Fly-Cruise

Another page for my 2025 album, and this one's a double to document a short cruise we took in November. It was the final week of a 57-night Grand Mediterranean Voyage, with us flying out to Málaga in Spain and sailing back to Southampton via Gibraltar, Lisbon and Honfleur.

I turned to the leftover supplies from a previous cruise album and made a symmetrical page with photos from the four ports on a large bracket-shaped square in the middle. I flanked this with two 3x4 photos of our flight and ship on the left side and a 4x6 of our family on formal night on the right.

Supplies: Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Set Sail, Pebbles Seen & Noted, Bo Bunny Early Bird, My Mind's Eye Market Street; Letters - American Crafts; Stickers - Heidi Swapp; Die-Cut - Heidi Swapp; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Rosie's Studio, Craftelier

(Pages 17 and 18 for 2026 - I count doubles as two.)

Nomads on Tour

Things have been quiet around here as we've been away on a cruise round the Mediterranean, and then I had to create something to share with you. I'm itching to make a start on my cruise scrapbook but it will have to wait as I have a few things I want to do first, such as finishing my 2023 album and bringing both my parkrun album and my 2024 album up to date.

I'm starting with 2024 and a double page for a weekend in Wales last month. This was organised by a member of Thurrock Nomads, our local running group, with the aim of doing a parkrun on Saturday morning followed by a walk up Pen y Fan in the afternoon. I made both halves of the page using Jenny Wren cut-files from Twilight Crafts as my DT projects this month, with Picture Wheel on the left and Road Sign 2 on the right.

(These are pages 81 & 82 for my page count this year.)

Supplies

Paper - Make & Create Moments, My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm, Make & Create Grunge Dreams, My Mind's Eye Necessities

Letters - American Crafts, Paige Evans

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo, Paige Evans, Pretty Little Studio, 49 & Market

Die-Cuts - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Dots - Altenew, Maggie Holmes

Disclosure - I receive digital cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

Summer Scraplifts with Scrap Squad - Part 1

The Scrap Squad group on Facebook generally post a scraplifting challenge once a week, but sometimes they do longer seasonal events and this month they ran '12 Days of Summer Scraplifts'. These series are great for getting me out of a scrapbooking rut and making some 'different' pages. 

I won't be doing them all, and I'm just sharing the first four today. Please follow the links over to the group if you want to see the original inspiration pages.

61 & 62. Getaway - Scotland (2023)

The first lift was a double page, which enabled me to make one of the last two pages for my 2023 album, a summary of our three week road trip around Scotland. I stuck to a single travel collection, trying to use up as many stickers and die-cuts as I could.

Supplies: Cardstock - The Craft Place; Paper - Photoplay Boarding Pass; Letters - Unknown; Stickers - Photoplay, Simple Stories; Die-Cuts - Photoplay; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, Simple Stories

63. Easter Engines (2024)

The second page was based on a diagonal line of hexagons, and I've long thought about cutting up this hexagon patterned paper as I found it too busy to use whole. This was my chance, with two photos from the Bluebell Railway on Easter Sunday.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill, DCWV; Paper - DCWV Linen Closet; Filmstrip - 49 & Market; Washi Tape - Stampin' Up!; Ticket & Puffy Sticker - Unknown; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye

64. Southend Half (2024)

Day 3's page featured a giant chevron, which I thought gave a sense of movement, well-suited to documenting my husband's first half marathon.

Supplies: Paper - Cocoa Vanilla Studio No Limits, Bo Bunny Little Wonders; Letters - American Crafts; Acetate Filmstrips - 49 & Market; Die-Cuts - 49 & Market; Star Stickers - Unknown; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, Altenew

65. Out for the Count (2024)

I concentrated on the patterned border from Day 4's page, and used inks and stamps to create something similar. I went off-piste in the middle, replacing the original trio of photos with eight pictures from election night when we were involved in the local count. I used the Filmstrip cut-file from Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files so this doubled up as my second DT page of the month.

Supplies: Cardstock - First Edition; Letters - American Crafts; Puffy Stars - Rosie's Studio; Acetate Filmstrip - 49 & Market; Washi Tape - American Crafts

Disclosure - I receive cut-files free of charge from Twilight Crafts as part of my DT role. All other supplies are my own.

On Meldon Hill

Three posts running for the same album and the same holiday! On Saturday afternoon we walked from our cottage to the town of Chagford, about three miles away, choosing a route that took us over Meldon Hill with its multitude of tors.

I printed six photos, five landscape 4x6s plus a smaller close-up, and went for a double page based on Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love class, but tweaked and updated.

