Safe Travels – Simple Stories – Part One | Amy Kattenbelt

 

Hello. Magpies, Amy here and today I am sharing the start of a new 12×12 project with you. As a family, we have set ourselves a challenge to visit all the counties in the UK (no time limits, no pressure), we thought it would be a nice way to get out and explore more of our country. To mark off each county, we are going to post home a postcard. This summer we started off our challenge by doing some day trips to some of the more local counties. I thought such an epic challenge needed its own album to document our travels. Hence the start of this new project. I’ve decided to work in a mixture of a 12×12 pocket page protectors (Project Life Design A) and a normal 12×12 page protector. Each county will get one page of each design – hence a double sided pocket page and 2 12×12 layouts. Any other layouts I make from the travels will be stored in with my ‘normal’ chronological albums but this way I will end up with a special album (or two – or three!). It also allows me to store the postcards in one of the 6×4 pockets so both sides are visible. So on with the project… I have chosen to use Simple Stories Safe Travels this month, which worked well for day trips as well as being perfect for longer road trips and vacations…its sure to be a collection I return to to document more of our travels.

County #1 – Gloucestershire

Layout 1 – Roam

For my first layout, I knew I wanted to use a 6×4 photo of the cathedral. I wanted to create a scalloped curvy shape for the base patterned paper layer. I should to use the B side of the paper called ‘Baggage Claim‘. To create my shape I sued some scrap paper, folded it in half and drew half the shape in pencil. When I was happy with my shape I cut it out and unfolded the paper. I ended up with a perfectly symmetrical shape. I used the paper shape as a template and drew around it on the reverse of my paper. I actually did this twice to give me two matching shapes for my layout as you can see below.

I love the contrast between the blue and the orange in the collection, so I added some blocks of paper called ‘Happy Travels‘. I also loved the floral pattern of this paper so added a block of this too. So my photo wouldnt get lost amongst all the patterned papers I matted it in black. My tittle and sub title were from the foam sticker pack. These are such a quick and eye catching way to add a title.

I added some more foam stickers to the top right of the layout, along with some of the phrase sticker strips from the sticker book. The layout was finished with some little black enamel dots and some black cross stitches to form a triangle across the layout.

Layout 2 – Stained Glass

My second layout uses three 3×4 photos of the stained glass windows inside the cathedral. I thought the diagonal patterned paper, the B side to the journal elements paper was a perfect mech for the photos ad they both had lots of similar colours. So I used this paper as a background border to frame my layout. I used a 12″ stripe across my whole layout in the paper called ‘Take Me Somewhere Safe‘. With a piece of cross hatched patterned paper from the 6×8 paper pad behind the photos too.

I used the ‘Journey’ foam sticker below my photos. Then I scatted some of the little stickers from the sticker book in the bottom right corner, along with some enamel dots and foam arrows. I kind of felt like it was the contents of a travel bag slipping over the page.

I loved the little hand sanitizer and mask stickers…it wasn’t a huge part of the collection but a unique little extra to document my 2021 photos! This lead me to use the backpack sticker in the top left of the layout along with more arrows and dots.

I added the title ‘Stained Glass’ using the two different alphabet stickers that come in the sticker book. I added a few more embellishments below the title to finish off the layout.

Page Pocket – Side 1

I really enjoyed creating the pocket page. Its something I have done for various projects in the past, but not for a good 5 years or so. It was nice to remember how much I enjoyed it and know I’ll look forward to creating more as our travels progress. I am following the same placement for each counties pocket page. The top left 6×4 is the county and place name that we visited. Then next to that I will place a full 6×4 photo with a small cluster of embellishments in one corner. The row of 4 3×4 pockets will show the following; A photo of the postcard being posted (printed slightly smaller than the pocket so it was a patterned paper border), A 3×4 card with the date on. a 3×4 card with the county number on and another 3×4 project life style card. Then the bottom left 6×4 pocket will either be a larger project life style card or some smaller photos. Finally the bottom right 6×4 pocket will contain the all important postcard!

The sticker book is a great collection of pieces to make pocket pages, as is the 6×8 paper pad. I loved the 3×4 cut aparts, and I cut down a 6×8 paper into 6×4 title card too. I would totally recommend getting these if you want to create this style of scrapbook. I also used the new alphabet stickers from Pinkfresh Studio as the blue was a perfect colour match.

Pocket Page – Side 2

Here is the reverse side of the pocket page protector. As you can see the lower left pocket will now show the reverse of the postcard, so I left that one alone. The top right 6×4 pocket will always contained a printed detailed journal of the visit. The 3rd 3×4 pocket will contain a photo of a flamingo object (this is a little side project!?!). The other pockets are a bit more random depending on what I have left that I want to document.

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a peek into the start of this new project. I will be back in a few weeks to share how I’ve documented another county. In the meantime Stay Safe and Take Care.