From Ledgers to Leisure

Today I'm sharing my second DT page of the month for Twilight Crafts and, for once, I haven't used a cut-file. Instead I've used a couple of papers from 49 and Market's Spectrum Gardenia collection; it's a slightly older one now (2023) but collection packs are still available in the shop (at the time of writing).

My page has photos from my leaving do when I retired earlier this year. The title is something that one of my colleagues wrote in my leaving card, which I earmarked for re-use here. I double-matted my photos using both sides of the Menagerie Medley paper and positioned them on the Pinwheel paper. I embellished by colour-matching some puffy stickers to the different areas of the background, and added a couple of black ones to balance the black title.

Supplies: Paper - 49 and Market Spectrum Gardenia; Letters - Anita's Glitterations; Puffy Stickers - MAMBI, Bella Boulevard, Rosie's Studio

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.