Supplies
Paper - Simple Stories Safe Travels, Crate Paper Sweet Story
Letters - The Robin's Nest
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio

Emamel Dots - Simple Stories

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch

Vegueta

The last two posts were a brief diversion to catch up with unblogged pages that I made last year. In truth I am still scrapping our Canary Islands cruise and have a page today from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Vegueta is the old town, and my page is a double with photos of three of the old buildings. 

I laid a torn paper strip on each side of the page to hold my title (cut on my Silhouette) and journalling, using the centre part for my photos. I made the right hand side first with two photos of Columbus' House which I matted together on a stack of patterned papers with the building name up the side in Spanish. I then moved across to the left side and made two separate patterned paper stacks for individual photos of the town hall and the theatre, repeating some of the papers from one stack to another.

Looking at the page on screen now, it's obvious that the flower cluster at the bottom-left needs a small piece of the same filmstrip washi tape that's in the top-right cluster so I've gone back and added it (but not taken a new photo).

Supplies

Cardstock - UK Crafts

Paper - Heidi Swapp Carefree, Jen Hadfield Peaceful Heart

Letters - KaiserCraft, Webster's Pages

Ephemera - Heidi Swapp

Label Sticker - Heidi Swapp

Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico

Puffy Hearts - Unknown

Washi Tape - Ebay, Unknown

Gems - Love to Craft

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot & X-Cut 'Explore' Die

X-Cut Circle Punch

 

On the Cinder Track

Our cottage in Yorkshire backed onto The Cinder Track, a footpath which follows the line of the old Whitby to Scarborough Railway. We walked several sections of it on different days, but I've pulled all the photos of the track onto one double page.

I'm using two complementary paper collections for the pages from this holiday, but only one of them here. There's a bit of cutting and stretching going on as I only had one sheet of the spotty paper, but didn't need any behind the full-height stack of three 4x6 photos.

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania, Bazzill

Paper - Bo Bunny Seen & Noted

Letters - October Afternoon

Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, Echo Park, Simple Stories

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Big Shot

Dovecraft Label Die

Make & Create 'Wheel' Die

X-Cut Circle Punch

Discover Dungeness

Before we went away, I'd embarked on a series of pages for a day walk around Dungeness in Kent. I'm making them out of order so this one comes before the last one I shared and is a double page overview of the day.

The '-ness' part of Dungeness means headland, the area is sort of V-shaped with the sea on the two sides of the V, and it's mostly covered in shingle which was very hard on the legs.

I started these pages with a colour palette of yellow ochre, magenta and navy from Heidi Swapp's Wanderlust collection, and I've added aqua into the mix for this one. I've used a slightly odd positioning for my title, splitting it across two places and running the words in different directions, but they fit so well where they are and I don't mind if they are read as title and embellishment instead.

Supplies

Paper - Heidi Swapp Wanderlust

Letters - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine

Word Sticker - Heidi Swapp

Phrase Sticker - Tim Holtz

Tab Die-Cut - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans

Washi Tape - Hobbycraft?

Enamel Dots - Freckled Fawn, Altenew, Pretty My Page

Tools

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Hares About Town

I have a double page to share today, another for my 2021 album. Hares About Town is a charity sculpture trail, currently being held in Southend-on-Sea before the hares are auctioned in aid of Havens Hospices. I spent a few hours ticking off the ones on the sea-front and the town centre.

I used the July double sketch from Stick It Down, with a grid of hare photos on the right side. My photos didn't fill the full height of the page so I ran lines of washi tape across the top and bottom of the double page. 

I chose to kill off a 6x6 pad by using shorter paper strips than those on the sketch, 6" tall in the bottom part of the page, and shorter ones to fit the space above.

One of the statues was positioned against a painted background (under a railway bridge) with the name of the hunt and a hare illustration; that photo's on the left side of the page and doubles as my title. I squeezed in a couple more hares on tags which overlap the main, larger photo.

I cut viewfinder circles from one of the papers, and die-cut labels from a couple of others, and used them in three clusters with some stickers and enamel dots.

Supplies

Cardstock - UK Crafts, Bazzill

Paper - My Mind's Eye Now and Then

Washi Tape - Unknown

Stickers - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans, Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes

Enamel Dots - Studio Calico, Freckled Fawn, Altenew

Tools

Big Shot

X-Cut Tag Die

Dovecraft Label Die

TGO Challenge

Back to the 2018 album, and a page for The Great Outdoors Challenge, a trek across Scotland that my husband did for three years before Covid struck (and is set to do again next year). This was his second Challenge, and I asked him to choose a selection of photos to illustrate the experience, as I find it hard to pick the significant moments when I'm not involved in the story.

