Forgive, Don't Forget

Before the hiatus of February challenge posts, I was working on filling in the gaps in my 2014 album. We visited Paris in April, and I've scrapped most of the photos, but I had skipped over those from the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation.

It's a memorial to the people of Vichy France who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. There are walls of 200,000 quartz stones (one for each person who was put to death) and chambers containing ashes from each of the camps, as well as the grave of an unknown deportee. The inscription on the wall reads 'Pardonne, n'oublie pas' which I translated for my title.

One reason for leaving these photos so long was that I didn't know how to scrap them. I knew that I wanted to use a lot of photos, but I didn't want to put them in a strict grid. I didn't want bright colours, or too many layers. Someone shared a page on Facebook recently (not her own, one she'd pinned on Pinterest so I can't acknowledge the source) during a discussion about grid layouts. That one had several staggered rows of photos, all the same height but various widths, with embellishments at the ends of the rows. Finally, I had my design for this page, though my photos differ in height as well as widths.

Supplies
Paper - Fancy Pants Me-ology, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Brads - Papermania
Ink - Docrafts
Peel-Offs/Stickers - Old Stash

Pocket Scrapping - Disneyland Paris

I've spent more time pushing paper around than sticking one piece to another this week. I have a part-made page that's giving me trouble, so I've put it to one side for now and switched to pocket scrapping instead. I'm mixing divided pages in with my 12x12 pages this year, using all 4x6 landscape pockets. I've scrapped most of our trip to Disneyland Paris on 12x12 pages (three singles and a double) but I had a few more odd photos that I want to include in the album.

The first pocket has a view of the park from the Red Queen's Castle and doubles as a title; the second is my daughter in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. The second row has part of Alice's Curious Labyrinth and then the Big Thunder Mountain roller-coaster. Pocket 5 has some of the film characters in Discoveryland; finally my daughter again, showing off her souvenir Tigger hoodie.

Pocket Scrapping - Paris 2

Following on from my last post, I'm sharing the second divided page from Paris, filled with photos from some of the minor things on the trip.

The first pocket has the Fontaine du Palmier which stands near the Conciergerie and commemorates the victories of Napolean Bonaparte. The second has a view of the Seine from the gardens where we ate our lunch. Then Sacre Coeur in the third; we'd visited before, but we walked up there one evening as the sun was setting. Pocket four has the Colonne du Juillet, commemorating the 1830 Revolution (which replaced Charles V with Louis-Phillippe). The fifth pocket has our quest for ice cream, and the sixth is the Palais de Chaillot.

Pocket Scrapping - Paris 1

I've been mixing 12x12 pages with divided pages this year, and our trip to Paris is no exception. There are some photos that really don't need a whole 12x12 page, but it's nice to be able to include them in the album anyway.

Up until now, I've been letting each month take as many pockets as it needs, but I finished April at the bottom of a page. When I counted up my Parisian photos, there were 10 cards, so I added a title and kept a pocket for tickets to make up 12, two whole pages. This is the first one, and I'll share the second on Friday.

There's lots of hoarded product here, kept with this trip in mind. The first pocket has map paper from October Afternoon's Travel Girl line featuring the centre of Paris. I think the washi tape is from the same collection and it shows the days we were in Paris - Sunday to Wednesday. The second pocket has a photo of our hotel - the background card and the smaller Paris metro map card are both from 4Heures37's Eiffel Avenue collection; I won the Paris postmark chipboard from a blog challenge last summer (thank you Crystal).

No hoarding on the rest of the cards. The third is the Pompidou Centre, then a selfie of the two of us that my daughter took in the Sainte Chapelle. Our tickets for the Sainte Chapelle, the Conciergerie and Notre Dame are in the fifth pocket. I didn't stick them down, but they are sandwiched between the background paper and a piece of acetate, with the letter stickers on top of the acetate. Finally, the sixth pocket has a photo of my daughter 'imprisoned' in the Conciergerie.

Notre Dame

I was watching a YouTube video recently where the scrapper made a double page with a sketch from Nuts About Sketches. I didn't care for that particular sketch, but any blog with double page sketches is worth a look, especially as I knew I wanted a double for my photos from Notre Dame in Paris. 

