Scenes from the Bridge

Last Friday was a Fun Night (with speed scrapping) for the Green Buttons House at UKScrappers and we had a couple of warm-up challenges earlier in the week; one was this sketch from Mary with three to six small photos.

I normally group my photos into block, rows or columns, so I found this quite hard to get going. I chose photos from a visit to the bridge on our cruise ship a couple of years ago. I had quite a few photos, but lots were poorly lit or slightly blurred. I ended up picking four and moving some of the page elements around the page. The lengths of 'chain' aren't quite so bright in reality; they're closer to the colour of the yellow bars at the top and bottom of the page.

Supplies
Paper - atd, Kit 'n' Kraft plus some unknown
Letters - atd, Joanne's Essentials
Borders - Bazzill Half the Edge (painted)
Paint - Folk Art
Ink - docrafts

The Little Mermaid

Back to UKScrappers and the weekly challenge there. January Week 3 was set by suzycad and had four elements: to use her sketch, to sew on the page, to use ink or paint and to include a quote or title from a poem.

I seem to have scrapped most of my older single photos, but I have loads from a cruise a couple of years ago and I decided that Copenhagen's Little Mermaid was worthy of a single photo page.

I chose a neutral background paper and started by painting through a new dotty stencil and machine stitching the circle. Then I pulled out my Follow Your Heart 6x6 paper pad as I knew that would have lots of small coordinating patterns to build up the layers behind my photo. However I spotted the hexagons paper and cut out a couple of sections from that. Once I had them in place I felt that more paper layers would just be distracting.

I turned to Google to try and find a mermaid-y poem to quote. To my surprise, I found that there were several poems simply titled 'The Little Mermaid' so I went with the obvious title. Challenge complete.

Supplies
Paper - Lily Bee Double Dutch, My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart 6x6 Pad
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Gems - Dovecraft
Paint - Wilko
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Sewing Machine
Fiskars Circles Template

Family Portrait

Following on from the monthly challenge at UKScrappers, I also tackled the January Week 1 Challenge. As always, this was in three parts and this week Siân asked us to use a single photo (preferably a large one), our scraps and a quote.

I've recently done a series of pages using 10x12 photos, so the largest one I had on hand was a bit smaller than 8x10. This was a family photo taken on a cruise a couple of years ago. I thought about a quote, and googled a few ideas, but I didn't find anything I liked so I decided to miss out that part of the challenge (meaning that I will only score 20/30 points this week for my team).

My photo takes up a lot of the page; the strips to the right of the photo and the border above and below it are all scraps.

I'm also sharing this page on Two Peas on a Bucket in response to Glitter Girl Adventure 52: Tricky Title Trouble which was about the size and placement of our titles. I wanted to place mine to the right of the photo, but there were two issues: the paper area is rather narrow, and the letters might be hard to see against the patterned background. Choosing a smaller font to fit the space would result in the words being even harder to see against the pattern. I solved both problems with the addition of the paper flower, which increased the space for the words and draws the eye to the title so it doesn't get lost against the background.

Supplies
Paper - Teresa Collins Vintage Finds Tiles, V&A 8x8 Paper Pack, Echo Park Yours Truly
Flower - Teresa Collins Vintage Finds
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

We're Off

My final page of the year, and there's quite a story behind it. I actually made it in August but had to keep it secret as it was part of a scraplifting chain of pages at the Scrap Whispers blog. The Scrap Whispers game works in the same way as the old game of Chinese Whispers, with each of us passing our page to the next person to scraplift, so it changes through time.

The 'message' or original page started its journey back in April and should have taken around three to four months to pass through the 15 participants. However what with over-protective spam filters and real life emergencies we were about a month behind schedule by the time Sadie's page (right) reached me at the end of July.

I was initially overwhelmed by the challenge that I had taken on as Sadie's page is completely different from anything I would normally choose to scraplift. However I remember breaking it down into its constituent parts and transferring these to my page.

Basically, Sadie had two photos with a large rectangle of paper behind them, a title across the bottom of the page and an assortment of embellishments including a baseball, a tag and a calender.

