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

It’s been an exciting weekend around the internets.

Thank you to Avant-Garde Craft Magazine who featured me and my little studio in their new issue. So honoured to be asked!

And also excited because our wedding cupcakes made a guest appearance on Let Her Bake Cake.

And just now I talked one of my oldest friends into joining Facebook and for this and I giddy with joy. This opens up an entirely new world of old photos for entertainment.

And something coming up: the adorable Jen Johner is teaching a four week online scrapbooking class here which looks exceedingly cool, and it will only set you back a whopping five bucks.

And the Here, There & Everywhere girls started posting pages today which is rather exciting indeed!

Hope your week is looking lovely!

xlovesx

PS: If anyone reading can translate the Japanese in my little hedgehog stamp, I actually have a set of them and would love to know what they say! Let me know, pretty please!

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At least a year ago, people started asking me if ‘The Boy’ would no longer be called ‘The Boy’ after the wedding. It seemed quite a popular theory that after the wedding, he should become ‘The Man’ but for a number of reasons, this is just wrong.

Mostly because the reason he is called ‘The Boy’ is because he is younger than I am.

From October to February, he gets to claim that he is four whole years younger than me. Which clearly isn’t quite the case, since from February to October, he is merely three and a half years younger than me. Suffice to say: if his name changes to one that seems old, then I would by definition be older. Ahem.

He will always be The Boy. At all costs.

Since I was actually home for his birthday, I had a master plan to take dozens of cupcakes to his office without him knowing in advance. Note to those who may have similar ideas: if his office has a tradition of the birthday person providing cake on their own birthday, the surprise factor has to go, unless you are quite happy for him to also buy a cake at the shop around the corner from the office. Perhaps the surprise factor is overrated anyway. Or so I tell myself.

The Boy remembers a rum-soaked cake from his childhood, but apparently he was quite the boozy child since he said it was absolutely soaked. No way that was going to work in a cupcake paper then. I asked for more description and he said there was coconut involved. And apricot jam. Which sounded like a very odd combination but turns out, it’s not at all. I know I sent two dozen of these and two dozen chocolate to his office and he returned only with empty boxes, so it seems they were approved.

Rum Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut-Rum Cream
makes about 24 medium sized cupcakes
Cake Ingredients:
6 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar (I use vanilla caster sugar in pretty much every cake)
190g unsalted butter (in US sticks, that’s one and a half. in UK blocks, it’s 3/4 of one.)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup dark rum
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
dash of salt

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Soften the butter and mix on high until fluffy.
Add eggs, sugar and vanilla and continue to mix.
Stir in all remaining ingredients and mix on medium until the batter is even.
Fill cupcake cases 2/3 full and bake for 16-20 minutes, or when a chopstick comes out clean.
Remove from pan immediately and cool on a rack.

Rum Soak: Combine equal parts dark rum and honey. Use a knife to cut an X in the top of each cake, and add a teaspoon of the rum and honey to each cake, so it soaks into the cake through the X.

When cakes are cool, glaze the top with apricot jam or conserve.

Cream Ingredients:
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup caster sugar (more or less to taste)
2 tablespoons coconut milk
1 tablespoon dark rum

Place in a mixing bowl and whisk at the highest speed until the cream thickens to form soft peaks.

Spoon on top of cooled, glazed cupcakes and sprinkle with coconut pieces.

And my own childhood preference for rum-flavoured sweets (Butter Rum Lifesaves were my favourite for years!) tells me you could certainly replace the real rum with flavouring in the cream, but the flavouring is most certainly more concentrated, so go easy.

For birthday dinner? I, the vegetarian wife, took The Boy to an Argentinian steak house. Let it not be said that I am always a pain in the neck when it comes to food.

xlovesx

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Recently loving:
...that the snow has disappeared to reveal that the daffodils are coming up and seem to still be thriving. I think they will bloom late this year, but I am happy for them whenever they arrive.
...discovering that friend and neighbour Hilary has a lovely baking blog with many things I want to make.
...chatting about cameras and villages and worldly perceptions with the girls in the new class.
...hearing happy news from two far away friends.
...making bread and watching House.
...the genius playlist in itunes that picks stuff from my existing collection that all goes together perfectly, no matter if I fancy beautiful 90s grunge or just ‘things that go well with David Bowie’.
...finding a birthday present for the boy that takes up no space in the flat and does not expand the waist line. I’ll blog more about that later perhaps. It needs a few weeks to see if it was a success.
...that although I am far from Japan, I am not that far from a Japanese bakery. Thankfully I am far enough that I can’t possibly go there on a daily basis, or there would be very much more of me. It is perhaps the perfect distance from home.
...working on a magazine project that has made me smile every step of the way, and

...that for the first time in three years, I am home on the boy’s birthday.

