Travellers Notebook

I know I haven't posted in ages, work and life have been getting in the way. I'll share a few recent LOs with you over the next week or so.

Before going on holiday I decided to scrapbook my time using a travellers notebook for the first time.

I set it up before going and took a small bag of stash so I could complete a page a day. I left spaces for 3x2 photos and added them on my return.  Here is the completed book.

The first page is stamped with an Altenew wreath set, I wrote the title with a brush pen.  I set out a circular mood tracker using a WRMK tool and drew out my month to view with just a pencil and ruler before going over it in pen.

The reading page has books with stars to review each book. As we didn't have such good weather especially in the second week, I read less than I usually do.  I the set out a page a day for the whole holiday.

On each page I added the day and a few stickers. I used washi tape with sweets and biscuits by Docrafts.

On a couple of pages I made a pocket to add extra photos and ephemera, the WRMK tool helped make these.

Stickers were from a couple of American Crafts books, they made decorating the pages quick and easy.

I did keep up with my book and it has taken the pressure off getting photos scrapbooked on my return.

I might still do some pages at 12x12 size, just need to look through my photos from my good camera. All the pictures in the notebook are from my phone.

I completed the journal with a couple of pages set up before I went. The weather page uses the WRMK tool to set up the circle tracker and Heidi Swapp weather stickers.

The ice cream page uses Altenew ice cream stamps, coloured each time we ate one.

The last page has a simple habit tracker page in the form of a table.  I picked up the journal in Hobbycraft, the pages were a little thin so pens can bleed through. To solve this, I stuck pages together. It meant that I could also make more pockets between pages too by not gluing the top.
Will I use a travellers planner again? Probably!

Hello NYC

A page with a variety of photos of famous New York landmarks on this layout.

More use of old stash, the NYC map on the background paper is probably around 7 or 8 years old at least.

The embellishments are cut from Passport patterned papers.

I was happy to get these random photos onto a layout and not just being left to rattle about in an old shoe box

Times Square.

Hannah and her fiance visited Times Square at night during their trip last summer.

Because of this, the photos were not great quality.

 To get around this problem,  I cut up a couple of the postcards they bought to add to the layout, along with the single good picture they took in the centre.

The papers are from an old Tim Holtz paper pad, with lots of Ali Edwards stamps cut out to embellish the page.

Making use of poor photos

Whilst in New York, Hannah and Chris borrowed an Instax camera to take additional snaps.

Although the photos are immediate, the quality isn't great, so I just added them all to one page, good, bad and indifferent to make a feature of them.

 The title and embellishments are about the camera too.

The Empire State Building.

Last August, my eldest daughter got engaged whilst on a trip to New York.

These photos and tickets are from their visit to the most famous skyscraper.

The papers are from the Passport range, along with an older paper pad in the background.

I cut the title using a Sizzix XL die (Deco) and some pewter glitter foam I bought in Hobby craft.  Great for making titles.
I made a pocket behind the page to slide tickets into too.

Really Old Photos.

When Kev and I were 'courting' we took our first holiday together walking in the Lake District.

The weather was so bad, we got little walking done; we managed to climb Hellvelyn. 

Loving the 80 fashions sported by us on the mountainside!  Papers by Teresa Collins, Pebbles and others that I can't recall. 

The One Canoe Two stickers were good additions to the page, along with chipboard circles I've had for a while by Ali Edwards. We are not big outdoors people now, so it was good to ue up this stash on older photos.

Break the Rules

On our way home from holiday a few years ago, the weather was poor, so we decided to leave early and call in at Oxford on our way north.

As ever, I took lots of photos and had scrapbooked most of them except these two of all the bicycles in the city. I liked the sign about not securing cycles to the railings (which was ignored!) so included this too.
  To complete the layout I followed one of the last of Shimelle's #clearthescrapdesk class, really well worth the cost if you have lots of patterned papers to clear.  I had bought a couple of new sets and the guilt about not being able to fit them in my stash storage forced me to use old papers and complete the lessons before I allow myself to dive into these new ranges.

The papers I used are from Amy Tan (Yes Please) and Teresa Collins.  Most of the stickers are from American Crafts sticker books, theses have been so handy in making my older stash appear more modern. The title is a mix of Pink Paislee mini thickers and a word stamped in Versafine grey using an alphabet that was part of a magazine (and is again very old!)

Another Tyneham page

The last time we went to Tyneham, we found a new wall in the old farmyard made up of old pieces of farm machinery and exploded ordnance.

