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

_{Full page here in the archives.}

So many scrapbooked selfies from last week’s challenge! It really made my week to see new pages pop up there and on Scrapbook like a Superhero every day. But we’re getting very close to Valentine’s Day now, so it’s time for embracing all the pink and red and vintage text and sheet music and other prettiment in paper crafting.

Here’s a new challenge! This week, get ready to get a bit symbolic. I challenge you this week to scrapbook with hearts. Make a new page and include one or more heart shapes in the design. Simple. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! A few years ago, May shared five ideas for artsy crafting with hearts, and this past summer, I tried using hearts in a relatively masculine design! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these new examples from contributing designer Heather Leopard and guest artist Chloe Murray.

The contest my daughter and I have almost every single day inspired me to create this layout. This is actually becoming a battle and she’s the one who instigates it 99% of the time but that’s okay because the awesome thing is that this competition is a healthy one for us. It’s a battle of who loves whom more. I’ve created pages about this before but I feel it’s important to document this throughout the year since it’s one of those ongoing special things between just us.

One of the things we talk about is how our hearts are exploding with love for each other so I thought it’d be fun to make it look like hearts were bursting from the bottom of the page. To create this, I started at the bottom and stitched the yellow heart. I then layered another heart on top, stitched it, tucked another heart under and stitched it, etc., etc. until I had all the hearts on the page.

Once the hearts were in place I added layers of paper, die cuts and other embellishments around the photo. I created a pocket under the right side of my photo to insert a journaling tag. I then created my title using a mix of alphas and two sentiments from one of the 12×12 papers.
- Heather

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I decided to scrap this recent photo of myself and my boyfriend. I had this wonderful patterned paper from the new Starshine collection just begging to be used as a background, so I decided to keep my photo very small, and really make use of the movement in the paper.

I layered the photo up on some shipping tags, a few die cuts from the Starshine ephemera pack, and some gorgeous floral stickers from the corresponding sticker sheet. Finally, I cut some hearts from an older Shimelle paper, and combined them with lots of other heart embellishments from my stash; I wanted to create the illusion that the hearts were emanating out from us. I’m really pleased with the overall effect.
- Chloe

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! Happy heart-filled scrapping!

Today’s Guest Artist: Chloé Murray loves documenting the little things, reading, and her pet bunnies. You can find more from Chloe on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and her blog.

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Happy Saturday! With Starshine arriving in stores, now seems the perfect time to round up a few examples to get your design wheels turning. Starshine started appearing on the American Crafts blog too, so we have the AC Design Team on the starry case!

Nancy Damiano (above) is taking Starshine to infinity and beyond. Her pages are always brilliant but she has a special passion for Disney. See the full page on the American Crafts blog.

Gina Lideros put Starshine to use with a beautiful full page design cut on the Silhouette. When I see one of those gorgeous full page designs I start to think I should upgrade to the larger size cutter… even though I don’t use my smaller one as much as I should! Anyway: Gina makes me want the bigger Silhouette every time. See the full page over at AC.

Evelyn Yusuf makes that big moon cityscape way easier to use than you might first think. Don’t be scared by it. Just embrace it with one photo you love and it will even work beautifully with a smaller size print. See the finished page here.

I’d love to see what you’re making with the Starshine collection, of course! And I’d love to share it too. If you post your pictures on Instagram, use the hashtag #ACstarshine, and you can always hashtag anything from my product lines or inspired by this blog or the classes with simply #shimelle. I hope to share more beautiful projects with you soon!

Have a beautiful weekend, and if you need a creative nudge, don’t forget about the current weekly challenge.

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You may have noticed my sparkly friend seems to be on a bit of quest to use older supplies she loves rather than letting them collect dust. I’ve decided I need to follow her lead with something I am often guilty of ignoring: tools! This week I have used my manual die cutter every single day! There has got to be a merit badge for that. We need more merit badges in scrapbooking, I tell you. Anyway, with the die cutter, I could ease back into fancy tools without needing to dust off every single item I have neglected for a while, so I started with simple shapes and embossing folders. That woodgrain embossing folder! I had so many plans for this folder and then my mind filled up like a fog (a happy fog!) and I’ve probably only used it half a dozen times. For shame! The good news is asked for help and contributing designer Meghann Andrew came to my rescue. Her page inspired mine, and I hope between the two of us, we might encourage you to dust off an embossing folder or two in your own collection.

