Loughrigg Tarn

I'm returning to my 2018 album for this page; it's a project that's nearing completion but I will need to place another photo order before that can finally happen.

We visited Cumbria twice that year; this page is from our December trip and a short walk to Loughrigg Tarn. There's no colour in the tarn photos but I was drawn to the pink of our friend's coat and then to an ancient pink and brown paper from Basic Grey. 

I'm currently taking Shimelle Laine's Half and Half class, composed of a series of process videos for pages all made on backgrounds composed of two 6x12 blocks; I teamed my pink and brown paper with a pink diagonal stripe for a page based on her lesson 8. It's an unusual combination for me, but one that I quite like and I plan to repeat it when I make a page from our other walk that weekend (using the remaining two halves of my papers).

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Basic Grey Bittersweet, My Mind's Eye Now and Then, My Mind's Eye On Trend 2, OneCanoeTwo Twilight
Letters - Basic Grey, Pinkfresh Studio

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Eyelet Outlet, Carta Bella

Ink - Memento

Paint - Golden

Tools

American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Big Shot

Little B Arrow Die

Spellbinders Circle Die

Roman Ruins

Back in the days before NSD, I was working on pages for my 2018 album. I didn't manage to fit many of those to the challenges that were set, but I do have another page from Cumbria. 

As we left Muncaster Fell and walked back to Ravenglass, we passed the remains of a Roman bath house, one of the tallest Roman structures still standing in northern Britain.

I've got a pile of scraps from other Cumbrian pages, so I just added the map print background for the 'Constructivism' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper - use scraps and build up layers.

Looking at the page now, I realise that there's no embellishment on it, so I may go back and add a few more pieces, or I may just leave it as it is.

Supplies

Paper - Authentique Abroad, We R Memory Keepers Quoted, We R Memory Keepers Good Day Sunshine, Simple Stories, Basic Grey, atd, Little Yellow Bicycle, Laura Ashley

Letters - Simple Stories

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

On Muncaster Fell

I've gone back to our Easter 2018 holiday in Cumbria now, and a walk over Muncaster Fell one afternoon. My colour scheme for this holiday is red, yellow, green, blue, brown and orange, in dull earthy shades rather than brights so I picked some green dotted Swiss cardstock which pulled that colour from the photos for my background and then went through my scraps box for pieces to use.

I had eight photos which I arranged in chronological order and matted the middle five on darker green cardstock. This meant that the middle of the page was fully covered and I could just tuck my scraps in around the green box. Most of these pieces are much smaller than they might appear and I've cut them into two or sometimes three pieces with the gaps covered by other layers.

P.S. You might have noticed that my posts have slowed down in recent weeks, and that's because I've been trying to tame our wilderness of a garden now that Spring has arrived and that is eating into my scrapping time. I might create and post something in the next week, but I might not. However next weekend is National Scrapbooking Day and I certainly intend to join in with that.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Stampin' Up!
Paper - We R Memory Keepers, Bo Bunny, Basic Grey, Pinkfresh Studio, The Paper Loft
Letters - Pinkfresh Studio

Ticket - Tim Holtz?

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology

Washi Tape - Dovecraft

Wood Veneer - Studio Calico, Creative Expressions

Pearls - Scrapberry's

Ink - Ranger

Windermere Sunset

Dotty About Flair held a cybercrop over the Easter weekend, and the last challenge was to be inspired by the cybercrop itself, and scraplift a page already entered for one of the other challenges. I picked 'Shine' by Kathryn which she made for a mixed media and stamping challenge.

I rotated her page for a landscape photo the sun setting over Windermere in the Lake District over a background that I inked in orange, purple and blue/grey. I used grey for my stamping as being softer than black, cut the word 'Sunset' on my Silhouette and added 'Windermere' in tile stickers in the space between the word and the photo.

P.S. We went to Cumbria twice in 2018, in April and December. This photo was from the second visit and will be completely separate from my recent (April) holiday pages so doesn't need to have the same colour scheme or techniques.