My photos were taken as we left Dover for a cruise last year and I kept the same orientations and similar sizes to Sadie but I moved the smaller one across to accommodate the quote on my patterned paper. I copied her calender and used a larger tag for my journalling in the same position as her tag. Sadie's baseball became a circle around my journalling and I added a circle sticker around the cruise start date on my calender.

I think that Sadie has used an electronic die-cutting machine for her title, and I like the way you can see the background through the letter shapes. I don't have one so I chose stickers on a strip of vellum for its translucent qualities.

All the pages in the chain were revealed together on the Scrap Whispers blog on Christmas Eve. Why not hop over there and see what Kathy came up with when she received my page, and how it changed step-by-step 

from this:   into this:

A new game will be starting on 12th January, but this time there will be three teams of five so it should move more swiftly; you can sign up via this blog post or find out more information about how the game works here.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Karen Foster Cruise Collage, MME Wild Asparagus
Tag - Making Memories 
Letters - American Crafts Sixth Avenue
Circle Sticker - Flair Designs Anchors Away
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates

Ports of Call

Next up is Treasure Island - a challenge to use a map on a page or card. I made an early page in my Baltic Cruise album, with a map of the area and a single photo from each city that we visited. I chose a paper with a border that I think is reminiscent of the edges of old maps, but no additional papers as I didn't want to detract from the simple grid layout, or cover up any more of the background paper.

Supplies
Paper - Unlabelled
Letters - Making Memories
Ink - Ink It Up!
Thread - from Stash
Map - downloaded from www.geographicguide.com

Black Watch

As well as the classes in the Cybercrop, there are a variety of challenges on offer. Yesterday's challenge was Digital Fortress from Karen Leahy, better known as scrapdolly. She offered a template for a digital page, but we were free to treat the template as a sketch for a paper page.

The sketch immediately made me think of cutting papers from a 6x6 pad to 4x6 and layering the pieces with a 4x6 photo. I chose the Follow Your Heart pad and a photo of the ship we cruised on last year. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill (SeaSalt), Papermania Kraft Basics (for tag)
Paper - MME Follow Your Heart 6x6 Pad
Letters - Making Memories
Corner Peel-Offs - Hobbycrafts

Tools
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
'Ordinary' Hole Punch

Baltic Cruise

The second page I've made today is based on one of Shimelle Laine's favourite page designs, as seen in her Hitchhikers Guide to Scrapbooking class.

I wanted a summary page for our cruise last summer, featuring us and the ship, but this gave me an awkward clash of colours from the two photos. I think I got round it using the stripy paper which combines the brown and the blue. I hand-wrote the journalling so the panel is rather large. I am in two minds as to whether I should leave it as it is or re-do it on the computer to be a bit smaller. 

Supplies
Card - DCWV Natural Stack
Paper - Basic Grey Max & Whispers (Clarence), Cloud 9 Design Ocean Blue Quad
Embellishments - atd
Letters - Stickopotamus
Pens - Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens

Tools
EK Success Corner Punch
  

Stockholm

My Scrapbook Nook are holding another cyber crop in honour of National Scrapbook Day in the US. This time the theme is Movie Madness and the first challenge was to scrap a page influenced by a movie genre. I chose a documentary to scrap the highlights of our day in Stockholm last summer. This is just a summary page to go in the 2011 album. I will be doing a full album for our cruise as well.

I love the colours in the new Pink Paislee papers and I was going to use these flowers in the middle of the page, until I realised just how much I would be covering up with the photos. I changed to just a couple of strips and used a stencil and ink to add some colour to the central panel. My printer chewed up my original journalling tag so this is just white card coloured with chalks.

Supplies

Card - DCWV? plus white scrapbook insert for tag

Paper - Pink Paislee Prairie Hill (Country Meadow)

Ribbon & Thread - from Stash

Ink - Papermania, Versacolor
Chalks - Studio G

Letters - Cut from free paper from Scrapbook Magazine Issue 36

Tools

Tando Creative Harlequin Mask

Art Underground

The second challenge of Shimelle's scrapbooking weekend was all about mixing papers. This isn't really a problem for me as I tend not to buy whole collections of paper, preferring to pick and choose individual papers that I think I will use.

