Network Festival

I find the sheer number of NSD events and challenges that are published these days to be overwhelming, so I stick with a couple of groups, For the Love of Pretty Paper and Hey Little Magpie, and combine their challenges whenever possible.

For the Love of Pretty Paper's 'Pop Art' challenge involved the use of bright, bold colours with repetition, and Hey Little Magpie asked for a mixed media background. The brightest photos I had printed were from my daughter's scout camp when they dressed as characters from Scooby Doo complete with cardboard Mystery Machine.

I made my background with blue ink and black stamping, and mounted it on a blue paper to give it a bright border. I matted my photos on identical papers for repetition and placed them above and below a central title. I added a diagonal line of small embellishments in my three colours to finish. There's no journalling yet as I want to check something with my daughter first, but I'll do that in black pen, either below the bottom photo or possibly around the edge of the page.

Supplies
Cardstock - UK Crafts
Paper - Sandylion Blue Stars, Unknown Scraps

Washi Tape - Unknown

Puffy Stickers - Elle's Studio, MAMBI, MRI

Enamel Dots - Echo Park

Ink - Ranger, Dr Ph. Martin

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

American Crafts/Shimelle Sparkle City Stamps

Make Your Mark

This is one of those pages which I kept putting off making. I'd printed the photos, chosen the papers (Simple Stories Awesome) and picked a page design (the 'On the Angle' sketch from Shimelle Laine's Start with a Sketch class from this time last year) but I had no ideas for the title, and for a long time I let that stop me from starting.

My photos are from January 2018 and if I'm going to complete that year's album then I need to make this page rather than put it off any longer. The occasion is my daughter and her fellow scouts receiving achievement awards from our mayor. I wanted something encouraging without being schmaltzy but nothing came to mind. 

Starting work on the page, I spotted that one of the papers had the wording 'Take Your Place, Make Your Mark, Live Your Life' printed on it. I earmarked 'Make Your Mark' as my title, initially intending to use letter stickers, but then decided to use the paper itself.

Supplies

Paper - Simple Stories Awesome, Pink Paislee Portfolio

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz

Washi Tape - Unknown

Enamel Dots - Freckled Fawn, Echo Park 

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

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

Sweet Dreams

It's always useful when different sites set similar challenges for National Scrapbooking Day and that's what happened for this page. For the Love of Pretty Paper asked for a page with black and white plus one other colour, while Hey Little Magpie wanted a monochrome page. The word monochrome seems to be open to interpretation in the scrapbooking world, but I went with the idea that black and white are both allowed alongside one other colour.

I had several photos of my daughter catching up on her sleep the day after a 24 hour scout activity; she's wearing a purple t-shirt and I briefly toyed with making a purple page, but I really don't have many purple papers. What I do have in abundance is aqua, in particular I had one paper with both aqua and black so picked the rest to coordinate with it.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Basics, American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Plus One, American Crafts Amy Tangerine Oh Happy Life
Acetate - Freckled Fawn
Flowers - Poundland
Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Ink - Hobbycraft
Mist - Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Template
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & The Works Scalloped Circle Die
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
American Crafts/Shimelle Stamp Set

Fire & Ice 2018

This was the third page that I made for Stick It Down's recent cyber-crop, and it's another double. Ashley's challenge was to combine a song title with any sketch from the SID archive. I'm not a fan of song title challenges as a rule, but my daughter had just come back from a 'Fire & Ice' scout camp (a song by Pat Benatar) so that was enough to get me started. 

Their scout leader had posted some photos to Facebook during the weekend, so I sorted through them and looked for a suitable sketch, hitting on this one from January 2015. One of the weekend's activities had been wood burning so I used the photo from that as my title. (Aquila is the Explorer Scout Unit that my daughter belongs to.)

Being a Fire and Ice camp, I wasn't sure whether to scrap these photos with warm (fire) or cool (ice) colours, so I tried them against a few colours and orange was the clear winner with even the snowy picture looking good against it.

Lotties Loves Paper have just launched a series of stash-busting challenges in their Facebook group, and the first of those was wood. I've used 24 wood veneer stars on this page but that's barely dented my stash at all. I'm on my second packet of them and have a third ready for when this pack runs low.

