Stracey Arms Windpump

This was actually the first page that I made for our Norfolk holiday, but I've been blogging them in chronological order for the week and this one comes from our last full day. We'd moored by the Stracey Arms windpump overnight and climbed it in the morning. The Broads are dotted with windpumps like this one which were built to pump water from the surrounding marshland.

The page is dotted with pieces from two tic-tac-toe challenges from National Scrapbooking Day. I chose gold, stitching and enamel dots for Hey Little Magpie, and repeated the stitching with blue letter stickers and a border punch for Lottie Loves Paper. I also knocked off a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper by using washi tape. I then repeated several of these elements (along with the various dies used) across all my Norfolk pages to help tie them together.

Supplies
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Simple Stories Sn@p Basics
Letters - October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye, Echo Park
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
Big Shot
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
X-Cut Explore Die
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Funny Faces

Mellow Yellow

I'm no fan of moodboards, but For the Love of Pretty Paper set several for National Scrapbooking Day that were easier to tackle than most. The first was 'Mellow Yellow' and we could take as much or as little as we wanted from the moodboard so long as we included some yellow on the page. 

There's yellow in the pad that I'm using for our Norfolk holiday so that part was easy. The yellow brick road in the moodboard inspired me to use a neutral brick print as my photo mat, and I added word stickers in a little column to echo the block of colour names.

Supplies
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Pebbles/Jen Hadfield
Letters - American Crafts
Placemat - Jillibean Soup
Word Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Stars - MRI
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, 
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die

Life on Board

As soon as Shimelle posted the first page from her 'Some Here, Some There' sketch in her class Start with a Sketch, I knew that it was perfect for this trio of photos, and I made the page the same day (although that's a few weeks ago now as I'm posting these in the order of the photographs rather than the order of the pages being made).

This was just after National Scrapbooking Day and I ticked off a couple of challenges with the page. Hey Little Magpie set us a colour palette of light pink, dark pink, sky blue, dark green, mustard yellow and gold. As luck would have it, this floral paper from the pad I am using for this holiday contained all of the colours except gold, and that was easy to add via my lettering, glitter tape and a spattering of mist.

The second challenge was from For the Love of Pretty Paper, and was to fussy-cut some elements for the page. I cut my labels from a free printable and cut a few flowers from the top paper to include at the bottom of the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - Make & Create Moments, Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page
Phrase Stickers - Pretty Little Studio
Puffy Camera - American Crafts/Shimelle
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye, Pretty My Page, Echo Park, Stampin' Up!

Tools
Sewing Machine
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Big Shot
Dovecraft Tag Dies
Spellbinders Circle Die

An Afternoon at the Beach

This is another page from our Norfolk boating holiday, but we'd left the boat and caught the train to Great Yarmouth. I had an assortment of photos of our children on the beach, and I printed them in a variety of sizes so that the children themselves remain at a similar size from one to the next.

I combined my row of photos with a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to use a large title on a page. I cut mine on the Silhouette, adding a shell to the letters, and backed each shape with a different paper from the pad that I'm using for this holiday.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Moments
Letters - October Afternoon
Journalling Cards - Project Life Sweet
Stickers - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes Sunny Days
Washi Tape - Unknown
Glitter Tape - Hobbycraft
Puffy Hearts - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Echo Park, Doodlebug, Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Hobbycraft

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Sewing Machine
Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Braving Breydon Water

I'm sticking with our Norfolk Broads holiday for now, and we're actually on the water for this page. Breydon Water links the north and south parts of the Broads and can be tricky to navigate. We went through at low tide, keeping to the marked channel and it wasn't as bad as we'd feared.

My three-photo page uses a tried and trusted formula with the pictures in a column alongside a mosaic of punched squares for the 'Punch It' NSD challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper. I also punched the scalloped border strip and the column of tags by the journalling card.

My page fits the criteria for three of the Hey Little Magpie challenges and I decided to enter it for their Tic Tac Toe, using the top row of gold, stitching and enamel dots.





Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy, Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Turn the Page, Simple Stories Posh
Letters - October Afternoon
Journalling Card - Project Life?
Puffy Camera - Freckled Fawn
Washi Tape - Hobbycraft, Pretty My Page
Enamel Dots - Doodelbug, My Mind's Eye, Marianne Designs, Echo Park
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Sewing Machine
Woodware 1" Square Punch
Woodware Tag Punch
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch

Follow the Tracks

I have another page from our Norfolk Broads holiday to share today. I am blogging them in the order they will come in the album rather than the order that I made them and this page comes from our second day. We moored our boat in Coltishall and took a trip from there to Wroxham on the Bure Valley Railway. 

I used a sketch from Shimelle's recent class Start with a Sketch for my page as its scattering of embellishments matched up with an NSD challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper to do just that. I tried to combine it with a recipe challenge from Hey Little Magpie but couldn't manage to incorporate all the elements. However I did redirect it to their stitching challenge with a line of machine-stitching along the scalloped border strip.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy
Letters - Studio Calico
Journalling Card - Studio Calico
Washi Tape - Unknown
Dew Drops - Papermania
Gems - Love to Craft
Enamel Sots - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
Craft Creatives Flower Punch

Life on Mars

The majority of the photos in my 'to scrap' pile for 2005 come from a boating holiday we took on the Norfolk Broads. I was planning to make the pages via as many NSD challenges as possible while using the same paper pad throughout, and hoping that they would be compatible.

I got off to a good start with the 'Griddled' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, which was just to create a page based on a grid. I had an assortment of photos from settling into our temporary home (the Broadland Mars) which I felt would work well with a quadrants design.

I was playing with a few ideas for titles until I hit on this one, and it was perfect for a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to use a quote, since they included song lyrics as one of their suggestions for possible quotes to be used.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft UK, Papermania
Paper - Make & Create Moments, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy
Journalling Card - Studio Calico
Letters - October Afternoon
Word Stickers - My Mind's Eye
Die Cut - Jillibean Soup
Flair - Unknown
Washi Tape - Pink Paislee, Hobbycraft
Enamel Dots - Doodlebug, My Mind's Eye, Eyelet Outlet, Stampin' Up!
Puffy Sticker - Fancy Pants
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot
Provocraft Alphabet Dies
Dovecraft Label Die
X-Cut Anchor Die
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp

Norjam

My printer's run out of ink again, so I'm dependent on pre-printed photos at the moment. Luckily I added a few to my order when I got all my Harry Potter photos printed last Autumn. This one is of my daughter's scout troop at Norjam - the Norfolk International Jamboree - last summer.

This was a fairly quick page. I keep outdoor/camping papers together (and I don't have many full sheets left) so it was an easy job to pick one for the background. Then I went through my outdoor scraps (Simple Stories Take a Hike, Bo Bunny Camp-a-Lot and other coordinating papers) and pulled out enough pieces for a 'messy stack' (a term from one of Shimelle's classes) behind the photo. I seem not to have many brown Thickers left (and no Ns), so I cut my title from a sheet of foam using my Big Shot.

Supplies
Paper - Rocky Mountain Scrapbook Co, Simple Stories, Fancy Pants, Basic Grey
Foam - Hobbycraft
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Stickers - Simple Stories Take a Hike
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Provocraft Alphabet Dies
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

On the Weavers Way

I've wanted some hexagon dies for a while, and finally got some for Christmas, though it's taken me a while to put them to use.

I'm filling in the gaps in my 2014 album and I've got to our holiday in Norfolk in May. I'd scrapped most of it but I missed out a walk that my husband and our friend did along part of the Weavers' Way. I always find it harder to scrap pages that I wasn't actually there for, but both of them wrote blog posts about the walk so I plundered those for information and photos.

The photos are quite rich in colour so I picked a palette of softer colours for my background, cutting 2" hexagons from a 6x6 pad and outlining them before running them from top left to bottom right of the page.

Supplies

Paper - KaiserCraft Hello Today, My Mind's Eye Quilting Bee 6x6 Pad

Letters - Basic Grey

Sticker - MME The Sweetest Thing

Ink - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot, X-Cut Hexagon Dies & X-Cut Headliner Alphabet Die

Dovecraft Filmstrip Stamp

Talk to the Animals

I've said before that I don't scrap chronologically, but I do store my pages in chronological albums. Once an album is taking shape I keep a list of 'missing' pages and the number of photos that each page needs, ready for when inspiration strikes.

One of these missing pages was a five-photo visit to an animal sanctuary, and my inspiration cam along in the shape of a sketch from Stuck?! Sketches last week. My photos were a mixture of portrait and landscape, so I jiggled them about in comparison with the sketch, but the basic plan is the same.

Taking the colour scheme for the page directly from the photos would have given me a mess of greens and browns, so I started by placing my photos on a few different backgrounds, and this stripe seemed to be the best option. The floral paper has the same yellow (same manufacturer, different collection) and the denim is the reverse side of the floral. I'm not a fan of banners, so I based my embellishment on wood veneer circles backed with coordinating patterned paper.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Neighbourhood, Crate Paper Random
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Bo Bunny Mamarazzi
Wood Veneer Circles - Studio Calico
Butterflies - Prima
Ink - docrafts, Ink It Up!
Mist - docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Dovecraft Filmstrip Stamp
Elle's Studio 100% Sweet Stamp

Pocket Scrapping - Norfolk

I'm sharing another pocket page today; this one's from our holiday to Norfolk in May and again it has a few odd photos that just didn't fit with the 12x12 pages I've done from that trip.

Up until now I've used a single colour background per month/trip for my divided pages, but this time I used up an old freebie set of papers in blues and browns. Strangely enough, it's a winter-themed collection but it works rather well with beach photos.

The top row has some narrative about the trip and who went (it was a group holiday, not just our family) plus pictures of our cottage. Row two has a couple of photos from our first day on the beach; these two didn't fit with the 12x12 page that I also made (Wonderful Day). The bottom two photos are my daughter plodding up Beacon Hill (see 103m) and Horsey Windpump looking rather forlorn without its sails, which were undergoing maintenance.

Up to Their Necks In It!

I've been on the lookout for a four-photo sketch for a while, for these pictures of our daughter and our friends' son burying each other in the sand when we were on holiday in Norfolk.

The sketch I needed came from My Scraps and More Sketches on Friday, but I stretched the central panel to suit my wider photos and large title.

Last autumn I sorted most of my scraps into co-ordinating sets, and most of the pieces on this page came from my blue/yellow/beach paper scraps. The woodgrain paper is new, as is the die I used to cut the title. It cuts beautifully, but pushing out all of those tiny circles was a bit fiddly.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts, Bazzill
Paper - Studio Calico Wanderlust, Pebbles, Paper Pizazz, DCWV, Craft Creations
Word Stickers - Authentique
Washi Tape - Waterstones
Gems - The Hobby House
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Headliner Alphabet Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Craft Creatives Heart Punch
Bazzill Paper Piercer

Wonderful Day

A new month means new challenges, and I've managed to combine four of them in the making of this page. But let's start with photos and paper - the photos are from our holiday in Norfolk in May and my daughter is wearing a purple dress which led me to choose Basic Grey's Plumeria range. This was the first collection where I bought the ephemera pack and although I've used most of the paper I still have a lot of the die-cuts and transparencies left. I tried to use a few up here, including the title. 'Wonderful Day' is an exaggeration, but 'Very Nice Day' wouldn't be much of a title.

I used the 1st July sketch with a twist from Paper Secrets for my page; this time the twist is to use items for each of the letters of the word SPLASH. I have Sequins, Purple, Layers, Arrows, Staples and Hexagons.

Paper Secrets are sponsoring Scrap & Play this month so they are sharing the same challenge.

I was trying to use up some old stash on this page which fits in with Stash Challenge 16 at Scrap Our Stash, where they asked us to use at least five different items from a list. I chose die-cuts and transparencies (obviously), plus sequins and wood veneer pieces. I also used two different punches in my embellishment cluster - the scalloped circle and scalloped border.

Finally, Jen set this week's challenge at UKScrappers and she asked us to look at our process for making a page and photograph each stage. She broke it down into Good (paper & photos in position), Better (distressing, inking, embossing etc) and Best (all the embellishments). The photos of these stages are (at time of writing) in the UKScrappers gallery.


Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Story Teller, Basic Grey Plumeria
Die-Cuts & Transparencies - Basic Grey Plumeria
Wood Veneer Arrows - Creative Embellishments
Staples - Making Memories
Mist - docrafts
Sequins - from Stash

Tools
X-Cut Scalloped Border Punch
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Dog Days

Our holiday in Norfolk last month was a group thing - three couples, two with children and one with dogs. The children and the dogs got on really well, and I snapped photos of them in the garden one afternoon.

No sketches or challenges for this page, just the pleasure of finishing off a paper collection by using the simple technique of 'cutting the pieces you have left into rectangles and arranging them on the page'.

I find that the more patterns I use, the less embellishments I want; I stitched a circle around the photos and just added a few simple flowers. The title was the hardest part - I really wanted to use brown Thickers and thought I had plenty, but they were all either too big or missing key letters. After going through most of my letter stickers (and re-organising the basket they live in) I unearthed these ones which match the papers really well (same manufacturer, different collection).

Supplies
Paper - Simple Stories Fabulous, Basic Grey Max & Whiskers
Letters - Basic Grey Nordic Holiday
Flowers - KaiserCraft
Ink - docrafts
Thread/Gems - from Stash

Tools
Fiskars Circle Template
Bazzill Paper Piercer

From All Angles

Another page from our Norfolk holiday last month. We could see this lighthouse from our bedroom window and I set off to visit it on our final day. Although it does open to the public, and you can climb to the top, it was closed that day. Norfolk is so flat that it could be seen from a fair distance away, and I took photos of it from various directions - from beside it, from the beach below, from the cliffs near the village and from a nearby road. I numbered all the photos and explained them in the journalling.

I used the latest sketch from Paper Secrets, but straightened up the photos and squeezed in an extra one. Their sketches always come with a twist and this time we have to use things that start with each of the letters of the word DANCE. I have stamping with ink from Docrafts, wood veneer Arrows, Numbers, Compasses (on the brown patterned paper) and Epoxy stickers.


Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Highline, Nitwit Land Ho, Pebbles Fresh Goods, 
      Dream Street Wonderland, Lily Bee Double Dutch
Letters/NUmbers - Jillibean Soup, Jenny Bowlin
Wood Veneer Arrows - Creative Expressions
Epoxy Stickers - from Stash
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Dovecraft Beautiful Border Stamp

103m

103m - That's the height of Beacon Hill, the highest point in Norfolk, where we spent May half-term this year. It's not an impressive hill, but we did walk up it from close to sea level, when we could have just driven up.

There's an awful lot of green in my photos, so I wasn't going to match my papers to the photos this time. I actually chose my background paper first, and the yellow and teal flower outlines on that set my colour palette for the page.

I used the 1st June sketch from Stuck Sketches for my page, and stayed pretty close to it. My main issue was the amount of journalling that I wanted. I normally write on the background paper but that wasn't going to be possible here. I ended up writing on the light bits of the stripey patterned paper.

Supplies
Paper - Bo Bunny Olivia, Authentique Natural Collection
Letters/Numbers - American Crafts Thickers
Butterflies - Prima
Brads - Papermania
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Sunday Morning on the Beach

This page was so much quicker to complete than the last one, and I'm so happy about that. It was inspired by a sketch in the July 'Old Stash New, New Stash SU' prompt at UKScrappers, though I didn't stick too closely to the original.

My photo shows my son, daughter, niece and nephew on the beach in April. It was bitterly cold and windy but we were at the coast so we walked on the beach. I mentally picked out this paper a while back, but I wasn't sure how to tie the photo and the background together and I didn't want to obscure too much of the background paper. The circle on Leanie's sketch was the perfect solution and I pared back the other elements to keep most of the background paper on show.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Creative Imaginations, Pink Paislee Prairie Hill
Letters - Lily Bee
Gems - Dovecraft
Ink - docrafts
Chalk - Readicut Craft

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter

...And Sand

Things have been quiet in blogland recently, as I was scrapping with friends today so I have just been making page kits this week instead of completing pages.

The first page I made was actually made from a page kit I put together last October and didn't use then. It was the right hand side of a pair of layouts, hence the strange half-title. The pair together read 'Sun Sea and Sand'. The left page is here but I changed the title letters to use a pretty shell alphabet which I downloaded from Two Peas in a Bucket.

Supplies
Paper - Fancy Pants True, Sandylion Sand, Travel Expressions Seashells, DCWV Beach Words, Buzzcraft (Squares)
Letters - Shell Alphabet by Betsy Tuma downloaded from Two Peas in a Bucket

Horsey Mere and Windpump

"Embrace the wonkicity," said Shimelle Laine, when she posted this Scrapbook Starting Point with its wonky strips of paper last weekend: 

So I did. This is my layout at the same point, though I have changed the sizes of some of the pieces of paper to suit my eventual layout. The horizontal piece is one that I stamped with a background stamp and I'm quite pleased with the effect. I had to stamp 6 or 7 times and you can't see any overlap or repetition.

And this is the finished layout (photo taken with much better lighting):

I even embraced the wonkicity with my title. I have a set of individual wooden letter stamps that I hardly ever use as I find them impossible to stamp straight. I stamped 'Mere and Windpump' with them here (although not as faintly as they appear to be in the photo).

Supplies
Card - Papermania Krafts Basic
Paper - Kit 'n' Kraft (Stripes), Chartwell Studios (Cream), Green from Stash
Letter Stickers - Scenic Route
Border Stickers - Doodlebug
Word Stickers - Crate Paper
Stamps - Lakeland, Hampton Art
Ink - Papermania
Brad - from Stash

Go Karts

Shimelle's Sketch of the Week was back last week and I teamed it with some of my new Pebbles papers for a simple two photo layout.

Supplies
Paper - The Paper Loft Green Grid, Pebbles Inc Fresh Goods
Letters - American Crafts Foam Thickers
Stickers - Pebbles Inc Fresh Goods Masking Tape Stickers
Gems - Dovecraft
Paint - Wilko