For this page, I picked two 4x6 photos from the Metro in St Petersburg last summer. I started by scraplifting myself (from this layout) but changed things as I went along, ending up here:

The background paper is from Daisy D's, plus Bazzill cardstock and bits from the K&Co Hannah, Bo Bunny Et Cetera and First Edition Spring Feast collections. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Daisy D's Small Flower-Petal, K&Co Hannah, Bo Bunny Et Cetera Stamped, First Edition Spring Feast
Letters - K&Co Hannah, Bo Bunny Et Cetera Combo Stickers

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
EK Success Corner Punch

Copenhagen

As I said last month, we did a Baltic Cruise this summer and I want a page in my general 2011 scrapbook for each destination (as well as making a specific cruise scrapbook!). I have already made a page for St Petersburg, and this is the one for Copenhagen. It's not done from any particular sketch; I just chose  the best photos from the day, sketched and scribbled until I had a rough layout, then let it evolve as I worked.

I borrowed my sister-in-law's Big Shot recently and put it to good use cutting my title letters.

Supplies

Paper - Pebbles, Craft Creations, K & Co 

Cardstock - DCWV Far East Stack, Bazzill

St Petersburg

We went on a Baltic Cruise this summer, and I will obviously create a holiday scrapbook in due course, but I also want to do a page about each destination in my general 2011 scrapbook. Most of the cities will be OK but we spent two days in St Petersburg, visited lots of cathedrals and palaces and took hundreds of photos. How on earth could I condense this to just one page?

Enter Shimelle Laine with her 4x6 Photo Love classes for Two Peas in a Bucket. Each month she creates a new layout with increasing numbers of 4x6 photos and September meant nine photos on one page! She achieved this by creating a large pocket with one photo on the front and eight more on extra cards inside. You can find a video of how she made it here or a PDF with more information here.

This is my version:

and these are the two sides of my inserts:

You might spot that I cheated a bit; I squeezed in a panoramic picture on the outside of the pocket, one of my pictures was portrait so I used a smaller landscape picture on that card, and two of them were proportioned 3x4 and couldn't be cropped to 4x6. Nevertheless I kept true to the overall design.

I made my pocket from vellum which I hand-stitched to my background paper, a piece from the Basic Grey Periphery collection. I used small pieces of the similarly-coloured Basic Grey Archaic papers and some epoxy flowers across all the layouts to tie them together.

All in all, it was a huge amount of work, more like 5 layouts than one, but I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

Supplies
Card - DCWV Neutral Stack
Paper - Basic Grey Periphery, Basic Grey Archaic
Vellum - Paper Adventures
Letters - Mustard Moon
Flowers - WHSmith
Camera Die-Cut - atd

Anyone for Tennis?

I'm supposed to be finishing off my Norway 2009 album, but didn't have anything suitable for this sketch, the Sketch of the Week from Shimelle Laine, so I've turned to this year's Baltic cruise, and photos of my children trying to play tennis on the top deck of the ship.

I moved the embellishment cluster below the left photo and extended my title. I also put my journalling on a tag in place of the embellishment at the top.

The photo's bleached out a bit here as the background card is actually creamy-yellow.

Supplies
Card - from Stash
Paper - K & Co Hannah Scrap Pad, C R Gibson Love Letters, Stripes from Stash
Tennis Embellishments - Paper Cellar
Letters - Papermania and American Crafts

In the Pool

I'm not doing Shimelle's challenges in any particular order - and next up is her Colour Story Challenge - create a project in red, white and aqua! I don't use much red in my layouts so this was rather troublesome. I was going to skip it but decided to check my paper first just in case I had a red patterned paper (solid red seems too intense though I do have red cardstock). Much to my own surprise I found this card that I bought for a cruise album a few years ago and didn't use. We came back from another cruise just last week so I have another stack of photos to scrap, including these pics of my children in the pool. Red, white and aqua - mission accomplished.

Supplies

Card - Unknown/Unlabelled

Paper - Far and Away Pool Water

Life Ring Embellishments - Cut from a Bon Voyage borders sheet