Fact or Fiction

I'm returning to my 2026 album now, and filling in a gap from earlier in the year. My son and I went to a recording of the Radio 4 show The Unbelievable Truth in February but we were a long way back and my photos (the smaller ones, taken at the end) weren't very clear. Thus I waited until the programme was broadcast and pinched a publicity photo to go with them. 

I'm trying to clear some old stash, so the colour scheme for this page came from a set of border stickers that I want to use up. Everything on the page except the letters and enamel dots is probably at least eight years old and comes from a wide range of suppliers.

I have two more border stickers left from this sheet, but they are black/white and grey/white so more versatile than these with the yellow and blue.

Supplies: Paper - Dear Lizzy New Day, Bazzill Basics, Simple Stories Heart, Pink Paislee Portfolio, My Mind's Eye; Letters - Hobbycraft; Stickers - Fancy Pants, Crate Paper, OneCanoeTwo, October Afternoon; Stars - Studio Calico; Enamel Dots - Violet Studio

All the Grid Squares: Watts Wood and Sandy Lane

I'm continuing with my project to walk in/through all the OS grid squares in Thurrock. At the end of my last post, I was going to focus on six unvisited squares in the south-west of the borough.

I started with square TQ5678, the single square at the bottom-right of the map, and plotted a rectangular walk round the upper part of the square. 

I started with the footpath on the right of the square, which took me through Watts Wood and into a grassy field behind the wood. I followed a well-trodden path through the grass until it turned back into the wood and fizzled out, then made my way back to the main road. The second part was more urban, following a couple of alleyways and another road to complete the route.

I then relocated for a second walk, in the top two boxes of the map. 

You can see there's one orange B road running across the squares as far as the black line which is the Thurrock boundary. All the white space is landfill, which is securely fenced off, and the little green wooded part was inaccessible behind the same fencing. Thus my route for ticking off these squares was just an out and back along Sandy Lane/B1335 from nearby Aveley. This was the first time that I'd walked over the boundary on a road, so I took a photo of the 'Welcome to Thurrock' sign.

Now my map of Thurrock overall looks like this:

My three new squares are yellow, and I've previously visited all the green squares (since August 2022). The grey and blue are the land and water borders with Essex and the Thames. The I square at the bottom is within Tilbury Docks and inaccessible to the public.

My next outing will be to Rainham Marshes to tick off the two grey squares on the left (which are grey because the border runs through them), which are the left two of the middle row of the OS map segment at the top of this post.

Finishing my Fly-Cruise Mini-Book

I've made the title page for my fly-cruise mini-album, and I've made four double pages for the four ports we visited, so now it's time to share the final single page, as there have to be an even number.

I've used a photo of the four of us, all dressed up on formal night, and placed it on a pocket which holds our cruise log. I'd initially planned to make a pocket on the back cover for the cruise log instead, but there was space here so I decided to move it and keep the inside covers clear.

My original plan was to make a version of the Jubilee Book by the late Cal Summers, which she made for Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. In the end, I don't think I've made any of her pages in exactly the same way, as I made mine in pairs to fit the photos and stories that I wanted to include. However, my basic book size is down to her and I returned to her videos to make the hinges and cover for mine. I had to pull in extra papers for this, but I'm quite happy that they are different ones from those that I used inside the album.

My outside cover is almost a polka-dot, but the dots are actually tiny planes. Unfortunately, the patterned paper started to split on the folds, so I had to go over the top and bottom of the covers with washi tape, but it's not too obvious.  I decorated the front using Twilight Crafts' Overlapping Triangles cut-file, which I cut from the same cardstock as the book pages, and backed with leftover papers that are in the book. I cut the 'Fly Cruise' words from the same dies that I'd used on the title page, and added the four ports in tile stickers below the cut-file.

I covered the insides with a cream and brown travel icons print.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Craft ID Travel the World, Simply Made Crafts Travel Keepsakes, Photoplay Anchors Aweigh, Simple Stories Hello Today, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart, American Crafts Shimelle, Simple Stories I Am; Letters - Teresa Collins, Creative Devotion; Stickers - Simple Stories, Photoplay; Washi Tape - 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.

Review Points

1. Format

I was trying a mini-book as an alternative to a 12x12 album for a shorter-than-usual cruise to see how they compare, whether a mini-book would hold enough photos and whether it would be quicker to complete.

My last 12x12 cruise album was for Norway last year; it lasted twelve nights with six ports of call and the resulting album took me about six months to make (in between other projects) with 36 pages holding 148 photos. By contrast, the mini-book was for seven nights with four ports of call; it took about three months to make (among other pages) and holds 92 photos. This is an average of 23/24 photos per port so the smaller format hasn't affected the number of photos I included. The main difference was that for the 12x12 I made pages until I had covered everything I wanted to include, whereas for the mini-book I limited myself to one basic double page per port and then added as many flaps and inserts as necessary to hold everything. This meant I had to plan carefully when designing the pages and had to scrap each port as a whole rather than just going page-by-page. I did find that there is much less 'white space' in the mini-book than the 12x12 album as almost all the surface area is covered in either photos or journalling. 

