By the Sea

Back to the NSD scrapping now, and I have two pages left to share. I'm still back in the photos archive for this one, which I made for the 'Dadaism' art-themed challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper. They asked us to use new stash and either a new technique or one we haven't done for a while. My newest stash is the beach-themed Salt & Sunsets collection from Rosie's Studio which led me to old beach photos of us as children,  and I chose stencilling for my technique as this meant I could double up with Hey Little Magpie's stencilling challenge.

Supplies

Cardstock - UK Crafts

Paper - Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets

Puffy Words - Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets

Die-Cuts - Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets

Word Stickers - American Crafts

Washi Tape - Little B

Enamel Dots - Echo Park

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Pretty My Page Circles Stencil

Sea Days / Ibiza 1985

I have loads of seaside photos from my childhood (we just took pictures on days out and holidays back then) but the colours in them tend to be washed out and they really don't look good with modern bright beach-themed paper collections. I've been looking for something to suit them and came across Rosie's Studio and their Salt & Sunsets collection whish was just perfect. It arrived the day before NSD, so I put it to good use scrapping all FIVE photos from our holiday in Ibiza back in 1985. Film was precious.

This is the first of three pages, with photos of my siblings in the sea, and I'm ticking off the 'Suprematism' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper (all this year's NSD challenges are art-themed). I'd never come across suprematism but it's a form of abstract art characterised by the use of basic shapes on a white background. 

We were asked to use a white cardstock background, a large patterned paper shape and some doodling. I cut a large scallop shell for my shape and doodled the crucial lines that make it actually look like a scallop shell. I popped my photos on top (matted on white cardstock to match the background), added a strip of paper below them and ran a line of seashell die-cuts along the bottom edge.

I ended up with two titles on the page (or title and sub-title I suppose). I intended it to be 'Ibiza 1985' which would also act as an introduction to the pages that follow it, but the space above my photo was crying out for something extra.

Supplies
Cardstock - UK Crafts
Paper - Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets
Letters - American Crafts, Rosie's Studio

Numbers - Pinkfresh Studio
Die-Cuts - Rosie's Studio Salt & Sunsets
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Tattered Angels
Paint - Golden

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Just a Minute

This page is nothing to do with the radio programme of the same name; the title was inspired by the fact that these two photos of Brighton beach were taken just one minute apart but have very different looks. 

I'm combining challenges again, starting with a mood board from Hey Little Magpie. I'm not usually a fan of mood boards, but this one was easy with these photos on my 'to scrap' pile. I pulled the beach theme and woodgrain from this one, along with aqua and beige for the colour scheme. I even squeezed some butterflies onto my page.

I also took on the 'Minimalist' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, using straight lines of washi, paper squares and stamping on my background. The use of squares led to a third challenge, one of the April sketches from Lottie Loves Paper. 

I rotated the sketch to suit landscape photos and used old woodgrain, beach and zig-zag papers for my squares.  Obviously my photos are much bigger than those in the sketch, but I have the main elements from it on my page. I've translated the stars into stamping, and moved them to be beside my photos.

There's no journalling at present as this is a page for my daughter's university album and she will do that, but I did add the time to each picture in tiny number stickers.

Supplies
Paper - OneCanoeTwo Hazelwood, DCWV Linen Closet, Sandylion Seashells, My Mind's Eye, Bo Bunny

Numbers - Creative Devotion
Ink - Ranger, Memento

Tools
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp

Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Heidi Swapp Inspire Stamp Set

Heidi Swapp Arrow Stamp
American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Stamp Set

Make & Create Stamp Set

Big Shot

Make & Create Alphabet Die Set

Coastal Walk

I'm still in Cumbria for this page, when we walked along the coast from the village of Allonby where we were staying; we were heading for the remains of a Roman fort, but this page comes first. It has two photos, one looking back to Allonby and one of the old salt pans on the coast viewed from above. 

I scraplifted myself for this page, adapting my Return to Dartmoor page from three smaller to two larger photos. 

I layered up two sets of paper strips, added my photos in opposite corners, and placed my title and journalling in between them this time.

Supplies

Cardstock - Stampin' Up!