Supplies

Paper - Simple Stories Awesome, Recollections Awesome Boy

Stickers - Simple Stories Take a Hike, The Paper Studio

Wood Veneer Stars - Studio Calico

Enamel Dots - Stampin' Up

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

X-Cut Circle Punch

Big Picture 'Explore' Stamp Set

Almost Grown Up

I'm back with another page from last weekend's cyber crop organised by the ladies at Stick It Down. Laura's challenge was a 'Grab 5' where she asked us to use a stencil, stamping, alpha stickers, sequins and this sketch.

My choice of photo to use was completely driven by the sketch. My daughter attended the local scouts' dinner and dance for the first time last year. It's a formal event for over 16s only and the only photo I have of her and her friends was small and square, perfect for this sketch.

Next decision was the background paper; I wanted it to be fairly plain for the mixed media effects in the sketch, but I didn't want to use completely plain cardstock as a lot of it would be on show. The paper I chose had some paint lines and spatters already printed on it, and I used two stencils and a stamp to add to them. 

The hardest part of the sketch was that large arrow, and I played around with various options before ditching it in favour of paper strips spanning the width of the page, sitting my title above them.

The long line of spatter is mostly printed on the page, though I added stars, sequins and some silver mist to it. I also added a small cluster at the top to cap the line, though it's not part of the original sketch.

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Indigo Hills, OneCanoeTwo Creekside, Crate Paper Random
Letters - Fancy Pants, Anita's
Stickers - MAMBI, OneCanoeTwo
Sequins - from Stash
Ink - Hobbycraft, Papermania
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
That Special Touch Grid Stencil
Heidi Swapp Star Stencil
Studio Calico Star Stamp

Just Big Kids

This page is something of a filler in my 2016 scrapbook. It uses a photo that I might not have scrapbooked, but I needed another page in order to even them up and prevent a gap in the book. It was one of my daughter and her fellow explorer scouts icing biscuits as part of a Christmas craft night last year.

The design is a departure from what is 'normal' for me, but it came from the third of the Advent Calendar challenges at For the Love of Pretty Paper. Each of these challenges require us to use five stash items and a specific technique, and this time the list was gold washi tape, wood veneer, small tile alpha stickers, a date stamp, a 'cut-apart' paper and watercolour painting.

I started by marking the shape of a Christmas tree on the page, which I then roughly painted and stitched round the outline. I matted my photo on two 3x3 cut-apart cards plus another paper and overlapped it onto the tree. Gold washi on the right, tile stickers in my title, wood veneer star on the tree and a date stamp under my journalling. Looking at the page in the screen now, I feel that it needs an embellishment cluster at the bottom right so I shall see what I can add.

Supplies
Cardstock - Stampin' Up!
Paper - American Crafts Deck the Halls, Pebble/Jen Hadfield Warm & Cozy
Letters - American Crafts
Washi - Tesco/Unknown
Sequins & Wood Veneer - Advent Calendar Gifts
Watercolours - Dr Ph. Martin's
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Amy Tangerine Roller Date Stamp

Go Blues!

Sketch-n-Scrap run cyber-crops on Facebook as well as publishing new sketches on their blog, and I made this page from a sketch in their 'Be Merry & Bright' crop.

I chose a couple of photos from when my daughter's Explorer Scout Unit went paintballing earlier this year, and teamed them with Simple Stories' Awesome collection. I flipped the sketch and added an extra triangle of patterned paper as there was a motorbike on the background paper that I wanted to cover up.

Supplies
Papers - Simple Stories Awesome
Letters - American Crafts, Basic Grey
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz
Enamel Shapes - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools
Big Shot & Little B Arrows Die

Gilwell 24

The page I scraplifted.

This was the fourth and final page that I made in the recent Scrap Whispers game at UKScrappers. We've passed a scrapbook page from one person to the next and scraplifted it in turn, and I was last to play in this chain.

I initially picked a single photo for my page, but then decided that I could squeeze in a few small ones as well. They come from Gilwell 24, 24 hours of scouting activities held each summer in Gilwell Park, which my daughter and her friends attended earlier this year.

I kept the inked background, the two paper panels, the placement of the large photo in the corner, and the scattering of embellishments, but this is by no means a faithful copy of the page I was given. 