P.P.S. I've doodled a black frame around the page now, but not taken a new photo.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV, Craft Sensations 
Letters - Creative Devotion

Ink - Ranger, Memento, Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Stamp Set

American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City Stamps

Studio Calico Stamps

Unknown Filmstrip Stamp

Make & Create Arrow Stamp

Milefortlet 21

This page follows on directly from the previous one, coming from the same coastal walk. My photos are of a milefortlet, part of the Roman defences that followed the coast south from Hadrian's Wall.

I've been trying to use my scraps in preference to new sheets, and I spotted three different patterns in the same shade of yellow lurking among them. I pulled in the plaid paper as having the same yellow and then picked the red and navy to match with it.

I used the back of the spotty paper to make a tag for my title and journalled in the opposite corner.

Supplies
Paper - K&Company, Anna Griffin, My Mind's Eye, Bo Bunny, Pinkfresh Studio, Junkitz

Letters - Simple Stories

Washi Tape - Unknown

Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Pretty My Page, Prima

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Big Shot

X-Cut Tag Die

Dovecraft Label Die

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

Run Workington

I'm tackling the missing pages for my 2018 album in random order, taking inspiration as it comes. This page is from April when a friend and I ran Workington parkrun* while on holiday in Cumbria. 

I followed a sketch from Lisa Sikorski which she published recently on Instagram; I flipped it over and added a second photo.

All my pages for parkruns other than my home event have the title Run XXX; for this page I cut the RUN three times on my Silhouette and glued them together for thicker letters, and added Workington in smaller letters to the frame below.

* Parkruns are free events run by volunteers in parks across the country every week (though currently suspended for obvious reasons). I started parkrunning in 2018 and kept an 8x8 scrapbook/journal for the first year; hit the 'parkrun 2018' or 'parkrun continued' label if you'd like to know more.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Grunge Dreams, Kit 'n' Craft

Letters - Jillibean Soup

Washi Tape & Flowers - Unknown

Sticker - Crate Paper

Enamel Shapes - Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye

Dots - Nuvo Drops

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot & Mini Botanical Die

Hello Allonby

Back in 2018, we spent Easter week in Cumbria, staying on the coast in the village of Allonby. I've made a few pages from that week so far, but nothing for the village or the cottage we rented. I often use a kit for our holidays to make a distinct sub-section in my annual album, but I hadn't done so on this occasion. However, looking back, most of my pages do follow a broad colour scheme of red, yellow, green, blue, brown and orange, mostly in dull earthy shades rather than clean and bright tones.

So no pinks or purples for this page, and no bright patterns, which led me to We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit for this page. I decided to split my page in two as my photos are quite different and don't sit that well together. I gave the top half to a general view of the village taken on a cloudy day, and used the bottom half for the cottage with its stronger colours and bright blue sky.

I added my title to the top, in a mixture of letter stickers and a word cut on my Silhouette, and journalled on paper strips on the bottom half. I built two embellishment clusters by the photos and one on the top edge of the page so that the three form a diagonal line. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit, Kit 'n' Craft

Letters - KaiserCraft

Word Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Washi Tape - Papermania

Ink - Ranger

Paint - Golden

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot

Spellbinders Circle Die

Dovecraft Label Die

Dovecraft Star Die

X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch

La'al Ratty

'La'al Ratty' is old Cumbrian for 'Little Railway' and is the nickname of the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway which we visited in 2018. I printed this set of photos for NSD that year but they didn't fit any challenges and have sat in my to-scrap pile ever since waiting for inspiration to strike.

I'm working my way through a set of challenges from a mini-cybercrop at For the Love of Pretty Paper which were based on the letters S-C-R-A-P, and I've reached A now. For this one we were asked to use our choice of acetate, acrylic, arrows and adventure, plus the colour amber. With very few printed photos at hand I picked up this set and worked with amber and arrows.