Paper - Basic Grey Wisteria, Studio Calico Snippets, OneCanoeTwo Twilight, American Crafts/Shimelle Starshine

Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot

Little B Arrow Die

Dovecraft Label Die

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Worbarrow Bay

I'm back in Dorset today, and this page follows on from the last one; we walked from Tyneham Farm down to the coast at Worbarrow Bay and I used two photos, one taken from each end.

When I make a series of pages from an event or holiday, I normally work on repeating design elements as well as using the same papers. However, my Stonehenge page was the only one to feature a large part-circle so far and I've put that right now.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon*

Letters - Anita's Glitterations

Die-Cuts - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine*

Flair - Dotty About Flair

Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Carta Bella

Dots - Nuvo Crystal Drops

Tools

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Template

Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

*Disclosure - I received these products free of charge from The Mad Scrapper as part of my DT role.

On the Beach

Vintage photos today, sharing a page I made for the recent GoGoGetaway cybercrop on Facebook. Jo's challenge was to be inspired by the shape of a beach hut. 

As luck would have it, I have a beach hut die set so I went for a simple, literal interpretation of the prompt. I cut a row of beach huts from pastel-coloured cardstock, and smooshed ink onto my white background to represent the sand, before deciding to cut it down a smidge and mat the page to add more colour. I cut the pennants from the same colours of cardstock, added a strip of camera washi tape to them and fussy-cut a few shells to scatter on my sand. 

Once my title was in place I added a heart from the same sticker sheet to the page and then felt that that looked a bit random, which I hopefully solved by adding even more hearts - 10 of them in five pairs, which killed off the pack.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Shine On, Scrapberry's Summer Joy
Letters - Doodlebug
Washi Tape - American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Ink - Memento
Mist - Tattered Angel

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Beach Hut Dies

Collect Moments

Lottie Loves Paper is running a Summer Sketch Challenge, with nine sketches during July and August. I did the first two as they were released but then slipped behind, and this is my page for week 4. It was a collaboration and we had the option of using the 'Collect Moments' cutfile from new venture Peartree Cutfiles. 

I scaled the cutfile to be as large as I could because I was working with old, pre-printed 4x6 photos. This made it difficult to include the paper strips behind it; I tried various combinations but there was so little showing at the edges that I wasn't happy and decided to drop them entirely and just use a few labels instead. That left me with a new problem - having just the white cutfile against the background was too plain, so I created an offset and cut that in green to match my son's shirt. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Stampin' Up!
Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Yes Please, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Stay Sweet, Studio Calico Heyday
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio
Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Design
Mist - Docrafts. Mister Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Peartree Cutfiles 'Collect Moments' Cutfile
Sewing Machine
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

South West Coast Path Part 9

My husband and father-in-law have been walking the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path, one section per year since 2008. I'm currently working on my 2016 album which was their ninth expedition, a stretch of the north Cornwall coast.

I've made each year's pages on the same blue paper, and they are always photo-heavy which generally means a grid. This time I have three rows of 7cm high photos with stripey borders at the edges, holding clusters of die-cut and punched shapes.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Craft Creations, Scrap Within Reach Elliot
Letters - October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Efco
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Marianne Design, Echo Park

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Big Shot
Spellbinders Circle Die
Little B Arrow Die
Dovecraft Star Die

Comfy?

This page is another with an old photo, made for a scraplift collaboration between the Scrap Squad and Scrap Academy groups on Facebook.

The original page that we were asked to lift was made by Suse Fish for Citrus Twist Kits back in 2016. I chose a single photo for my page, and flipped the design to suit the direction that my brother was looking in the photo.

I find that the colours of older photos don't work well with modern white backgrounds so I chose a distressed paper with a diagonal ombre print for mine and then went through my scraps box for coordinating pieces to make up the vertical strips and the layers behind the photo.

Supplies
Paper - Authentique, Crate Paper The Pier, Jillbean Soup, American Traditional Designs 
Letters - SEI
Tags - Kaisercraft
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Pretty My Page, Marianne Design
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag and Label Dies

Saunton Sands

Another page with vintage photos today, a trio of beach snaps from Saunton Sands in North Devon. I used a page design from Shimelle Laine's Layer on Layer on Layer class in combination with a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to doodle in colour on a page. My doodling is simple, just outlining each paper, but I did each one in colours to match the different papers.