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye 29th Street Market, My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus
Letters - Chatter Box, Basic Grey
Butterflies - Prima
Pearls - The Hobby House
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Simple Scallop Border Punch

Wet & Wacky

I'm stepping away from the cruise photos for a brief interlude caused by the game of Scrap Whispers that's just finished over at UKScrappers. The game involves passing a page from one person to another in turn with each one scraplifting the person before them to produce a chain of related pages. 

The page that I received from Craftpopsy at the start of the second week was a lovely mixed media piece that I knew just wouldn't fit with the other cruise pages, so I had to switch to something else. I don't have very many single photos left, and nothing that I wanted to crop and scrap in this style, so I mulled it over for almost a week before I got going with this page. 

My daughter is an explorer scout and her leader recently posted some photos on Facebook from an outdoor games evening. They weren't great quality, and I might not ordinarily have scrapped them, but they were a good subject for the playful nature of that run of circles. I decided to use two of them and picked a 6x6 pad with some soft greens, yellows and aquas for my circles.

I started the right side page with distress inks and the packaging technique, smooshing a mix of ink and water on to the page, used a stencil for a grid of dots (which mostly got covered up) and flicked three colours of mist over the top. On the left, I changed Craftpopsy's hearts to stamped stars and coloured them in with the same distress ink. I cut and layered up my circles before stamping asterisks on and around them, and adding tiny pearls. Finally I spattered another colour of mist over the circles and doodled a border around the right side of the page which was feeling unfinished. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - My Mind's Eye Bright 6x6 Pad
Pearls - The Hobby House, Kanban Crafts
Ink - Hobbycraft, Ranger, 
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts, Cosmic Shimmer, Maya Road

Tools
Banana Frog 'Circus Stories' Star Stamp
American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Asterisk Stamp
Dreamweaver 'Background Dots' Stencil

24 Hours

During the last week of June, there was a recipe challenge in the Lottie Loves Paper Facebook group which I tried to follow. The requirements were one photograph, 4 (or more) patterned papers, teal or turquoise, word or phrase stickers, stitching, stamping and enamel dot, sequins or gems.

I don't scrap many single photos, but I did have just one from the Beaver Sleepover last weekend where my daughter was a Young Leader. It was posted on Facebook for the parents, but that was in a closed group so I've blurred all the children's faces on my page below.

In the end I missed the deadline on this one, and when I rechecked the recipe I found that I'd missed the stamping too, but it's another page done for my 2017 album.

Supplies
Paper - Echo Park Boys Rule, Basic Grey Mon Ami, Cloud 9 Design Finley's Estate
Letters - American Crafts, Prima
Puffy Stars - Bella Boulevard
Enamel Dots - Eyelet Outlet
Ink - Hobbycraft
Washi Tape - Unknown

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die

Firestarter

I seem to do more challenges from Facebook groups, and less from blogs these days. Sarah at Lottie Loves Paper posted 'Five Sketches in Five Days' during May and this page came from the first of those sketches (originally published at Sketch Savvy).

I flipped through my 2017 photos for some that would fit the sketch, and picked a couple of my daughter and her friend at Explorer Scouts, chopping wood and lighting a fire as part of their survival skills badge. I used a woodgrain background with papers from Simple Stories' Awesome collection, designed for boys but I find it useful for outdoors and camping photos.

Supplies
Paper - Jillibean Soup Apple Cheddar Soup, Simple Stories Awesome
Enamel Dots/Triangles - My Mind's Eye, Trimcraft
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
X-Cut Circle Punch

Hallowe'en Pumpkins

I'm sharing another 2016 page with you today so the album appears to be back on track, at least for now. This one's from Hallowe'en when my daughter's Explorer Scout Unit tried their hands at pumpkin-carving.

Believe it or not, this page started out from a Stick It Down sketch. I had three photos, two landscape and a smaller square, and I initially rotated the sketch to suit them. As I went on, I dropped the smaller photo, added in more paper layers and rotated the background back again while keeping the photos at 90° to the original. Hopefully you can still see the sketch in my finished page.

I used old October Afternoon papers from several collections and fussy cut most of the embellishment pieces from a Witch Hazel paper. The frame on the photo highlights my daughter's Harry Potter pumpkin.