I'd originally printed these photos in an assortment of sizes and they take up a lot of the page space so it seemed best to set them in a block and then fill in the gaps with patterned paper. I chose blue for a good contrast with orange (amber) and pulled in the arrows via scraps of patterned paper left over from a recent page which were still on my desk.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Good Day Sunshine, Heidi Swapp No Limits, Echo Park The Story of Fall, Simple Stories Good Day Sunshine
Letters - Doodlebug
Word Sticker - My Mind's Eye
Ticket - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Star Gems - Hobbycraft
Staples - Creating Keepsakes
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

3 amigos

I'm still working my way through December photos, and this rather poor selfie is the only one I have from a walk in the Lake District that month, a walk that I should have skipped as the weather was atrocious (hence the lack of photos; we couldn't see the views through the mist).

Original Page

My page is a scraplift, one set as a New Year's Day Challenge by Scrap Squad on Facebook, which I think was originally made by one of the Studio Calico design team though I got lost in a maze on Pinterest trying to confirm this and credit the creator.

I recently came across this cloud print by Basic Grey in my stash, and put it to one side ready for this page; everything else came from my scraps box, mostly keeping to the colours in that paper apart from a tiny splash of pink to match our coats.

I altered the page design to use a larger oblong photo and moved it further into the page, but I mimicked the circular photo of the original with circles behind mine. My photo mat doubles as a pocket which holds my journalling.

I'm also linking up with the January challenge from Hey Little Magpie, which was to create a clean and simple layout with one photo and lots of 'white space'.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Basic Grey Mon Ami, Glitz Design Uncharted Waters, Bazzill Basics, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Plus One, OneCanoeTwo Creekside
Number - American Crafts
Letters - Fancy Pants
Stickers - Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Ebay
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates
X-Cut Circle Punch

Run Fell Foot

FTLOPP Mood Board

I'm not normally a fan of mood boards, but For the Love of Pretty Paper published one as part of their winter series of challenges and for once it actually inspired a page from me. This was a two part challenge, to scrap an everyday photo of ourselves and to use the moodboard.

My photo is us at Fell Foot parkrun in Cumbria last month, and I picked out aqua, brown and leaves from the moodboard to get started, then added woodgrain and bookprint patterns, a few touches of gold and a puffy camera. Looking at the board again, I added a wood veneer bird, similar to the one in the parkrun logo, swapped the puffy camera for a wooden one, and squeezed a wooden ampersand into the cluster on the right.

Supplies
Paper - Carta Bella Fall Blessings, Authentique Durable, OneCanoeTwo Creekside, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society, Little Yellow Bicycle Acorn Hollow
Letters - October Afternoon, Prima?
Die-Cut - KaiserCraft
Border Sticker - Basic Grey?
Word Sticker - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes
Washi Tape - Efco
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico, Freckled Fawn
Enamel Shapes - Marianne Designs, Doodlebug
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Stick It Down - Buttermere

Back in October I created a cruise page (Rain Stops Play) using a double page sketch from Stick It Down, and from that they picked me to be their double page guest designer for this month. 

The December sketch is one for eight square photos, but I adapted it for three landscape 4x6 prints with seven 3x3 squares, a set that were already printed and waiting in my 'to scrap' pile. These were from April last year, when we spent a week in Cumbria and did a circular walk around Buttermere on Easter Sunday. 

My first couple of paper choices were outdoors-themed but were too brown; the photos just got lost against them. I switched to brighter papers, an old collection from My Mind's Eye, with three differently patterned multi-coloured papers for the stripes on the right and the triangles on the left side. I also switched from trees to more generic triangles for my page because I thought that they could represent mountains (and I had no reason for trees).

Stick It Down have three sketches each month, for single and double scrapbook pages plus a card sketch, so hopefully there's something for everyone. Why not pop over, take a look and link up your creations too?

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Necessities
Puffy Stickers - MAMBI, Elle's Studio
Washi Tape - Unknown
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die
X-Cut Circle Punch

Network Gathering

I'm trying to keep my 2019 album up-to-date as we go along, and that means tackling doubles as they come up rather than putting them off for later. Our daughter is part of Scout Network (the division for 18-25 year-olds) and her group attended the Network Gathering in the Lake District over the Easter weekend. 

