Cruise Norway 2013

We cruised to Norway back in 2013 and although I've made the holiday album for that trip I will also include some pages in my main annual album. The plan was for one for each port of call; I made two of them in 2014, then another the following year and the leftover paper scraps have sat on my shelf ever since.

My Existing Three Pages

Rather than tidying round the papers any more, I've decided to get the pages done. We visited seven ports and I'm adding a introductory page to make eight for the trip. For more recent cruises, I've just made a single or double summary page for the annual album, but with three already done here I will stick with the original plan. I didn't assemble a kit for these in advance, and certainly don't have enough paper in my scraps for five new pages, but there are certain elements that I can and will repeat:

• Kraft backgrounds
• Map print paper (as on two pages above; I may add some to the third)
• A specific red K&Co patterned paper (on all pages above)
• Multi-coloured stripes from Simple Stories (all pages above)
• Machine-stitching (as on two pages; I can add some to the third)
• Port names as sub-titles in small letter stickers
• Repeated date stamps
• Punched shapes (scalloped circles and postage stamps in particular)

I started at the beginning, with my introductory page, and used the June sketch from Scrap-Circle on Facebook. 

The larger photo is a copy of one that we bought on board, with the cruise name, itinerary and ship; the smaller ones are scenery photos that won't make it into the pages in this album, though they do appear in the trip album.

I repeated many of the elements listed above, and pulled in a plaid paper for the main circle. There's plenty left so I can repeat it too on some of the remaining pages.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - My Mind's Eye, K&Company Hannah, Simple Stories Awesome
Letters - Basic Grey, Lily Bee Design
Washi Tape - American Crafts
Pearls - Scrapberry's
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts, Mister Huey's

Tools
Sewing Machine
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Big Shot
Little B Arrows Die
Dovecraft Star Die
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch
Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Black Watch Mini Book

Last month was mini-book madness month over at For the Love of Pretty Paper, and I certainly went mad as I have another to share with you today. That's two this week, which is as many as I'd previously made in the past 10 years!

My book is another version of the wallet brag book that I made last year, but this time I challenged myself to make a moving waterfall section rather than the flip-over pages. Both the brag book and the waterfall section were made using free tutorials from Cal Summers. 

I started the book as an exercise in paper construction, for the satisfaction of mastering the waterfall, without any clear intention for which photos would go in it. As I worked, I decided to use travel-themed papers (since I scrap more travel photos than any other type), and then I hit on making it a book about the Black Watch cruise ship. We've sailed on her three times so I have loads of photos of her but it's recently been announced that she is being retired so this is the end of an era.

I mixed Pinkfresh Studio's Out and About papers with stickers from PhotoPlay's Boarding Pass collection; I've used both lines for cruise albums in the past. I made the book with gussets at the sides so that it would stay closed on its own, but it was bulging by the time I filled it with photos so I added an elastic tie with a couple of anchor charms. I bought a set of these for my first album 12 years ago and only used one. They're a bit lumpy for scrapbook pages, but a good weight for this project.

The book opens up to three sections, journalling on the left, my waterfall of photos in the middle and a pocket on the right which hold my cruise cards from the three holidays we had on Black Watch.

We visited 21 ports in 12 countries on her, and saw her in two more when we were on sister ship Balmoral in 2018. I try to take photos of our ship in every port but some are better than others; I picked out nine of the prettier or more interesting ones for the book, including photos taken from different angles, making sure to get a good spread of dates and places.

The best way to see a waterfall is a video, so I filmed it, but it's sideways:

Alternatively, here are a couple of stills.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out, and the waterfall was easier than it might seem. Thank you Cal!

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania

Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Out and About

Letters - Anita's Glitterations

Puffy Stickers - Pinkfresh Studio

Flat Stickers - PhotoPlay Boarding Pass, Pinkfresh Studio

Label Stickers - 7Gypsies

Anchors - Ebay

Enamel Shapes - Studio Calico

Ink - Memento

Tools

X-Cut Corner Punch

X-Cut Circle Punches

 

Butterflies Mini Book

I wrote recently about how I became Slightly Obsessed with photographing and identifying butterflies over the summer. Well, that obsession has spilled over into my paper-crafting world, with a mini-album as well as the scrapbook page I shared on Sunday.

