Cruise Canada 2015 - The Album

It's been more than a year since I made the last page from our Canadian cruise and since then the pages have been sitting in an unlabelled album waiting for a final check and a title card.

My annual albums are a mish-mash of pages in different colours and styles and they sit happily side-by-side as they are. However, when I make a themed album with one kit of papers I like to let it sit for a while and then review it to make sure I'm happy with all the pages and the balance of embellishments from beginning to end.

Whales - Before

I never intended to let my Canadian album sit for as long as it did, but I've returned to it recently for that final review. There was just one page that I wasn't happy with; the 'whales' page was a bit bare at the top and needed more embellishment - clusters at the top of the 'discover' paper and to the left of the photos to make a triangle with the existing cluster (which I also added to).

I've kept hold of the remaining papers from the kit pending this exercise, so it was easy to pull them out and add a few more pieces.

One final task was the album cover; I'd chosen one with a window and needed to make a title piece with a design around four inches square. I worked on a larger piece of paper which would fill the pocket without moving about, and marked the part that would be visible through the window, before assembling a design around an anchor die-cut. 

This is it in place, and the album has now joined the others in the lounge rather than being stashed under my craft desk awaiting the finishing touches.

Supplies
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - Jillibean Soup
Die-Cut - KaiserCraft
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup, Bella Boulevard
Washi Tape - Little B
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

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

Shankill Road

This is the second of a pair of pages from Belfast last summer, showing the murals in both the republican Falls Road, and the loyalist Shankill Road areas of the city. I shared Falls Road last week, and I used a similar layout for this one, but a different colour scheme, as I wanted to emphasise both the similarities and differences between the two areas.

As you might expect, the murals here commemorate their military history as part of the UK and the lives lost on this side during the Troubles.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Stickers - Anita's Glitterations, Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Waterstones
Gems - ZVA Creative plus some from stash
Ink & Mist - Docrafts
Staples - Making Memories

Tools
Big Shot & Sizzix Wallflower Alphabet Dies
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Make & Create Script Stamp

Falls Road

It's been more than a month since I made a page from our cruise last summer but, despite a long detour, I'm going back to it now. The end is in sight as I am making pages from Belfast, our last port of call. The last page, Divided, told of the peace walls which separate loyalist and republican areas of the city; the people on both sides have painted murals on their buildings which show their heritage and the issues that are important to them, and I'm doing a page for each of them now. 

I've started with the Falls Road area which is republican; their murals remember the 1916 Easter Rising and the protests made by their political prisoners who were interred in the Maze Prison during the Troubles. I kept the page design really simple with strips of paper in Irish colours at the page edges; I'll do something similar for the opposite page for the loyalist Shankill Road but in red, white and blue. I'm hoping that when the two pages are next to each other you will be able to see similarities and differences in the two, and the borders in the middle will represent the wall between the two sides.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Pink Paislee Memorandum, Three Bugs in a Rug
Stickers - Tim Holtz, Paperchase, WHSmith
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot, Sizzix Wallflower Alphabet Dies & Nested Circles Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Make & Create Script Stamp

Divided

I'm flitting back and forth between old (2015) and new (2016) photos at the moment and this is another page for my 2015 Cruise album. 

We spent our last day in Belfast where we visited both the loyalist Shankill Road and the republican Falls Road to look at the murals painted on the buildings there. The two areas are separated by a 'peace wall' with gates that are normally open in the day and closed at night or in times of unrest. This particular gate was closed on the day of our visit but we did cross via an alternative gate where we saw the Cross of Crosses commemorating the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which brought some peace to Northern Ireland. I used photos of the gate and the cross for a page with a lot of journalling.

I based my page on the 1 April sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap. The larger photo is already there, and there was room on the sketch for my smaller photo. The three banners on the sketch became longer, narrower strips of paper on my page as I had to adjust them to fit in all the writing I wanted. 

I used butterflies for my embellishment as they are symbols of peace and hope.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Lily Bee Double Dutch, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II
Letters - American Crafts
Butterflies - Prima
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

International Murals

I have lots of pages whizzing round my head at the moment, but I'm waiting for an order of new photos to arrive before I can pin them down on paper. In the meantime, I'm returning to my cruise album from last summer. It was mostly a Canadian cruise, but we also had stops in Ireland on the way out and back. Our final port of call was Belfast and we used the local buses to look at the various murals around the city. I'm still thinking about how I'm going to scrap my photos of the Loyalist and Republican murals, but I'm starting with a simpler set of pictures - some of the murals on the International Wall.

