Badness

Another cruise page, but we're back on board now. Badness, a Madness tribute band, was one of the best guest acts we've seen on a ship. I followed the First Idea from Shimelle Laine's recent One Two Punch class, which was based around repeating lines of punched shapes.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK; Paper - Simple Stories Happy Travels, Alchemy Hearts Out & About 2025, Shimelle Never Grow Up; JOurnalling Card - Project Life; Puffy Stickers - Bella Boulevard; Washi Tape - Unknown; Enamel Shapes - Latech

(Page 96 in my count for the year.)

Beer Fest Bands

Today I'm sharing my first DT page of the month for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used three lines from cut-file 515 Scallops Strips as 'shelves' for my photos from Thurrock Beer Festival last month.

All the papers except the background were leftovers from my 2017 Nordic Cruise album which have been languishing in my scraps box since I finished it. The stripe caught my eye first and a quick rummage turned up the others to match.

Supplies: Paper - Reminisce Be Kind, Bo Bunny Early Bird, Echo Park Winter Park, Echo Park We Are Family; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Label Sticker - Heidi Swapp; Enamel Dots - Carta Bella, My Mind's Eye

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

(Page 69 for the year.)

March Pages

Happy Easter!

It's time for my March round-up of pages, and this month I've concentrated on my Scandinavian Cruise album from last year, which is a mixture of 12x12 pages and pocket pages. I'd done two ports out of six before Christmas so it was far from finished.

20. Bolette

I actually made this one in February, but it was to be my first March DT page for Twilight Crafts, using their Arrows Where Shall We Go? cut-file (with the wording removed). It will be the final page in the album and has a large pocket to hold our cruise log.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV, Craft UK, The Craft Place; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Simply the Best, Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Route, Studio Calico South of Market; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio; Filmstrip - 49 and Market; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye

21. City of Roses and Ruins

This is Visby, on the Swedish island of Gotland, a walled medieval city with the ruins of about a dozen churches which were abandoned after the Reformation.

Supplies: Cardstock - Craft UK, Bazzill; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Out & About, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now, Studio Calico South of the Market; Numbers - Jillibean Soup; Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio; Gloitter Tape - The Works;  Enamel Dots - Pinkfresh Studio, Freckled Fawn, My Mind's Eye

22. Drotten

The first church we visited. (The photos on the other side determined which style of page protector to use.)

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Out & About, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Washi Tape - Unknown; Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye

23. St Lars

Another church - St Lars or St Lawrence. I titled the pages with the Swedish names but used English names in my journalling.

Supplies: Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Label - Tim Holtz; Puffy Stickers - Bella Boulevard, Pinkfresh Studio; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Shapes - Doodlebug

24. St Clemens & St Nicolaus

Two more ruined churches share the next page.

Supplies: Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Letters - Elle's Studio; Enamel Dots - Altenew, Hey Little Magpie

25. St Olaf / Botanical Garden

The last ruined church that I am recording, and a couple of photos of the Botanical Garden that it sits within.

Supplies: Cardstock - The Craft Place; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now, Pinkfresh Studio Simply the Best, Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Dots - Pinkfresh Studio, My Mind's Eye

26. Sankta Maria Domkyrka

A page for Visby's Cathedral.

Supplies: Cardstock - Bazzill; Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Echo Park Capture Life; Washi Tape - Unknown; Enamel Shapes - Obed Marshall, Maggie Holmes, My Mind's Eye, Carta Bella

27. Visby Ringmur

The last page from Visby is our walk round the city wall.

Supplies: Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Tourist Mode, Pinkfresh Studio Brighter Days, Pinkfresh Studio Life Right Now; Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio; Label Stickers - Teresa Collins; Glitter Tape - The Works; Enamel Dots - Pinkfresh Studio

28. This Could be the Last Time

This was my second page of the month for Twilight Crafts, using their Bauble Border cut-file. I used two copies and flipped one design over to make a column of six baubles rather than the three on the original cut-file.