My layout is pretty conventional, the logical choice for a walking page. The photos are in roughly chronological order with a grid of six in the middle and a more varied arrangement to the sides.

The quadrilaterals of stripy paper at the sides came about because the paper is a diagonal stripe but the lines run at a shallower angle than the arrows print and they looked odd together, so I turned the stripes to run vertically instead.

Supplies

Cardstock - American Crafts

Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit

Letters - American Crafts, Teresa Collins

Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Shapes - Doodlebug, Papermania

Ink - Memento

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

Cultural Cities Cruise

I'm heading back into my 2018 photos now with this page, the last one for my term on the Design Team at The Mad Scrapper. I've picked my favourite collection from the last six months, Vicki Boutin's Storyteller, for a double page summary of that year's cruise.

I used a globe cutfile from Paige Evans, and a page design from Shimelle Laine, with eight 3x4 photos. Please pop over to The Mad Scrapper Blog for more information and close-up photos.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - American Crafts/Vicki Boutin Storyteller*

Letters - American Crafts/Paige Evans

Stickers - American Crafts/Vicki Boutin Storyteller*

Washi Tape - Unknown

Ink - Memento

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Paige Evans Floral Globe Cut-File

*Disclosure - I received the Storyteller papers and stickers free of charge from The Mad Scrapper as part of my Design Team role.

Sculpture by the Lakes

One of the reasons for our trip to Dorset was that I wanted to visit Sculpture by the Lakes, 26 acres of gardens populated with sculptures mostly by Simon Gudgeon.

Obviously, I took loads of photos and this has lead to a quadruple page in my album, a double plus a divided page that will sit between the two halves. I actually made the divided pages quite early on, using a page protector with a mix of vertical and horizontal 4x6 pockets. I filled all 10 with photos and used the 2x10 pocket at the side of the front for a title.

This page protector then sat on my shelf for three months, waiting for the double that would complete the quartet. I toyed with a few ideas over that time and pulled out the photos more than once but I couldn't really work out what I wanted to do with them.

Eventually I had scrapped everything else from this trip and there was no putting this page off any longer. Firstly I tried to emulate the divided page look with a mosaic of photos and patterned paper panels on plain cardstock, but the contrast between the mostly green photos and the bright colours of the patterned paper was too jarring. I switched to another project and came back again a few days later, to try a similar mosaic but with each photo matted on one of the patterned papers, which made me much happier. The 'double' will never be viewed together as the divided page will sit between the two halves in my album so I ended up working on them separately.

The left side has five photos arranged around a 'Create' die-cut that I had been saving all along,

and the right side has eight mostly smaller photos.

I journalled on both pages, using the lines between the pattern on the orange scallops paper as I have done so many times before. I embellished two of the paper panels on the left page but by the time I got to the right side I just wanted it to be done. I tried embellishments in a few spots but nothing looked right so this side stayed plainer.

Supplies

Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon*

Letters - Anita's Glitterations

Die-Cuts - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon*

Flower - Kaisercraft

Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico

Butterflies - Prima*

Washi Tape - Little B

Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Echo Park, Eyelet Outlet

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Big Shot

Dovecraft Label Die

X-Cut Pennant Die

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

*Disclosure - I received the paper pad, die-cut and sugar dots free of charge from The Mad Scrapper as part of my DT role.

Winter Ball

I'm back on the blog at The Mad Scrapper today, with a double page made using Vicki Boutin's Storyteller collection. This page will go in my daughter's university album, and records their Winter Ball from 2019.

Please do hop over there for more details and close-up photos.

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania

Paper - Vicki Boutin Storyteller*

Letters - Pink Paislee 5th & Monaco*

Stickers - Vicki Boutin Storyteller*

Washi Tape - Ebay

Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Trimcraft

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Docrafts

*Disclosure - I received the papers, stickers and letters free of charge from The Mad Scrapper as part of my Design Team role.

Ball Boys

I'm continuing to tick off the cake-themed birthday challenges from For the Love of Pretty Paper; the fifth one was 'Chocolate Fudge Cake', or 'More is More'. I've gone for an unconventional interpretation with five photos on a double page.