Which means tomorrow I have a cupcake post to share.

xlovesx

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Just a note to say…

If you signed up for Here, There and Everywhere and haven’t received today’s class materials, please email me so I can make sure you have everything you need.

Thanks!

xlovesx

And the winner is…

Shaquanna Says:
13 February 2009, 01:51
This class looks like it is going to be great! I would love to win a spot to take this class!

So Shaquanna, email me with the name, email address and TwoPeas login name for you and a friend, and I’ll get you all set to go!

Thanks to everyone who entered! You can still sign up here and join in the fun. Class starts tomorrow, so go-go-go!

xlovesx

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Thanks so much for your happy comments about the new class, Here, There & Everywhere. Lots more to share with you today as we get nearer and nearer the first day of class this Sunday! Some sneak peeks, a bit of Q&A and some prizes to be won, all in this post.

Questions and Answers

Q: This album is just for people who have been on lots of trips, right?
A: Definitely not. Although there is certainly a travel element to this album, this isn’t a travel album that will make you feel inadequate if you haven’t had a chance to see the world. If you have visited three cities, towns or destinations that are not where you live, then you have enough material to follow every prompt in the workshop. They don’t have to be places that are far from home – they might even be places you’ve gone to visit family. For this book, the places you want to see someday are more important than the places you’ve already been, so don’t let your limited travel stop you.

Q: Are you selling a kit for this workshop?
A: No. But there are two supply options that you can mix and match throughout the workshop if you want. The first option is to make this project from your own stash. So many of us have enough scrapbook supplies to wallpaper our homes many times over, so I know you have enough stuff to make this come together with what you have on hand. The second option is to shop from the four sample albums, as you’ll be able to download a list of the materials each of us used to create our books and purchase anything you fancy with just a click. You’ll see those shopping lists this Sunday when the class starts, and the prompts give you time to order a few special things without having to stall on the project in the mean time.

A sneak peek from Jennifer Johner

Q: Will the Photoshop Actions work in Photoshop Elements?
A: Yes. With a bit of extra work. The files are super easy to use if you have full Photoshop, because the easy action interface is part of that program. But Photoshop Elements is a much more affordable program that is more practical for home use. It doesn’t have the same easy interface for actions, but you can run actions in Photoshop Elements—you’ll just need to do a little extra homework to make that happen. And the homework is different depending on which version of Elements you’re running. Thankfully this website has instructions for every version going. So you should be able to follow the instructions there and use the actions in Elements. Occasionally there may be parts to the actions that will not be available in your version of PSE, depending on the edition you’re using. But just in case all the action stuff is scary (or you don’t have Photoshop Elements), there’s also a step-by-step instruction for recreating each of the actions using both Elements and Picasa (Google’s free-to-download image editing software). So by the end of all that, the answer is yes!

Q: Do I need to know a lot of stuff about scrapbooking?
A: No, of course not. If you have an appreciation of photographs, the written word, day dreams and the occasional piece of pretty paper, you’re all set. If you are a scrapbooking superstar, you can gloss right over the little margin notes where each of us declare our love for our favourite adhesives and inking techniques. If you’re new to all this, there will be plenty of step-by-step stuff for you to try and by the end of the six weeks, you’ll have reached superstar status yourself!

Q: Do I have to do the project right now, or can I keep it for later?
A: You are more than welcome to do the project on your own time, whenever suits you. Sign up now and you’ll receive all the materials and you can decide when you want to make your book. There are no due dates and no detentions, so you can work at your own pace.

A sneak peek from Nichol Magouirk

Q: Do I need to be able to print photos at home?
A: No. One of the prompts actually discusses various methods of printing, including various places to order your prints. The prompts come on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so you have a bit more time to choose your photos and order them if you would like something a bit more economical than printing at home.

Q: Can I participate if I’m a digital scrapbooker?
A: Yes, definitely! Tia has made some gorgeous goodies for you digital girls to use, and they come as part of the class. Then you can mix them up with your favourite digi supplies and you’ll be good to go.

Q: Can I print the digital elements if I’m a paper scrapper?
A: Yes! Tia has even set them out so they are super easy—arranged everything over a couple of pages so you can print them all out on the same paper if you want, but she’s also included each individual image in case you want to change the size, colour or paper and print them individually.

Q: When will I receive my first email after I sign up?
A: This Sunday, the 15th—that’s when class starts!

A sneak peek from Kelli Crowe

Q: Will the private forum be hosted at shimelle.com or twopeasinabucket.com?
A: This class is hosted by Two Peas and the forum and downloads will be available there – not at the forum you may have used for any of my classes over the last year. There are some great benefits for us moving over to Two Peas—like how they have a real team of IT experts and it’s not just me banging my head against the keyboard when something technical goes screwy. (When the headbanging didn’t work, then I had a list of people to call, in order of how much they would charge me for help!) Two Peas also has the capability to do things I couldn’t do with just my own tiny little set up: like have things run on a set schedule rather than me needing to manually send things at crazy hours of the day. Okay, so that one is more help to me than it is to you perhaps! But definitely good for you: a more reliable server that won’t suffer from our normal first-day-of-class wobbles when my website would inevitably hit the overload mark. And a gallery, instead of loading images into discussion threads. Plus I’ve worked with the team at Two Peas to make sure you still get everything you’re used to with my classes—materials that come straight to your inbox but are archived online for you to access if you need them at a later date, a private forum to discuss things along the way. And I’ll still be available by email to help with absolutely anything I can.

Q: Can I pay in pounds sterling instead of US dollars?
A: I know some of the banks here have gone insane with extra charges for every time you breathe, so if your account is one that’s affected by this, I may have a solution for you. The easiest and quickest way to sign up is to use your debit/credit card (or paypal account) to pay for the class in US dollars. If your bank is trying to make it all but impossible for you to pay in dollars, then I do have an answer for you—it’s just a bit more effort than the first version. If you need to pay in sterling, then email me and I will take care of it for you.

Q: How much is the class?
A: $25 US dollars, which at the time of writing this is £17.40 in pounds. So less than a pound per prompt (and these prompts are longer than most of my classes, so although it’s in 18 prompts, you’re looking at 70+ pages of material, if that gives you a better idea). If you want to see the price in any other currency, check here for up to date exchange rates.

Any other questions, just ask and I’ll post the answers!

And now it’s about time we got down to some prizes, don’t you think? I’ll pay your way for you and a friend to join in on this class!
—>Comment below and your name goes into the draw once.
—>Comment below with a link to where you blogged about this class (with a link to the sign up page please!) OR you posted it on Facebook, Digg, etc and your name goes into the draw twice.

Entries will close at midnight London time (GMT) this Friday night and the winner will be posted here on Saturday!

Here are a few little images if you want something colourful for your blog or message board signature!

The polaroid image in this mini size and also in medium.

Or a bit of a sneak peek…

Or a blinkie that doesn’t blink!

Don’t forget to sign up before Sunday!

xlovesx

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Image composed by Rosie—my boss!

Scrapbook Inspirations Magazine!

It’s a big month for scrap-friendly birthdays, as the new edition of SI is Issue 50. I’ve been working with SI in some way or another since the day before the very first issue was finished. I only remember because I returned a call to the office and was greeted by the hilarious voice of a temp who had been called in for admin help. When I asked for Jenny (our very first editor), he replied ‘Dudedudedudedudedude….she is like SOOOO busy right now you like SOOOOO don’t wanna talk to her!’ Which to this date is possibly the most hilarious and definitely the most Ashton-Kutchereque conversation of all my time at the magazine. It turned out that all that dude-talk was shorthand for saying ‘we’re about to meet the very first deadline’.

Supplies: Travel Journal Tool Kit, Rhonna Swirls v4 , Urban Junque Journalers and Round N Round v4 all by Rhonna Farrer; Toy Camera Frames by Tia Bennett, Rough Paint Stencils by Erica Hernandez and Legibles 1 by Meredith Fenwick.

Even after fifty issues, I still get nervous about what things will look like in the finished edition. Issue 50 includes my first real digital article—it covers techniques for using a photograph as your page background in digital artwork. This page is from that, plus two more you’ll find in the magazine.

For a chance to appear in the letters section of Scrapbook Inspirations, be sure to email some birthday wishes to SI headquarters. The Readers’ Gallery is also looking for your best wedding and father-themed pages, so email those in too, to this address! Submission deadline is 6th March.

xlovesx

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As promised, the 15th of February begins a new class…this time it’s a six week online album workshop called Here, There and Everywhere.

One of the first albums I ever taught in an online class was a tiny little minibook called Roam. The idea was to use those tiny little pages to track all the places you had been, and count them up, whether you were counting towns, states, countries or continents. Even though I made it quite some time ago, I still like it and it’s one of a select few albums that I am often asked about. Was it you that did the Roam album? Which always makes me smile. And so over the last six months I’ve been thinking about that little book, what made it special and more importantly, what it was lacking.

I love that it captured travel from one set perspective in time. Places I had been as of that very date.
I love that I couldn’t go wrong with the photos—I could use my favourites or I could use the oddball snaps that didn’t fit easily into other scrapbook pages about a certain trip.
I love that everyone’s books came out lovely whether someone had racked up a gazillion frequent flyer miles or focused on the towns where they visited their grandparents and cousins.

I didn’t love that the tiny format made it hard to add anything to the project, so I couldn’t return to it after my next trip.
I didn’t love that made it feel out of date within a month or so of finishing it.
I didn’t love that it didn’t let me look forward and plan where I wanted to go next.
I didn’t love that it made little to no allusion to the place I considered home.

Add all that with many years of scrapbook style evolution, and we arrive at Here, There and Everywhere: an album documenting the places you’ve been and the places you dream of going.

Here, There and Everywhere is the name of the workshop but it’s also the name of the album’s three sections. Here documents the kind of travel you do near home: tiny little everyday journeys and important sights on your hometown landscape. There records the places you have been. Whether they are close or far away, we’ll illustrate your travels so far. Everywhere is something entirely new: we’ll be scrapbooking about the places we dream of going and looking into making the travel of our dreams one step closer to reality.

If you’ve participated in one of my classes before, you’ll know that the album prompts…
...come to your inbox and are backed up online permanenetly so you can download them later if you like.
...are illustrated by breaking things into steps that include photography, writing and design.
...give you examples you can recreate, use as inspiration or completely ignore if you have a better idea.
All of that will still be true.

I’m positively giddy to show you four completed albums throughout this course. One from me, plus an album each from the lovely and talented Kelli Crowe, Nichol Magouirk and Jennifer Johner.

There’s also yummy digital and printable goodness as part of this course. Tia Bennett has designed both a custom digital kit that is included with the course if you would like to create digital pages AND a printable kit with custom book plates, section dividers, journaling notes and all sorts of goodness.

Plus there are five Photoshop actions included to give you a range of easy photo-editing options. If you don’t use Photoshop, don’t worry—we’ve also included step by step instructions for creating similar effects in other photo-editing programs, including Picasa.

And you can breathe a little easier with this project: the prompts come three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so you can stay caught up even if you only scrap once or twice a week and even if you would like to order prints online as we go.

As always, there will be a private message board to chat, ask questions and share your work during the class. You can chat it up or work quietly—whatever suits you best!

This is the first workshop I’m teaching through Two Peas in a Bucket, and you can sign up here. You can also say hello here until class starts next weekend. If you’ve been taking classes at shimelle.com, we’ve made sure that things will work in a very similar way for my classes at Two Peas (and shimelle.com isn’t going anywhere!) plus the introduction notes will take you through everything just in case.

I’ll have more about this project to share throughout the week, but you can go ahead and book your place now. The six week workshop is $25 (US dollars), which includes everything I’ve talked about above and a few extra surprises along the way. And seeing as class starts on February 15th, you could always email the sign up page to your significant other and suggest if you’re not getting whisked away to a romantic location for Valentine’s Day, you could at least be allowed to scrapbook about it!

Any questions I can answer about the class, just leave in the comments!

xlovesx

PS: UK girls who would prefer to pay in sterling: I am working on an option to have this available for you tomorrow, as I know some of you would prefer not to use your credit/debit card overseas. If that’s not an issue, by all means, go ahead and sign up in dollars. You can check the current exchange rate here. But if it is an issue, check back here tomorrow and hopefully I will have an answer for you!

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