I used an old sketch from Sketch Support; it's one I've used before but changing the number and placement of the smaller photos and the papers helps the pages to look different each time.

I'd started this page intending it for a challenge to mix old and new stash, but once I added the acetate hexagon I switched to a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to include acetate and orange on a page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Fancy Pants Swagger, Simple Stories Awesome Boy
Stickers - Fancy Pants, OneCanoeTwo, Simple Stories
Acetate - from a Swap
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Doodlebug, Stampin' Up!
Ink - Docrafts, Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die
Hexagon Stamp

On Latrigg

I'm going back to our Easter holiday in Cumbria now as I printed lots of photos when we came home, but still haven't scrapped them all. These three came from a quick walk we did on Latrigg above the town of Keswick. 

It's another page for the Summer Fiesta challenges in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group. We joined up with UK Scrap Addicts to share their August tic-tac-toe board and added the additional requirement of including water on the page. My water is the lakes in the photos and I used the middle row of the tic-tac-toe board - arrows, circles and washi tape.

The papers are part of a kit I put together for Shimelle's Clear the Desk class and my layout is scraplifted from one of the pages in that class.

Supplies
Paper - October Afternoon 9to5, My Mind's Eye Collectable, Bo Bunny Olivia
Letters - October Afternoon, American Crafts
Cards - October Afternoon 9to5
Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Circle Stickers - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Eyelet Outlet, Pretty My Page, Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Take a Hike

I had a pile of photos from our Easter holiday in Cumbria printed at the end of April, ready for National Scrapbooking Day and the remainders have been sitting on my desk ever since. This set were originally 4x6 prints, but I trimmed them all down to scraplift a page from Shimelle Laine's current class Layer on Layer on Layer. Her prompt was about scraplifting your own page (and I've already done that) but I really liked her page design as something a bit different from my normal three photo layouts.

We're continuing the Summer Fiesta challenges at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and this was an easy one - to use red on a page. I might not have used red otherwise, but I'm very pleased with the way the page turned out and I've used some ancient stash.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Quoted, Crate Paper Notes & Things, Jillibean Soup, Basic Grey. Photo Play Paper, Craft Creations
Vellum - American Crafts
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - We R Memory Keepers, One Canoe Two
Chipboard - Making Memories?
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments
Enamel Dots - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger

Tools
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Big Shot
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Little B Arrows Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Snow and Xmas Trees

We have a weekly Alpha Relay challenge running in the For the Love of Pretty Paper group on Facebook, with different members setting each challenge based on the letters of the alphabet (in no particular order).

Having entered a page into A for Acrylic, I was picked (by random number generator) to set the next one, and chose D for Double page. I knew it wouldn't be a popular choice, but challenges are supposed to be challenges, aren't they? No point picking something too easy.

I had this set of photos in mind when I set the challenge. They come from our Easter holiday in Cumbria and I sketched the layout and printed the photos back before National Scrapbooking Day but I didn't use them for any of the challenges then and they've been lurking on my desk ever since. This was a group holiday but we split up on this particular day with my husband and our friends tackling a few fells while I took their son on a less strenuous walk in Whinlatter Forest.

Despite being April, winter was lingering and there was snow on higher ground. As we walked through the conifers my young companion declared that snow and Christmas trees were two of his favourite things, so setting the title and subtitle of my page at that point. I knew I had a tree print in a Christmas collection from Glitz Design so that determined my colour scheme, with the yellow stripe coming from the same paper pack. I picked blue as a nice contrast to the yellow and a match with the blue skies in the photos, and added a few pops of dark green with my title and some puffy stickers to match the lone green tree on the tree print paper.

Supplies
Paper - Glitz Design Hello December, Little Yellow Bicycle Acorn Hollow, Basic Grey Capture
Letters - Papermania
Die-Cuts - Jillibean Soup, Heidi Swapp, Lakeland
Stickers - October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup, Pebbles, Simple Stories
Enamel Dots - Stampin' Up!
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Cartmel Overnight

I'd printed an assortment of photos before National Scrapbooking Day, different numbers and sizes including a couple of sets for double pages. One of them was a group of five 4x3 photos from Cartmel in Cumbria where we stayed for a night last December having won a night's B&B in a raffle.

