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

Need more inspiration for this week’s paint challenge No problem! Contributing designer Gina Lideros shares her steps for using paint to highlight the photo on your next scrapbook page.

My routine every morning is to get up early and enjoy a nice cup of coffee before the rest of the house awakes. There is something about having that quiet time each day that sets the tone for the rest of the day. It’s kind of like a meditation of sorts to me, plus caffeine.  The best of both worlds!  I chose to document my morning routine for this week’s post.  

To get started, I chose a favorite photo, a stencil from Heidi Swapp and Craft Smart Navy blue acrylic paint. I specifically chose a photo that had a lot of negative space. I placed my stencil over the left side of my photo.  I carefully applied my paint to the left side of the stencil, leaving the right side open.  By only painting one side of the diamond shape, my design became a chevron. After applying paint I was careful to lift my stencil up in slow motion (to not smear the design).  Next, I used a heat gun over my design to speed up the drying process.  

While my photo was drying, I created my background for my layout.  I used the Half Hearted cut file from The Cut Shoppe to cut my background out of white cardstock paper.  I then chose a selection of favorite patterned papers from Shimelle’s True Stories and Starshine collections.  

Lots of fun embellishments such as buttons, stickers, Thickers, and stickers helped finish up my page.  I even added some paint splatters and machine stitching for a more homemade feel.

Comment [8]

I love colour on my scrapbook pages. So much. And usually I go to patterned papers for the start of all that colour, but then a page like this comes along and reminds me the colour can always start somewhere else, like paint:

It’s a page Corrie Jones shared here in an article about scrapbooking with paint absolutely ages ago, but it’s one that pops into my mind often and I always find something on that beautiful page to inspire me.

This week, I challenge you this week to paint your scrapbook page. If more specifics help you, paint the edge of your page. It’s an easy way to introduce paint of any kind without feeling you need to be Matisse or have special brushes or absolutely anything complicated. Watercolour, acrylic, or mist can all be painted on with either a brush or a sponge, and going around the edge can be bold or subtle depending on how much paint you use and what colour you pick. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Sheena Rowlands and guest artist Jeanna Cata.

I love it when a challenge gets me scrapping something I’d not got around to documenting up to now. When I saw the challenge was sport I was reminded of a visit my husband and I made to the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament a couple of years ago. This trip was made even more special as we used to live there many years ago and actually got married there too and we could see the church from the Tennis Club, which got us reminising together.

As my photos from the day aren’t that great I’ve printed them small and incorporated four into this grid design. To emphasise the tennis feel I’ve stitched white lines through the grid and dry brushed a white paint border around the edge. All my supplies are from the Go Now Go and Starshine ranges and they coordinate together beautifully.
- Sheena

I’m always up for a challenge, and with this week’s project I explored new techniques and stepped a bit out of my comfort zone. I’m only just now exploring mixed media, so had some acrylic paint on hand; however, I hadn’t ever considered painting the edges of my page with it. The thought was a bit terrifying once I realized that I only had one page of Pathfinder from Shimelle’s Starshine line on hand. Eek!

Since I decided to record our trip to Lincoln to watch Nebraska football play last fall, I wanted to stick to a very specific color palette and I’m grateful that the various American Craft lines, those of Shimelle and Amy Tangerine, included so much red, white and black, and that they were complimentary. Of course, the final project wasn’t what I had first envisioned, but I like how it turned out. My story can be found on the backside.
- Jeanna

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

I’ll see you tomorrow to share how I took on this challenge!

Today’s Guest Artist: Jeanna Cata loves to travel, read, and laugh. You can find more from Jeanna on Instagram, Pinterest, and her blog.

Comment [7]

It wouldn’t be September without a leaf challenge, right? Southern hemisphere friends, please tell me you can take some leafy inspiration for springtime and use an entirely different colour scheme than we are up here, okay? Leaves, leaves aplenty!

This week I challenge you this week to scrapbook with leaves. It is that simple! Use a leaf-printed paper or stamp some leaves or punch them or put some stickers to work, or all of the above. Leaves it is, and everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! You might find this tutorial or this video from the archives inspiring for this challenge too, but to get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Leigh Ann Odynski and guest artist Ingunn Mankiewicz.

