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

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.

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

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.