Every Day is a New Adventure

One of the prompts from The 20 Project was to change your title techniques, to think about what you use for your page titles and then to do something different. This made me think about a pre-cut title piece that I received in a Quirky Kit last spring; 'Every Day is a New Adventure' is perfect for a cruise, when you are visiting a new place every day, but I made the whole album for our last cruise without using it. However I also need to document that cruise for my 2015 annual album.

We visited seven towns and cities on that cruise, so I picked one photo from each port and got them printed as squares ready for a double page using quadrants with photos in seven and the title in the eighth. Once I started, I rejected that idea as it wasn't working for me, and I considered scraplifting my Books About Town page instead. My final page was actually a hybrid of the two with rows of photos in distinct blocks.

I mostly used leftover papers from my cruise album for my page, but the filmstrip washi is a brand new purchase. I used silver-grey mist in the album but switched to gold here to match the title piece.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Coredinations, Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Title - Quirky Kits
Letters - October Afternoon
Die Cuts - atd
Washi Tape - Ebay
Puffy Stickers - Paperchase
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Echo Park
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Compass Stamp

The Queen's Battery

At last, after 10 months, I've finished the last page of my scrapbook for our cruise to Ireland and Canada last summer. It's another one from St John's in Newfoundland, with photos of the Queen's Battery, a row of 19th century cannons on Signal Hill, overlooking the Narrows, the harbour entrance.

None of the challenge blogs that I follow have a current sketch that I felt I could make work for these photos, so I went back to last month and Sketch #107 from Sketch-n-Scrap.

I don't have a lot of papers left from my album kit, but I put together three 12" strips for the basis of the page, and matted my photos on three smaller pieces in co-ordinating colours. 

Now all I have to do is wrestle 56 pages into one postbound album, easier said than done, even with extension posts (but I still don't like three ring albums so I will persevere).

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Colorbok Travel, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Stickers - Studio Calico, Anita's Glitterations, Tim Holtz, Ebay
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

St John's (Page Re-Do)

I made a title/divider page for each port of call on our cruise to Ireland and Canada last summer, including this page for St John's that I made last November. 

Fast forward eight months and, as I come to the end of my scrapbook, there is one more photo that I'd like to include in the album. It's a picture of a plaque in Harbourside Park that commemorates the foundation of the British Empire when Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for Britain in 1583; it hasn't fitted with any of the pages that I've made, and it doesn't merit a page of its own, so I decided to add it to my title page. I printed it at 3" square, which is large enough to read the inscription, and squeezed it in above the map paper on my original page. Of course, it wasn't quite that easy as I also lifted the map section up and replaced the background layers with new taller pieces so that my new photo would share the blue mat with the map. Here's the new version (with newly extended journalling too):

The eagle-eyed will notice that the page has also acquired a yellow strip down the right-hand side. That's because the page protectors in my album are only 30cm wide (12" is 30.5cm) so I've had to cut the edges off all my pages to make them fit the page protectors, and I mis-measured this one. The easiest cure was a strip of cardstock stuck behind the original page to bring it back to the 30cm width.

Just one more page to go now!

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Bazzill
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Glitz Designs Uncharted Waters, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts
Tag - Graines Creatives
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp

The Narrows

This is the penultimate page from my album for our cruise to Canada and Ireland last summer. It's another from St John's and has three photos of The Narrows, the entrance to the harbour.

I based my page on Sketch #108 from Sketch-n-Scrap, which I rotated and adapted to my three photos - the channel from Signal Hill, the lighthouse and fort on one side, and the colourful houses on the other side.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, Glitz Designs Uncharted Waters, Basic Grey Little Black Dress
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Anita's Glitterations, 7Gypsies
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp, Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp
Make & Create Label Stamp

Enjoy the View

I can't believe it's been three weeks since I last shared a scrapbook page. That one was from Belfast, the final port of call of our cruise to Ireland and Canada last summer; now I'm going back in time, back to our second stop which was St John's in Newfoundland.

St John's was our favourite port of the seven that we visited, and I've made more pages for it than for any of the others, so many that I decided to move on to the rest and come back later. Now that the album is almost finished, I need an odd number of pages and I've planned three more, plus I want to re-do a page to add one more photo.

