - Maggie Holmes, Altenew, Violet Studio; Gems - Love to Craft