The Dark Light

Much as I'd like to get my2018 album finished, the photos just aren't inspiring me at the moment so I'm changing tack, picking challenges that do inspire me and then finding photos (from any year) to go with them.

The first one that caught my eye was a scraplift challenge from Scrap Squad, to lift a page by Lacey Robin for Paper Issues. 

Those diamond shapes made me think of the tile print on a paper from Vicki Boutin's Storyteller collection, so I started by chopping it up into individual squares. I picked grey cardstock for my background, and smooshed ink over it in three colours that match the paper. Most of it's been covered by the tiles, but that's the effect I wanted, with just a little peeking out around the edges.

My photo's an old one of Dungeness Lighthouse (which coincidentally we visited again last month so it'll be making another appearance here soon) that I matted on cardstock and then another Storyteller paper. The title gave me some trouble as the lighthouse has been decommissioned so I couldn't use any title based around it shining; it's even been painted black so that is harder to see and doesn't confuse seafarers. Eventually I hit upon The Dark Light and cut it on my Silhouette as I didn't have all the letters I needed in any of my sticker sets. 

Supplies

Cardstock - Colorset?

Paper - American Crafts/Vicki Boutin Storyteller

Letters - Creative Devotion

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Stars - Doodlebug

Ink - Ranger, Memento

Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Dreamland

I will get back to my Far East album, but I am easily diverted by a good cybercrop; this time it was one from For the Love of Pretty Paper with challenges themed around the letters S-C-R-A-P.

I did 'S' for the last page I shared, so now it's 'C' - our choice of chipboard, clips, cork and crosses plus compulsory charcoal. I don't have many photos printed right now, so I flipped through an old photo album and found a quartet from my schooldays, an end-of-term trip to Dreamland, an amusement park in Margate.

I'd previously tried to scrap these photos, and had cropped them down to 4" x 3.5" before getting frustrated and abandoning them. This time I worked from a sketch, published in January by The ScrapRoom, and was more successful.

I needed soft vintage papers to match the colour tones in my photographs and started from the star print paper which I mounted on a charcoal stripe. The red spotty paper came from my scraps box but wasn't really wide enough for the banner, so I added a second one (and dropped the circle). 

I matted the photos on four colours of cardstock, tucked in extra strips around the edges and cut the title on my Silhouette from the same four colours with a charcoal offset. I pulled in crosses, chipboard stars and a cork-patterned heart in my scattering of embellishments and finished with a couple of phrase stickers.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, DCWV, Stampin' Up!
Paper - Echo Park We Are Family, We R Memory Keepers Shine, Pebbles Fresh Goods, Echo Park Dots & Stripes
Letters - Bo Bunny Et Cetera
Chipboard - Simple Stories 24/Seven
Stickers - One CanoeTwo #Stickerbook
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Castle Builder

Another of the challenges in For the Love of Pretty Paper's birthday party cybercrop was 'Musical Chairs' which asked us to create a repeating pattern. 

Some time ago, I made a 'starting point' page with a mosaic of hexagons cut from the scraps of a 6x6 pad, and that was still sitting around my craft space so I decided to finish it off for this challenge.

The blue and yellow feel 'beachy' to me and I had always intended this to be a single photo page with the photo covering the empty space in the mosaic, so I searched my old photo albums and found one of my brother that would work for this.

I matted the photo on a scrap of denim paper that was wider than the photo, and filled the gap with a few pieces from the same paper pad. I'd originally added a couple of yellow enamel dots to the page (the end of a pack, I'm sure) but I preferred to have three and managed to find another that matched before adding some blue ones too.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart
Letters - American Crafts/Shimelle, Papermania
Washi Tape - Ebay
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Simple Stories, Pretty My Page
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Mister Huey's, Cosmic Shimmer, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Hexagon Die

Just Chill

Another post, another challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper. The next one that I tackled from the Scrap in Colour cybercrop was 'What's in Your Pocket?' which asked us to use Project Life cards (or papers cut to their sizes) and also the colour blue on a page.

I shuffled my branded PL cards for a while before switching to an equivalent product from Simple Stories, their Insta-Squares. Mine are from a 2014 summer/beach collection, and have been kicking around for far too long, so I decided to kill the pack with this page if I could. I picked old beach photos of my brother when we were children and layered them on some whole cards. I used pieces of cards to form borders at the top of bottom of the page and then tucked lots of the off-cuts back in to the layers behind the photos. It ended up being quite a busy page, but I have no cards left now.

Supplies
Paper - Crafts House
Letters - Basic Grey
Cards - Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico Stars , Camera/Ball from a Stash Swap
Ink/Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

On the Farm

Di's Page

Back before National Scrapbooking Day, I saw a layout by Di Willcox that I was inspired to scraplift using an old pack of 2x12 paper strips from My Mind's Eye. 

That page had to wait a while, though I did make it for an NSD challenge from Bramble Fox to use four or more patterned papers on a page.

Knowing my colour scheme from the paper pack, I picked a trio of old photos from my grandparents' friends' farm, somewhere we visited regularly in my childhood. I matted them on cardstock which I turned into a pocket for journalling. I haven't written it yet, but I want to include the back story and why this farm is significant.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow
Letters - Jillibean Soup

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Pennant Die

Cousins

I've had this stars cut-file sitting on my desk for ages; I don't remember now which photos I cut it for or why I didn't use it, but it had been there long enough.