Supplies
Cardstock - My Mind's Eye Necessities, Bazzill
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Sandylion
Kraft Tags - Advent Calendar Swap
Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico Mistables
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
American Crafts Mini Stapler
Big Shot
X-Cut Camera Die
Dovecraft Tag Die

Hello Summer

Laura's Sketch

I made this page for the final NSD challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and it was a jumbo challenge - a sketch by the fabulous Laura Rumble with bonus points for including items from a list of 18 stash pieces, colours and techniques. Of course, if you give me a list like that then I set out to bust them all.

The full list was: ink splatters; flair; gold; twine; camera icon; kraft; sewing; teal; 3x4 photo; sequins; handwritten journalling; scraps; wood veneer; Project Life cards; tags; puffy stickers; washi tape; something from your random junk bowl. That bowl was something we were asked to start at the beginning of the weekend, a place to put the leftovers and reject pieces from one page ready to incorporate them on a later page.

I stuck with my childhood for these beach photos (I'm the one with dark hair) and pulled out some scraps and coordinating Project Life cards. Starting with the background, I laid down some stripes of ink directly from my ink pads, and then added some lines of machine-stitching. I found the large tag in my scraps and decided to use it as my title, with its size and orientation dictating that it went in the previously empty space at the top right. Having established that I didn't have to keep the Project Life cards whole, I cut and punched various pieces from them and more scraps to include in my embellishment clusters, while taking care to include all the other items from the list. Can you spot them all?

(My 'random junk' was the pink puffy camera, the twin of one on this page. I'd already stamped tiny cameras on the background to fulfil that element of the challenge.) 

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Crate Paper Craft Market, Crate Paper The Pier
PL Cards - Summer Mini Kit
Wood Veneer - Advent Swap, Studio Calico
Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, MRI, American Crafts/Shimelle
Word Stickers - Pretty Little Studio
Flair - Imagine That
Sequins - Pretty Little Studio
Washi Tape - Ebay, Pretty My Page
Ink - Ranger. Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Woodware Tag Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Big Shor
Dovecraft Tag Die
Studio Calico Pinked Circle Die
X-Cut Bunting Die
Studio Calico Camera Stamp

An Afternoon at the Beach

This is another page from our Norfolk boating holiday, but we'd left the boat and caught the train to Great Yarmouth. I had an assortment of photos of our children on the beach, and I printed them in a variety of sizes so that the children themselves remain at a similar size from one to the next.

I combined my row of photos with a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to use a large title on a page. I cut mine on the Silhouette, adding a shell to the letters, and backed each shape with a different paper from the pad that I'm using for this holiday.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Moments
Letters - October Afternoon
Journalling Cards - Project Life Sweet
Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Sunny Days
Washi Tape - Unknown
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Doodlebug, Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Sewing Machine
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

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

Walking with Friends

I'm sharing my last page from For the Love of Pretty Paper's Scrap in Colour event today. This one was made for the final challenge, which was to use up all the scraps, off-cuts and rejects from our other pages and to include the colour indigo.

I've been making all my recent pages with papers from my scraps box so didn't have many pieces left over. However I did choose scraps again for this one, the remnants of a Crate Paper collection which worked with an indigo blue background. I'd previously cut and abandoned some of the die-cut pieces and the gem strips were rejected from another page.

I've gone back to our Cornish holiday earlier this year, and a walk along a section of the South West Coast Path. This holiday is always a group affair with some friends from our university days, and we were joined for the day by another friend who lives in Devon, which lead to my title.

All my Cornish pages have a large central square on a patterned background, so I kept that for consistency. I'm fairly sure that I used a sketch for this page, but I can't find it again now.

Supplies
Paper - Lily Bee Double Dutch, Crate Paper Random, My Mind's Eye
Letters - October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup
Gems - Mark Richards
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Travel Dies
Little B Arrow Die
Dovecraft Star and Heart Dies

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

We Dare You!

A little while back I made a pile of 'starting point' pages from my scraps box, and it didn't take long for me to use up the first one. I was actually looking for photos for another of these pages when I found a pair that would work better with this one.

The pictures are from 1990 when I was at university and a group of us went to the beach one afternoon, where someone dared one of the group to swim in the sea ... in March.