Those photos are old ones of my (now-adult) son and nephew in a ball pit when they were small, and I used an old page layout too, the May class from Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love class way back in 2011.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Swiss Dot

Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, PhotoPlay Boarding Pass

Tickets - Unknown

Word Stickers - Bazzill

Glitter Tape - The Works

Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs, Doodlebug, Eyelet Outlet, Echo Park

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

X-Cut Circle Punch

Big Shot & M&C Fancy Circle Die

Lost in Time

One of the reasons that we chose Dorset for our autumn mini-break was my long-held desire to visit the abandoned village of Tyneham. The village and the surrounding area were requisitioned by the War Office in 1943 to provide an area for military training; they were supposed to be given back after the war but that never happened, the buildings fell into ruin and the area is now part of Lulworth Ranges. However the village is open to the public when the ranges are not in use. 

I took loads of photos so this had to be a double page (with a single to follow for the adjacent farm). I printed a map to go with the photos and used a couple of journalling cards, one on each side.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts

Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon*

Letters - American Crafts*, October Afternoon

Numbers - October Afternoon, Jenni Bowlin

Die-Cuts - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Late Afternoon*

Washi Tape - Efco, Little B

Enamel Dots - Prima Darcelle Sugar Dots*

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

Big Shot & X-Cut 'Explore' Die

*Disclosure - I received the papers, Thickers, die-cuts and sugar dots free of charge from The Mad Scrapper as part of my DT role.

Coast to Coast

Last page now for my 2016 album, and it's another long distance walk for my husband. This time he and a friend were walking north to south across Devon from Lynmouth to Wembury.

An eight day walk across glorious countryside yielded a plethora of photos so I made a double page by repeating the 'Half and Half' sketch from Shimelle's Start with a Sketch class. This gave me room for twelve smaller photos in the bottom half of the page plus larger photos, title and journalling in the top half. It's also a good design for when you don't have two identical papers for the background as it can be made by splitting two different papers into 6" panels for the tops and bottoms.

Supplies
Paper - Authentique, We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit, Crate Paper Random, My Mind's Eye Collectable, Simple Stories Awesome

Letters - American Crafts

Journalling Cards - Project Life

Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio, Freckled Fawn

Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Pretty My Page

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot

Dovecraft Label Die

X-Cut Pennant Die

Prom

I'm working through my remaining 2016 pages, but it really is a reminder that I shouldn't leave double pages until last. This is the fifth of six, so almost done.
This page is from my daughter's Prom which was held at a local hotel. I've gone with seven photos: I took the large one on the left outside the hotel when I dropped off my daughter and her friend; the rest are a mixture of professional photos and snaps taken on their phones.

I used last month's double sketch from Stick It Down for my page, adjusting it to suit my variety of photo sizes, and adding extra papers on the right so that the far column of photos wan't so isolated.

I mostly used papers from Amy Tangerine's Shine On collection, which I also used for Family Fun and Games last week. However, where that page was quite colourful and playful, I concentrated on the grey and black papers this time for a more sophisticated look with gold accents.

I built an embellishment cluster on each side of the page based around two cameras in different sizes; they are the same motif cut from a 12x12 paper and the 6x6 pad. The 'summer' and 'party' words on the left came from the same 6x6 paper. I finished off with some of the smaller chipboard pieces from the collection and some puffy dots in grey and black.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Amy Tangerine Shine On, American Crafts/Shimelle Head in the Clouds
Letters - American Crafts
Chipboard - Amy Tangerine Shine On
Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio
Word Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes
Label Sticker - 7Gypsies
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

MUSE

I'm sticking with my 2016 album for this page, filling in another gap with a double page from when we saw Muse at the O2 in April. 

I took a ton of photos and thought that this was going to be a photo-heavy page, but when I sorted through them there just a couple that were really much better than the rest and that I wanted to blow up large. I then added a third which wasn't quite as good but gave me a close-up of the band in action.

I was stumped for both page design and colour scheme so asked for ideas on Facebook. One lady shared a concert page where she used a cutfile and this got me going though neither my cutfile nor my colour scheme match hers at all.

I started with a black cardstock background and liberally spattered it with three colours of mist. I used a stars cutfile, backed some of the small stars with vellum, and filled some of the larger stars with die-cuts.

Supplies

Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Papermania

Paper - Sandylion, HOTP

Vellum - Crate Paper

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz

Mist - Docrafts, Heidi Swapp

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Paige Taylor Evans 'Stars' Cutfile

Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die

Woodware Tiny Star Punch

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

Chepstow Castle

I'm filling in another gap in my 2016 album today, with a page from our holiday in Wales at Easter. We visited Chepstow Castle one afternoon, and I had sufficient decent photos to need a double page.

It's a rough scraplift of my 'Lift Me Up' page from last year, mostly flipped from left to right, but with some of the page elements moved around to suit my new set of photos.

Supplies
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Glitter Tape - Unknown
Pearls - Craft for Occasions, The Hobby House
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die