The background cardstock is an elderly K and Company, dots are by MME and the red is Cosmo Cricket.  #clearthescrapdesk is really helping me to get lots of very old stash into my albums!

The speech bubble (again) is Paige Evans, lots of stickers by both Paige and Maggie Holmes.

The title is a sticker from the Maggie Holmes sticker book, so handy for finishing off pages quickly.

Summer Scrapbooking

This photo was taken in the middle of summer down in Dorset a few years ago, so I thought it was about time I got them into my album. 

The background paper is by Amy Tan (Yes Please)... another really old paper. I love it as a background paper as suggested by Shimelle (#clearthescrapdesk) along with a neutral to back the photo.

The title is part die cut, and part stickers (Maggie Holmes), I chose the Confuscian quote as it seemed a suitable one for my children all on the brink of adulthood. 

I used an MME sticker sheet to border the photo, and added puffy stickers, the speech bubble is cut from a Paige Evans paper.  Good to get a five year old photo scrapped!

No Signal

There we were, in a village and Bay mile from anywhere, that had been abandoned for over seventy years, and still Harry was looking for a signal for his mobile phone!

The papers and speech bubble are by Paige Evans (I never thought I would use them!). 

I added plenty of embellishments and stickers some puffy, some by Maggie Holmes and the star is cut from a Paige Evans paper.

A few scattered dots finished my page, another of my old holiday layouts completed!

The title tiles are gold chipboard by DoCrafts, love this set.

Brownsea

A few years ago, we took a trip around Poole harbour on a boat which dropped us on Brownsea Island. This is where the scouting movement began over one hundred years ago and one of the few places where elusive red squirrels can be found.

Another #clearthescrapdesk layout here from the second set of stash I put together. As I had three photo I used the shelf style layout to fit them all onto. 

My stickers are all by Maggie Holmes, with the letters and speech bubble by Paige Evans.
The background cardstock is by Trimcraft, and the multicoloured piece is by MME. 

The little border was cut from a Paige Evans paper, as the journalling says, we sadly didn't spot any of the rare little squirrels.

Fond Memories

The photos on this layout are of the donkeys on the beach at Whitby seen during our recent half term visit.

On seeing them, I was reminded of the last time I stood on this beach, we were in our early thirties, the girls were still small enough to take a ride and Harry was under one and in the pushchair.  Although it was October and I think generally the donkeys would be having their winter holiday, as it was half term, there were enough children on the beach to make it worthwhile them being there.

I made my layout using Shimelle's Glitter Girl range.  The embellishments are mainly cut from one of the 12x12 papers.

The camera strip is cut from one of the 12x12 papers, perfect for a border, and I added pastel enamel dots too. 

My title sticker letters are from the 12x12 paper pad, and the large word is stamped.  I bought the alphabet script stamp set from Stamps by Me by Toni Darroch, it stamped beautifully to finish the layout off.

A Few Days Up North Part 1

We booked a last minute trip to the North Yorkshire coast at the weekend, staying in Scarborough and visiting various places on our way there and back.

We stayed at The Grand Hotel, very much faded grandeur, but we enjoyed our stay nonetheless.  We booked one of the better rooms and ended up with two sea views as the room was on the corner of the hotel up on the third floor.  On the seaward side of the hotel we were seven floors up, so our view was incredible!

Not only was it great to see and hear the waves as we slept, but as we faced east, the sunrise on our second day (viewed from our bed) was incredible.  A cup of coffee, relaxing first thing and watching the sun come up over the horizon, what could be more lovely?

On the way up we stopped at two English Heritage properties just outside Doncaster; Conisborough Castle

and Brodsworth Hall, a property which has a roof (unusually for English Heritage!)

We settled in once arriving at the coast and planned the rest of our trip. Next morning we set off for Whitby.

The Abbey was spookily quiet as we were some of the first to arrive, great as it meant I could take some lovely photos of the Abbey in the sun,

some of the details of the building,

and I even got a photo (taken by Harry) of the two of us outside the Abbots house.

We then went down into the town and had an obligatory Whitby photo under the Whale bones.

I loved the steep steps in the town,

 ...leading down to the harbour from its time as a fishing village.

And with the link to the story of Dracula to Whitby, there were lots of signs of Halloween.

Later, we headed back to Scarborough for and ice-cream sundae and to explore the town.  More about this in the next post.