I don’t know about you, but I own dozens of 4×6 embossing folders, and I rarely pull them out to create something other than the background on a handmade card. Using Shimelle’s woodgrain embossing folder, I’ve come up with an easy way to put those embossing folders to use on my pages, by creating a textured tone-on-tone background for this fun layout about a recent favorite breakfast.

To show you how easy it is to put your embossing folders to use and make this background, I’ve created a video, in which I also finish off the page with embellishments from the True Stories collection.

Thanks for watching! Now I challenged Shimelle to take an idea from my page and put it to work on her own. She had three rules: she had to use the woodgrain embossing folder, she had to include a photo of herself, and she had to do something that she could link to the design of my page!
-Meghann

Challenge set. I could do this, right? Found some photos that included me that I needed to scrap (from a weekend in Edinburgh, our last travel as just two before Wonder Boy’s arrival) and dusted off my embossing folder. But I wasn’t ready to go tone-on-tone. I love colour and right now, colour is making me want to scrapbook every day. So whatever I was going to do, it needed to be colourful!

Then I decided to emboss white cardstock. Because that’s colourful. Sure.

But there was method to my madness! I want to take the inspiration from Meghann’s page in the shape – circles!

I embossed the white cardstock then die cut it into circles to include in some embellishment clusters. There’s a heap of colour happening here – that floral paper is from Jen Hadfield’s new Pebbles collection, and there are cut-aparts from Dear Lizzy and Amy Tangerine too, plus some Starshine tags. Cute puffy stickers by Lora Bailora. So much colour, so much love. But when I stared at all that on my desk, I didn’t want more colour – I wanted more texture. Perfect! The woodgrain embossed circles are a really small detail but it made it one of those pages that people touch when they turn the page in my album. I love that! Plus it’s a gateway drug technique: now that I’ve used a little embossed texture, I want to use more! (In fact I have done a few cards that are due to be delivered to recipients this weekend, so I’ll share those next week I think!) Mission accomplished; challenge met. Thanks Megan!

(One note about visiting Edinburgh when very pregnant: the hills are tall, the hills are steep. We walk a lot here and live at the top of a hill, but this is a whole other class of hill. Walking up to the castle, I was literally passed by an octogenarian with a cane. I was slow-slow-slow. But it was awesome. Of course it was awesome: there are pandas. And if you’re ever there are Christmas, the high tea at the Caledonian is basically twice as cool and a third the price of any London Christmas high tea. But don’t tell London that I just said Edinburgh was better or anything. Even if there are pandas involved. Just wear comfortable shoes, for all that is good in this world. That’s all.)

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UPDATE: this sale has now ended. All three class are available at any time, however, at the full price. You can find a link to each sign up page in the text below. If you have any questions, please send me a message so I can help! Thank you for all your support. -S.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome back to more regular posting. I’m so happy to have heard things like ‘I haven’t scrapped in a year but I made a page today and now I’m hooked again’. Seriously, that Made My Day. What you’ve seen so far this week is the sort of thing you’ll see every week here now, with a new challenge every Monday, Glitter Girl always posting a video on a Wednesday, then an assortment of scrapbooking topics on the other days of the week. I hope that balance of a little bit of schedule, a little bit of spontaneity works as well for you as a reader as it does for me at my crafting desk!

Now there’s another post with new pages coming up a little later today, and you still have this weekend to participate in the Scrapbook a Selfie challenge, but I have one little extra for you: a sale! This weekend only you can grab some online scrapbooking workshops at a discount.

First, there’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scrapbooking. This is a class I taught at Two Peas and I haven’t had it available to purchase here until today. The Two Peas price was $25 and that’s what it will be here normally, but this weekend you can sign up for $18. The course includes 5 videos, each with a corresponding PDF, with a total of forty-two scrapbook pages found only in that workshop. You can read more about the class in this original post but remember to come back to this post to sign up! While this class will feature supplies that are no longer on the shelf in most shops, it is not a class that relies on you using the exact same products and is designed for you to adapt all the ideas to the stash you already have to hand.