I decided to scrap those photos for a simple challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, to use a vertical striped paper. I had a large scrap of striped paper that suited the colours of the old buildings in Cartmel rather well so I started arranging and rearranging the photos on the page for a layout that I liked. One thing that soon struck me was that the photo of Cartmel Priory was just too small. The other buildings filled their frames but I'd taken the Priory photo from a distance to include the graveyard and it looked too small and insignificant. I printed it again at 4x6 and I'm much happier now, the building is a similar size to the others and it seems more balanced. Back to rearranging the photos and I decided on a circle of photos backed by a circle of the striped paper.

Supplies
Paper - Bo Bunny Double Dot, KaiserCraft Madame Boutique
Stickers - Bo Bunny Mama-razzi, atd
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Silhouette Portrait

Young at Heart

This page had been fizzing round my head for a few weeks before National Scrapbooking Day, and I was sure that it would work for one of the upcoming challenges. I scrapped a photo of myself, I used lots of die-cuts, I used a song  for my title and I featured numbers. 

But, NONE of these came up on the challenge sites I follow! Last Monday, once all the challenges had been posted, I decided to make the page anyway, and did manage to fit it to a colour challenge at Hey Little Magpie, where they asked us to use two colours that were roughly opposites on the colour wheel. My aqua and yellowy orange aren't quite opposites, but close enough.

I've had this pack of die-cuts for ages and only used a few as they never seem to match my pages once I reach the choosing embellishments part. When I realised how good a match they are for the colours in the numbers paper, I kept the two together and resolved to use as many die-cuts as possible all in one go. Now I only have the green, grey and coral ones left.

The photo is me on a swing in the Lake District; I can't resist a swing even at my age, and why should I?

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Paige Evans, My Mind's Eye Fine & Dandy, My Mind's Eye Collectable, My Mind's Eye Necessities
Die Cuts & Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Who's Counting?

The only way to get through all the National Scrapbooking Day challenges is to combine as many as possible in a page. This one ticks off three, and also uses the current sketch from Let's Get Sketchy.

For the Love of Pretty Paper asked us to scrap a list; the photo is me atop my fifth Wainwright (Lake District fell) and I listed the five; my husband has climbed all 214 and I am never, ever going to do that.

Hey Little Magpie gave us a tic-tac-toe grid and I picked the middle row - washi tape, bling and all patterned paper. All the paper came from a kit I put together before NSD based around the floral paper, which is so pretty and had been in my stash for too long.

Finally, UKScrappers set the challenge that I was expecting to see in most groups that I follow - to scrap a page about yourself. 

Supplies
Paper - Kaisercraft Teddy Bear's Picnic, Kit 'n' Craft, Anna Griffin, Craft Creations
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Crate Paper, Jillibean Soup
Word - Pretty Little Studio
Flower/Gem/Washi Tape - from Stash
Arrow Paper Clip - Freckled Fawn
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot, Spellbinders Circle Die & X-Cut Camera Die
X-Cut Circle Punch
American Crafts/Shimelle Stamp Set
Studio Calico Stamp Set

Grasmere

Back to 2014 now, and I'm moving on to December (though I've skipped a few pages and will need to go back to them). We made a brief trip to the Lake District that month and this page has a couple of photos of Grasmere.

There isn't a lot of colour in the photos and I tried a variety of papers with them before settling on a silver and white snowflake and circles print. However, keeping that colour scheme for the whole page would have been very bland, and the photos would have merged with the rest of the page, so I went for much darker colours behind the initial paper layer. 

Supplies
Paper - Simple Stories Cozy Christmas, Simple Stories DIY Christmas, Echo Park Dots & Stripes, 
      One Canoe Two Creekside, Pink Paislee Memorandum
Letters - Hobbycraft
Border Sticker - Echo Park Dots & Stripes
Puffy Stickers - Fancy Pants
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs, Echo Park
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts