Fly-Cruise Mini-Book Title Page

I'm sharing the first page of my new cruise mini-book today. 

All our previous cruises have started and finished at a UK port, but this was a fly-cruise where we flew out to Málaga and sailed back to Southampton, joining the ship for final week of its 57-night Mediterranean Grand Voyage. 

I will have a double page for each of the ports visited, but this is just a single to get started. The top photo is one I bought onboard which shows our route, and the bottom is one of our ship, Fred. Olsen's Balmoral. Both of these are stuck to flaps that lift up for more photos and journalling.

The top flap lifts to show a photo as we boarded the plane, one of Málaga from the air and a journalling card.

There's more journalling under the bottom flap as our original itinerary was changed due to bad weather so I have an explanation of the changes and then both the old and new versions.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio, Papermania; Paper - Simple Stories Hello Today, Pink Paislee Atlas, Simple Stories Happy Travels, Echo Park Dots and Stripes; Letters - Shimelle; Stickers - Simple Stories, 49 and Market, Tim Holtz; Washi Tape - Little B

(Page 26 for 2026; it's neither 12x12 or 8x8 so doesn't follow my existing 'rules', but I've decided to count this as a whole page in my count for the year. It has the same total surface area as a 12x12 and I also had to make the base page first.)

A New Project for a Fly-Cruise

Up to now, I've made (or planned to make) an album for each of our foreign holidays. However, that is beginning to cause me problems so I am going to change tack.

Both our children have left home and we cut down our working hours in recent years, so we've been able to take more holidays and the albums 'to do' list is growing faster than I can complete them. We've both recently retired completely so this 'problem' is only going to get worse. I am more-or-less completing the current annual albums but I don't find the time to work on the older ones that still have plenty of gaps, or to turn the boxes of pages from even earlier years into albums. This weighs on my mind as I will eventually be leaving all my albums to our daughter (our son has no interest) and I'd rather leave her a complete set of annual albums than a stack for holidays where she wasn't even there.

I don't want to stop documenting our holidays, but I'm going to try switching to making mini-books for them instead of 12x12 albums. I don't plan for the books to be particularly 'mini' as I'm starting with an 8"x8.5" for a fly-cruise we took in November. This one's an experiment to see whether I can make mini-books with enough flips and flaps to hold all the photos and whether I can make them in a shorter time period.

I'll be basing my first mini-book on the 'Jubilee Album' taught by the late Cal Summers in the summer of 2022 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee; however I'll obviously be using different papers and I will mix and match the page types to suit my needs rather than making exactly the same book.

My last 12x12 holiday album was for a cruise to Norway in July/August last year. It lasted twelve nights with six ports of call and the resulting album has 36 pages with 148 photos. In November we took a seven night fly-cruise with four ports of call; I expect my mini-book to have two single pages and four double pages (one per port) with extra pockets inside the front and back covers. Cal's version holds 208 photos (which is more than my Norway album does) but, as I said, I'll be modifying her design.

I've bought a stack of A4 kraft cardstock for my basic album structure, but nothing else as I'm planning to 'bash my stash' for this one. I started from the remains of Simple Stories' Hello Today collection; it may be an odd choice as it's an annual collection with patterns on one side of each paper and an assortment of monthly cut-aparts on the other, but I like the way that the colours repeat in different patterns across the collection.

I've added the leftovers of Pink Paislee's Atlas collection which is travel-themed and some of the colours match those in Hello Today. I originally used this for Austria 2016 so it's high time I got the rest used up or passed on. I also have the remains of a 6x6 pad and some journal cards from My Mind's Eye Hello World which I might mix in, though only some of the colours are right.

Since I mostly have scraps of all these collections, I've pulled out some 12x12 papers from Simple Stories, Heidi Swapp, Shimelle, Echo Park and We R Memory Keepers which match the colours of Hello Today. I also have two pieces of memorabilia which I want to include - our cruise log and a postcard with a map of our route.

I'm going to keep the pages flat on this project so that everything folds up neatly. This means no enamel dots or bulky embellishments so I'll be decorating with stickers and punched shapes. I have a sheet of travel-themed washi stickers from 49 and Market, most of a pack of camera-themed clear stickers from Make & Create and a filmstrip washi tape, all in black and white. I won't be using any Thickers and will concentrate on die-cut letters and flat stickers for titles.

All the Grid Squares: Cely Woods & Kenningtons Park

I'm documenting a couple of recent walks in which I resurrected my old project to walk in all the OS grid squares in Thurrock Borough. I'd started this in 2022 but it fell by the wayside in 2023, and now I'm going back to it.

I've blogged previous walks in detail, but my blog is primarily for me and I don't need that detail. I'm more interested in recording which squares I have ticked off, so this post will be a quick summary and a few photos.

My first walk started in Cely Woods and continued through the neighbouring Warwick Wood and White Post Wood. This is all ancient woodland, now managed by Forestry England.

The main track is about 2.5km long but I wandered off deeper into the woods on more minor paths at some points. I was primarily looking for bluebells but made sure that I passed through all four possible grid squares.

My second walk was in Kenningtons Park which is a little way south of Cely Woods. It wasn't clear from the maps online just how much land was accessible and it turned out not to be a huge area, though a notice board in the car park shows their plan to construct new paths in the future.

I explored all the paths, including several dead ends and found myself back at the car park in no time, so went round again to make the walk worth the drive there. 

Small though the area is, I completed two more squares here and also walked a short way into a previously visited square.

I've marked the Cely Woods walk in orange and Kenningtons Park in yellow on the map below; the green squares are ones that I had previously visited; the purple one is my home square; the grey and blue squares are the land and river borders of the borough. The square with a red outline is inside Tilbury Docks and inaccessible.

This leaves me with a small, isolated block of squares in the west of the borough which I will be attempting to visit next. I've outlined them in red here, and marked the borough boundary in black.

A visit to RSPB Rainham Marshes will get me two of them, the left two in the row of three, but I'll need to do some more research to see whether I can use parks or footpaths through the other squares or if I'll have to resort to walking along roads.

80

Today's DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files was initially inspired by the February sketch for For the Love of Pretty Paper. I knew that I could use the Star Bunting 1 cut-file with that sketch and a photo from my mum's 80th birthday.

I based my colour scheme on the plate that my mum's holding as I knew I had a mixed media style paper from Vicki Boutin in those colours and, since I store my whole papers by manufacturer/designer, I immediately spotted the floral from another of her collections to go with it. 

I cut half the cut-file from a pink patterned paper to go against the yellow stripes on the background, and ended up cutting it into two pieces so that it would show on the left half of the page.

I built a paper stack behind the photos and went through my embellishment drawers (I store those by colour) for anything else that I could tuck in (and used up a pleasing amount of oddments). 

Supplies: Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, Vicki Boutin Sweet Rush, Pinkfresh Studio Happy Holidays, Basic Grey Urban Prairie, Paige Evans Bungalow Lane; Numbers - American Crafts; Filmstrip - 49 and Market; Word Stickers - Jen Hadfield; Stars - Hobbycraft; Acetate Heart & Tab Die-Cuts - Unknown

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 25 for the year.)

All the Grid Squares: Project Resurrected

Back in August 2022, I embarked on a project to walk in or through all the (accessible) OS grid squares in Thurrock (and blogged about it here). However, by January 2023 a combination of rising workload and poor weather saw it quietly stop. It wasn't a conscious decision to abandon it, and I've thought about the project many times since then, and now I'm going back to it. I've recently retired, I want to stay active and I'm bored of walking routes from home.

Last time I blogged, my map of Thurrock looked like this, with each box being a 1km OS grid square:

The dark green squares were ones that I had walked in since August 2022, while the light green squares were ones that I had walked in prior to that date. When I started, I wasn't sure whether the light green ones would count, but now I have decided that they don't and that I will revisit them. The land border with London/Essex runs through the grey squares and the river border with the Thames runs through the blue squares (and some of the green/visited squares). I am aiming to visit all these border squares, though there are a few where the Thurrock part is tiny and might be inaccessible.

Moving forward to 2026, I've visited a good many more squares even while I wasn't actively exploring. I joined a running club in October 2024 and they are based in the black-outlined square below so I've now run all around there. Furthermore, last summer some members organised 'away nights' in different areas which filled in a few more squares. I've coloured all the running squares bright blue below (as that's our running club colour). I've also visited the orange squares - the one on its own contains our nearest library, and the three at the bottom were covered by us walking from Tilbury Cruise Terminal to Tilbury Town railway station after a cruise in December 2023. Finally, I've blanked out the light green squares following my decision to re-visit them. 

I've been out twice in the last couple of weeks to collect a few new squares so I'll blog them soon.

Parkrun Pages

Having finished my 2025 album, I'm turning my attention to my parkrun album now. I've been sitting on the first page since January since I generally share them in pairs; I count these 8x8 pages as halves in my page count for the year and it's been waiting for a 'twin' to keep the count even.

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

22.5 Wickford Memorial

Catherine's Page

I made this page for week 3 of the January/February series from Scrapbook Challenges UK. We were asked to use yellow, paint splatters, 2+ photos, an animal and the theme of happiness, but we didn't have to use all the prompts. There were bonus points for scraplifting one of three layouts and I chose one by Catherine Lapidge.

I saw Catherine's page as a giant bauble which was perfect for our run at Wickford Memorial parkrun on Christmas Day. I found a couple of Christmassy die-cuts and popped a robin on one for my animal. The background is yellow and I spattered gold paint across the diagonal. I only had one photo and I thought that I would be dropping the happiness theme too, until I found the journalling die-cut. 

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV; Paper - Junkitz Salsa Celebration; Die-Cuts - Fancy Pants, Pebbles; Ribbon Laser-Cut - 49 and Market; Gems - Love to Craft

23. Whitecliffe Lake

This page comes from from January when we visited a newish event which started in November and immediately became our NENDY (nearest event not done yet). I used the March sketch from For the Love of Pretty Paper for this one.

My paper choice was driven by my scraps box. I sort by size (simply two pizza boxes with large and small scraps) so I went through the 'large' box until I found two papers that went together and then stopped looking. I only had one photo so I used a journalling card instead of the second, an ancient one that I am happy has finally found a home on a page.

Supplies: Paper - Simple Stories, Crate Paper; Journalling Card - My Mind's Eye; Flowers - Unknown; Puffy Crosses - Studio Calico; Washi Tape - Tesco

23.5 Valentines

We toured again in February when our local grass course was a quagmire so we turned to alternatives in parks with solid paths. First up was Valentines Park in Ilford. It was a rainy day so I based my page around a raindrop card and pulled matching papers from my scraps box.

Supplies: Papers - Unknown Scraps; Card - Studio Calico; Labels - Kaitlin Sheaffer; Puffy Hearts - Shimelle; Enamel Hearts - My Mind's Eye, Altenew

24. Raphael

The following week we went to Raphael Park in Romford, and I scraplifted a page by Kirei Baldwin which was one of the '12 Days of Spring' scraplifts in the Scrap Squad group on Facebook recently.

I took all my paper strips from a 6x6 pad which I would love to kill off, and added oddments of embellishments in matching colours, including the same clear stickers with faux stitching that Kirei used.

Supplies: Paper - Basic Grey Mint Julep, Shimelle, Vicki Boutin; Stickers - Pretty Little Studio; Enamel Hearts - Maggie Holmes, Altenew

I have a few more pages to do to bring this album up-to-date, but I haven't printed the photos yet so it's back on hold for now.

Malta Memories

I'm sharing my latest DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files today. It's a summary of our holiday in Malta last year, which will go in my annual album for 2025.

I used the frames from the Covid Memes Polaroid cut-file (cutting away the wording) and backed them with eight photos from our trip. I then made a 'MALTA' cut-file to run across the middle in place of the original wording and layered the chipboard word 'Memories' over it. I outlined both cut-files to give them some definition and added a few word stickers and enamel shapes.

This concludes my 2025 album. I have a few pages to make for my 8x8 parkrun album, and I need to make a start on 2026 (five pages on the list so far). I also have plans for a new holiday album project, so look out for that soon.

Supplies: Cardstock - Rosie's Studio; Paper - Rosie's Studio Golden Afternoon; Chipboard - 49 and Market; Stickers - Tim Holtz; Enamel Shapes - 49 and Market

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 22 for the year.)

The Great Outdoors Challenge

The Great Outdoors Challenge is an annual event with participants planning and walking their own routes from west to east coast-to-coast across Scotland. My husband has done it six times and this double page documents his most recent challenge and will go in my 2025 album.

I originally printed 16 photos and later ditched two so that I could make a 4x4 grid in the middle of the page, with title and journalling in opposite corners. I then filled in the edges with torn strips of patterned paper and created a couple of similar embellishment clusters, happily using up a few die-cut labels and heart stickers of  indeterminate age and origin.

Supplies: Paper - Simply Made Crafts?, Heidi Swapp Wanderlust; Border Sticker - atd; Laser-Cuts - 49 and Market; Stickers - Echo Park, 49 and Market, Pretty Little Studio; Die-Cut Labels - Unknown

(Pages 20 and 21 for 2026 - I count doubles as two.)

Stitched Birthday Card

My first DT project for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files this month is a birthday card that I made with a one of the flowers from a stitching cut-file.

I printed out the PDF version of Card Flowers and Border 1 and pricked the holes in a piece of white cardstock by hand. I added distress oxide inks to the outlines and then stitched over the ink with matching threads.

Finally I matted the flower on pink patterned paper and added another piece of the same paper below with my sentiment.

Away Nights

Another page for my 2025 album, and it's a round-up of the extra runs that our running club organised last summer, in country parks and open spaces across the area. I took part in six of them and double-matted each photo with papers from a 6x8 pad. I then butted them all up together to make a colourful panel in the centre of my page.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Simple Stories Summer Snapshots; Letters - Rosie's Studio; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

(Page 19 for 2026)

Fly-Cruise

Another page for my 2025 album, and this one's a double to document a short cruise we took in November. It was the final week of a 57-night Grand Mediterranean Voyage, with us flying out to Málaga in Spain and sailing back to Southampton via Gibraltar, Lisbon and Honfleur.

I turned to the leftover supplies from a previous cruise album and made a symmetrical page with photos from the four ports on a large bracket-shaped square in the middle. I flanked this with two 3x4 photos of our flight and ship on the left side and a 4x6 of our family on formal night on the right.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Set Sail, Pebbles Seen & Noted, Bo Bunny Early Bird, My Mind's Eye Market Street; Letters - American Crafts; Stickers - Heidi Swapp; Die-Cut - Heidi Swapp; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Rosie's Studio, Craftelier

(Pages 17 and 18 for 2026 - I count doubles as two.)

Snoopy in the City

Time to share another DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-files. This one is from a sculpture trail I did in London last December which celebrated 75 years of the Peanuts comic strip.

I've used the Covid Memes cut-file; cutting the wording away left me 11 frames which I rotated and filled with photos of 11 of the 12 statues.

I didn't initially have a colour scheme in mind, so looked at my pad of pre-made mixed media backgrounds, picking one which was a yellow/green. I then picked an orange paper that had touches of that yellow/green in the pattern for my cut-file. With eleven photos framed by the cut-file, I added the twelfth in a column on the left with my title and journalling.

Supplies: Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, K&Company Mira, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline; Letters - Hip Kit Club, Shimelle; Journal Cards - Studio Calico; Stickers - My Mind's Eye, Studio Calico, Jen Hadfield, Latech

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 16 for 2026.)

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all those celebrating today (I know it's in May in many other countries). I'm sharing the card that I made for my mum, and it's quite a simple one this year. I bought Simple Stories' Mom's Day collection a few months ago, and the cut-apart sheet contains a 4x6 sentiment piece that makes the perfect basis for a card. I layered it on a larger patterned paper and just added a couple of old pearl swirls to finish off.

Parkrun Tourism 2025

Having finally finished my Norwegian cruise album, I'm turning to my 2025 annual album, aiming to complete it before 2026 draws my attention instead.

This is a round-up of our parkrun tourism for last year, when we ran seven courses other than our home event. I went with a grid of photos for this month's challenge from Hey Little Magpie, and an orange and blue colour scheme taken from the name signs.

I'm really glad to have cleared some older stash here too; that background is from 2017 and the stars 2018. There's no year on the letter stickers but I'm pretty sure they are even older. Much better to have them in my album than in my stash.

Supplies: Cardstock - Payper Box; Paper - Dear Lizzy Star Gazer, Vicki Boutin Sweet Rush; Letters - Stickopotamus; Puffy Stars - Bella Boulevard

(Page 15 for the year.)

Finishing my Norwegian Cruise Album

Last post for my cruise album, and it's finally time for the title page. Sometimes I make these first if I have a clear idea, but often I leave them until last which gives me time to think them over, and an opportunity to include pieces that I want to be in the album but haven't used elsewhere.

This time, I knew I wanted to use the Norway cut-file from Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files as my title but I had no other ideas so I left it until inspiration struck (or I finished the rest of the pages). 

I started with the cut-file, making it the width of the page, and cutting an offset to back and frame it. I then printed photos of our six ports of call and cut them into hexagons as that has been a repeating shape in the album. However, getting the large title and the hexagons to fit nicely together was tricky. I arranged and rearranged them on the page until I hit on the positions below, filling the gaps in the middle with larger paper hexagons rather than trying to  stick with one size. I then tucked a few smaller ones in around the edges to break up the uniformity.

As I've previously mentioned, I've ended up with an odd number of pages in my album, so I've been through my photos and decided to make an extra one for the silent disco that was held onboard one evening. My page design was driven by the papers I have left, which included two papers from my 6x8 pad and a few tags. I didn't think I would use the cassette sticker from this collection, but it found a home here.

There's been one page that's been bugging me since I made it, one that I'm not happy with, and that was the page I made for Badness, a Madness tribute band which was one of our guest acts on board. I liked the background ink and the central design, but not the line of hexagons so I removed them. They came off cleanly on the right but left some sticky marks on the left of the page which I covered up, and then added some extra pieces at the bottom right to try to balance them. It's not how I would have made it otherwise but I'm happier now.

One final task was the title card for the window in front cover. I don't have the album yet (it's in the post) so I've based the title on a 4x6 card which I will trim down to a square when the album arrives.

I've also been through all the pages to see if any of them felt like they were unfinished, a bit bare or had something missing. This included adding the dates to each port's subtitle page as I didn't manage to include a full itinerary on either my title page or my ship page. I've also squeezed in a few of my leftover stickers where I could.

So, it's all done, and time for a moment's reflection. I've only used a subset of the supplies that I originally gathered. My decision to use white cardstock backgrounds for all my pages rendered most of the 12x12 sheets surplus to requirements and I've only used three of them I think. Never mind, they came from my stash and will go back to my stash. I barely touched the remnants of Simple Stories Hello Today and Pink Paislee Atlas, which I have already repurposed for another project. I've also used far fewer of the embellishments than I intended, though I used almost all the enamel dots (and pulled out some more). My biggest 'mistake' was to buy the Alchemy Hearts Out and About 2025 collection, as I found the style and colours just didn't work with Simple Stories Happy Travels. However, I like the patterns and it is good, sturdy cardstock so I am sure I will put them to good use elsewhere.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Simple Stories Happy Travels; Letters - Simple Stories, Tim Holtz; Numbers - Doodlebug; Stickers - Simple Stories, Pretty Little Studio, 7Gypsies; Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, 49 and Market, 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.

(Pages 13 and 14 for 2026.)

Pages from Åndalsnes

Åndalsnes was the third port of call on our Norwegian cruise last summer, but it's the last to be scrapped as I don't work in order. This means I'm coming to the end of the project, but I still need a title page and I'll be reviewing everything else to see what's missing or where I can add more pieces to use up my kit. In particular, after I've made the title page, I will have an odd number of pages so I will need to make one more to even them up.

8. Åndalsnes

My usual sub-title page, which should be familiar to you by now: a strip of stamp-print paper, a vertical title cut on my Silhouette and a big block of photos with journalling. 

9 & 10. To Nebba & Back

We'd planned to get the cable car to the top of Nesaksla (the mountain on the page above) and walk back down but poor weather meant we cancelled that and instead walked up the mountain as far as the first viewpoint, called Nebba.

Shimelle's Page

11. Byparken

I've already made a page with this title for Ålesund, but Norwegians seem to take a very straightforward approach to naming their parks: by=town, park=park and en=the - so The Town Park. My page is a loose scraplift of one of Shimelle's December YouTube pages rotated, with two photos of the park and a journalling box below them.

 

Amy's Page

12. The Train Chapel

This is one of the pages I made for Week 2 of the Winter Challenges at Scrapbook Challenges - UK, where I scored points for using yellow with two or more photos plus bonus points for scraplifting a previous challenge page from Amy Kattenbelt. 

My photos are from the Train Chapel at Åndalsnes station which is a converted train carriage with an altar made from railway sleepers.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Simple Stories Happy Travels, My Mind's Eye Market Street, Photoplay Anchors Aweigh; Letters - Hobbycraft, Creative Devotion, Maggie Holmes, KaiserCraft; Stickers - Simple Stories; Die-Cut - Vicki Boutin; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft; Enamel Shapes - Simple Stories, 49 and Market, Paige Evans, My Mind's Eye, Papermania

Oh Christmas Tree

It's time for another DT page for  Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files, and I'm scrapping six  photos of Christmas trees from around London.

I used Oh Christmas Tree 2 as the title for my page, and took inspiration for my photo placement from another cut-file, Christmas Tree, with its tree made up of small frames.

I used a 49 and Market paper with a subtle pattern as my background and added stencilling and stamping in a rough triangle. I arranged my photos in a tree shape with a woodgrain paper as a 'trunk' and a star at the top, then nestled in my cut-file against it.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - 49 and Market Tranquillity, Basic Grey Mon Ami, Simple Stories, Stickers - Studio Calico

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 7 for 2026)

At the Hurn and Spoon

Another page for my 2025 album, and I'm combining challenges. First up was this month's sketch from For the Love of Pretty Paper, then the second week of challenges from Scrapbook Challenges UK had us scoring points for using a three word title or longer, sequins or gems, ribbon or lace, triangles, and balloons.

I started from the balloon requirement and picked a Christmas party photo, but I then struggled to actually include them. I managed the title, gems and triangles, but my ribbons are printed cardstock laser-cut pieces so I'm not sure they count.

Supplies: Paper - Elle's Studio Live Laugh Love, Pebbles Welcome Christmas; Letters - Tim Holtz; Baubles - Unknown; Laser-Cut Ribbons - 49 and Market; Stickers - Studio Calico, American Crafts; Gems - Hobbycraft, Love to Craft

(Page 6 for 2026)