Tea @ Claridge's

I've reached April now on my run through 2026, and an afternoon tea at Claridge's to celebrate my friend's big birthday. I'd thought that this page would have a mint green colour scheme, to match our cups, and even mentally selected the papers, but the the cool tones did not work with the warm tones in the photos, so I had to rethink.

After considering quite a few collections, I decided on 49 and Market's Plum Grove, using their rub-ons to create a roughly square frame around my photos, with my title across the middle. 

Supplies: Paper - 49 and Market Plum Grove; Letters - American Crafts; Rub-Ons - 49 and Market; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

Club Night with AI

I have another page for my 2026 album today, and it's also a DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. My pictures come from a social night for our running club, where afterwards a member turned the group photo into a drawing using ChatGPT, and then my husband turned us all into Lego people.

I stuck with the Lego theme by using the girl from the Lego Pirate, Girl and Spaceman cut-file as a large embellishment, cutting her from dull brown cardstock and backing her with paper scraps, including making her shirt match our club colour. I didn't trust myself to draw her face, so I used some punctuation stickers instead.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania; Paper - Heidi Swapp Sun Chaser, Heidi Swapp Hello Today; Letters - Shimelle, American Crafts, Papermania; Journalling Cards - Maggie Holmes; Word Stickers - Tim Holtz; Stickers - Studio Calico, Hobbycraft, OneCanoeTwo; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Unknown; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories

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

London Pages

Next up are two pages for this year's annual album. I'm doing a reasonable job of keeping on top of this as I go along, and these pages mean everything has been scrapped up to mid-March with no gaps. 

We live just outside London and had made two social trips into the city this year at the time that I started this post:

(The numbers are my page count for the year. I count doubles as two pages.)

36. London Meet-Up

This is a page from February, dinner with friends and then a walk along the Thames by night. I didn't feel the need for it to be two pages but I did want to separate the two parts, which I did with Sketch 9 from Shimelle's Start with a Sketch Class.

Supplies: Cardstock - American Crafts; Paper - Echo Park It's a Boy, Glitz Design Sunshine in My Soul; Letters - Rosie's Studio, Basic Grey; Washi Tape - Vicki Boutin; Glitter Tape - The Works; Stickers - Maggie Holmes, 49 & Market; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella

37 & 38. Nomads in the City

Our running club, Thurrock Nomads, turns 40 this year and we kicked off our celebrations with a run through London. I'm trying to cut back on double pages, but there were too many photos that I wanted to include and I couldn't go much smaller as then you wouldn't be able to see people's faces clearly in the group shots.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Simple Stories Safe Travels; Letters - Rosie's Studio; Puffy Stickers - Vicki Boutin

Pages for 2024

Pausing the cruise pages now, to catch up with the end of 2024. I have a few gaps to go back and fill in, but these pages cover most of November and December. Facebook group For the Love of Pretty Paper recently celebrated their tenth birthday with 10 challenges and I've covered a few here.

(The numbers are my page count for this year; I'm aiming to beat the 105 that I managed in 2024.)

1. Delicious Moments

My first DT page of the year for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files, which satisfied the 'Circle' challenge from FTLOPP. I cut two of Leaf Wreath and layered them up over a stamped circle of leaves. The photo is from our Christmas lunch in a local pub.

Supplies: Paper - 49 & Market, Kit 'n' Craft; Rub-Ons - 49 & Market; Gems - Papermania, Unknown Stars

2. Penguin Parade

Twelve photos from a penguin statue trail in London, perfect for the 'Repeat' challenge from FTLOPP as they are all basically the same shape. Having chosen a suitable background, I picked out an assortment of ancient stash to go with it.

Supplies: Paper - Echo Park Reflections Christmas, Fancy Pants Winterland, Heidi Swapp No Limits; Washi Tape - Dovecraft, Unknown; Puffy Stickers - MAMBI; Stars - Sheenanigans; Pearls - Mark Richards, The Hobby House; Paint - Golden

3. Christmas Lights
My second January DT page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files uses an older cut-file, the word Christmas, as part of my title and I included machine-stitching for the 'Stitched' challenge from FTLOPP. The photos are from a Christmas Lights Run that one of the members of our running club organised.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill, DCWV; Paper - Simple Stories Jingle all the Way, Carta Bella Hello Christmas; Letters - Studio Calico, We R Memory Keepers; Laser-Cut Baubles - 49 & Market; Sticker - Shimelle; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella

4. Parkrun Tourism 2024

I used to make a 12x12 pages in my annual albums for each parkrun we visited, but they were getting too numerous and duplicating the 8x8 pages in my parkrun album, so I've just done a single roundup page for 2024, using another Jenny Wren Cut-File - 2024 Stacked. Eleven photos for the '3 or More Photos' challenge from FTLOPP.

