Cycling the Downs Link

I'm trying to fill in the gaps in my 2026 album chronologically rather than picking out the 'easy' pages and leaving all the 'difficult' ones for later. The next set comes from my husband's first major cycle ride of the year, back in March. This was along the Downs Link, a route that runs through Surrey and West Sussex, joining the North Downs Way to the South Downs Way then continuing to the coast at Shoreham-by-Sea.

I printed seven photos, all at the same height, and arranged them in two rows, loosely based on the June sketch from For the Love of Pretty Paper.

There's not a lot of colour in the photos, so I concentrated on the orange from my husband's shirt, this being one of his favourite colours. I found a couple of individual sheets from Bo Bunny which match perfectly despite being 11 years apart in age (2006 and 2017) and both so old that they are well overdue for being used up or passed on. 

I kept the plainer piece as my background and tore the stripes to go in the top part of the page. Later on I tore another smaller strip to go at the bottom (that isn't on the sketch). I also moved the embellishment clusters to go at the ends of my photo strips, clusters made up of assorted oddments arranged around a couple of die-cut chevrons. The cross-stitch sticker was the last one of that colour in the pack so I cut it in two and used bits top and bottom.

Supplies: Paper - Bo Bunny Daydream, Bo Bunny Cottontail, Shimelle Starshine, Pink Paislee Memorandum; Letters - Pinkfresh Studio; Border - Unknown; Bicycle Die-Cut - Simple Stories; Acetate - 49 and Market; Stitching Sticker - Pretty Little Studio; Stars - Studio Calico; Gem Chevrons - Prima; Enamel Dots - Hey Little Magpie, Ebay

Moments Together

Sharing another page that I made at the recent Twilight Crafts Weekend Crop, which is also my first DT page of June for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I used two words from Titles 1 With Offset alongside two 4x6 photos of my extended family.

The page design was mostly driven by the word print paper which I received in a mystery box, along with the floral from the same collection. 

Supplies: Cardstock - Stampin' Up!; Paper - Paige Evans Wonders, Photoplay Wicker Lane; Stickers - Cocoa Vanilla Studio, Paige Evans; Washi Tape - Hobbycraft

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 50 for the year.)

Grown Up?

I've decided to abandon my cruise album for now and concentrate on 2023 instead. I had done half the necessary pages at the end of March, but that's now just one of fourteen following a day out and a week's holiday in Devon.

I'm starting with that day out, a family affair where my Mum requested a photo of her grandchildren. They are all adults now (aged 18-27) but chose to pose on a climbing frame for this one.

I used Sketch #62 from Lisa Sikorski at Scrap a Sketch, which called for lots of smaller papers, so I pulled out the November 2021 'Just Add Cardstock' kit from ScrapMates which consists of A6 papers and smaller pieces. I cut the papers down further to give me twelve 2x2.5" rectangles as per the sketch and double matted my photo. 

I'm on a mission to use some old stash, particularly where I just have a few pieces left in a pack; I've used the last of the rub-ons from an old pack (2006) here, along with the end of a pack of black gems and my last acetate label.

My page also fits with Challenge 7 from Twilight's Easter cybercrop which was to create a page with a grid design and using only four colours including yellow.

Supplies

Paper - Crate Paper Peppermint, Simple Stories Simple Vintage Lemon Twist

Letters - American Crafts

Label - Studio Calico

Rub-Ons - Basic Grey

Butterflies - Prima

Puffy Sticker - Unknown

Gems - Unknown

Ink - Hobbycraft, Ranger

West Pier Sunset

Twilight Crafts are half-way through a '12 Days of Christmas' cybercrop over in their Facebook group, and today it's my turn to set the challenge. I've chosen a stash challenge based around the letters of the alphabet. I'm asking people to choose any four consecutive letters of the alphabet and then choose an item of stash for each letter; for my sample page I chose butterfly stickers, a cut-file, die-cut tags and enamel dots for BCDE.

My photo (or rather my daughter's photo) is of sunset over (the remains of) the West Pier in Brighton and the page will go in her University Years scrapbook. I started out with the Criss Cross Grid cut-file from Jenny Wren Cut-Files which I cropped down as my Silhouette Portrait can only cut 8" x 12". I cut it in grey cardstock, backed the open stripes with papers from 7 Dots Studio  and flipped it round to be on the left of my page.

I had a sheet of die-cut tags from the collection so layered some of the larger ones behind my photo and tucked a couple of the smaller ones in next to my title, adding three trios of enamel dots. At this point I had used C, D and E from the alphabet and had a decision to make between adding B or F; the butterfly stickers were on my desk, rejected from another page, so they were an easy choice.

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania

Paper - DCWV Romantic Life, 7 Dots Studio Illumination

Letters - Basic Grey, Crate Paper

Tags - 7 Dots Studio

Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Dots - Crate Paper, Artenew

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Jenny Wren Criss Cross Grid Cut-File

Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Die

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

Yes to University of Sussex

I called my 2019 album 'done for now' more than a year ago, but there was a gap in my daughter's story that I wanted to remedy. We looked at various universities for her, including Sussex where she ended up but, although I took photos on some of those visits, I didn't take any at Sussex. Thus the scrapbooks go from us looking at other places to her starting at Sussex without any mention of our visit and her decision to make it her first choice.