This week’s challenge is such a great starting point to tell the story of a morning nature walk along the ocean. To enhance the organic feel of the layout, I chose to punch a couple different leaf shapes from lots of different patterns. You can create an ombre look by punching lighter tints to darker shades of the same color. Layer and glue them to a simple hand cut leaf shape, then stitch around each one. Have fun punching away, and see how many different patterns you can use! (I used patterns from True Stories, Starshine, and the new Go Now Go collections.)

Decide how to position your leaf shapes without adhesive first, then glue smaller single leaves around the page. I then machine stitched around the page in a loose circle about five times.

Now add your ombre leaves, and some new Go Now Go puffy Heart Stickers and enamel shapes.

I think the stitched wonky circles continue the organic lines in the photos, and the punched leaves. I added three photos from this peaceful walk along the shore, and attached them according to the colors in each photo.

Now you can simply add your journaling and title, and your favorite Go Now Go stickers and enamel shapes to fill in any empty spots around the circle! I really love these challenges, as they always get me thinking more about the story I want to share and how to connect it with the supplies!

Thank you for stopping by today, and I can’t wait to see what you create for this leaf motif challenge!
- Leigh Ann

One of the things I remember most vividly from this hike was how amazingly delicious the huckleberries were, and I keep going on about them in my journaling. Unfortunately I somehow failed to get a photo of those tasty little trailside snacks, so I wanted to at least honor them in embellishment form.

I had limited space due to squeezing in as many photos and words as possible, but I opened up a little half circle for them in the main photo. I cut out a couple of leaves and colored them with two shades of green ink (while congratulating myself, an incorrigible clean & simple scrapbooker, on my extreme artsiness) and used enamel dots as berries. I used the same inks for my title background to repeat the pop of green color.
- Ingunn

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

I’ll see you tomorrow to share how I took on this challenge!

Today’s Guest Artist: Ingunn Markiewicz loves hiking, scrapbooking, and eating plants (not just huckleberries). You can find more from Ingunn on Instagram and her blog.

Comment [5]

It’s not just back to school time for many of us, it’s also back to school scrapping time! Contributing designer Nicole Nowosad is here to share a fabulous idea for just that!

It’s that time of year where all the kids are heading back to school, if not already there! Like alot of other parents, I like to take back to school photos each year. They sure pile up year after year! It’s about time that I get some of them scrapped.

This past year in particular was an exciting one for my middle son – he started (& finished) his last year of elementary school. I thought it would be great to follow suit of many by taking a first and last day of school photo of him in this big year for him.

You can really see in the two different photos how he has grown up a little in his own way over the 10 month school year. It’s fun to look back and see the progression of your child in the short time span. It is also important to document some of those fun things that happen throughout the year at the same time. I kept both the photos black and white, so that the focus is on the photos themselves, and not so much what color he was wearing those particular days.

I chose to use before and after approach to my page for this – dividing up my project into two similar halves. I really tried to keep things quite monochromatic on each side of the layout, and mimicked the embellishments on both sides as well. It’s great to have a similar approach to each photo on the page, that you can really see each of the photos side by side and see those little physical changes.

I asked my son about his school year and typed up those items and added simple journaling under each photo. It would have been great to have it in his handwriting, but he didn’t want me to use his writing on the page. Preteen drama!

Comment [9]

It was so lovely to see all your paper layering in last week’s challenge! Today I write from a window with a gloomy, grey sky, and plenty of raindrops. Is this the end of summer and the start of all things autumnal? Well, let’s have at least one more challenge with something filled with summer blossoms.

This week, I challenge you this week to scrapbook with floral motifs. It can be something quite minimal, like the single flower tucked into each embellishment cluster in the double page above, or it can be something completely filled to bursting with blossoms! Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Meghann Andrew and guest artist Diana Rivera Torres.

One of the things I remember most about my wedding day was the morning of rain, and the feeling of dread I had before walking out in the downpour wearing a silk wedding dress. I guess that’s what you get when you get married in Scotland, right? Our wedding photographer captured several photos of the wedding party arriving at the church under umbrellas, which I had not yet documented, and it was about time to do that.

Instead of using raindrops, I decided to create a shower of flowers on my 8-1/2” 11” layout!

To create a lot of contrast from the brightly colored die-cut umbrella and fussy-cut flowers, I used black and white photos and a clean, white background.

The dreary, rainy morning turned into a beautiful, warm sunny day for our wedding reception, and this layout definitely looks on the bright and sunny side of the day!
- Meghann

Scrapbooking is the perfect way to express my feelings about these pictures. I love to challenge myself to give a whole new way to use paper collections that are supposed to be used for other topics or experiment with materials like heat transfer in paper.

Because of a mistake I don’t have many pictures of my wedding, but this is one of my favourites, and I always tell a different story or feeling about it each time I work with it. I love the flowers of Shimelle’s Starshine Collection because they remind me of the bold colors of my bridal bouquet. I made the title with Silhouette heat transfer and adhesive vinyl.
- Diana

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Diana Rivera Torres loves writing, music and stories. You can find more from Diana on Instagram, YouTube, and her blog.

Comment [19]

In celebration of a lovely layered challenge to start September, contributing designer Leigh Ann Odynski joins us to share her take on scrapbook layering. Enjoy!

I love this week’s challenge! I’ll be honest. It struck me that vehicles are really not something that I’ve scrapbooked. I mean, I could only find about four photos of our cars from the last twenty years! Then it hit me. Look at what story you want to tell. That began with a question.

“What memories are centered around our cars?”

We bring babies and groceries home in them, travel on family road trips, go out on dates, and to church on Sunday, and hop in them to start our lives together after the wedding with streamers flailing and cans rattling! After I found the 1950 photo of my Grandma and Papa, holding my Mom, I realized I could tell the story of our family cars over the last 66 years! OF course you don’t need to span that broad of a timeframe. Brainstorm all the memories associated with your vehicles, and see how your story unfolds.

I really loved the mod feel of the 1950 photo, so I went with a 1950s inspired color scheme. The Starshine “Juno” paper had the perfect motif! The repeating diamonds on the left side of the layout utilize the tone on tone patterns from Shimelle’s lines. Love the subtle effect!

To keep the layout clean, I wanted to house all six color photos in the glassine bag with the journaling. I hand cut random size tags from the True Stories 6×6 pad. The crochet thread allows you to easily pull the tags out of the bag to read and view.

Lots of layers were used figuratively and literally, in the layers of time represented, and the tons of paper strips used behind the focal point photo. I also added more layers with True Stories word stickers, die cuts, and an epoxy paper clip from Starshine.

In the end, this page took me a lot longer than usual to create, but it was so worth it! I can’t believe I have never realized how substantial the family vehicle is in our lives! Think about your life and the story you want to tell for future generations, and maybe even find a story you didn’t know was there!

Thank you so much to Shimelle, for coming up with these challenges! If not for this challenge, I would not have this page that I cherish so much, and I am so thankful!l

I would love to see your take on this week’s challenge! Share your link here and happy creating!

Comment [11]

I’ve been doing a bit of organising of files on computer drives. That’s always ridiculously exciting, right? Trying to sort through some of my earliest videos and see how much of that older content is still useful and how much of it was so trend-based it would probably be best ignored today, and one of the earliest Glitter Girl videos made me sigh. Adventure 004 was my first video truly dedicated to layering, and it’s basically the most watched process video I’ve ever made. Episode FOUR! So very early indeed.

But I still love layering. My layers change with time and product but the principles remain the same. I like small angles, a mix of patterns, contrast and harmony in the colours. I love that pulling pieces of pretty paper from my scrap basket feels like bonus use of a product, so I can layer so much onto a page without feeling like it cost the earth, even if that is somewhat creative accounting. I’d love to see and hear what you love about layering too.

This week, I challenge you this week to scrapbook with lots and lots of layers. That’s as simple as challenges come, right? Everything is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer May Flaum and guest artist Laura Payne.

When it comes to lots of layers on my scrapbook pages, I really like to focus in on details in specific areas. One such example? Taking journaling cards that perhaps aren’t my style, and transforming them into embellished gems ready to top off any scrapbook or pocket page.

These days I’m recovering from a complex wrist injury that has me barely holding a pen and only able to work in small batches of time. Dressing up one or two journaling cards with scraps and layers has been just the ticket.

I started with two travel cards that I knew I’d never use. Old cars were on them, and well that doesn’t fit with anything I do. Not to worry – first some Shimelle ticket tape, then some roll-on stars, and then a few scraps of papers quickly covered the cars up as well as adding some lovely layers. The key to layering for me is to be OK with any early layers being partially, or even fully covered when done. You’ll also want to mix up size, pattern, and color for variety. Once you’ve added a few paper scraps (great way to clean the desk) – add some texture. I like tiny staples and stitching. If bulk is an issue, add drops of mist, stickers, or some sequins. Otherwise grab those wood veneer pieces, buttons, and other embellishments and add that flair!

With the cards finished and waiting, it was quick and easy to turn them into a completed 12×12 page with my next pocket of time and energy. It’s great to remember these cards can look brilliant on a more traditional page as well as in the divided page protector style.
- May

Being mama to a little boy obsessed with his toy cars made the theme of vehicles something i could totally scrap about, and his ever growing collection was something i definitely wanted to document!

My go to process when scrapping is to take several pieces of patterned paper and stack them all up behind my photos. It’s a look I truly love and I knew the papers in Shimelle’s True Stories collection would be the perfect match to the bright colours in my photos. I added a doily and a kraft tag in between to build up the layering and finished off with embellishments and a simple title created on my computer and cut out.
- Laura

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Laura Payne loves her little family, anything crafty, and copious amounts of tea. You can find more from Laura on Instagram.

Comment [8]

Just in case a weekend of challenges from the contributing designers is not enough to keep your fingers cutting and pasting this week, we have a weekly challenge for you as well! Time to dust off your sewing machine or your needle and thread: this week, I challenge you this week to stitch on your page. Machine or hand, a little or a lot – it’s completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! A few years ago, Marie Pierre shared a collection of stitching ideas you might find useful for reference, but let’s started on this week’s challenge with a look at these examples from contributing designer Heather Leopard and guest artist Joanne Walton-Calvert.

There’s something about stitching that pulls me in every. single. time. I absolutely HAVE to include it on all my pages. While I love the look of a hand stitched layout, I don’t do it on the regular because it’s quite time consuming. I save those for binge watching tv or road trips (when I’m a passenger). My go to stitching technique is to use a sewing machine. What I love about machine stitching is that you can go as minimal or detailed as you wish in a fraction of the time so while it does add a little more time to your creative process, the results are worth it, in my opinion. It just adds that extra finished detail that bonds the entire page together.

For this layout, I wanted to mimic the circular inner tube float in my photo so using my Silhouette software, I created a cut file and cut circles in half but with a rounded cut in the semi part of the circle. You can download my free cut file here. Then I pieced them together like a quilt and stitched over them on both the inside and outside of the perimeter. Circles are not my favorite to machine stitch but never fear, it’s really hard to see if you don’t make the perfect circle and you can cover little mistakes with an embellishment or two.
- Heather

I made this layout with an arty photo my daughter took when we were whale watching in Reykjavik at Easter. I love how Fiona has gotten interested in photography recently and wanted to document this. I like using sewing on my layouts as it adds texture – hand sewing is very therapeutic and can be prepared so that I can do it while watching tv with my family in the evenings. It is also a frugal way to make my supplies go further!

I like mixing my new supplies which inspire me, with older supplies and collections. I only have a very small amount of the True Stories and Starshine collections left so I have used them here with My Mind’s Eye By the Sea brads, Pinkfresh Felicity letters, and October Afternoon letters. The little grey envelope that holds my journaling is so, so old, bought from Two Peas on clearance, the embroidery floss is from various manufacturers and Bazzil card stock. I also detail cut the globes which is an economical way to make my embellishments.

For hand sewing I use a mix of old fashioned stencils and simple free hand shapes, just pricking the paper first with my piercing tool. For machine sewing I use a children’s sewing machine bought in post Christmas sales for £5 – I don’t worry about making it too neat and often go over it several times for effect.
- Joanne

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Joanne Walton-Calvert loves spending time with her family (including two cats), travel, and cooking. You can find more from Joanne on Instagram.

Comment [9]