The first one is from when we climbed Signal Hill, which rises above St John's and guards the entrance to the harbour; this page has a single large photo of the view from the top.

It's a really simple page, and I feel that it needs more embellishment, but everything else that I tried to add just looked wrong. Hopefully, sometimes less is more.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - Fancy Pants
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

The Islands

I'm a follower of Michelle at Scrapthology, where she posts a scrapbook sketch each Sunday. She published Sketch 100 recently and she's celebrating her century with a prize - just create a page from any of her 100 sketches and link up to her blog by next Monday to enter.

I picked Sketch 66 from last summer and played with the dimensions to suit two landscape photos of the islands in Red Bay, the final Canadian stop of our cruise last summer.

I've been working on grey cardstock for all the pages in this album and I didn't want a large block of colour in the middle of the page, so I pulled in a grey script paper which is almost the same colour. It's not on any of my other pages yet, but I will try to include the remaining pieces somewhere in the album for continuity.

Supplies

Cardstock - Colorset

Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Bazzill Basics, Graphic 45 Artisan Style

Letters - American Crafts

Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Echo Park

Washi Tape - Unknown

Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Woodware Scalloped Cirlce Punch

Icebergs

Shimelle's latest weekly challenge is to be inspired by maps and globes, whether that is a travel page or something more metaphorical. I'm still scrapping our Canadian cruise last summer, so I'm taking the literal approach with this page. When I collected together the supplies for my album I included a strip of globe paper, but I've only used it on one or two pages so far.

As we were leaving Red Bay, the captain announced that we would follow the coast and "try" to find some icebergs, despite the fact that they are tracked by satellite, so he knew exactly where to go. 

I had a variety of photos in different proportions and orientations; I wanted a more free-flowing design rather than a grid so I scraplifted my Fuschalseerundreg page from Austria. I matted all my photos to get some colour on the page and embellished with globes and enamel dots.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Bazzill
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Echo Park This & That
Letters - American Crafts
Washi Tape - Tesco
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Papermania, Echo Park
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware 1" Square Punch
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Around the Bay

The bay in my title is Red Bay, the name of both the village we visited in Labrador and the bay where it is situated. The buildings in the village are strung out along the shore, and we walked about half way round. I picked three photos for my page, two of the village and one of the church.

This led to me tackling the third prompt from the Scrap Like You Mean It series at UKScrappers - "Scrap with Three" - and I decided to see how many trios I could incorporate into my page.

I'm also linking with Rochelle Spears; her part of the Scrappy Friends trio of challenges for March is a 'This or That' challenge - to use either chevrons or polka dots (but not both). 

It's a simple layout, and one that I've used before in various guises, but it's so useful that I know I will use it again.

Supplies

Cardstock - Colorset

Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Pink Paislee Memorandum

Card - Project Life Sweet Edition

Letters - American Crafts

Wood Veneer - Studio Calico

Brads - My Mind's Eye

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Killer Vampire Bugs from Hell

An odd title, and an odd subject for a scrapbook page, but these bugs form one of the memories from our holiday in Canada last year.

They were the black flies that we encountered in Red Bay. The females feed on human blood, and they were determined to have us for lunch. We could feel them biting and we were able to squash them, but by then they had done their worst. The bites spoiled our day, sending us back to the ship early, and they itched for days afterwards.

I chose Sketch 98 from Sketch-n-Scrap for my page. I only had one picture of the flies, but I sourced a drawing from the internet to go with it and split my title and journalling across the other two quadrants.

I'm sticking to black titles in this album (in a variety of fonts) but I didn't have any small black letter stickers; these are actually woodgrain stickers that I coloured with a marker. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Lily Bee Double Dutch
Card - Project Life Summer
Letters - Elle's Studio
Ink & Mist - Docrafts
Epoxy Sticker - Ebay
Washi Tape - Unknown

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Red Bay

Red Bay, on the Labrador coast, was the last of the Canadian ports on our cruise last summer, and the only one on the mainland. We moored just outside the bay and used the ship's lifeboats to go ashore. 

