pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Here’s another little glimpse at True Stories, the online class that starts on Monday. The supply list for this class is just paper and pen. You are welcome to type instead, but for various reasons, I encourage you to pick up a pen for your notes as we spend three weeks telling stories in dozens of different ways.

I love what technology has done to benefit out society, but I think we have to make sure that happens on our terms. For me, those terms include days where I’m allowed to step away from the internet and switch off my phone. Knowing when news needs to get somewhere quickly, by phone or email, or whether it can wait a bit longer for something with a tiny bit of handcrafting, like a letter. And having my own personal guidelines for things I do and do not share online with a world filled with people I do and do not know. I love that technology means I can do my grocery shopping on a website and it’s delivered to my kitchen (which is extra helpful in life without a car) but at the same time I go to our local farmers’ market every week on my own two feet. We all need a balance, right?

In the True Stories workshop, we will be picking up a pen and restoring some balance. Writing about things we want to remember and telling them in ways that make writing creative and fun and simple.

I would love for you to join us.

xlovesx

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Just a quick little heads up to let you know I have two pages up on the blog over in Jenni Bowlin land. I hope you’ll hop over to check out lots of red and black birthday scrapping.

Today I’m working on a little special something that is part of True Stories — I’ll share as soon as it’s done! And don’t miss all the giveaways from the special guests – leaving a comment on their blogs could make you the lucky winner!

xlovesx

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Less than a week now until the new online scrapbooking class, True Stories, starts and I love the week before a new project. So excited as the finishing touches all come together! Today I want to share one little part of that — some of the special guest stars making an appearance in the class. Each of these talented ladies have contributed to a True Stories lesson with their own take on the writing topics and of course their fabulous creative style to get you crafting too!

Let’s have a drum roll for these fifteen inspiring scrapping stars, in alphabetical order, since we’re on a bit of a literary and library kick!

Laura Buckingham makes me fall back in love with label stickers with pretty much every page, adores donkeys and llamas and believes in writing real letters.

SJ Dowsett writes beautiful heartfelt notes about her son that make me well up every time, throws the most amazing summer birthday tea parties and promises to put your postcards on her wall.

Danielle Flanders creates gorgeously detailed projects that make me want to rethink everything I ever believed about my crafting supplies, writes journaling with such great description that sometimes I’m sure I was really there and makes me smile when I see thread, like her blogheader.

Wilna Furstenberg creates pages that make you automatically click to view large so you can read her amazing words, has the teacher look down pat and made me never want to throw away another paper coffee cup without making it into a minibook.

Alissa Fast scrapbooks the every day in themed albums that make me wish I had thought of that, writes blog posts that make me want to wander around the Pacific Northwest for approximately a million days and has so much energy I wonder what her secret truly is.

Jennifer Gallacher has never, ever made a layout I didn’t love, tells beautiful stories about her family and photographs her pages with such cute backdrops that I’m convinced she has a second house just filled with props.

Jen Geigley has a daughter with a name I absolutely adore, dares you to scrap with pure emotion (like she does) and believes in the power of Converse All-Stars.

Kelly Goree has mad skills with patterned paper, is one of the most soothing personalities I have ever met in scrapbooking, and just blogged the sweetest thing about wanting to get back to telling the important stories for her family. It made my heart ache with happiness.

Jen Jockisch makes fabulous pages that balance superfun design with supermeaningful storytelling, has tiny little one and a not as tiny little one in her family and has a turquoise-coloured wall in her house that I love so much there I would agree to live there without ever seeing the rest of her home.

Nichol Magouirk is an absolutely genius with die-cutters and gadgets you can use to scrapbook, has a supersweet smile and giggle in real life and always gets bonus points for being a Kansas girl, like me!

Kelly Purkey will create a page that makes my jaw drop and then say shyly that she wishes it was a lot better, blogs about food so amazing it makes me want to get on a plane just to go to lunch and has a love of always going somewhere, even though she loves her NYC base.

Doris Sander makes layouts with paint and stitches that make me want to just play with craft supplies, keeps a blog that tells the sweet stories of her family’s adventures and is unabashedly addicted to Coca-Cola Classic.

Liz Tamanaha creates the most delicate and lush digital scrapbook pages ever, tells lots of stories that are worth a thousand words because her photos carry such meaning and sent me the cutest note about loving scrapbooking that made me so very excited for this class.