I matted the photos on a scrap of cardstock and added an extra paper layer (also a scrap) behind them to give my title a calmer background to sit against. The circles of stars are one die-cut cut into three pieces and I added more stars to each piece.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - American Crafts/Shimelle, Lily Bee Design, Echo Park Note to Self
Letters - Fancy Pants
Die-Cut - Jillibean Soup
Word Sticker - Cosmo Cricket
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Stars - MRI
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Dovecraft Star Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

SWCP 7

The last page for my 2014 album is one that I so often leave until last. Every year since 2008 my husband and father-in-law have walked a section of the South West Coast Path, a 630 mile journey from Poole in Dorset round to Minehead in Somerset, and in 2014 they walked round the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. 

I find the pages from these walks to be difficult to make as there are a large number of photos and since I wasn't there I don't know which ones are important to them and I don't know the details of their week. Some years my husband writes blog posts which I can use, but he didn't do any for 2014 so there's minimal journalling on this page. I took most of my inspiration from the 2015 page that I've already made, which led me to a huge grid filling most of the double page. I printed all the photos at the same height and filled in the ends of the rows with cards for journalling and embellishments. I couldn't find any letter stickers the right size and shape to have my title fill the space available, so I cut that on my Silhouette. 

I'd already started to prepare this page when a FTLOPP Summer Fiesta challenge was set to use a blue background paper with the theme of the sea. I use the same blue background paper for the SWCP page every year, so this was the perfect challenge and came through at the perfect time for me.

Supplies
Paper - Craft Creative, My Mind's Eye, Daisy D's, Pink Paislee
Letters - October Afternoon
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments, Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Unknown
Puffy Sticker - Jillibean Soup
Enamel Shapes - Marianne Designs, Stampin' Up!

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
X-Cut Circle Punches
X-Cut Corner Punch

Secret Water

Laura's Sketch

I'm still sharing pages that I made for National Scrapbooking Day, and the next challenge that I tackled from For the Love of Pretty Paper was to be inspired by a sketch.

I liked the idea of using arrows for a walk, and I had printed four 4x3 photos from one my husband and our friend did exploring 'Secret Water' from Arthur Ramsome's book. However hard I tried, there was no way to fit them on the four arrows of the sketch so I switched to two much larger arrows instead. After all, the challenge had been to take inspiration from the sketch, not to follow it religiously. 

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mr Huey's

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Alphabet Dies
Little B Arrows Die
X-Cut Camera Die

Lyme Regis

This is the last page from our camping trip back in 2014, one for an afternoon that we spent wandering round Lyme Regis. I took quite a few photos and, when it came to picking which ones to scrap, I realised that I 'needed' most of them, a mix of wider views and close-ups of the details. I got them down to seven and decided that a grid would be the best way to scrap so many different photos while keeping the feeling that they all belong together.

I decided to use a nautical paper for the background, but then covered most of it with an arrows print and my block of photos. The letters for my title are a new-ish product from Hobbycraft; their 'chunky stickers' are similar to American Crafts' Thickers, but not as thick. I bought a couple of packs recently and so far I've been pleased with them. There's no journalling on this page as there's no real story and I've already written a little on the divided page that will go opposite this one in the album.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Webster's Pages Feeling Nautical, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Rise & Shine, OneCanoeTwo Creekside
Letters - Hobbycraft
Puffy Stickers - Fancy Pants
Stickers - OneCanoeTwo #Stickerbook
Washi Tape - The Works
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
American Crafts Scallop Border Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
X-Cut Circle Punch

Happy Days

Christina's Page

This is the fourth and final page that I made for the Chinese Whispers game in the Mind the Scrap Facebook group. As always, I was scraplifting a page from Christina, and as soon as I saw hers I knew that mine would be a close copy, using insta-cards and a beach photo.

I'd imagined that beach photo being one of my children, but it appears that I've already scrapped them all so I went back to our university days and some really old photos of us on the beach at Teignmouth. There were two, so I adjusted the page slightly.

I wanted a cloud print for the background, but I couldn't find one so I compromised by painting white cardstock with mist. I arranged a grid of 3x3 cards at the bottom of the page and cut the sun and cloud from a 4x4 card. The title came from one of Shimelle's prompts for her 25 Days of Scrapbooking Words last month.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Imaginesce
Insta-Cards - Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Wood Veneer - Make & Create
Letters - October Afternoon
Labels - Sarah's Cards Printable
Washi Tape - Little B
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye
Mist - Cosmic Shimmer, Docrafts
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Travel Mini Dies
X-Cut Circle Punch