I clicked on a few of the labels for high numbers of photos and turned up this sketch from 2009 which has a good mix of sizes and orientations. I played with the photo sizes as the largest that I generally print my photos is 4x6; this left me an awkward gap on the far right, so I squeezed in three more tiny photos there.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Linen Closet
Paper - MME Vintage Charm
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Gems - Michaels/Recollections
Ink - Ink It Up!
Buttons - from Stash

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Studio Calico Doilies Stamp Set

La Conciergerie

It's been a few days, but I've made another page from Paris; this one is of the Conciergerie, formerly part of the royal palace, it was converted to a prison in the fourteenth century, and held more than 2500 prisoners (including Marie Antoinette) en route to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

I started my page with three horizontal panels of paper, but then I added two more (well, one and a border sticker really), and stitched a circle around my photos to break up the 'boxiness' of the page. I didn't leave a lot of space for writing, so I captioned the pictures and turned my largest photo into a pocket to hold a journalling card.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Linen Closet Stack
Paper - Authentique Natural, Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu
Border Sticker - Fancy Pants Park Bench
Stickers - Authentique Natural
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Gems - Papermania Dew Drops
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Label Punch

Sainte Chapelle

I have a gaping hole in my 2014 scrapbook, and it relates to the trip my daughter and I took to Paris just before Easter. None of the challenges posted since then have suited these multi-photo pages-to-be, so the photos have been sadly neglected until now. I started at the beginning of our trip and picked five photos from Sainte Chapelle, the Holy Chapel built by Louis IX to house his collection of relics including the Crown of Thorns. The chapel has the most amazing stained glass windows, and I didn't want my papers to fight with the colours in the photos so I picked a muted, almost monochromatic, palette of blues, greys and creams for my page.

Supplies
Paper - Anna Griffin, Laura Ashley, Echo Park Capture Life, Glitz Design Beautiful Dreamer, MME Follow Your Heart
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - American Crafts DIY
Word Stickers - Authentique Natural
Gems - Papermania Dew Drops
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch

Tour Eiffel

My 2014 album is beginning to take shape now. I've planned out how the 12x12 pages and the divided pages for the first few months will fit together, and I have a list of pages that I need to make, including a batch from our trip to Paris in April. This page comes from our final afternoon, at the Eiffel Tower, and the June Week 1 sketch from Let's Get Sketchy.

I used papers from a 6x6 pad for my tags as the smaller patterns work better and all the colours match perfectly. The horizontal paper in the sketch became two overlapping pieces on my page as I used another coordinating paper from the same 6x6 pad. I switched over the title and the journalling, as they fitted better this way with my paper selections.

Supplies

Paper - MME The Sweetest Thing, MME Quilting Bee 6x6

Cardstock - DCWV Far East Stack

Letter & Arrow Stickers - Studio Calico Snippets

Word Stickers - MME The Sweetest Thing

Washi Tape - The Range

Gems - Dovecraft

Brad - Fancy Pants Wonderful Day

Ink - Ink It Up!

Mist - Cosmic Shimmer Mist

Thread - DMC

Tools

The Stamp Connection Chipboard Tag (used as a template)

X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Office Hole Punch

Love Locks

I made this page a few weeks ago for the team scraplifting game at Scrap Whispers, but I had to keep it a secret until the 'Big Reveal' at the end of the game. Three teams of scrappers start from the same page and each player scraplifts the page made by the player before her, without seeing any of the other pages in the chain. The three final pages can be quite similar or very different depending which elements each player takes from the page before theirs.

This time I was scraplifting Susi's page from her trip to London, and I chose to make a page from my visit to Paris. These are the 'love locks' on the Pont de l'Archevêché.

This is Susi's page (right). I used two photos in the same space as her one photo and similar placement of patterned paper. I kept her circles of brads which link nicely with the metals of the locks in my photos. I changed her pennants for a small piece of Paris map paper, with a tiny red brad to mark the location of the bridge. I moved the title as it leads directly into the journalling, and ended that journalling with a sub-title. I did consider adding some hearts like Susi did, but I thought that they would just get lost against my patterned paper background.

You can see all three chains of pages on the Scrap Whispers blog: Georgina's Team; Nilsa's Team; Rosey's Team.

Supplies
Paper - First Edition Spring Feast, K&Co Hannah, October Afternoon Travel Girl, Unlabelled Hearts Paper
Letters - MME Lush
Brads - Dovecraft, Papermania
Washi Tape - American Crafts
Ink - Ink It Up!

Magical Parade

This month Sketch-n-Scrap are celebrating their second birthday with a month of challenges from members of their design team. I remember taking part in their first birthday bash and it doesn't seem possible that a year has passed since then.

This year the first challenge is being hosted by Kerry at Scrapbooking - for the Love of Paper; she gave us a tic-tac-toe grid and asked us to use any three elements from a row, column or diagonal. I chose the right hand column - doily, tags and yellow - as I thought that these would work best with the final page that I wanted to make from our trip to Disneyland Paris.

This page was going to be a double, with lots of photos from the parade at the end of the day. I recently came across Stick It Down, a blog that has double page sketches, and bookmarked a page of them for future use. There are only a few at the moment but they are adding one each month. This is April's. I changed the square photos to rectangles, and once I had them laid out on my page I rearranged them slightly, as it felt like there was too much on the right-hand side.

Returning to Kerry's challenge, I used doilies and tags in the embellishment on either side. I had several yellow butterflies in my patterned paper, but I managed to cover most of them with the photos. The two that you can clearly see have been fussy cut and layered over cream ones on the paper. I stuck the bodies flush to the paper and lifted the wings up on my thinnest foam squares.

Supplies
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Sandylion Pink Gingham, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, Scrappy Cat Butterfly Dreams,
      American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan
Letters - American Crafts, Echo Park
Doilies - Dovecraft
Tags - Lakeland
Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time
Ink - Ink It Up!

Disneyland Paris

While I was still in 'Disneyland mode' after the last page, I decided to pull together a page that has been brewing in my head. This one will come first in my album and has photos of the park entrance and the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle. The mixture of one landscape photo and one portrait photo can be tricky, but I matted them together and used a postcard that I bought (raised on foam squares) to fill in the gap and to serve as my title.

I'm keeping to the same pastel colour palette for all my Disneyland pages, and repeating the mason jars, gems and rub-ons.

Supplies
Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Studio Calico Snippets, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, 
   American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan
Border - Bazzill Half the Edge
Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time + some from stash
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Space Mountain

I discovered a new challenge blog last week, and by new I mean 'brand new' rather than 'new to me'. Scrap & Play posted their first ever challenge, a sketch, just a few days ago.

I had a couple of landscape photos from Space Mountain at Disneyland Paris that I wanted to scrap but those in the sketch are portrait; I considered rotating the whole sketch but I preferred my paper strips to run horizontally so I just jiggled things a bit to make them work.

The basis of the layout is those three paper strips, which links this page nicely with this week's challenge at shimelle.com, where Relly Annett-Baker has taken over the reins while Shimelle is on maternity leave. Each week Relly is taking inspiration from one of Shimelle's old pages and this week she has challenged us to use paper strips on a page.

I've already made one page from Disneyland (Meet the Characters) so I kept to the same colour palette and repeated the lettering, mason jar, rub-ons and gems from my first page. I'd layered the papers on that page, so I overlapped them here rather than having separate panels as in the sketch.

Supplies

Paper - docrafts Spring Chic, Karen Foster, Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, Echo Park Sweet Summertime, 

    American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan

Letters - American Crafts Thickers

Rub-Ons - Basic Grey
Gems - Forever in Time

Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools

Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Hobbycraft Star Punch

The Gates to Paris

The blog's been a bit quiet recently as it's the Easter holidays from school, so we've been out and about, day trips last week and a few days in Paris this week. All the new Parisian photos had my fingers twitching and so I've scrapped the first page from our trip.

I used the April Week 1 sketch from Let's Get Sketchy for my page, but rotated it to suit my landscape photos. Those photos are of Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin, two triumphal arches built for Louis XIV. Everyone knows the Arc de Triomphe but these seem to be less well-known.

I have a piece of Paris map paper from October Afternoon's Travel Girl collection which I've been saving for this trip, and I've used the appropriate part for this page, marking the gates' locations with gems.

I'm also linking up to the new weekly challenge at shimelle.com. Shimelle herself is on maternity leave, but she has a series of guest posts lined up and the first one came from Relly, who asked us to make a project about a place we have visited. Perfect timing.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - MME The Sweetest Thing, MME Lost & Found 3, V&A Paper Pack, October Afternoon Travel Girl
Letters - October Afternoon
Doily Sticker - MME The Sweetest Thing
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Sewing Machine
Big Shot & Alphabet Dies
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

Montmartre

And Challenge 14:

I have several photos from Montmartre in Paris which don't have anything in common apart from their location, and don't merit a whole page each. I decided to make four mini-layouts, each with its own sub-title and journalling, and combine them on one page. I used the same 6x6 paper pack for each but  the fourth section demanded a punch of bright red. The Thickers were originally grey, but I painted them to give a better contrast with the background paper.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Archaic (Timeworn 12x12 & 6x6 Paper Pack)
Card - Papermania
Letters - American Crafts Foam Thickers

Tools
EK Success Corner Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter and Circle/Oval Templates

Seeing the Sights

I didn't do Shimelle's last Starting Point challenge; it started with a bundle of offcuts arranged in a rectangle at the bottom of the page which didn't immediately inspire me. Having seen some of the completed layouts that were submitted, I may go back to it. 

However this week's challenge was very different with four separate blocks of patterned paper to build from. This suggested four separate but linked photos to me so I used some from a trip to Paris last year. After a rummage, I decided to use only two patterns and repeat them, partly as I couldn't find four co-ordinating papers that didn't overwhelm the pictures. 

I only had one of the name-tags and it was too large so I scanned it, resized it and printed five with the place names and my journalling. I used a piece of 35mm film instead of the paper strip across the middle; this tied in with my title sticker which has a camera on it. Finally I tucked my ticket from the Louvre behind its photo.

Supplies
Paper - Colorbok Travel Page Kit, NitWit Collections Winter Wishes
Name-Tags - NitWit Collections Winter Wishes
Title - atd