Next up is Scrapbook Remix. Originally taught in 2012, this is a workshop all about mixing product from a variety of manufacturers and collections, with tips on what to look for to find things that will work together. Includes a series of eight videos and twenty PDFs (plus a few little extras), and is normally $25. This weekend, you can sign up for $18. The original post about Remix includes the breakdown of class materials, but make sure you come back to this page to sign up with the discounted price.

Then there’s Ready Set Scrapbook. This course came out in the middle of last year and it’s already really affordable – it’s only $8 full price for three videos. This weekend it’s just $5! Ready Set Scrapbook uses the True Stories collection in the examples. You can totally follow the steps with any products and papers you like, but if you have True Stories papers just waiting for you to get cutting and pasting, then watch these videos and have an easy time making pages! You can read the full class details here, then come back to this page to get the sale price.

HOW IT WORKS
All of these classes are in an archived format. When you sign up, you’ll receive a payment receipt through Paypal (you can pay by credit/debit card or from your Paypal account) then your registration will be processed by an actual person (me!) and you’ll receive a second email that welcomes you to class. If you’ve never taken a class at shimelle.com, you’ll receive one more email with your login details for the class side of the website. Once you have the email from me, you can sign in and access all the materials and work through them at your own pace. If you want to chat about anything or ask any questions, I’m just at the end of an email – send me a note or a tweet and I’ll help in any way I can! I aim to make sure you have class access within twenty-four hours of your purchase. If you can’t see an email in that time, let me know so I can get that sorted for you.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome back and I hope your weekend is filled with new happy memories!

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_{(made with the globe and explore text stamps from the Starshine stamp set. Stamped on plain white cardstock in Versamark ink and heat embossed with white detail powder, then coloured with Distress Inks and a foam ink applicator.)}

‘Blue and green should never be seen’ is such an old phrase, the internet seems incapable of telling me who said it in the first place. But it was able to tell me that it’s actually not a stand alone phrase like I have always heard, but some sort of colour rhyme involving red and yellow as a good combination to wear to ‘catch a fellow’ and pink and green should be worn by a queen. Suddenly I have far less worry about breaking this guideline on a regular basis.

My logic has always been that blues and greens work well together because it’s a combination we see so many times in nature. Green grass or trees topped by a blue sky. The way tropical waters look blue one moment, green the next, and back to blue. Blue and green are next to each other in the rainbow. So all this ‘should never be seen’ is definitely rubbish, no matter where it originated.

That rainbow thing holds more value though: blue and green are next to each other in the rainbow because they are next to each other in the colour spectrum when it comes to all things light. That means they are right there together on the colour wheel – blue… blue-green… green -right in a row. If you want to be more official about colour theory, that would make those three analogous colours. Analogous colours are any three in a row on the colour wheel and those sets of three will always look lovely to our eyes. But you don’t need to talk about it in official terms to be able to spot that those colours next to each other make lovely little sets. Blue and green definitely make me happy.

Blues and greens aside, I once had an epiphany while scrapping that made it so much easier to use my supplies. I’d been scrapping about two years when Bazzill announced their new line up of scrapbooking cardstock. It came in sixty-four colours. Sixty-four colours blew our minds because previous cardstock options were really only like the small box of Crayolas and this was the big box with the sharpener build in on the back! We were allowed the 64 box with the sharpener in fourth grade at my school. I have many specific memories about opening new boxes of Crayolas, but that one is my favourite. I digress. Shades of one colour, like choosing a colour of paint then slowing mixing in more and more black paint to create a whole set of new tones, made it so much easier for me to use my supplies because I could let go of the mindset that came with just a dozen colours. With a dozen colours (and even with sixty-four, if I’m honest), we seemed to spend hours of our scrapbooking time trying to find just the right paper to match the exact colour and shade of an embellishment. Then something hit me that actually, all the shades of one pink look lovely together and all the shades of one blue look lovely together, and so on… and that meant instead of having one correct combination in all of my stash, there was far more freedom in this dark pink embellishment goes with this much lighter pink paper, and I tell you, it was like a children’s choir appeared in the corner of my craft space and sang hallelujah. Instant relief of stress. Zero pressure to make everything match to the exact tone.