Dina Wakley travels all over the world to teach people how to create art and get their feelings on paper, can seriously work paint like nobody’s business and actually took some of my very first classes I ever taught online, which makes me a bit giddy.

Kerry Lynn Yeary writes sensory blog posts that always inspire me with something new, has a vintage-meets-modern crafting style that I love and sent Halloween party invitations with (non-actual) eyeballs in actual jars. Gotta love it.

Now… it pays to be nice to these ladies – or at least to comment on their blogs! They all have a class pass for True Stories to give away! They are all in different time zones so the give aways may be posted at various times, so just keep an eye out to make sure you don’t miss out! (And by the way, there is no risk in signing up if you’re entering — if you win, I will happily send you a refund of your class fee or you can invite a friend if you prefer!)

So very excited — class starts Monday and I hope you’ll join all of us there!

xlovesx

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For a long time, scrapbooking (and even the odd scrapbooking class) was something I did in my spare time, not my every day. The spare time when I was not in my more traditional classroom, teaching English to teenagers. The spare time I needed to kick back after being my most energetic and my most creative in finding ways to get those very teenagers to embrace things like reading and writing as useful and enjoyable rather than just required.

Now that scrapbooking is my every day, there is part of me that misses that very core of my curriculum and the excitement at seeing someone realise that perhaps writing has an unwarranted bad rap. Discovering that really, putting pen to paper can be an exercise in being in complete control of your world and saying things exactly how you want to say them and better yet – saying them in a way that anyone else could pick them up and understand you completely.

I’ve said it many times: to me, scrapbooking is pretty paper and true stories. I’ve taught plenty of classes about the pretty paper. This time, we’re going to focus on True Stories.

True Stories is an online class that starts on the 25th of October, but it can be completed at any time. It lasts three weeks, with fifteen full-colour PDF prompts delivered straight to your inbox, Mondays through Fridays. From the beginning, there is absolutely no way to ‘fall behind’ or ‘not finish’ because it’s not that kind of class. You can follow along by working on a prompt each day if you would like, but you can also keep the prompts as a reference for when they come in useful for your own scrapbooking, blogging or other story-telling needs.

True Stories covers fifteen different ways to approach your story and commit it to paper. You can use these prompts as a scrapbooker and see your journaling evolve to something that will be a treasure to read. You can use the prompts as a blogger to make your entries feel like honest, unique and compelling tales. Or you can just use them in general as a collection of ways to add a bit more excitement to your writing if you’re feeling like you’re in a rut of writing the same way on every project.

True Stories is a natural complement to all the classes I offer here at shimelle.com. If you loved Something from Almost Nothing, you’ll love that the prompts include scrapbook pages you can create with the supplies you already have on hand. If you loved Blogging for Scrapbookers, these topics will push your writing another step, and we all know that a successful blog can be just as much about the way something is said rather than just what is mentioned. If you love Journal your Christmas but would like to expand your written memories of the season, this will do just that. And if you have been working on scrapping your own story with a class like You Think You Know Me or My Freedom, then there is a lot of content here that would be a happy match to writing from your own memory (though it’s not a requirement of True Stories to just write about yourself). This natural complement is why it doesn’t matter when you take this class or if you use it in the order the prompts are delivered or instead choose to keep it all as one reference and dip into the materials whenever they are most useful for you.

True Stories includes my own notes, scrapbook pages and writing exercises in each prompt, but there are also many special guests. On the crafty side of things, a different scrapbooking star (or two!) will join us in each prompt to share their spin on storytelling — they will share a new layout with you as well as their thoughts on writing. On the writing side, I’ll be joined by Relly Annett-Baker (twitter | bio), who travels around the world teaching corporations and designers how to get the most from words. And she’s a scrapbooker! So she’s the perfect balance — she’s a technical expert with a love of this same hobby we all share. She’ll be sharing her own tips and exercises to bring it all together – and Relly has a wicked sense of humour too! I can’t wait to show you what all these great contributors have helped me build for you, and I just love the variety of backgrounds that we’ve all come from while coming together to share one love: scrapbooks that tell beautiful stories.

True Stories also includes a private forum for class participants to discuss and share their work, including a section for getting feedback on your writing if you would like to share your journaling with others, or the option to submit your writing for feedback privately if you would rather just have some tips from the course leaders rather than share with everyone in the class. Like all shimelle.com classes, True Stories includes permanent access to all the class materials so you can return to the prompts and discussions at absolutely any time.

Ready to sign up? You can sign up at any time and you can choose to pay in UK Pounds or US Dollars. If neither of those is your currency, you can choose whichever you prefer – you don’t need to do anything special to change the currency from your account.

You can pay by credit/debit card (click on the left of the payment screen) or Paypal account (log in on the right of the payment screen). The email address on your Paypal account is where your class materials will be sent by default, so please be sure this is a valid email address. If you would like your prompts sent to a different email address, you can enter this email in the ‘notes to seller’ field or you can send me an email (shimelle at gmail dot com) and let me know if you miss that step.

Class starts on the 25th of October but you can sign up at any time (even if you are reading this later than the 25th). Please be aware that your class registration is processed by an actual person (me!) and that means there will be a short wait before you receive your information. It’s never more than a day and usually much, much less, but I do try to make a habit of sleeping once per day, in general.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me or ask in the comments on this post.

I’m so excited to write with all of you — especially since you’ll never have homework deadlines which means I’ll never give any detentions!

xlovesx

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_{©twopeasinabucket.com}

All through October, Two Peas is hosting a SpookCRAFTular Halloween event, filled with projects, special guests and prizes. Today it’s my turn to share a project and start a challenge that is open to anyone who would like to participate.

This Halloween shadowbox is made with the Maya Road Trinket Box and a digital kit by Rhonna Farrer that is available for download at Two Peas. I also used buttons and pins by Jenni Bowlin and pleated ribbon by Pink Paislee. You can find all the details about this project here, including a full supply list and a PDF instruction sheet to download. Or if you prefer to watch rather than read instructions, you can watch a full video of the project from start to finish.

Your challenge is to create any Halloween-themed project that includes at least one Two Peas digital kit. There are plenty of Halloween kits available so you can find something right up your street. Print something out and make a scrapbook page, card, decor project, cupcake topper, tag or anything else — as long as it’s Halloween-themed and you’ve included something printed from a Two Peas digi kit, then you’re in. Upload your project to the gallery at Two Peas and remember to check the box for this challenge in step 4 of the upload process so you’ll be entered for a chance to win a prize!

In other news…
…The brand new online class will make its first appearance on the blog later tonight and you’ll be able to sign up any time from then! ETA:The class details are now here and registration is open!

…The last of the prizes from the last online crop (and some Banana Frog giveaways) will all be sent this week – the last of the boxes will hit the post on Friday and several others have already been posted this week. So if you have been waiting, I promise it will be with you very soon.

…If you fancy a bit of a scrappy bargain, there are some great Halloween deals here, tons of BasicGrey is marked down and today only, the Greenhouse collection is 50% off — it’s one of my favourites, filled with hot pinks and mod flower illustrations.

…I’m interested to know what you think about videos shot like this rather than from overhead. Does it just depend on the project, or would you in general like to see everything from one vantage point? And would you want to see longer videos like this regularly or better to stick to things that are short and sweet? Just curious as to what you would find most useful!

Have a lovely Wednesday!

xlovesx

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_{Includes Paper Girl collection from The Girls’ Paperie, Craft Fair collection from American Crafts, canvas flowers from Jillibean Soup, Dear Lizzy flair from American Crafts and vellum butterfly from Jenni Bowlin Studio.}

So where were we? You’ve printed or ordered your photos by now, right? Which means we’re ready to move on in our quest to get caught up with Document:2010. I certainly am, anyway!

The next step you can actually do without your photos to hand, so if you’re still waiting for them, you can go ahead and join in. This step focuses on the evidence pages – one page per month that includes an envelope or pocket to hold all the bits and pieces from life that month.

_{Includes Cherry Delicious collection by Sassafras, Wander collection by BasicGrey, scallop circle punch by EK Success, butterfly punch by Martha Stewart Crafts.}

I followed a similar plan for each of the five evidence pages I needed to create, but I think they look sufficiently different so it won’t necessarily be obvious that I made them all in one scrapping session. For each page I selected two patterned papers to be my primary focus, then built around that to create the page.

The trick at this stage isn’t to create finished layouts, but a near-finished state that can be easily completed with a photo or two, the evidence in your envelope and then maybe a bit of further embellishment if you fancy – or leave it just as it is.

_{Includes Seaside Retreat collection from Webster’s Pages, Amy Butler collection from K&Company, calendar die-cut from Jenni Bowlin Studio.}

Every evidence page needs an envelope or pocket that will hold ticket stubs, receipts, printed emails and anything else that might wind up at the bottom of your handbag. I kept it simple with an envelope from my stationery drawer on each page. August’s is the smallest, but I’m okay with folding papers to fit if they are too big (and I checked and I don’t have tons of things to keep from August).

_{Includes papers from Scenic Route and Anna Griffin, Thickers from American Crafts, Handmade collection by K&Company and an Artbox envelope.}

For May, June and July, I cut the titles with the Silhouette die-cutter. For August and September, I used letter stickers. Perhaps I should have mixed that up a bit, but I’m okay with it like this.

At the end of this process, I’ll come back to each of these monthly pages to finish them off and make each set of monthly pages have a feeling that they fit together, so I didn’t even tidy the offcuts away yet — I’ll want the papers I used for May’s evidence page handy as I put together the highlights of everything that month.

_{Includes papers from American Crafts and Love, Elsie by KI Memories, calendar die-cut from Jenni Bowlin Studio and die-cut cardstock by Bazzill Basics.}

I do have to admit I was quite tempted to go ahead and make pages for October, November and December as I was working on these, because it’s easy to just keep going once you have a system sorted. I didn’t in the end, but if you feel like that might help you keep up for the rest of the year, I would go for it!

If you’re catching up with me, feel free to use these pages as a basic sketch for your evidence pages – or to ignore them completely and create your own designs, of course.

---

_{Includes border stamps and birdcage stamps by Banana Frog, Letterbox collection from American Crafts, Nutmeg collection from Cosmo Crickets, digital photo frame by Rhonna Farrer.}

And just as a little extra, here’s a page I made for Banana Frog last week with some bits and pieces left on my desk + two lovely sets of Banana Frog stamps!

xlovesx

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Document:2010 is a year-long project I’ve worked on with UK Scrappers. It’s free to follow along and includes a PDF download each month with notes and a page of printable journaling boxes. The idea is very simple: scrapbook the year by creating four pages for each month. One evidence page includes an envelope of things you have collected that month. Two divided pages (one page or page protector, front and back) highlight up to a dozen things from your calendar. One highlight page shows a key event in more detail. Nice and simple, right?

Except somewhere in late spring, my personal album derailed. Now you know why my online classes are normally four to six weeks! That’s the length of time I can keep a project in working mode. Longer than that becomes a real challenge to keep up with something as other projects need to be on the table. It’s always there in the back of my mind, creating a huge amount of guilt and this feeling that there must be a way to get caught up, but life keeps steaming ahead with new deadlines and events and so it goes.

So here we go and you can mark my words: this week I am getting up to date with Document:2010, and I’m going to share the entire process with you over the next four days. If you’re behind, you can join in. If you never started but think it sounds like a cool idea, this is a great time to get started. If you’re totally up to date and have been cursing my name for not being able to keep up, well then I salute you and hope by the end of this week we can be friends again. Sound like a plan?

Today we’re going to start with the photos to get this big catch-up session rolling. I need to complete my pages for May, June, July, August and September. Why yes, I did just admit that in view of the entire internet. And now I exhale. I haven’t kept photos aside especially for this project, so I’m using iPhoto for this part of the process. If you’re a PC rather than a Mac, you could use Picasa or ACDSee — both are photo management tools that will help you navigate your photo library with ease. If you don’t use any sort of photo manager and instead keep all your photos in separate folders as you upload, I would highly suggest checking out these options, as they will save you a million headaches as a scrapbooker. I use iPhoto and I seriously would hate to go without it.

Once you’ve opened your photo library, give yourself some structure so you’ll be able to select and sort your photos easily even though we’re working on more than one month at a time. I created a folder called Document:2010 and within that folder made a new album for each month I needed to complete.

Now view your photos by date. I normally use my library to view by event, but clicking on ‘Photos’ at the top left gets rid of the events and lets you sort your images by date, file name, keyword and so forth. Sort by date and scroll to the first month you need to scrap. As you look through those images, you’ll start to get a picture of what you did that month. In May, I taught two scrapbooking workshops, spent a lot of time at the park while the cherry blossoms and tulips were in bloom, spent a few days in Dublin (then got stuck there when the airlines were all grounded), spent a day with SJ thrift shopping in Hastings, printed about twelve million (okay, two hundred) Hipstamatic photos, went to a concert, tried to find elephants in London, snapped a family photo shoot for a scrapbooker and went to the Southend Air Show with The Boy’s family. Some of those things I could tell by looking back at my calendar but others I wouldn’t have noted – and when I review the photos it’s all pretty obvious. The trick at this point is to take one to four photos from each event that month and drag them to the album for May. (By the way, in iPhoto, when you’re dragging the pictures to that album, you aren’t removing them from anywhere else — the album is essentially a collection of bookmarks, so you can add and delete with no worry about losing something from your full photo library.)

Repeat this process for each month. Don’t pay all that much attention to the number of photos you’re dragging to the folder, but keep that rough idea of one to four photos per event in mind. When you finish your first pass, go look at your monthly collections and see how many pictures you have selected. At first, I was okay for May through July but I had forty for September and only half a dozen for August. We want a happy medium in between those two, so I removed some of the September images and added to the August collection. This left me with 28 photos for May, 13 for June, 13 for July, 13 for August and 21 for September. (Apparently I like the number 13?!) I know this sounds like a ton of photos to scrapbook, and with the regular process of making pages, it would be. But for Document:2010 or similar ideas of scrapping a month over a few pages, this number is totally achievable.

Now there’s an optional editing step if you like to mix up things like colour and black and white or the size of the images in your albums. I altered two or three images per month to black and white, mostly chosen by just picking the images that didn’t have the truest colour or the highest quality, because black and white is a lovely instant fix to that. It’s far more forgiving than colour! I also made a note of some images that I wanted to print at a smaller size than my standard 4×6 format.

Which leads us to printing time! You can print your images at home or upload them to an online printer – whichever you prefer! I love my at-home printer, but it is more economical for me to order prints from Photobox, so it’s a decision I make with every project about whether I can wait the extra day to get my prints in the post. Some stores also offer an in-between option that lets you upload your photos to their website but pick them up in-store, like using the one-hour photo with the first step still being at home. I used this option a few times while I was visiting the States because there was a Walgreens just around the corner, but in my little corner of London there’s nowhere nearby that offers this service. It’s worth checking though! You could always put these images on a memory card or a CD and print them in store through a kiosk too. Anyway, I’m off the topic now — print those pictures. That’s what I’m saying.

Once you have them printed, stack them up by month and label them so you’re good to go, and tomorrow we’ll pick up from there!

If you’re new to this project, you can find the monthly downloads for Document:2010 on the UKS homepage and there is a forum to chat about the project too.

xlovesx

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_{Supplies: patterned papers by My Mind’s Eye, Bo Bunny and Cosmo Cricket, die cut and mini paper by Jenni Bowlin Studio, chipboard letters by Making Memories, letter stickers and border sticker by The Girls’ Paperie, bird sticker by My Mind’s Eye, word sticker by K&Company, label sticker by October Afternoon, lace rub-on by Hambly Studios and border punch by EK Success.}

As promised, a layout to start scrapping the photos from Laura’s wedding. I highly approve of her wedding colour scheme – I love scrapping with pink and green! I just had a few of the pictures printed so I could test out the various styles in the post-production. A few more little tweaks and I shall order prints of the whole lot! Exciting stuff. For a scrapbooker anyway.

In other news, there’s been a little switch up here at shimelle.com, so if you’re reading through a reader, stop by for a look. If you have any trouble with the changes, please let me know. Over to the right you’ll find all the online scrapbooking classes that are available. All the classes are available at any time – each class runs once on a ‘live’ schedule when the prompts are sent to your inbox each day, but you can also sign up at any date as an ‘archived’ class. You get full, permanent access to all the materials – you just download them from the website instead of getting them in your inbox. Two classes (Learn Something New and Journal your Christmas) run every year, and no matter when you sign up, you get to participate for as many years as you would like at no additional charge. So you can sign up any time!

I’m down to my last few days of this September visit to my hometown, and I’ve been able to meet up with some of my oldest friends, which was super lovely. I’m looking forward to heading home (and The Boy), but not until after the Britney episode of Glee, obviously! Ha.

xlovesx

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