This is my arrival/introduction page for Red Bay; I've made one for each port of call to divide up my album. The two photos are the view of the bay and a closer shot of the village both taken from the ship. I've taken inspiration from (i.e. copied) Glitter Girl's Adventure 128, placing my photos next to each other with strips of patterned paper above and below.

I'm also linking up with Shimelle's weekly challenge - to mix old scrapbooking stash with new. I would consider most of the things on this page to be "new" in that I bought them specifically for this album (even though they are up to 10 months old now). The stripy paper is definitely "old", I'm guessing 2010 though it could be earlier, and so are the turquoise gems and the label stickers. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Colorbok Travel, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Card - Project Life Summer
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - 7Gypsies, Studio Calico
Brads - My Mind's Eye
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Gems - Papermania
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp
7Gypsies 'Collections from the Journey' Stamp

Stream Trails

Back to Canada now, and my final page from Corner Brook in Newfoundland. It's a double from the Stream Trails, a network of paths that follow the Corner Brook Stream.

I used a sketch from ScrapMuch? who have had a few useful double page sketches recently.

I wondered about stitching the circle on the sketch, but there's no other stitching in my Canada album, so I decided to use a cut file instead. 

My photos are a tad larger than those in the sketch, and I altered the shape of two of them from squares to landscape and portrait shots. My embellishment was strongly influenced by the sketch; the leaf sprigs and flowers just seemed right for this page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Crafts House Retro, Bo Bunny Double Dot
Letters - Pink Paislee
Flowers - Dovecraft
Gems - KaiserCraft Droplets
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Docrafts, Ink It Up!
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Poppy Stamps Small Leafy Sprig Die
The Works Text Stamp

Main Street

That's Main Street in Corner Brook, Newfoundland which was the fifth port of call on our cruise to Canada last summer. I had a few photos from the city centre that I wanted to include in our holiday album, and I was stuck for a page title so I just used the street name.

There's a mix of landscape and portrait images, and none of them is a 'main' photo so I printed them all at the same size and scraplifted a page that I made about 18 months ago (Talk to the Animals).

That big wood veneer camera from Heidi Swapp has always seemed to be too large on the page, but it fitted nicely on the label that I used on this one. The aperture is rather large too - nearly 1" across - but the @ fills it nicely, and I echoed these with a smaller camera and a star in the top cluster.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp, Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Dovecraft Filmstrip Stamp

Captain James Cook Historic Site

Yes. it's another double page! That's two in less than a week! I don't generally enjoy them, unless I have a good sketch... and this one from ScrapMuch? was almost perfect for my photos from the Captain James Cook Historic Site in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

I did add an extra photo on the left, and I changed the size of one of the photos on the right to give extra importance to the statue of Captain Cook. He was the first person to reliably map the coast of Newfoundland, and it was this work that led to his later voyages to the Pacific. 

The Historic Site is a small area of parkland at the top of Crow Hill. It was quite a walk, but definitely worth it for the views over the bay. I used another of the view photos on my Corner Brook title page - here.

There's no 'proper' title as it is on the left-most photo, with some journalling strips beneath it. I could have written directly on the background on the right, but I used strips again so that it would end just above the photos, and I wouldn't either run out of space or have an awkward gap.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Arrow Clip - Freckled Fawn
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Tag Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Corner Brook

I'll probably be flitting back and forth between my 2015 album and my Cruise album for the next few posts, depending which challenges I can fit to which photos.

Today is a Canadian page, made with the aid of Sketch #96 from Sketch-n-Scrap. The pair of large photos on the sketch made it perfect for an introductory page, and our next port of call was Corner Brook in Newfoundland. I'm making one of these pages for each place we visited in order to divide up the album into sections. 

The top photo is the town as we arrived, and the bottom one is the view from Crow Hill, on the edge of the city.

I'm using the same 'Entry Date' stamp on each of these pages; here it's among a row of dials cut from one of the papers. I added brads to the row of dials, the last five silver brads in the packet, as I try to use up some older embellishments. 