This set of colours was on my desk every day as we worked on Starshine. The blues and greens with that inspiration from nature backed up by a bit of colour theory; the rose that offers a stark contrast while staying so soft. Without the rose, it’s not nearly so feminine, but by using different quantities, like just a tiny bit of the rose, then it’s still very possible to use this set of colours without having some sort of pink Lelli Kelly explosion on your project. It’s most obvious in the globe paper with every globe filled in with shades of blue and shades or green, and quite a few globes accented with a rose-coloured floral detail.

After loving them but looking at them on screen for ages, it was time to try this combination in terms of paper rather than pixels. I still love those colour together. And so I asked special guest Zinia Amoiridou to also give it a go.

My biggest challenge was where to start, since I looked at the products on my desk and nothing included this colour combination. After digging through my stash, I found some paper scraps and partial patterns thin shades of blue, green, and rose, so I decided to use them and hand-cut some heart shapes to use as embellishments. I placed the hearts diagonally on the page and I though it would be a nice distraction from my messy cutting to make them a bit more dimensional. So I folded them in the middle and stuck them with some hot glue, making them look as if they want to “fly” out of the page. To finish the layout I added a few more heart embellishments and word stickers to bring everything together.
-Zinia

Today’s Guest Artist: Zinia Amoiridou loves ice cream, colours and her little family. You can find more from Zinia on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and her blog.

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This week Glitter Girl sets off on a quest with two purposes: to turn her paper scraps into unique embellishments and then to make them work on a page with her favourite products. The question was posed by Tori Bissell, a scrapbooker with her own YouTube channel, who loves making her own embellishments from small scraps of paper she stores in a cookie tin. I love this both because a cookie tin means she is far more controlled with the amount of paper scraps she has left (mine take up an entire basket) and it makes me hungry (mmm cookies).

Cookies aside, Glitter Girl delved into the scraps and used stamps, scissors, and punches to create the embellishments on this selfie page, but there are store-bought supplies in the mix too: enamel hearts, stickers, and a transparency sheet in addition to all the patterned paper. Come along for the adventure, won’t you?

It’s a lot of embellishment. It was very much a more-is-more feel to the workflow, but if that much embellishment puts you a little on edge, there are a few things to consider. First, I think you can add as much or as little as you like as long as you enjoy making it! Second, I really like a mix of very embellished pages in my album alongside pages that are very simple and 12×12 photo prints. I love that mix together and I feel it makes me look at everything with a closer eye when I flip from page to page in the book. (The book in scrapbook is so important to me that it’s very difficult for me to break it down to one page at a time, actually!) And third, if all else fails remember you are in control of your pages and you can learn by your reaction that you don’t want that much embellishment on your page! It’s definitely easier and cheaper to learn that lesson by watching rather than doing. Anyway, I love a little more is more when I’m in a paper groove.

While we’re on the subject of handmade embellishments from scraps, don’t forget to check out Tori’s YouTube Channel and her Scrap your Scraps series for more ideas on working with those little pieces of paper you love way too much to put in the recycling bin.

You can ask Glitter Girl a question any time by commenting here, on her YouTube videos, or in the Facebook chat group, Scrapbook like a Superhero.

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I’m so grateful for the positive response to new things here, and seeing the first few layouts for this week’s scrapbook a selfie challenge pop up on Facebook made me grin from ear to ear. (Don’t forget to link them up at the end of yesterday’s post so everyone can see!) Today it’s my turn, and this video has been a long while coming – it’s the page I made right around my birthday, which isn’t itself a problem until you realise my birthday was in October. Oh well!

I’ve always used a selfie of just myself for this page in the past but at the last minute I was happier including someone small in the photo as well. For those who initially balked at the idea of scrapbooking a self portrait, maybe that would help! Take a picture with your child, parent, significant other, pet, some random guy on the street… whatever makes it feel right for you!

This is an As It Happens video, so unlike Glitter Girl, I’m a bit extra rambly and indecisive, but it gets there in the end. I do as little editing as possible in the As It Happens episodes so you can see everything in pretty much real time and the only thing I plan before I start filming is some of the supplies I will use and the photo!