Supplies
Cardstock - Craft Creations?
Paper - October Afternoon Witch Hazel, OA 9 to 5, OA 5 & Dime
Letters - October Afternoon Daily Flash
Die-Cut & Brad - October Afternoon Witch Hazel
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins, Doodlebug, American Crafts/Shimelle
Ink & Mist - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punches

Jamboree

With a title like Jamboree, this has to be a scouting page; my daughter has recently returned from the Essex International Jamboree, and one of the leaders remembered to take a group photo.

I'm currently working through The 20 Project, an online class from Shimelle Laine, and one of the prompts was about finding inspiration on Pinterest and then using it. I don't 'do' Pinterest as such, but I do keep an ideas folder on my computer where I save pages for future reference. One of those inspiration pieces was a 'Starting Point' challenge from Sarah in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group which I flipped vertically for this page.

My photo doesn't have much colour, but I wanted a fun feel to the page so I picked bright colours from a couple of Dear Lizzy collections.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Dear Lizzy Happy Place & Lucky Charm
Letters - Fancy Pants
Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico
Arrow Clip - Freckled Fawn
Sticker - My Mind's Eye
Gems - ZVA Creative, Mark Richards, Unknown Stars
Washi Tape - Unknown
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Just Add Water

I'm continuing with my 2016 album, but I'm not working in any particular order. These photos are from June, when my daughter went kayaking with her Explorer Scout Unit. Their leader posted some photos on Facebook, so of course I nabbed them for a page.

I chose a summery yellow sunburst paper as the basis of my page, and picked turquoise from the photos as an accent colour. The turquoise was so strong that I confined it to a border, and switched to a softer aqua colour in my embellishment.

I'm linking up to Rochelle Spears' August This or That Challenge, where she has asked us to use washi tape or border stickers (but not both) on a page. I picked washi tape, using two colours to anchor my embellishment.

I'm currently following Shimelle Laine's latest class, The 20 Project, and this page also fits her first prompt (although I started the page before class started). Three days in and I've made one page; hopefully I can catch up at the weekend.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Simple Stories Sn@p Basics, Elle's Studio Shine, Dear Lizzy Serendipity
Letters - Collage Press
Cut-Apart & Label - Elle's Studio Shine
Butterflies - Prima
Circle Stickers - Anita's Glitterations
Washi Tape - Tesco (Aqua), Unknown (Yellow)
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Mist - Mr Huey's, Docrafts

Around the Campfire

I have another page from our NSD challenges at For the Love of Pretty Paper to share today; Sarah asked us to make a page based on this sketch and I decided to rotate it and flip it for two landscape photos.

My daughter's a young leader for the local cub pack and they attended a district camp last bank holiday weekend. These photos from the Saturday campfire were posted to Facebook by one of the other young leaders, and I had to pinch them and scrapbook them.

I used Simple Stories Awesome collection, and one of the papers had three stars in circles that were perfect for the three semi-circles on the sketch. I punched smaller circles from another paper to go with them, and inked some wood veneer stars too.

Supplies
Paper - Simple Stories Awesome, Heidi Swapp Vintage Chic
Letters - American Crafts, Cosmo Cricket
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Ink - Docrafts, Ranger

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Say Cheese

I'm combining NSD challenges again today, but this time there are only two of them! Shimelle posted a challenge to repeat a shape on your page, and in the For the Love of Pretty Paper Facebook group Natalie asked us to scrap using negative space.

I picked the Spin Cycle cut file from The Cut Shoppe with its repeating circles as the basis of my page and cut it from solid cardstock as I didn't want white edges to the cut and there's no way that I am going to ink the edges of all those openings. I kept hold of the middle circles and used them as templates to cut patterned paper pieces to back the negative spaces. 

I needed a photo without a story as too much journalling would have detracted from the design, so I picked a group picture of my daughter's Explorer Scout Unit, taken earlier this year. One of the older girls posted it on Facebook on the night that she moved on to Network (the group for 18-25 year old scouts) so I have no story. I'm going to ask my daughter to write a list of who's who (as I'm sure she'll forget in a few years) and I'll put that list on the back of the page.

I picked a co-ordinating card with a camera die-cut which I backed with a cardstock scrap and layered a camera wood veneer over it. The starburst wood veneer was lying on my desk and was perfect for filling one of the circles. I then had a rummage for a suitable third wood piece and found an @ to fill another circle and complete a triangle of wood veneer pieces. I was going to add a proper title, but didn't have an obvious place for it so I'm going to let the wording on the card double as my title this time.