Supplies
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Colorbok Travel
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - Papermania
Ink & Mist - Docrafts
Gems - ZVA Creative

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp
Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp

At the Apothecary

Three of the four buildings on my last page are now museums, and one of the houses has a small apothecary display. I love looking at old medicines and their labels, so this had to have a page in my album.

The layout is another scraplift, this time of one of my Paralympic pages - Table Tennis - though I flipped it horizontally for this version.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Trimcraft
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Downtown

I'm still plodding on with my holiday album, though I am feeling the pull of other projects. I have a few pages left to make from St John's, but I'm moving on to Sydney (Nova Scotia) now. The city was founded by the British in the 1780s and the oldest buildings are in the Downtown area, near the port. 

My page has photos of four of those buildings, two churches and two houses. I was originally planning to make a page with four quadrants, but I couldn't make it work so I scanned my old pages for inspiration and hit upon one for Happisburgh Lighthouse which I decided to scraplift.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Hot Off the Press Ivory, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - American Crafts
Enamel Dot - Trimcraft
Pearls - My Mind's Eye
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Government House / Court House / Colonial Building

Three mini-layouts in one page today, with photos of the major government buildings in St John's. Government House is the official residence of the Lieutenant-Governor; the Court House holds the Supreme Court of Newfoundland & Labrador; the Colonial Building used to be the seat of government and is being refurbished before it opens as a museum.

None of the buildings really 'deserved' their own page in my holiday album and a standard three photo page didn't feel right, so I partitioned my page and made three similar mini-layouts (each 9.5cm by 29.5cm).

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Bazzill
Paper - My Minds Eye Chalk Studio II, Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Doodlebug Petite Prints
Letters - American Crafts Shimelle
Washi Tape - Tesco
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Simple Stories, Trimcraft
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Stamps

Jelly Bean Row

I posted this month's Scraplift Challenge earlier this week and, as always, I've taken on the challenge myself. I picked a four-photo page because I wanted to show off a selection of the brightly-coloured houses from downtown St John's, affectionately nicknamed Jelly Bean Row.

My original page, Up to Their Necks In It!, had a much more subtle background, but I wanted to play with the idea of the rows of coloured houses this time. I moved the journalling compared to the last page, and this allowed the introduction of a third embellishment cluster.

I have to say that I am loving these Thickers (the Fitzgerald font). The letters are nice and skinny so fit in small spaces, and there are loads of them. Having said that, I have now started my second pack because I've used all the L's and N's in the first.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, October Afternoon Travel Girl, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - My Minds Eye
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Washi Tape - Tesco
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

St John's

After a brief diversion, I'm going back to my cruise scrapbooking today where I'm making a 'title page' for each of our ports of call to divide up the album. I'd imagined each of these as having two 4x6 overview photos (though Sydney didn't) and that's what I've chosen for St John's (in Newfoundland).

I chose an old sketch from Shimelle for the page, one with an L-shaped design.

My photos were taken from the ship, in the middle of the harbour. The page is an introduction to our day in St John's and I have repeated the 'Entry Date' stamp that I've used on these pages before. I have a piece of map print paper in my layers and I've added a gem to mark the city's location.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Glitz Designs Uncharted Waters, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts
Tag - Graines Creatives
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp

Sydney

That's Sydney in Nova Scotia, not it's more famous namesake. It was the fourth stop on our cruise this summer and this is the 'title' page for that day. I'm making a introductory page for each port in my album, and this is the second (Killybegs was the first). I'd imagined using two 4x6 landscape photos for each of these pages, but looking through my photos from Sydney I soon changed my mind, and picked three pictures instead.

The top photo is the view of the town as we arrived, the bottom left has the town's name in signal flags and the bottom right photo is the largest fiddle in the world, a symbol of the island's Celtic culture.


I used the 6 November sketch from Scrap Much? for my page, but I rotated it and flipped it to suit my photos.

I'm trying to use my stamps in this album, as they make motifs that are easy to repeat. In particular, each of these 'arrival' pages will have an 'Entry Date' stamp with the day and date.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Record It, My Mind's Eye Hello World, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - American Crafts, Jenni Bowlin Studios
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Wood Veneers - Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Tesco
Pearls - Craft for Occasions
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp