Christmas is Coming

This is my final DT page of the year for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files and, since it's an open-ended role, you'll be seeing more from them next year.

I picked the JWCF601 Camera Shutter Lens 1 cut-file for my page using it as a decorative circular element rather than needing to see it as a camera shutter. I daubed the background with pink, green and yellow inks behind the cut-file and backed my photo with laser-cut pieces from 49 and Market's Rouge Cluster Kit. Finally I layered leaves from the same set mixed with bells from Christmas Spectacular following the shape of the lens to make two sections of wreath.

Most of the 49 and Market supplies for this page came from last year's Mystery Box; I haven't bought this year's as I still have plenty left, but they are available from Twilight Crafts and if you  are a fan of 49 and Market they are sure not to disappoint.

Supplies: Paper - 49 and Market Nature Study; Laser Cut Pieces - 49 and Market; Stickers - Shimelle Christmas Magic, American Crafts Very Merry; 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.

Great South Run

I'm flip-flopping between albums at the moment, here with a new page for my 2025 album. It's a page from October when my husband, sister and brother-in-law all did the Great South Run.

I mostly followed my husband's progress and have photos of him in a few places, only one of an back-view of my sister and nothing of my brother-in-law who I must have missed in the crowd as he passed. Therefore I decided to used the official photos, and left them in their branded frames. My brother-in-law's was poorly framed with him running out of shot but it's all I have.

I based my page on Sketch #188 from Scrap a Sketch, running my photos in a row with a square frame behind them. Taller photos meant less space for the title where indicated so I moved it onto the frame, and I tucked in a journalling card at the bottom. My embellishment is smaller too, with die-cut stars and arrows. The weather was very wet that day, so I cut the stars from a journalling card with a raindrops pattern.

Supplies: Cardstock - Papermania; Paper - My Mind's Eye Market Street; Letters - Doodlebug; Journalling Cards - Studio Calico, Elle's Studio; Phrase Sticker - Tim Holtz; Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio

(Page 113 for the year.)

Pages from Haugesund

Back to the cruise album now - Haugesund was the first port of call of our Norwegian cruise this summer, a small town on the North Sea coast. 

While making these pages, I was also reviewing what I've made so far; I'm sticking with white cardstock backgrounds and plenty of ink to colour them but I felt the need to make sure that the different styles of inking and the uninked all balance, no method dominates and nothing is so rare that it jars. Of the 14 pages before these, for two ports and some onboard activities, I have:

• Six stencilled pages 
• Five uninked pages
• Two with ink smooshed on the pages via the 'packaging technique'
• One where I swiped ink onto the page directly from the ink pad

While I may need to do a bit more smooshing, this is a technique that I feel should be used sparingly and only when it suits the subject matter. However, it should be easy to make more pages where I colour the cardstock by swiping the ink pad directly over it, so that the only one I've done so far fits in better. 

I've used a 50/50 mixture of letter stickers and cut-files for my titles, and I'm happy with that mixture. Using the same font whenever I cut them on the Silhouette adds to the cohesion of the album as a whole. 

I chose to use hexagons as a repeating shape in this album, a decision which was inspired by a PhotoPlay paper, and I haven't used that paper at all yet. I must rectify that soon. I've also only cut my photos into hexagons once and I'd like to repeat that at least once, if not a couple of times, before I finish.

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

107. Haugesund

My sub-title page is similar to the ones I made for Nordfjordeid and Trondheim, but this time I have more photos in a mix of orientations. Using some portrait photos gave me a bit more space on the right, so I got my hexagon stencil out again. The star is a stray one that I found and decided to use immediately.

108. Haraldshaugen

This monument was built in 1872 to mark 1000 years since King Harald Fairhair united Norway. I used my trellis stencil on the background and chose a classic two-photo layout, with my title running vertically. Now I see it on the screen, I'm going to try to move that title down a bit so that it sits  directly opposite the journalling.

109. Kyststien

A couple of photos of views from the coastal path that we followed from Haraldshaugen as part of a circular walk, and one of Kvala Fyr, a tiny lighthouse. I chose to make this one as a 'no ink' page but the edges look too plain now so I might add some ink later.

110. The Rising Tide

I went inky here, picking up the colours from the sea. The four horses of this sculpture are loosely based on the four horsemen of the Apocolypse and are a warning against climate change. More info on this link. 

111. Kvala Batteri

A simple layout and one I've used before, with a stack of three photos and a 6x8 paper cut in two to fill the rest of the width of the page. This battery was built by the Germans during WW2 to protect the town.

112. Our Saviour and the Fishermen

A classic three-photos-across-the-page layout, but I 'bounced' the photos up and down and filled the gaps with a stamp-print paper. This is one where I felt it to be right to repeat the ink-swiping rather than using either stencil again.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Simple Stories Happy Travels, Simple Stories Safe Travels, Simple Stories Summer Snapshots, Alchemy Hearts Out & About 2025, Maggie Holmes Sunny Days; Letters - Basic Grey, KaiserCraft, Tim Holtz; Stickers - Simple Stories, Heidi Swapp; Filmstrip - 49 and Market; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Vicki Boutin; Chipboard Star - Studio Calico; Enamel Shapes - Simple Stories, Pink Paislee, 49 and Market, Cocoa Vanilla Studio, Twilight Crafts