Supplies: Cardstock - Stampin' Up!; Paper - Sokai SO'BB, My Mind's Eye Jubilee, Simple Stories; Puffy Stars - Rosie's Studio 

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

Pages from Starting Points

I sometimes make 'starting point' pages, a term I have taken from Shimelle, pages that I start without photos and finish at a later date. I do this either in order slim down my scraps box or to kill off a collection pack. And, eventually, they do generally get used even if that's years later, like these two pages.

89. Girls' Night Out
I started this one back in 2016, one of two pages that I started with the remnants of Basic Grey's What's Up collection.  I planned it for a single 4x6 vertical photo and it's taken eight years to get one that suits the colour scheme. I finished it using the Girls Night Out cut-file from Twilight Crafts which I backed with some of the scraps that I had kept, before fussy-cutting some leaves and a flower as embellishment.

Supplies: Paper - Basic Grey What's Up, My Mind's Eye Cut and Paste; Letters - My Mind's Eye; Stars - Rosie's Studio; Nuvo Drops

90. #Boyznite

My second page is only five years old, and was started with an assortment of blue and green pieces from my scraps box. I cut down the blue paper with the writing on as it wasn't completely right for the page once I had decided to use it with this photo, and tucked in a journalling card to the side. I based the embellishment clusters around three punched circles that I had kept and finished off two packs of puffy stars.

Supplies: Paper - Cherry Arte, Jillibean Soup, Sandylion, My Mind's Eye; Letters - American Crafts; Stars - Pinkfresh Studio, MRI; Enamel Dots - Altenew, 49 & Market, Ebay

This just leaves one starting point page in the folder, waiting a bit longer for its finishing touches. Though my scraps box is getting rather full again ...

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

A Birthday Selfie

Just a single page to share today, my first project of the month for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files.

The photo is a selfie that a friend took when a group of us went out for breakfast recently to celebrate her birthday, and the page will go in this year's annual album.

I used the Butterfly Wreath cut-file, chose a pre-printed mixed media style background paper, and backed the butterflies with papers to match the colours on the background. I then stitched a circle within the butterfly wreath to provide an anchor for my title letters. 

Supplies 

Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, Vicki Boutin Storyteller, Carta Bella Flower Garden, My Mind's Eye Collectable

Letters - Violet Studio

Stickers - Simple Stories, Vicki Boutin

Enamel Dots - 49 & Market, Simple Stories

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

(Page 53 for 2024)

Spread the Parkrun Love

Well, I applied for the new DT at Let's Get Sketchy but I wasn't successful. However the sketch to use for DT submissions was also the first sketch of the new era, so I had a page ready and waiting for that when it was published at the start of the month.

We are in March now but we haven't done much yet this year and that makes keeping on top of the 2022 album quite straightforward. I have a single photo of a friend and me at parkrun taken by the photographer volunteer last month which I thought would suit the sketch well.

I picked Simple Stories Safe Travels papers from the colours in the photo and layered them in a similar way to the sketch. That big flower became my tree and I inked an old piece of filmstrip chipboard to run behind the photo (which I popped up on a piece of foam to give enough depth for the chipboard piece to sit neatly).

There's no place marked for journalling on the sketch so I popped mine on a card below the photo and moved the title across. I included the word 'love' for a challenge from Hey Little Magpie, but I would probably have used this wording anyway. My friend is a relative newcomer to parkrun and now loves it almost as much as we do.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Paper - Fancy Pants Off to School, Simple Stories Safe Travels

Letters - American Crafts

Chipboard - Creative Expressions

Tree Die-Cut - Quirky Kits

Phrase Sticker - Pretty Little Studio

Enamel Dots - Papermania, Simple Stories

Tools

X-Cut Circle Punch

Fabulous Fridays

Now that Covid restrictions are being lifted here, we've actually been places and done things for the 2021 album. I recently got a batch of photos printed and I'm hoping they bring my mojo back.

This first page was already part done; it started off as a scraplift challenge back in 2017, but I didn't have a photo to finish the page at the time. I put it to one side until I did, but that's taken much longer than I originally thought it would. 

My new photo is a selfie from a lunch with friends to celebrate my birthday and the journalling is about how we're allowed to meet in person again now. I used a couple of flairs from Dotty About Flair, including a coffee cup which I've been hoarding because we normally meet up on Fridays for coffee and a natter. 

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Teresa Collins Something Wonderful, We R Memory Keepers Love Notes, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society

Letters - American Crafts

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Flair - Dotty About Flair
Gems - ZVA Creative
Enamel Dots - Altenew
Thread - DMC

Mist - Mister Huey's

Back Together

I have a trio of 2020 pages coming up over the next week, all made for the summer sketch series at Lottie Loves Paper. First up is a two-photo page of my friends and me getting back together in person after four months of chatting online. We used to meet weekly for coffee in a shopping centre, but we've replaced that with the outdoor area of an independent cafe instead. There's nothing to do afterwards but none of us wants to go shopping at present so that's fine.

I used three papers from the Whimsical collection for the triangles on the sketch, and double matted the photos as indicated. I didn't have a coordinating paper for the background and didn't want plain white cardstock so got brave with inks and mists. The clusters to the right of the photos gave me some trouble. I stamped the circles as they are on the sketch, but then tried a variety of different hearts and stars to finish them without success, until I spotted these floral puffy stickers and then it all fell into place.

 
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft UK
Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Whimsical, Studio Calico Snippets, Scrapberry's Summer Joy
Letters - Pebbles
Title Die-Cut - Unknown
Puffy Stickers - OneCanoeTwo Hazelwood
Stickers - Paige Evans #Stickerbook
Enamel Dots/Stars - My Mind's Eye, Doodlebug, Studio Calico
Ink - Versamagic, Ranger, Ink It Up!
Mist - Heidi Swapp, Maya Road, Docrafts

Tools
Hobbycraft 'Star Circle' Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp

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

Five Go Adventuring Again

Back in May I started working through my 2005 photos with the aid of various National Scrapbooking Day challenges, and then I wandered off through the archives to complete some more. Now it's time to return to that album with a double page from a trip to Adventure Island (a local theme park) for my son's birthday.

I'd planned this page out before NSD, using an old sketch from Sketch Support which I tweaked to suit my photos. 

With wider photos on the right hand side of the page I knew that my journalling would have to move, and earmarked a space below the title. It took a while to come up with that title though - we visited this theme park a lot when my children were small and I've used up all the obvious titles (and repeated some of them). I eventually locked on to the fact that there were five children this time and pinched the title of a Famous Five story which plays on the word Adventure. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, DCWV, Bazzill
Paper - Studio Calico Snippets, Studio Calico Heyday
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Chipboard Number - Unknown
Puffy Stars - Pinkfresh Studio, MRI
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die

On-Nomi

Firstly, that title might need some explanation; it's a Japanese word that I first saw back in March (on a Facebook post from the TV programme QI) which translates to English as "online drinking" and captures the idea of enjoying a drink at home while chatting with your friends via video-conferencing apps.

It's something that I've been doing regularly and wanted to capture in my scrapbook as it's so different from the 'old normal' when I used to meet with these ladies in person every week. I played with various ideas for this page, which I wanted to combine with a sticker challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper as I had some coffee cup and teacup stickers lurking in my stash. I finally decided on a tight grid, with an assortment of stickers on the boxes in between our faces.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page
Letters - American Crafts
Stickers - Paige Evans #Stickerbook
Washi Tape - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs
Ink - Memento

Tools
Lakeland Speckled Background Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Celebrate

We had eighteen challenges in the recent birthday cybercrop at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and the very last one, 'Midnight Madness', was to combine any five of the others on one page.

I chose to do these with a group photo from my friend's 50th birthday party. Coincidentally, all the guests in this picture wore black sparkly outfits while the birthday girl (centre) was in dark cerise pink so I used that as the main colour in my page. I had pinched some of the table confetti from the evening to use on the page if I could, and it worked out quite well.

I didn't choose my five challenges in advance, but kept a list beside me and worked out which ones could be included as I went along. I ended up with something sparkly or glittery, circles, lots of layers, new stash (silver glitter tape) and lots of the same embellishment (gems).

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Collectable, Hot Off the Press Garnet Sarabook
Vellum - My Mind's Eye
Letters - American Crafts
Frame & Glitter Tape - from Advent Swap
Enamel Hearts - Marianne Designs
Gems - Simply Creative
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Big Shot & Doily Die

Christmas Starts Here

We ended the year over at For the Love of Pretty Paper with a cybercrop to celebrate the group's fifth birthday. The admin team organised 18 challenges across New Year's Eve which is far too many for me to do them all, but gives me a wide variety to choose from.

I started with 'Musical Statues' which asked us to use a vertical design or vertical stripes, and picked December's single page sketch from Stick It Down to go with two photos from a Christmas party that we attend every year.

I like to use a traditional colour palette of red, green and gold for Christmas photos; for this page I mixed a variety of old and new papers from several different manufacturers.

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV, Stampin' Up!

Paper - American Crafts Be Merry, Carta Bella Christmas Market, Simple Stories DIY Christmas

Letters - We R Memory Keepers
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft?

Puffy Stars - Bella Boulevard

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot & X-Cut Star Die

Woodware Tiny Star Punch

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

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

Alix

Alix was my French penfriend when we were teenagers, and I was inspired to scrap this photo of her (the only one I have) by a prompt at For the Love of Pretty Paper to use envelopes on a page. I can be pretty literal at times, and penfriends and envelopes fitted together in my mind.

I'm combining National Scrapbooking Day challenges again, starting with a scraplift from UK Scrap Addicts for their 'Attack of the Clones' challenge. I sketched and stitched the swirly lines, which satisfied the requests for stitching which came from both Hey Little Magpie and Bramble Fox.

I did my best to kill off a 6x6 pad with this page, cutting and stretching some of the papers. There are so many patterns that once I'd added my envelopes I didn't feel that there was a place or a need for much embellishment, just adding a few subtle punched flowers.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus, My Mind's Eye Just Splendid
Letters - DCWV
Gems - Simply Creative
Thread - DMC

Tools
Big Shot & Sizzix Cards & Envelopes Die
Craft Creative Flower Punch

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

Black Tor

It was another challenge from the Stashbusting Facebook group that got me to make this page; one of the choices was a tic-tac-toe grid with 'outdoors theme' in the corner and this drew me towards recent photos from Dartmoor. Most of my outdoors-y paper collections have brown in them so I decided to add stars and complete the right-hand column of the grid.


I initially picked three photos, but then cropped the group picture and added a fourth. Looking for a layout to suit them, I hit upon the monthly challenge from UKScrappers, which was a sketch for two 4x6 photos that looked adaptable if I went a bit smaller with mine.

I used an old but well-loved set of Thickers for my title, surprised to find that I still had an 'a' left but not so lucky with the other letters; I had to cut down a 'b' and an 'm' to make 'or'.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Authentique Natural, We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit, Kit 'n' Kraft
Pocket Cards - We R Memory Keepers Indian Summer
Letters - American Crafts
Flowers - KaiserCraft
Die-Cut - atd
Sticker - OneCanoeTwo
Washi Tape - Stampin' Up!
Enamel Shapes - American Crafts/Shimelle, Simple Stories
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Studio Calico, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Star Die

A Bit of a Do

The "Do" of my title is a Christmas party in the Lake District that we've attended every year since its inception, the photos were published on Facebook by the party organiser in an album she called "A Bit of a Do", and the name stuck with me as the title for my page.

My favourite scrappy Facebook group For the Love of Pretty Paper recently celebrated its fourth birthday with a 'Grab 5' challenge - to use sparkles, bunting, 4 patterned papers, alpha stickers and triangles - plus to include the word happy somewhere on the page. I also ticked off 'Z is for Zig-Zag' in the Alpha Relay challenges with my chevron background paper.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, DCWV
Paper - Simple Stories December Documented, Simple Stories DIY Christmas, Pebbles Welcome Christmas, Echo Park Reflections Christmas
Letters - Simply Creative
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Word Stickers - American Crafts
Puffy Hearts - American Crafts
Enamel Dots - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger, Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Pretty My Page Arrows Mask
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Studio Calico Stars Stamp