National Scrapbooking Day is always a good time for random photos and random supplies and I fulfilled three NSD challenges while creating a permanent home for my cut-file: The Cut Shoppe asked us to use any of their cut-files with torn paper; Bramble Fox just wanted to see plenty of stars on a page; UK Scrap Addicts asked for a large element for their 'Death Star' challenge from a Star Wars themed day. 

The original cut-file (Oh Little Star) was a 12" circle, but I have a Silhouette Portrait which can only cut 8" wide so I'd cut 2/3 of the circle, and now I positioned it to one side of the page and covered the cut edge with a torn strip of paper. I dived into the archives again for a single photo - me, my siblings and our cousins 35 years ago - which I layered up with patterned papers.

Finally, For the Love of Pretty Paper have 'A Prompt a Day for the Month of May' to get us using more of our supplies; the prompts can be combined so here I have Stars, No Flowers and Primary Colours for 3rd to 5th May.

Supplies
Paper - SEI Moravia, Simple Stories, Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, 4Heures 37 Eiffel Avenue, Basic Grey
Vellum - American Crafts
Letters - American Crafts
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Stars - Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Unknown
Gems - Papermania
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Oh Little Star Cut-File
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Easter Lamb

This page came from another challenge of the recent cybercrop at Lottie Loves Paper. Di set a scraplift challenge, with the source being a page that Jana Eubank made for Simple Stories.

This was another page design that led to me using a 6x6 pad with its variety of coordinating patterns. However I found that most of my recent pads have been single-sided which was quite disappointing. 

I found one from Authentique which was double-sided and vaguely outdoor-themed, and managed to match the colours to a farm photo taken on Easter Sunday 25 years ago.

I layered the photo on coordinating papers from my scraps box and popped it up on foam adhesive to keep it above the folded paper circles. With so many patterns already on the page, I kept my embellishment quite simple, with a few punched shapes in a dark woodgrain. I added my title to an acetate piece that you can still see the papers behind it; the pearls are behind the acetate too.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Authentique Nestled, Scraps
Letters - Basic Grey
Acetate - Studio Calico
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft?
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Hobbycraft Heart Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch
Silhouette Portrait & Perforated Circles Cutfile

Happiness

Natalie's Page

Cybercrops have been coming thick and fast recently and the latest one that I've played along with came from Lottie Loves Paper over on Facebook. I often find it easier to work with older photos for cybercrops so I've dug into the 1980s archives for the next few pages that I plan to share with you.

Each challenge was set by a different member of the DT or by a guest designer, and Natalie's challenge was to use tags and/or tabs. I loved her sample page so much that I decided to scraplift it. I picked the remains of an older 6x6 pad to die-cut my tags, and paired them with old beach photos of my siblings.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper The Pier
Die-Cuts - KaiserCraft Island Escape
Stickers - MAMBI, OneCanoeTwo
Washi Tape - Stampin' Up!
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Chalk - Readicut Crafts
Mist - Mister Huey's, Heidi Swapp, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Tag Die

Whatever Takes Your Fancy

I'm sharing a page with older photos today, made as part of February's GoGoGetaway cybercrop. The challenge was to scrapbook with something quirky and one of the suggestions was to use photos of quirkily dressed subjects. I found a trio of family pictures from a fancy dress barbecue tucked away in an old photo album and went from there.

I used half a sketch from February's Pick Your Side Sketch Challenge at Scrap Our Stash, the left side of their double page, and teamed it with red and green papers from my scraps box.

I auditioned various phrases incorporating the word 'fancy' for my title while I worked on this page before settling on this one. However the barbecue was an annual event so one of my rejected titles may still make an appearance later on.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Paper - Heidi Swapp Vintage Chic, Hot off the Press, Teresa Collins, Chatterbox

Letters - Jillibean Soup

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz

Enamel Shapes - Marianne Designs

Pearls - Scrapberry's

Flower, Chipboard - Unknown

Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot

Spellbinders Circle Dies

X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Dovecraft Label Die

Quickutz Label Die

Craft Creative Flower Punch

X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch

Great Little Engines

I'm sharing another page today that I created by pairing up a 'starting point' with some old photos. I started off this page some time ago in order to kill off an Echo Park collection pack, and then left it for the right photos.

The ones I picked are from the Bluebell Railway in East Sussex, which I visited very many times as a child. I had two photos of the engines from this visit, so matted them together and then tucked in a punched strip next to the photo block. I hadn't stuck down the journalling card or all the circles previously so I rearranged those and fussy cut a camera from one of the scraps I'd kept from the collection.

My title gave me a lot of trouble as I couldn't find the right size, colour and font for the space available. I ended up using some small tiles above the journalling card, as being the best fit, but I'm still not entirely happy with it.

Supplies
Cardstock - Unknown
Paper - Echo Park This & That Charming
Letters - KaiserCraft
Stickers - Echo Park, CLaoud 9 Design
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
X-Cut Circle Punches