I laid them out with scraps of patterned paper so that my page looks like a wall (or that was my aim anyway). I punched circles from a map paper to use in my embellishment, picking Europe (where we are) plus North America and the Middle East (which link to some of the murals).

I decided on all black titles for this album, but I'm running out of some vowels now. I used my last 'a' in this font for Murals and I completed my title by cutting 'International' on my Silhouette Portrait.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II, Bazzill Basics
Letters - American Crafts
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Stars - from Stash
Ink/Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Little B Arrow Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

City Centre Landmarks

It's been a while since I joined in with the challenges at Scrap Our Stash. They changed format at the start of the year, and I haven't been able to fit the new challenges to the pages that I am making for my cruise album. However their latest Sketch+3 Challenge was perfect for me. 

The '+3' part is to use items from three lists alongside the sketch. These have been alphabetical so far, they've reached GHI and I've picked Graphic 45, Heidi Swapp and Ink. I've been mostly using Heidi Swapp's No Limits collection for this album, together with Graphic 45's Artisan Style in 6x6 and several other random papers that fit the colour palette. I've inked the edges of all my papers, inked the wood veneer triangles, and used ink again to stamp on the page.

As the title says, it's a few of the landmarks in the centre of Belfast - St Anne's Cathedral, the Albert Memorial Clock, City Hall and Buoys Park. My photos were different shapes and sizes, so I arranged them in a collage and filled the gaps with paper and stamping. 

Supplies
Cardstock - COlorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Fancy Pants Country Boutique
Letters - Pink Paislee Memorandum, American Crafts Shimelle
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Ink & Mist - Docrafts
Enamel Dot - Trimcraft

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Stampendous 'Travel Words' Stamp
Papermania 'All Aboard' Postmark Stamp

Belfast

After a diversion through Shimelle's challenges and a belated Capital Ring post, I'm back to my 2015 Cruise album today. Four days after leaving Red Bay in Canada we arrived back in the UK; our final port of call was Belfast. We only had an afternoon there, which really wasn't long enough to see everything the city has to offer.

I'm starting with an arrival/introduction page for Belfast; I've done one for each place we visited and they will divide up the album into sections. I used a sketch from ScrapMuch? which I flipped horizontally because the views in my photos are that way round in real life. The photos were taken from the ship looking across to the Harland & Wolff shipyard and the Titanic Belfast building.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, DCWV
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - American Crafts
Washi Tape - October Afternoon
Enamel Dots - Papermania, Echo Park
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

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

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

Whales

The waters between Newfoundland and Labrador are a 'hot spot' for whales (over 20 species have been seen there) and we managed to see quite a few including one that blew a waterspout as it surfaced. Unfortunately, they don't stay on the surface for long so getting a decent photograph was quite difficult. However I did manage to capture a fin and a tail, and I've scrapped them with the mid-month sketch from Sketch-n-Scrap.

I printed my photos as 3x3 squares and added a journalling card next to them, matting them all on navy paper to stop the photos disappearing into the background paper. I've been working on this album for a while now, and I have a healthy collection of scraps, so I just used some of those as they were rather than worrying about the sizes on the sketch.  

When I reviewed my album later on, I amended this page, adding an extra cluster at the top - see this post for details.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, HOTP Ivory Sarabook, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, Lily Bee Double Dutch
Letters - American Crafts
Card - Project Life Summer
Sticker - Tim Holtz Idea-ology
Washi Tape - KaiserCraft, Unknown
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Template
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle 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

Forget the Selfie

A new year begins in February over at shimelle.com with the announcement of weekly challenges each Monday. The first one was to scrapbook a selfie, but I didn't quite do this, although I am in the photo I scrapped.

I'm a Luddite and don't have a smartphone, so selfies are few and far between. My husband took a few on the first formal night of our cruise last year, but they are truly terrible, so bad that we had a professional photo taken on the second formal night the following week, and it's that picture that I used here. 

There isn't normally a story to this sort of posed photo which makes it difficult to think of an interesting page title. However this time Shimelle's challenge got me thinking about those failed selfies and lead directly to the title of my page.

My page design came from another challenge - this week's sketch from Let's Get Sketchy. I copied the main diagonal elements, but I added a journalling box on the left, and moved my title across above it.

I cut the word Selfie four times on my Silhouette Portrait and layered them up to give the word a little dimension, adding the rest of the title with letter stickers.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Colorbok Travel, Graphic 45 Artisan Style, HOTP Ivory Sarabook
Vellum - Crate Paper
Doily - Dovecraft
Letters - American Crafts
Wood Veneer - Heidi Swapp
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-ology

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

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