Supplies
Carsdstock - American Crafts
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Free Spirit
Card - We R Memory Keepers Indian Summer
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico, Heidi Swapp
Gem - Doodlebug

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Other
Spin Cycle Cut File from The Cut Shoppe

Enjoy Every Moment

I have a run of posts scheduled with pages from Shimelle's Online Scrapbooking Weekend, but I'm squeezing in an extra post today because this page goes with the one I posted yesterday even though I made them days apart.

When I made the last page, with six selfies from a Scouting challenge, I also had three other team photos that weren't selfies. I'd considered using them too, but the two sets of pictures didn't combine well, so I put these to one side possible for a second page.

Roll forward a couple of days and Shimelle posted her normal weekly challenge; this time it's to scrap three photos on one page. Dead simple, and I had three photos ready and waiting. However a second 12x12 page didn't feel right; I'd told the story on the first page and these were just supporting pictures so I decided on a 6x12 page instead.

This brought to mind Shimelle's final challenge from last weekend. It was an odd one, and rather interesting. She asked us to create a challenge for her, and our challenge is to pick one of those suggestions and follow it for our own page. I'm going with Gemma's suggestion to use a non-standard page size (not 12x12 square and not a pocket page).

Finally, here are the two pages together:

Supplies
Paper & Stickers - Echo Park Note to Self
Pearls - Scrapberry's Vintage Circus
Ink - Ranger

Tools
American Crafts Notebook Border Punch

A Challenging Day

Last weekend Shimelle Laine hosted an online scrapbooking weekend, with ten challenges that will remain open until the end of next Sunday. The first one was a recap of the five weekly challenges that she has posted so far this year: scrap a selfie; use hearts; mix old and new; make a monochromatic page; or be inspired by maps and globes. I've actually done all five already, so I'm choosing to repeat the selfie challenge; this also ties with a recent prompt in the Scrap Like You Mean It forum on UKScrappers - to scrap a funny face.

My daughter's an Explorer Scout and each year the district organises a District Commissioner's Challenge. This year it took place in London; they had a list of questions to answer, and each answer had to be illustrated with a team photo at the appropriate landmark. Luckily for me, my daughter was nominated to take the photos so I had easy access to them for this page.

I picked six photos and started my page with Sketch 100 from Sketch-n-Scrap, which I rotated to accommodate a column of photos. I had a reasonable amount of journalling to include so the right hand side of my page ended up veering away from the top part of the sketch.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazill, Papermania

Paper - Echo Park Note to Self, Echo Park This & That

Letters/Stickers - Echo Park Note to Self

Pearls - Scrapberry's Vintage Circus

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Big Shot & Little B Arrows Dies

Hobbycraft Film Reel Stamp

Scrapberry's 'Around the World' Stamp Set

Amy Tangerine Camera Stamp

Tiedyetastic

This page is something a bit different for me. My daughter and her fellow Explorer Scouts had been doing tie-dye and their leader posted some photos of the results on Facebook. I decided to try a messy multi-coloured background to imitate the way that colours run into each other in tie-dye.

I mixed several colours of ink with water and 'smooshed' them into a plain piece of white cardstock using plastic packaging to spread them around. This worked best with Ranger distress inks, was acceptable with Hobbycraft ink and an abject failure with Papermania inks.

I stamped over this with a bubble wrap stamp, used modelling paste and a circles mask for a bit of texture, and spattered two colours of mist across the diagonal. Messy stuff over, I cut down my page slightly and matted it on a diagonal striped paper. I don't normally like multi-coloured titles but it seemed to be the right thing for this page. My title was originally going to be the slightly clearer tie-dye-tastic, but I found a cursive font and decided to join up all the letters.

Supplies
Cardstock - Quirky Kit
Paper - We R Memory Keepers Quoted, My Minds Eye Just Splendid
Letters - Echo Park
Ink - Ranger, Hobbycraft, Docrafts
Mist - Maya Road, Docrafts
Word Stickers - Tim Holtz Idea-Ology
Washi Tape - Tesco
Gems - ZVA Creative, Forever in Time
Modelling Paste - Farrel & Gold

Tools
KaiserCraft Bubble Wrap Stamp
Heidi Swapp Confetti Mask