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

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Design Team Search

handmade card

Banana Frog Stamps just made some major changes and things are looking pretty exciting for 2009 in Bananaland. To try to contain her excitement, Banana Frog Bev is looking for a few good stampers to join in the mix.

Interested in working on a fab design team? Catch all the details here and then get stamping.

And as much as I try to convince her that anyone who uses my stamps in their portfolio should automatically win, she just ain’t buying it. So stamp with whatever you like, and show it off already!

xlovesx

Fabulous finds

Things making me happy on the internets lately:
->This project and a window display based on this dress are both making me wonder why my friends can’t all do me a favour and have little girls. (Or rather, little girls who like girly things.)
->The colours and happiness in this layout are fabulous. I just ordered those loopy letter stickers in practically every colour because clearly my life was less grand without them. Now I am stalking the post box for their arrival.
->Aqua + woodgrain = pretty yet manly enough for boys.
-> The fact that I. Caught. Up. On. My. Email.
-> The perfection of this room. So unlike anything in our home but so lovely. I want to sit there and read a new book and drink tea and film out the window with the super 8 camera that cost me fifty pence, including postage.
-> Possibly the cutest paper I have seen since I left Japan. (Oh stationery and fabric haunts of Japan: I miss you still!)
-> Working on something with this funky girl. So far it does not involve woodgrain. Frankly, I don’t know how long that part will last.

Happy Saturday to you!
xlovesx

Oh the pretty

Sigur Rós

Long-time blog readers and those who read Scrapbook Inspirations will know I scrapbook about a particular band far too often. Perhaps it’s a character flaw. I like to think of it as more to do with pretty pictures and pretty music, but think of it what you will.

Scrapbook pages aside, they started a European tour last week and I was thrilled to score a photo pass to opening night, so not only pretty pictures and pretty music, but pretty pictures without tall people in the way! This was pretty exciting for short little me.

Anyway, now that the images are up on the band’s website, I can share a few here.

Sigur Rós

Sigur Rós

Sigur Rós

The rest of the set is here and their new album is here.

And just to make this scrapbook-related in some way, here’s the last time I scrapped them, as seen in Scrapbook Inspirations!

scrapbook page

And two other little bits of housekeeping:
Journal your Christmas alumni should have received a welcome message yesterday. If you have changed your email address since last year, you’ll need to change it on the forum or by emailing me please.

The sneak peek from the last post is a quilted title page for a scrapbook—sewn straight onto a page protector. Click here for details including a free tutorial to download and print that walks you through, step by step.

And for the record, I am very sad about the disappearance of the Eggnog Latte from the world of red cups this year. Is this everywhere or just in the UK? Not that I will fly to America for a coffee, mind you. I promise.

xlovesx

Come say hello!

quilted scrapbook page
©twopeasinabucket.com

Just a little note to say I’ll be chatting here at TwoPeas today (along with superstar Tia Bennett) at 5pm British time/11am CST. We’ll be talking Christmas and home decor and all sorts of seasonal goodness, and we’d love for you to join us.

It’s my first official duty as a Garden Girl, oh my!

xlovesx

Skrapztacular...the Christmas retreat

scrapbook class page

That’s better—we have a bit of light now so we can have some pictures! Next weekend I am teaching four classes at the Skrapztacular Christmas weekend—two layout classes and two project classes on Saturday.

Yuletide Magic is the first layout class—and we actually make two pages in class because we’ll use die-cut paper and cardstock lace to create two pages back to back, so when it goes in your album you can see right through it. There are two colour options for this class (you choose when you arrive) so although one is certainly Christmas themed, there is also a second colour option that could go with a wider variety of photo themes. And this is a class that you can add the photos either on the day or later (which is a bit rare for me!) so you don’t really even need to plan anything. The kit includes everything you need to make the double-sided die-cut layouts plus an additional 12×12 page to construct outside of class. Click here to book.

scrapbook class page

Sing, Sparkle & Shine is the other layout class and it too is two pages, and you’ll even have more left over in the kit to make two more after that, so it’s a blingy kit for four whole layouts. We’ll be working with a mix of new and vintage bling as well as glass, paint and a few other little tricks. Again there are two kit options so on the day you can choose something in Christmas colours or brighter florals. There are only a couple spots left for this one, so click here to book if you fancy!

I want to show you a bit more on the two project classes—one is a fabric book (I’m packing my sewing machine!) and one is linked to Journal your Christmas, where we’ll make the album together so you’re ready to go when December hits…so I’ll share those two classes with you tomorrow!

More info on the retreat is here and there is a chat thread here if you want to say hello to others who will be there!

xlovesx

PS: Tomorrow I am going to get caught up on all my email from when I was away, so if you’re waiting for a response, you should hear from me soon! Thanks for your patience!

Partying it up

scrapbookers + pumpkins = fun

halloween decorations

halloween polaroid scrapbook

Somewhere along the insanity of getting back to a gazillion hour time difference, a huge drop in temperatures and that autumn shock that is ‘my goodness, when did it start getting dark so early?!’, we decided we needed some Halloween festivities and hosted a party with pumpkin cupcakes and pumpkin carving and pumpkin pie and that not-so-pumpkiny food: burritos. While our guests were super cool, can you believe we had not a single trick or treater?! We have decided we will have to eat the entire contents of the trick-or-treat bowl ourselves in order to find some solace for missing this vital part of the holiday!

(Also about solace: we braved the stupidly long walk in the rain today to see the new Bond movie. Hmmm. For once, can he just drive the exceedingly pretty car without killing it in every possible way? I suppose not. We didn’t like this one as much as the last but I loved the opera scene. Spies! It’s like miles above the rock & roll lifestyle! And with Tosca!)

Now that it is November, it’s time for my brain to shift from Halloween and autumny goodness to Christmas! The best time of year! I’m ringing in my start to Christmas with a Christmas themed cropping retreat next weekend in Shropshire—Skrapztacular! I’ll share photos of those projects with you tomorrow morning as the light went about ten hours ago and try as I might, I can’t get a decent photo to save my life right now! So I’ll be right back with those as soon as the sun comes up! Happy weekend to you!

xlovesx

Super fun Halloween photo frames are here, here and here, respectively! It seemed appropriate since the 1st of November is Official Digital Scrapbooking Day! Who knew?!

Home!

streets of tokyo

Indeed, we are home and now we are supposed to just be normal married people, right? We took down our wedding cards today and replaced them with Halloween decorations. It seemed that if we left the cards any longer that a) people would start talking about it, b) the mantle would be too crowded with cards + decorations and c) it would be just a little too Corpse Bride to be particularly funny.

So much to tell as some exciting stuff has been happening. Like how I’m going to be working with these guys now. I took not a single crafty thing with me and now I am afraid I do not know how to scrapbook, but I’ve got to finish my first project straight away. Eeep. No pressure then, right? I did manage to buy some adorable Japanese stationery, rubber stamps of hedgehogs speaking Japanese and some Japanese adhesive that I will probably want to ration because it is so lovely. And then I filled all the gaps in my suitcase with Gocco supplies and smiled to myself at how wonderful this was. So hopefully a love of crafty stuff will have kept my inner mojo going. I’ll see soon enough.

We’ve started to upload some pictures but we’re rationing those too so we can live vicariously through our own slide shows. You can see our first day in Tokyo here.

And that awesome polaroid frame? It’s from this kit by Rhonna. It’s so pretty it might make me do some scrapping that involves using the printer for things other than photos. Shocking, I know. Watch this space. And hurry, because there is a sale on all digital stuff at Two Peas but it ends at midnight on the 31st!

Gotta try to get back on this time zone…more soon!

xlovesx

It's the 25th!

scrap your day

Happy 25th of October to you! This month’s album prompt is available for download here.

I’d love to see what you snap and create this month—I’m excited to see how Halloween decorations show up in photos here and there as well as the changing leaves and other autumn wonders. Or spring for some of us! If you upload your photos or pages, leave me a link in the comments!

And while I’m talking about autumn…we’re off to the beach! It certainly doesn’t feel like reality.

ETA: There have been a few questions about the opening and closing pages to this album. You can create them at any time but I am going to finish mine at the end so I can highlight some of my favourite photos of the whole year in one place as well as have some perspective of looking back at the whole year at once. But if you have an idea and are itching to create those pages, by all means don’t let me stop you!!

For more Scrap your Day information, check out:
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xlovesx