The new format certainly worked, but the resulting mini-book has a 1.75" spine and I wouldn't want to go much thicker, so I think I will have to limit it to shorter cruises. I don't think it would sensibly hold more than five ports, especially if there are a lot of shipboard photos to include too (there weren't this time but there were five pages in the Norwegian album). However, I didn't use either inside cover so I have extra space there if required another time.

We currently have three more cruises booked (for 2026 and 2027). One to Iceland has six ports, one around Britain has four ports and a return to Norway has seven ports. The middle one looks like a good candidate for another mini-book. I also have a few older cruises that don't have albums yet, at least one of which should suit the mini-book format.

2. Supplies

I blogged my starting supplies here, but I didn't use them all. I found that I filled almost all my page space with photos and journalling cards, with little room for much else. I only used bits of two of the Pink Paislee Atlas papers and none of the My Mind's Eye Hello World. My pack of Simple Stories Hello Today papers was already the leftovers from another project and was still sufficient for this album when bulked out by just four additional 12x12 sheets with quiet patterns like polka dots and stripes for the inside pages and then four more for the covers. When I make my next mini-book, I should be able to do so using existing supplies again rather than buying new ones. I may make the pages just a little smaller so that I can use 6x8 papers, but I'll need to think about that and plan it out.

Mini-Book Pages from Honfleur

This is the last of my port pages from our fly-cruise last November, for an extra port that was squeezed in as an itinerary change. We were supposed to visit Málaga, Gibraltar and Lisbon, with an overnight stay in the Portuguese capital, but an approaching storm caused the company to shorten the stops in Gibraltar and Lisbon so we could cross the Bay of Biscay a day earlier. This gave us a free day at the end of the cruise, which we spent in Honfleur, France.

My husband and I had been here before but that was 15 years ago and we didn't remember much beyond the Vieux Bassin (old harbour) and an old wooden church with separate bell tower. We picked up a map when we disembarked which showed three walking tours in the town so we started off with two of them; later in the day our daughter and I did the third.

Each port has a double page in my mini-album, with a 4x6 title card and then  generally three more 4x6 cards or photos which open up with enough flips and flaps to hold all the photos.  

This time, the left side opens up to a page of journalling for the whole day and a waterfall of photos and cards from the Old Town walking tour, as there were so many old buildings to include.

I haven't taken pictures of all the waterfall pages, but there are 10 photos in there with a few journalling cards to explain what they all are.

The top of the right-hand side has a view of a park called the Jardin des Personnalités, and this lifts up and pulls out from a pocket. The Jardin is full of busts of famous people connected with Honfleur, and I have included about half of them, in four groups.

The bottom of the right-hand page has a smaller lift up flap from our third walk, to the Côte de Grâce viewpoint. The outside (above) has an overall view of the town, and the inside has photos of the small chapel on the top of the hill.

So that's the last port done, just one other page left and then I need to construct the cover. I've left that until last as I had no idea how thick the pages would get when I started, and therefore what size spine the book would need. That will all be the subject of my next post.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Simple Stories Happy Travels, My Mind's Eye Now and Then; Letters - Glitz Design, Creative Devotion, Make & Create; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Tim Holtz, OneCanoeTwo; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Mini-Book Pages from Lisbon

I'm returning to my fly-cruise mini-book now, and will finish it off in the next few posts. This was a seven night cruise last November with four ports of call, and I'm trialling the mini-book format instead of a 12x12 album. I've previously shared the title page and two doubles for Málaga and Gibraltar, so now it's the turn of Lisbon.

The initial view of each double page has been similar, with a 4x6 title card and three other 4x6 photos or cards, which open up to as required to share all the photos I want to include from each port.

For Lisbon, the left side opens as two separate flaps. The top one has photos of the central Praça do Comércio and also Belém (which our son visited); the bottom one has photos of the Elevador de Santa Justa and the Carmo Church (which our daughter visited):

The right side is a large flap, hinged at the top, for photos of the Alfama district, Lisbon's old town.

I made a pocket to sit behind the lower set of photos, which holds a double-sided pull-out card for the Castelo de São Jorge. 

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Echo Park Dots & Stripes, Pink Paislee Atlas, Simple Stories Simple Vintage Botanicals, Simple Stories I Am, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart; Letters - Glitz Design, Creative Devotion; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Tim Holtz, Pretty Little Studio; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Club Night with AI

I have another page for my 2026 album today, and it's also a DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. My pictures come from a social night for our running club, where afterwards a member turned the group photo into a drawing using ChatGPT, and then my husband turned us all into Lego people.

I stuck with the Lego theme by using the girl from the Lego Pirate, Girl and Spaceman cut-file as a large embellishment, cutting her from dull brown cardstock and backing her with paper scraps, including making her shirt match our club colour. I didn't trust myself to draw her face, so I used some punctuation stickers instead.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania; Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Hello Today; Letters - Shimelle, American Crafts, Papermania; Journalling Cards - Maggie Holmes; Word Stickers - Tim Holtz; Stickers - Studio Calico, Hobbycraft, OneCanoeTwo; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Unknown; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

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

Salt Marsh Half Marathon

My husband's first race of the year was the Saltmarsh Half Marathon, and I went along as support crew, dropping him at the start, pausing twice to see him en route and picking him up at the end.