It's a very simple album, made from one 12x12 sheet of concertina-folded cardstock and based on Cal Summers' one page mini-album, though I adapted her instructions to make my book at 4" square rather then her original 3" square (plus covers). 

I decorated the covers with butterfly paper and two die-cut butterflies arranged on and around a chipboard frame which I popped up on foam adhesive so that I could thread my ribbon tie behind it.

Inside, I wrote a brief introduction and then gave each butterfly its own page, with names cut on my Silhouette.

Flipping the book over, the butterflies continue 

and I end with a mention of the ones that I saw but couldn't photograph and a repeat of the front cover motif.

I used a limited selection of supplies throughout - three patterned papers, three colours of cardstock, three washi tapes - and repeated them with motifs such as the cameras and the pairs of hearts.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Studio Calico Heyday
Kraft Heart Stickers - Studio Calico
Puffy Stars - Elle's Studio, Pinkfresh Studio
Washi Tape - Docrafts, We R Memory Keepers
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot
X-Cut Tag Die
X-Cut Camera Die
Dovecraft Label Die
Little B Arrow Die
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

I'm a Mad Scrapper - Design Team News

I'm really pleased, and slightly gobsmacked, to have been selected as one of the new Design Team members for The Mad Scrapper, a real bricks and mortar scrapbooking shop in East Lothian, with a website for shopping if you're not local.

Janine, the owner, is a lovely lady who has helped me out by ordering in products for me before, specifically the PhotoPlay Boarding Pass collection for one of my cruise albums.

I've started work on my first project, using papers from Cocoa Vanilla Studio; look out for that here and on The Mad Scrapper blog soon.

Slightly Obssessed

I'm still working my way through the summer sketch series at Lottie Loves Paper, with a four photo page for sketch 7 today.

Over the summer, I became 'slightly obsessed' with photographing and identifying the butterflies that I saw on my local walks, even discovering a variety that I had never heard of before - the gatekeeper butterfly.

The sketch didn't need a lot of paper or any larger pieces so I raided my scraps box, spotting this old stripey piece from My Mind's Eye and finding a few matching pieces from the same company.

Supplies
Paper - KaiserCraft Full Bloom, My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline. My Mind's Eye Lime Twist, Simple Stories Awesome
Letters - My Mind's Eye
Puffy Stickers - MAMBI, Elle's Studio
Pearls - Doodlebug
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Silhouette Portrait
Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

Dino-Mite

I'm celebrating a birthday with this page today. The photos are of my husband's cousin's son, who is three years old and mad about dinosaurs.

I pinched the photos from Facebook; I wouldn't normally scrap something like this if I wan't there, but the combination of these two photos, a new sketch from Lottie Loves Paper and an old dinosaur print paper that I was about to discard was just too much temptation.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - DCWV Linen Closet Stack, Karen Foster Dinosaur Collage
Letters - American Crafts
Word Stickers - Pretty Little Studio
Enamel Stars/Dots - Marianne Design
Ink - Ranger, Memento

Tools
Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Back Together

I have a trio of 2020 pages coming up over the next week, all made for the summer sketch series at Lottie Loves Paper. First up is a two-photo page of my friends and me getting back together in person after four months of chatting online. We used to meet weekly for coffee in a shopping centre, but we've replaced that with the outdoor area of an independent cafe instead. There's nothing to do afterwards but none of us wants to go shopping at present so that's fine.

I used three papers from the Whimsical collection for the triangles on the sketch, and double matted the photos as indicated. I didn't have a coordinating paper for the background and didn't want plain white cardstock so got brave with inks and mists. The clusters to the right of the photos gave me some trouble. I stamped the circles as they are on the sketch, but then tried a variety of different hearts and stars to finish them without success, until I spotted these floral puffy stickers and then it all fell into place.

 
Supplies
Cardstock - Craft UK
Paper - Pink Paislee/Paige Evans Whimsical, Studio Calico Snippets, Scrapberry's Summer Joy
Letters - Pebbles
Title Die-Cut - Unknown
Puffy Stickers - OneCanoeTwo Hazelwood
Stickers - Paige Evans #Stickerbook
Enamel Dots/Stars - My Mind's Eye, Doodlebug, Studio Calico
Ink - Versamagic, Ranger, Ink It Up!
Mist - Heidi Swapp, Maya Road, Docrafts

Tools
Hobbycraft 'Star Circle' Stamp
Studio Calico Stars Stamp