When I realised this, I decided to take photos when we collected her at the end of the spring term (March 2020) but Covid disrupted that and I eventually took them in March this year. I particularly wanted spring photos so that they would match the time of our original visit and the trees and flowers would look right.

I took four photos of the buildings that surround Library Square, and used them for the 'Conceptual Art' challenge at For the Love of Pretty Paper. This challenge was an oddity as we had to work from a printed list of instructions without seeing a picture of what the final layout should look like. I'll admit that I didn't follow all the instructions, but I felt it was more important to make a page I liked then to stick to them rigidly and be less happy with the result.

For comparison purposes, here's the original page made by Karen/Scrapdolly who also wrote the instructions.

It all felt too left-heavy to me, so I pushed everything to the right by extending the paper across the top of the page, adding an extra square on top of it and spreading out the layering of the vertical papers and photos. I also rotated the banners at the top of the page, added some labels at the bottom left and dropped the line of bunting.

I also linked up with Hey Little Magpie who set a much more straightforward challenge to use three or more photos on a page.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bo Bunny, UK Crafts

Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Whimsical
Enamel Dots - Pretty My Page, Freckled Fawn

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot
Dovecraft Label Die
X-Cut Pennant Die

Just a Minute

This page is nothing to do with the radio programme of the same name; the title was inspired by the fact that these two photos of Brighton beach were taken just one minute apart but have very different looks. 

I'm combining challenges again, starting with a mood board from Hey Little Magpie. I'm not usually a fan of mood boards, but this one was easy with these photos on my 'to scrap' pile. I pulled the beach theme and woodgrain from this one, along with aqua and beige for the colour scheme. I even squeezed some butterflies onto my page.

I also took on the 'Minimalist' challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper, using straight lines of washi, paper squares and stamping on my background. The use of squares led to a third challenge, one of the April sketches from Lottie Loves Paper. 

I rotated the sketch to suit landscape photos and used old woodgrain, beach and zig-zag papers for my squares.  Obviously my photos are much bigger than those in the sketch, but I have the main elements from it on my page. I've translated the stars into stamping, and moved them to be beside my photos.

There's no journalling at present as this is a page for my daughter's university album and she will do that, but I did add the time to each picture in tiny number stickers.

Supplies
Paper - OneCanoeTwo Hazelwood, DCWV Linen Closet, Sandylion Seashells, My Mind's Eye, Bo Bunny

Numbers - Creative Devotion
Ink - Ranger, Memento

Tools
Scrapberry's Compass Stamp

Studio Calico Stars Stamp

Heidi Swapp Inspire Stamp Set

Heidi Swapp Arrow Stamp
American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Stamp Set

Make & Create Stamp Set

Big Shot

Make & Create Alphabet Die Set

New Beginnings

I mostly kept on top of my 2020 album as we went along last year; it's taken me a while to scrap our October break in Dorset, but I'm about five pages away from finishing the album now. 

I'm going back to August for this page, when my daughter and her friends moved into a student house in Brighton ready for the new term. I've already scrapped two of these photos for her university album, but they're going in our family album too.

Adam's Page

My page design was inspired by Scrappy Adam; scraplifting his Epic Epcot Topiaries page was the January challenge from Dotty About Flair.

Mine's not a perfect scraplift as my three photos take up a wide band in the middle of the page, but I've certainly copied his mix of gridlines and punched squares, some of which I topped with puffy stickers. I added my journalling around the edge of the page after taking the photo for security reasons as it includes their address.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Ready Set Go, Kit 'n' Craft

Letters - American Crafts

Puffy Stickers - American Crafts/Amy Tangerine Journal Studio

Phrase Stickers - Tim Holtz

Gold Pen - Faber Castell

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Woodware Square Punch

Snapshots from Bognor Regis

It's not often that I can put a whole year on one scrapbook page, but when I raided my parents' old photo album for my childhood photos there were just four pictures for 1972, and they all came from our summer holiday in Bognor Regis so they all went on one page.

I've had this large scrap of floral paper for a few weeks, and when I saw it with the pink I knew that I had the colour scheme for a new page. I lined the photos up in a row, layered them on some more scraps and machine-stitched a couple of overlapping circles around them. I used a mask for the two lines of chevrons for a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper and included a shaker pocket in my layers for a subsidiary challenge from the same group to combine one with any other challenge. 

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts/Dear Lizzy Saturday, Crate Paper Random, American Crafts Shimelle Head in the Clouds, My Mind'd Eye Cut & Paste
Letters - Studio Calico, Creative Devotion
Puffy Stickers - OneCanoeTwo
Washi Tape - Dovecraft
Star Gems - Simply Creative
Enamel Dots - Echo Park
Ink - Memento
Stars and Micro Beads - from Stash

Tools
Sewing Machine
Big Shot & Dovecraft Tag Die
Pretty My Page Borders Mask