40th Birthday Card

It's my brother's birthday today, and I hope this card has arrived with him on time. 

It's based on this month's card sketch from Stick It Down, but I stretched it a bit to make a slightly larger card. A landmark birthday deserves a larger card than usual, and this one is 6x6 rather than 4x6.

I cut five 1" paper strips and matted them on embossed orange paper, cutting my stars from the same paper, plus a dark grey scrap. I inked all the edges, and mounted my stars on foam pads for a little dimension.

Supplies
Card - Craft Creations
Paper - Paper Cellar, Payperbox
Ink - Docrafts
Peel-Offs - from Stash

Tools
Big Shot & Sizzix Stars Die

Weekly Routine

This is a page with a difference - absolutely no photos. It's for another NSD challenge from our Facebook group. Alexa asked us to scrap our work life, and this really was a challenge. I have made one page about my current job, but I really didn't fancy doing another one at the present time. 

I decided to look at my 'working week' when I was a stay-at-home mum. When my son was about two, we had a set routine of going to the gym (or crèche), attending various parent and toddler groups and weekly trips to my parents. I've told him about those days, but never scrapped it, and probably wouldn't have done so without Alexa's prompt because I don't have photos from most of these activities. So... a photoless page:

I divided my page into five columns, one per day, and took the opportunity to use up some 2x12 papers and some days of the week rub-ons, both of which I've had for years.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - My Mind's Eye Bloom & Grow
Letters - American Crafts
Word Stickers - Authentique
Rub-Ons - Rusty Pickle
Gems - Mark Richards
Washi Tape - from Stash

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Journalling Cards

Another post sharing my crafting from National Scrapbooking Day. I'm part of a Facebook group where we set each other a few fun challenges. Mostly they were for scrapbook pages, but Fiona took us in a slightly different direction with her challenge. She no longer scraps in 12x12 and uses pocketed pages for her memory-keeping instead. She makes her own cards for this, and challenged us to do the same.

I'm part way through making an album with divided pages for our cruise to Norway and Svalbard in 2013 (and I really need to get back to it soon). I have a specific box of supplies for that album, so I raided that to make a few new 3x4 cards.

Supplies
Paper - Pink Paislee Portfolio, Pink Paislee Indigo Bleu, My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart, 
     MME Lost & Found 3, Studio Calico Atlantic
Washi Tape - Papermania, Trimcraft
Chipboard - MME Lost & Found 3
Vellum & Button - from Stash

Thomas and Friends

This is another challenge from our Facebook group for National Scrapbooking Day; our second one was set by Jennifer Grace and she gave us a sketch with a mixture of photo orientations.

I deliberately try to avoid this clash of orientations when I'm taking photos, and I had to go back to 1999 to find a pair that would fit the sketch. They're from a 'Thomas the Tank Engine' day at the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. We took my son and my nephew there when they were toddlers. Unfortunately the two photos that I do have are of the engines, not the boys.

While I have been concentrating on the Facebook NSD challenges, I have borne others in mind while I worked, and I've managed to incorporate the criteria for Stash Challenge #26 at Scrap Our Stash. This month we need to create a page with stash items for each letter of the word EMBOSS. My items are: Enamel dots, paper from My Mind's Eye (yellow stripes), Blue background, Orange (punched circle), Stitching and the word Smile.

Supplies

Paper - My Mind's Eye Lost & Found 3, MME Now & Then, Chickaniddy Crafts Scrumptious, plus Scraps

Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins, Doodlebug

Thread - DMC

Ink - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot & Sizzix Wallflower Alphabet Dies

Fiskars Circle Template

Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Woodware Tag Punch

Christmas Trees

Last Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day and one of the Facebook groups that I'm part of came together for a few fun challenges. Sarah set the first one - to use three (or more) photos and also our newest item of stash.

A brief look through my recent(ish) photos turned up a set of Christmas tree photos that I took in various locations around London last year. My newest purchase was from My Mind's Eye, the Chalk Studio II collection from TKMaxx, and I used the red and black papers with some older Christmas stash.

Supplies
Paper - MME Chalk Studio II, Glitz Design Hello December, Basic Grey, Bo Bunny Zoology
Letters - Pretty Little Studio, Dear Lizzy
Stickers - Glitz Design Hello December
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Docrafts

Stick It Down - Escape in a Book

This month's sketches were revealed last Friday at Stick It Down, with stunning samples from Rachel, Stephanie and Jodie. Today it's the turn of the rest of the single page DT to reveal our versions.

The obvious features of the sketch are those hexagons and the large doily; I die-cut the hexagons for my page and placed them on a doily print background. 

My photo is from the V&A Museum of Childhood which I visited in January; specifically it's from an art installation called Dream House, where 20 designers were asked to create their ideal rooms. I really liked this one (Offline Hideaway by Dominic Wilcox) with the girl reading a book atop a pile of furniture. I could just imagine myself in her place.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline, MME Vintage Chic, Crate Paper The Pier
Letters - Pretty Little Studio, October Afternoon
Gems - ZVA Creative
Ink - Ranger

Tools
Big Shot
X-Cut Hexagon Die
Little B Arrow Die
Woodware Tag Punch

The House with Two Names

I posted a new Scraplift Challenge a couple of days ago, and I've taken on my own challenge this month as always. The page I gave you this time was Big Cats, which I made in March last year and which used two 4x6 photos.

My new page has the same number of photos - a close-up and a distance shot of the cottage we stayed in for our holiday in Devon at Easter. It was marketed under one name, but when we received the directions for finding it we found that it actually had another name.

I'm making all the pages from our Devon (and Cornwall) holiday on the same cardstock for a sense of continuity and to define a sub-section of my 2015 album. I built up my collection of paper strips to the left of the photos, as in my previous page, but I wanted space for some journalling in this one. I used a new-ish notebook page stamp and layered that on a couple more bits of paper, under the title on the right. I dropped the twine from the original page, but I tucked a few paper scraps and a month sticker in among the layers this time.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Dotted Swiss
Paper - Bo Bunny Zoology, Basic Grey Spice Market, My Mind's Eye Cut & Paste, MME Find Your Wings and Fly
Letters - American Crafts
Sticker - Studio Calico
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Washi Tape - Papermania
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Notebook Border Punch
Docrafts Notebook Page Stamp