Every Day is a New Adventure

One of the prompts from The 20 Project was to change your title techniques, to think about what you use for your page titles and then to do something different. This made me think about a pre-cut title piece that I received in a Quirky Kit last spring; 'Every Day is a New Adventure' is perfect for a cruise, when you are visiting a new place every day, but I made the whole album for our last cruise without using it. However I also need to document that cruise for my 2015 annual album.

We visited seven towns and cities on that cruise, so I picked one photo from each port and got them printed as squares ready for a double page using quadrants with photos in seven and the title in the eighth. Once I started, I rejected that idea as it wasn't working for me, and I considered scraplifting my Books About Town page instead. My final page was actually a hybrid of the two with rows of photos in distinct blocks.

I mostly used leftover papers from my cruise album for my page, but the filmstrip washi is a brand new purchase. I used silver-grey mist in the album but switched to gold here to match the title piece.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Coredinations, Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits
Title - Quirky Kits
Letters - October Afternoon
Die Cuts - atd
Washi Tape - Ebay
Puffy Stickers - Paperchase
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, Echo Park
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Compass Stamp

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

On the Heritage Trail

Back to my cruise album, after the diversion of the last page. I have two approaches to albums like this, firstly to make random pages inspired by sketches and challenges, and secondly to fill in the gaps in the 'story'. 

This page falls in the second category, and is from our afternoon in Killybegs. It's a small town and has nothing obvious to attract the visitor, but I found a Heritage Trail leaflet online and we followed this around the town. It was an interesting overview of the town, but there was no one special building to feature so I decided on an eight-photo double page for the whole trail.

I deliberately printed the pictures in different sizes for interest, but I still ended up with my default two rows of photos in the centre of the double page. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Glitz Design Uncharted Waters, Pink Paislee Cedar Lane, Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - Anita's Glitterations, Glitz Design
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Pearls - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Unknown
Washi Paper - We R Memory Keepers
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
7Gypsies Stamp
Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp

Going Coastal

We spent the first morning of our cruise this summer following the Irish coast en route from Liverpool to Killybegs. I picked the best photo of that coast and printed it large for this page.

I've already used my default large photo layout for this album (for my title page) so I went looking for an alternative. I picked an old five-photo sketch from Shimelle and used all that photo space for just one. 

Supplies

Cardstock - Colorset

Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Hot Off the Press

Letters - Papermania

Washi Tape - Unknown

Diecuts - atd

Wood Veneer - Studio Calico

Mist - Docrafts

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Stamp

Dovecraft Filmstrip Stamp

Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp

Killybegs

I will need to make a lot of pages with 4x6 photos for my cruise album, so I've been bookmarking suitable sketches when I see them but don't have enough time to use them immediately. This page is based on one of the September sketches from ScrapMuch?

It also incorporates this month's Stash Challenge from Scrap Our Stash, one to create a layout using stash items for each of the letters of the word INKS. Mine are Inked edges, Notebook border and No Limits paper, the title Killybegs, Star Sticker and Stamping.

I used two photos of the town of Killybegs in the Republic of Ireland, the first stop on our cruise. The top one is the view from our ship's berth; the bottom one is a view across the bay as we walked into town.

I'm planning to make introductory pages like this for each of the towns/cities that we visited, to act as dividers in the album and to make it clear where each set of photos were taken. The stamped circle on the right isn't very clear, but it reads 'Entry Date'. I'll repeat this on each introductory page, and then I won't need to date all the intervening pages too.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Colorbok Travel
Letters - American Crafts
Star Sticker - Studio Calico
Pearls - Mark Richards
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

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

She Reads

This IS a cruise page, but it's a 'people' page rather than a 'places' page, one about our daughter and her propensity for reading wherever and whenever she could.

I started out with two 3" x 4" photos and Sketch #115 from My Scraps and More, but I soon realised that I wanted to sit my daughter and the vellum girl back-to-back in their similar positions, and my photo was too small for that. I reprinted it and cropped the other one down to a 2" square, which means that my page no longer looks exactly like the sketch.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Papermania
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Graphic 45 Artisan Style
Letters - American Crafts
Vellum Girl - Crafty Templates/Quirky Kits
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-ology
Ink & Mist - Docrafts
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Doodlebug
Washi Tape - Unknown
Epoxy Dome Stickers - Ebay

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Stick It Down - Black Watch

Today's reveal day for the single pages from this month's sketch at Stick It Down. It's a six photo sketch this time, though I'm sure you could make it work with fewer.

I'm staying with my cruise album, and I picked photos of our ship in six of our seven ports of call for my page. (The seventh was Belfast, where the port area was fairly industrial and not at all photogenic.)

My photos are wider than those in the sketch, so they take up a greater proportion of the page. I tried my title on both the left and the right, and with the letters in both directions, and ultimately chose to run the words up the left side of the page, filling the gap at the top with a repeat of my compass stamp. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset, Papermania
Paper - Heidi Swapp No Limits, Glitz Design Uncharted Waters
Letters - American Crafts
Label Stickers - 7Gypsies
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico, Trimcraft, Doodlebug
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Compass Stamp