Supplies: Cardstock - DCWV; Paper - Ha-Pi Little Fox Un Conte Nordique; Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Carta Bella

29. & 30. Freddie Mercury - A World of His Own

A double page from last summer when Sotheby's put on a public exhibition of Freddie Mercury's possessions, before they were auctioned. I used the double page sketch from Stick It Down.

Supplies: Cardstock - The Craft Place, American Crafts; Paper - Heidi Swapp Hello Today, Stampin' Up!; Washi Tape - Unknown; Enamel Dots - Papermania, Eyelet Outlet

Finally, I made a card for Mother's Day, also using the card sketch from Stick It Down.

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

QuEx

Time now for my first DT page of the month for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I've used Star Bunting 1 with a bokeh print paper to document seeing the Queen Extravaganza (aka QuEx) earlier this year. QuEx are the official Queen tribute band, and this was the second time we've seen them live. 

I positioned the cut-file touching the top and left edges of the page, with a pair of 4x6 photos on the right. I  also chopped off a trio of stars that were hidden behind the photos and added them at the top as an extension of another line.

I had no wish to cover up any more of the paper or the cut-file with embellishments so my only addition was a scattering of pink and purple enamel stars.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts, Craft Sensations, DCWV
Paper - Echo Park Capture Life

Letters - American Crafts, Jenni Bowlin

Enamel Stars - Paperchase, Latech

Paint - Golden

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Star Bunting 1 Cut-File

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Look Up to the Skies

Shimelle's Page

2018 again, but I've jumped to later in the year and a page for the light installation in Carnaby Street that coincided with the release of the film Bohemian Rhapsody. 

I've scraplifted a page from Shimelle from one of her Facebook lives for my page. All those strips of word paper on her page were perfect to copy for my photos of the different lyrics, and one main photo instead of four was an easy swap.

I've used Shimelle paper, washi and letter stickers too, all from Sparkle City which had the purple I needed.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - DCWV Romantic Life, American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City

Letters - American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City

Washi Tape - American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City

Gems - Hobbycraft, ZVA Creative

Ink - Memento, Dr Ph. Martin

Mist - Mister Huey's

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

Cinematastic

I have more pages to make from our day in Flåm, but I need to print the photos first so I'm changing tack for the next few posts.

There's a show on board every evening, and I took this photo of the singers during 'Cinematastic' which featured songs and dances from the movies. 

I used this month's JumpStart sketch from The ScrapRoom but layered the papers more tightly with a portrait photo rather than landscape. I'm so pleased to have included that chipboard filmstrip; it's about five years old now and has been sitting among a pile of pieces that I want to use up. 

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Birthday Bash, Pinkfresh Studio Be You, Studio Calico Heyday, Echo Park Summer Dreams, Simple Stories So Fancy, Pinkfresh Studio Out and About
Chipboard - Creative Embellishments
Puffy Stars - Pinkfresh Studio
Washi Tape - Unknown
Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, My Mind's Eye
Ink - Memento
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Muse - Simulation Theory Tour

I'm supposed to be finishing my cruise album, but I also want to keep on top of my 2019 album and those are the photos that are inspiring me more at the moment, so those are the ones I'm going to scrap.

We saw Muse at the London Stadium at the beginning of June and, of course, I took my 'proper' camera to record the event, but I forgot to put a memory card in it. This limited me to the camera's internal storage of eight photos so, rather than snapping away randomly, I was much more selective about the shots I took and I deleted the duds as I went along. (I did have my phone too, but it really wasn't up to the job.)

I picked three photos for this page, printed them at 4x6 and positioned them in a large block with the MUSE logo in the fourth quarter and music print washi tape above and below. 

Unusually, there's absolutely no patterned paper on this page. The photos take up a lot of space on the page, and I picked cardstock for both the background and for the logo.

We're focusing on using our tools this month over at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and I've used my Silhouette (for the logo), my Big Shot (for the smaller stars) and a punch (for the larger stars) on this page. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania, Stampin' Up!
Letters - Unkown
Washi Tape - The Works
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft?
Sticker - OneCanoeTwo
Gems - Love to Craft
Ink - Memento
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Stop the Clocks

As well as working on my holiday album, I'm trying to keep 2019 up to date. It's been a quiet year so far but I know that it will take off from Easter so I'd like to keep the early months on track if I can. 

Back in January, my husband and daughter went to see Enter Shikari on their Stop the Clocks tour. I've used a sketch originally from Scrapbook Circle which was shared in the Stashbusting Facebook group last month, combined with a cybercrop challenge in the same group to scrap without hearts or flowers. 

I rotated the sketch, and used two of my husband's photos with one facing the audience taken from the band's Facebook page.

I'm really happy to have busted some ancient alpha stickers and paper here. I don't remember ever choosing this background paper so can only assume that it came from a mystery box once upon a time. 

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Cherry Arte Poolside, Imaginisce, Unknown Scraps

Letters - Sandylion

Paper Clip - Freckled Fawn?

Acetate Label - Studio Calico

Music Label - Unknown

Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft

Star Gems - Papermania

Ink - Hobbycraft

Mist - Docrafts

All You Need is Love

Still on cruise pages, there are two more to come and then I'll be done ... just in time for the next cruise! To be honest, this one's a 'filler', I'm on an odd number of pages and so I need one more (or a gap and that would be silly).

My photos came from a Beatles-themed show one evening, and I scraplifted myself for the page design. However it's a scraplift with a twist as I am taking Shimelle's latest class, Layer on Layer on Layer, and one of the prompts is to scraplift yourself but find a way to incorporate more layers in the page. 

I started out from a three year old page for Caernarfon Castle, and flipped it horizontally to suit the direction in my photos. At this stage in the album I didn't have many big pieces of paper left, but I did have plenty of 12" strips and some medium size pieces that I could cut and stretch. The new page has more layers behind the photos than the original and I substituted a series of overlapping paper strips for the single vertical piece in the original. I even got an extra layer into the background with two scraps of vellum positioned to look like one longer strip.

I used two colours of tile stickers for my title and there are three reasons why I used the red ones for the word love - they form a triangle of red with the two ends of the red paper strip; they are wider than the cream ones so can 'support' the longer words above; and I only had two cream l's left.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, HOTP, Simple Stories, American Crafts/Shimelle, Echo Park, Basic Grey
Vellum - Crate Paper
Letters - October Afternoon, We R Memory Keepers
Enamel Shapes - Stampin' Up!
Gems - from Stash
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
The Works Roller Stamp
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Hobbycraft Heart Punch

ELO

I made this page for a Recipe Challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, we were asked to make a page with two photos, three patterned papers, five die-cuts, alphas, thread, sequins, mist and our own secret ingredient.

The only pair of printed photos that I had came from an ELO concert last year. I'd previously picked this pearlescent paper as a possible background but I hadn't found suitable papers to match. With the recipe in mind I didn't need many papers and went with gold and a music-printed tissue paper. I used thread to sew a star on the page and die-cut five small stars from glittery paper. My secret ingredients were washi tape and stamping.

Supplies
Paper - Rustic Charm Paperz, Unknown Scraps
Letters - Simply Creative
Washi Tape - Unknown
Sequins - from Stash
Mist - Docrafts
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Card Factory Roller Stamp

The Musical Merrymaker

Another cruise page, with photos of one of our guest entertainers. Andy Eastwood aka the Musical Merrymaker is a showman and ukulele-player who did two evening shows on board playing classics from the era of George Formby and also his own arrangements of other pieces.

I used the first of the February sketches from Stuck?! Sketches for this page, but switched the doily to a square of vellum as I haven't been using doilies or circles in this album. I wanted a much longer title and subtitle for my page than that in the sketch so I moved them to the bottom of the page where I added an extra strip of paper and some washi tape.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, Echo Park Travel, Echo Park Note to Self
Vellum - Crate Paper
Letters - Basic Grey
Stickers - Studio Calico, Echo Park, Papermania
Washi Tape - Tesco
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait & Filmstrip Cut File
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circles Die

Musical Legends

I made this page last weekend, just after the first round of November challenges and sketches had been posted by the blogs I follow. I'd recently printed another batch of cruise photos and the first sketch to catch my attention was a three-photo design from Stuck?! Sketches.

I'd printed three 4x3 photos from one of the shows onboard and it was an easy job to adapt the sketch to the larger size. I'm doing all the pages for this album on Kraft cardstock but I decided to soften the brown with a liberal spritzing of white mist for this page, then added a layer of gold vellum.

I needed to move the title below the photos, and with my journalling nearing the foot of the page I decided to move some of my embellishments down too. I had the navy blue frame from the sketch in place all along, but as I was working I felt that (1) the page was unbalanced and (2) I needed to repeat the frame elsewhere. I cut extra pieces to go round the other embellishment clusters and I'm so happy with the way they look now. I do have another page where I'm not happy with my clusters and I'm actually going to go back to it and see whether similar frames will work on that one.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations, Bazzill
Paper - Photo Play Boarding Pass, American Crafts/Shimelle Go Now Go, Echo Park, Heidi Swapp
Vellum - American Crafts
Letters - American Crafts, My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Tesco
Enamel Dots/Stars - Marianne Designs
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mr Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Woodware Tag Punch
X-Cut Circle Punch
Big Shot
X-Cut Nesting Stars Die
Little B Arrows Die

QUEX - Queen Extravaganza

I'm continuing with 2016 photos, working backwards through the year, and I'm now in November when we saw the Queen Extravaganza at Hammersmith Appollo. They are a very special Queen tribute band, having been put together by Roger Taylor and Brian May, and they were playing the "A Night at the Opera" album in full. Photography wasn't allowed, but I wasn't the only one taking a few pictures, and I supplemented them with some from their Facebook page. 

This needed to be a double page, and I turned to the sketch archive at Stick It Down for ideas, picking this one from 2014. I had a half-sheet of music print paper which worked perfectly for the vertical panel on the sketch and found some 6x6 papers from the same collection to go with it. I picked dark blue for the panel across the bottom of the page to work with the blue hues in my photos, and decided on black for my background.

I cut the musical notes on my Silhouette (using a cut file based on some free clip art that I had made previously) and added washi tape, stickers and clear stars for further embellishments.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Sensations
Paper - 7Gypsies Avignon, Echo Park Hello Winter
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Stickers - Tim Holtz
Stars - Papermania
Washi Tape - Little B, The Works

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Caro Live

Last month Sarah posted 'five sketches in five days' in the Lottie Loves Paper group on Facebook. This was the second, originally published by Bella Boulevard.

I picked a single photo of singer Caro Emerald; my husband's a fan and he saw her live for the third time earlier this year. I'm not keen on banners, so chose to miss those out and to layer the photo on 6x6 papers instead. I picked the leaf paper because of the stage backdrop but tried loads of others to go with it before settling on the frames. I'm not completely happy with it but I couldn't find anything better. I moved the title and made a triangle of embellishment clusters, so moved a long way from the sketch in the end.

Supplies
Paper - Pebbles/Jen Hadfield Everyday, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Plus One, 
        We R Memory Keepers Love Notes, My Mind's Eye Now and Then, Crate Paper
Letters - American Crafts/Dear Lizzy
Die Cuts - Studio Calico, Jillibean Soup
Flowers - Poundland
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter and Circles Template
Big Shot and Cut & Make Doily Die

Bürgermusik 150

It's been a while since I made a page from a sketch at Stick It Down, but their November sketch caught my eye.

Bürgermusik St Gilgen, the Citizen's Band, were celebrating their 150th anniversary as we arrived in Austria, and I have loads of photos of the various local brass bands marching through the village. 

I had printed ten photos at just less than 3" by 3" intending to use nine of them in three rows of three but this sketch changed my plans. Four photos just fitted the width of the page on a slight diagonal and I changed the spotty panels at the top and bottom to follow the same angle. I wrote my journalling between the rows of spots and added embellishment clusters to opposite corners.

I'm also linking up with Shimelle's latest weekly challenge - go big with red - as red is the dominant colour on the page. I didn't use it in large areas but it repeats across the page and a little red goes a long way. I wonder now if my title should have been red too, but that seemed too much at the time and it's too late to change it now.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Fancy Pants Country Boutique, Pink Paislee Atlas
Letters - American Crafts
Brads - My Mind's Eye
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Word Stickers- Tim Holtz
Washi Tape - Ebay
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Pink Paislee
Ink - Docrafts, Ink It Up!
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

ELO

This page has been a long time in the making. I saw the sketch (from ScrapMuch?) at the end of April, and ordered photos from an ELO concert to suit it, but by the time I received the photos I was deep in National Scrapbook Day challenges so it took a while for me to get back to it again.

Then I've been so busy recently that it's taken me a whole week to actually make the page, working on it bit by bit when I had both time and motivation. 

As you can see, I kept close to the sketch on the right hand side, but I rotated the photos on the left, which gave me space for journalling strips below the title. I used my Silhouette Portrait for both the title (the band's logo) and for the music note embellishments (cut using a free clip art file). I turned the photo block on the left into a pocket and tucked my ticket and the set list inside.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Basic Grey Little Black Dress, Echo Park Note to Self, My Mind's Eye 29th Street Market
Stars - Unknown
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Tabs Die
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch

The Feeling

I still have a few NSD challenge pages to share here, but May isn't just about National Scrapbooking Day; there are plenty of other challenges too, and I need to share those before the end of the month.

We saw ELO at the O2 last month, and they were supported by The Feeling. Normally the support acts are groups that I've never heard of, but we know and like The Feeling so they merit a page in my 2016 scrapbook. I used Sketch 104 from Sketch-n-Scrap for my page, but I played with the paper layers a little. The combination of one large photo and three smaller ones also satisfies Mercy Tiara's May 27 day challenge to scrapbook at least three photos, one of which must be 4x6.

My photos have a purplish tint, and I wanted to match this in my papers, but few manufacturers use purple in their collections and the only piece that I had was much too bright. I decided to make my own, using inks and water 'smooshed' onto the paper with plastic packaging, and after four attempts I had something that I was happy to use.*

I downloaded the band's logo from the internet and manipulated it in the Silhouette software to make a cut file for my title; I cut it in black cardstock and backed the letters with a piece gutted from my background. My main journalling is on strips at the bottom, but I also wrote the songs from the set list around the edge of the right side of the page.

* Four attempts at my background paper:
Try 1 - The ink and water mix soaked into the paper too quickly, leading to uneven colouring and warped paper.
Try 2 - I applied gesso to the paper before the inks, but the brush marks were too obvious once I added colour, and the colour was still uneven.
Try 3 - I tried using acetate instead of plastic packaging, inking up a 12x12 sheet of acetate, and laying my paper over it so that the whole piece would be inked at once rather than one section at a time. This worked, and I will probably use the paper, but I'd used white paper throughout, and the white looked wrong with my other papers.
Try 4 - I repeated the 'ink the acetate' method with grey paper, and this is the piece I used.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - SEI Moravia, 7Gypsies Avignon
Puffy Stickers - Paperchase
Gems - from Stash
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Sizzix Stars Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch
X-Cut Corner Punch