Speaking of supplies, this one features mostly things from my True Stories collection, which is hard for me to admit is basically a year old now. We released it in January 2015 but it didn’t ship until later in the spring, so I guess there’s a technicality if you have too much of it on your desk! It hasn’t been there a year, I promise! I’ve added some buttons over there on the right to online shops who carry my products, and you can still find True Stories if you see something you missed before but fancy now. In fact, it will probably be on sale. (Disclosure: Those boxes are affiliate links, which makes it possible to pay guest artists for the work they share here.)

There’s still plenty of time to snap a selfie and scrapbook it, so put on that lip gloss you save for special occasions, stand next to a window for beautiful light, and look up to the camera. Then get cutting and pasting and all things scrappy!

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Welcome to February, and welcome to what feels like a new year here! Along with the Starshine release at CHA, this past month has been filled with putting together all those pieces to bring you the reenergised dream I shared with you on the first of the year. Scrapping. Filming. Editing. Scheduling. Collaborating. Commissioning. So many things I’m excited for you to see here on a near-daily basis, and it all starts today.

Scrapbooking challenges are no new thing in terms of motivating crafters to stop staring at the pretty paper and start sticking it to other pretty paper. I think it must be nearly fifteen years ago when I was starting to put my small stash to work following challenges on DMarie, UKScrappers, and Two Peas. Talk about ‘back in the day’. But it’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of set challenges here, and it feels like the right time! Every Monday, you’ll find a new scrapbooking challenge right here along with two examples to inspire you: one from a contributing designer and one from a guest artist. Then you’ll often see my version on Tuesday – this week it’s complete with a new video too.

Speaking of contributing designers, I’m delighted to introduce eight talented artists who you will see here throughout the year. I’ve spent the last month having a creative pow-wow with these ladies and their individual passions for this hobby. I love that they love this craft. They love telling stories. They love beautiful design. And they love talking about it. I think you will love their work. You’ll see each of them about once a month here, but they post much more frequently on their own blogs, of course. Please welcome Meghann Andrew, May Flaum, Heather Leopard, Gina Lideros, Nicole Nowosad, Leigh Odynski, Sheena Rowlands, and Kirsty Smith.

And now, on to the challenge! We’re starting at the centre of it all – there would be no scrapbook without you making it! I challenge you this week to scrapbook a selfie. Make a new page with a photo of yourself. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! A few years ago, I scrapped about our self portraits needing some work, and phew – they really did get better! If you don’t rate yours right now, have faith and take the time to experiment. I know it won’t take you as long to get to grips with selfies as it took me! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Leigh Odynski and guest artist Leanne Edwards.

My selfie scrapping inspiration came entirely from my ‘one little word’ for 2016: aspire. Once I had that direction, I was ready to run with the idea!

I got the idea to create an envelope effect at the top of the page, sort of like you are opening a letter from a friend, and inside is a scrapbook page. I am sure I am not alone in thinking these are the hardest pages to create – the ones about ourselves. This photo was taken a year ago,and it’s amazing how time flies without the person behind the lens ever getting in front of the camera, so I’m glad of challenges like this that give me a much-needed reminder.

The vellum journaling strips from Shimelle’s True Stories Tags, made for quick and easy journaling. I ran this page through my printer to add more journaling, but you could just as well add it with a typewriter!
- Leigh

In the past I was all about scrapbooking and recording every little thing. Then I had two kids and became a working mum. Trying to balance my hobbies, I had to take a step back and work out how I could make this work for me. I think I am finally settling into a system which works for our family life: at the end of the year I do a stock take on all the photos I have printed and find the stories I want to tell. I can usually find themes among those photos, and one of the many themes in our daily life is selfies. My husband and I love them!

I have a nice stack of photos of the two of us from the past year, and pulled together four on the layout, taken at various points over the past year, seasons and various events. Making them into a grid with a mat gave me the focus for the page. All the layers behind that were from my bag of scraps – go me, remembering to use my stash! As the photos had no real colour theme I just went with what I liked. The red heart paper from Shimelle’s first AC collection is one of my all time favourites and I am now down to these last few bits and pieces of that paper. Mixing red with green can sometimes look a bit Christmassy but adding the navy and pinks from Elle’s Studio from the Thankful collection soften the colour palette.
- Leanne

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 for a brand new video to share how I took on this challenge!

Today’s Guest Artist: Leanne Edwards loves being a mum, caffeinated drinks, and collecting hobbies. You can find more from Leanne on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and her blog.

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