This page was built around one of the photos I took of a line of runners beside the river, which came out in soft focus and reminded me of a watercolour painting. I decided to print it on plain white cardstock which adds to the softness, and use it in place of patterned paper in the middle of this page. I then layered the before and during photos over the top and the finish photo with a journalling box over the bottom part.

Supplies: Paper - Mintay Golden Days, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline, Basic Grey Urban Prairie, Shimelle Glitter Girl; Letters - Hip Kit Club, Echo Park?; Die-Cuts - Simple Stories, Pinkfresh Studio, October Afternoon; Enamel Stars - Latech

20 Years of Blitz Gooday

Years ago, I received some swatch books from Paige Evans' collections in a mystery box; these are 2" square books packed with patterns and sayings filling each page. I've been meaning to make a tiled layout ever since but never got round to it. April's sketch from the girls at 1 Sketch: 3 Ways (originally published by Page Maps) finally gave me the push to get it done. 

I picked a photo from our company's 20th anniversary celebrations as it matched the colours in my swatch books, an odd way for me to start but it was curiously satisfying to switch round my normal process.

Supplies: Paper - Paige Evans Truly Grateful, Amy Tangerine Brave + Bold, Shimelle Never Grow Up; Swatches - Paige Evans Wonders, Paige Evans Go the Scenic Route; Letters - Doodlebug; Washi Tape - Shimelle, Little B; Enamel Dots - American Crafts, Stampin' Up!

A Few Birthday Cards

I'm sharing a few cards today, in particular one that I made as a DT project for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used the Chain Circle cut-file shrunk down to about 5.5" across and backed with four papers from a 6x6 pad. I then added another circle in the middle with my sentiment and popped it up on foam squares.

This one was a lift of a previous card, as there's no need to 'reinvent the wheel', a change of papers gives it a different look, and it went to a different recipient.

Finally, this card was based on one of the 'bits and pieces' that I keep in a drawer for making cards. I've had the plaid paper with the sentiment for ages so I tore it in two to stretch it across a wider card and filled in the gap with coordinating pieces. 

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

Mini-Book Pages from Gibraltar

I'm sharing the pages from my cruise mini-book in the order that they come in the book, not the the order that I made them. I rarely make holiday album pages in chronological order so that there is no evolution in style or sudden introduction of new supplies as you turn the pages. I've already shared the pages from Málaga but these from Gibraltar were the first that I made.

Gibraltar was our shortest stop, with the fewest photos, so it seemed like a good place to get started and feel my way with this new size. I will have a double page for each port, with as many flaps and inserts as I need to cover everything in that space. This is the initial view for the Gibraltar pages:

The left side, with my title card and a view from the ship at sea, pulls out from a pocket and unfolds to three panels with photos from our cable car trip up the Rock:

Turning that over gives two more panels, and returns to the title page.

The two photos on the right side both lift up to show more photos. The top one has the town hall and a remembrance-themed postbox topper (we visited in November)

and the bottom part has extra photos of the Alameda Botanic Gardens.

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Simple Stories Simple Vintage Botanicals; Letters - Glitz Design; Journalling Cards - Project Life; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Mini-Book Pages from Málaga

We flew out to Málaga for our cruise, and then spent the next day in the town. Each port of call is getting one double page in my mini-album and I've decorated four 4x6 title cards (one per port) which will start off the left side along with a photo of the town each time. I'll then add as many flaps and inserts as I need to accommodate my photos and journalling.

This is the initial view of the Málaga pages:

The left side opens out to show photos of the amphitheatre and the Alcazaba (palace) which we had visited before.

The right side is dedicated to the 14th century Castillo de Gibralfaro which was built on a on a hill above the city in order to protect it (spoiler - it failed in 1487). I had plenty of photos that I wanted to include so this page opens out with two flaps:

Supplies: Cardstock - Art Studio; Papers - Simple Stories Hello Today, Pink Paislee Atlas, American Crafts Shimelle; Letters - Teresa Collins; Journalling Cards - Project Life; Stickers - Simple Stories, Studio Calico, Make & Create, 49 and Market, Teresa Collins; Washi Tape - Ebay, Little B; Enamel Geotag - Pink Paislee

Quiz-ical

Time to share a new DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny-Wren Cut-Files. I've used Circle in Sections with a photo of our work team after we won the local Chamber of Commerce quiz.

The cut-file was pre-cut in a soft yellow so I looked for a 6x6 pad to match it and found an old one from My Mind's Eye with enough patterns left to make it interesting. I tried to alternate darker and lighter papers but did them randomly rather than in strict rotation as I had varying amounts left.

My embellishment is quite simple as I didn't want to distract from the circular shape of the cut-file by tucking anything in around it. I have a pack of vellum stickers that I would love to finish off, so I placed pairs of black and teal ones in three places and then added trios of enamel dots from the same collection as the papers.

Supplies: Paper - K & Company, My Mind's Eye Now and Then; Letters - American Crafts; Stickers - Studio Calico; Enamel Dots - 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 27 for 2026)

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.