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

I love incorporating different mediums all into one scrapbook page. Today, I am demonstrating some of my favorite techniques at the moment – stamping, watercolors and stitching. I love starting off on a fresh, clean sheet of white cardstock.

To make the watercolor shapes, I made a small circle with a juicy dot of paint and used a straw to blow some air to make this splattered effect. For the 2 strips of paint below, I just painted two short lines, lighter color first, darker color on top.

To add the circles, I punched out some phrases from Shimelle’s and my Stitched line of papers, added a cork circle and stamped a Kelly Purkey image.

Next, to add a few more stamped phrases from Kellie Winnell and place my photo.

I added some handwritten journaling and then beneath, I used a paper piercer to make a few holes and added some simple line stitches beneath the journaling. This is a fantastic and fast way to add a bit of texture with thread to any paper project. And really is the perfect finishing touch, in my opinion.

It’s hard for Amy Tan to imagine where her life would be had she not fallen in love with scrapbooking in 2007. This hobby has afforded her so many amazing opportunities—including a number of signature lines with American Crafts, many of her projects published in a variety of magazines, her own book, and the chance to meet so many inspiring people—that she is endlessly grateful for. Her company, Amy Tangerine keeps her busy with creative collaborations ranging from custom scrapbooks to celebrity events to consulting services. When she’s not at home in Los Angeles, California with two mischievous Jack Russell Terriers, her long-time partner, JC and their adorable son, Jack, she is traveling, finding great places to eat, and doing her best to enjoy every moment. All while Instagramming everything along the way. Amy loves salted caramel anything, doggy cuddles, baby giggles, palm trees, riding her beach cruiser, and nachos. Always nachos. You can see what she’s up to on her blog amy tangerine and Instagram and join her for her latest online workshop, entitled Inspiration Live (only $20!)

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Some of you may remember I designed a set of ‘real life’ phrase stamps for Two Peas in a Bucket last year, called Nailed It. With the closure of Two Peas, I now have the remaining sets of this design and can ship them from here in London, which may make a difference if you were hoping to order a set to a European address and shipping from the US was too expensive. Of course it’s still possible to send them back to North America if that’s where you are!

These stamps are high quality photo polymer, made in the USA. They are long-wearing and can be used with a variety of inks. You will need an acrylic block or other stamping surface, as clear stamps don’t come mounted to anything (that will be old hat to those of you who stamp all the time, but I know it’s a little confusing the first time you see a set of clear stamps so it’s worth a mention now and then). The set is 4×6 inches, and the individual phrases are designed to fit on 3×4 cards for Project Life scrapping as well as other projects of any size.

Sorry – all stamps now sold! Thank you!

About the Workshop The new workshop will be available shortly, just waiting on one last tiny detail and then it will be available for you!

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With September’s end drawing near, I find the end of Learn Something New (the annual September project in my world) makes me excited to dive into new learning adventures with a more specific focus. Just in case you’re the same, I wanted to share two new scrapbooking workshops with you, led by two talented ladies and dear friends.

First up, a workshop from May Flaum! I’ve contributed a layout and extended video to her new class that focuses on using all the supplies you’ve been collecting. (My contribution covers paper scraps.) For ten days, May will lead you through the different items in your stash. Supplies on Hand starts this Wednesday.

May has brought together a great team of contributors, including Ashli Oliver, Lisa Dickinson, Paige Evans, Patricia Roebuck, Sasha Farina, Anna-Karin Evaldsson, Michelle Wooderson, Mel Blackburn, Emma Williams, Sian Fair, all contributing new layouts with either step by step tutorials or videos, and of course May has included lots of her own new projects too.

Supplies on Hand starts on the first of October and you can register now.

Or if you’re looking for a last minute workshop now that we are coming to the end of Learn Something New, Wilna Furstenburg has just started a new four week workshop, Art and Design, at Big Picture Classes.

With twenty instructional videos, Wilna will walk you through dozens of tips, tricks, and techniques to make new pages that break her beautifully artistic style down to simple steps and easy ways to remember strong design principles that can be applied to all sorts of layouts. If you have taken and enjoyed her Art Class workshops (formerly at Two Peas and now available on her own site), you’ll love this new twist of teaching her style, but it’s not necessary to have taken any of her earlier classes to follow this one.

This class has just started and registration ends on the first of October, so there are only two more days left to sign up.

And speaking of workshops, I’m in the final stages of moving my Two Peas workshops to my own site and will be launching a brand new workshop this week too! Watch this space, as they say.

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When I saw that the Shimelle collection was overloaded with fabulous patterned papers I could not wait to get my hands on it… all of it. I immediately jumped in and got started. I picked a few papers to save for background papers and then I started cutting the rest into strips. Some of various widths but mostly in the one inch and one point five inch category. I am thrilled with this collection and can’t wait to create even more projects with the supplies I have left.

Day One
On this layout I used twelve strips of patterned paper. I cut each piece of paper just under an inch wide. I scored and pleated each strip and machine stitched each pleated strip before I adhered it to my background paper. At the top of each strip I added a die cut number. This technique gives lots of texture and dimension to the layout.

First Day
By cutting strips of patterned paper in various widths I created a bold chevron background on this layout. With a background this bold I kept embellishments to a minimum and only added a little bit of machine stitching throughout the chevron.

Almost Two
This is my favorite of the five layouts I created with patterned paper strips. This was really easy to complete. It was a little bit time consuming so I turned on my favorite show and got to work. I adhered the very end of the strips while I was weaving them to make sure they stayed in place. I used a LOT of adhesive underneath when I was finished. To give the project a more finished look I put strips of white cardstock above and below the woven parts to cover the uneven ends. The layout is complete with a strip of glitter tape on the top and bottom of the woven background. The strip of cardstock at the bottom of the layout made a perfect spot for some journaling cards.

Keep Learning… always
This layout is created by cutting a heart out of the background sheet of paper. Then, on the back of the paper I adhered strips of patterned paper so they were inlaid on the background. I also added a wood veneer piece to one of the strips. This layout also varies from the other ones because it doesn’t contain a photo. This layout is just for my kids. I wanted to document my hopes for them. I didn’t have a photo that particularly went with the story so I just left it as a story, without a photo.

State Fair Fun
On this layout I used all the bits and pieces from the previous layouts I created. I adhered the strips to scraps of cardstock and then die cut the scraps of cardstock in my manual die cut machine. These bold scalloped circles added a bold whimsical look to the white cardstock background.

Becki Adams has been passionate about memory keeping since 1998 when she first started scrapbooking. She lives in a small farming town in Idaho, USA. She spends her days scrapbooking, blogging, creating, being a mom to three amazing kids, and being a second mom to her nieces and nephew. She loves a clean house, a good book, and a really great cup of hot chocolate (in the winter) or a glass of raspberry lemonade (in the summer). Oh, and chocolate, don’t forget chocolate. She also love a great find in a thrift store. Some of her favorite things to look for are books and dishes… a girl can never have too many dishes, or books. You can find Becki designing for Pebbles Inc. and Carta Bella Paper. You can also find her on her blog, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

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Gold is all the rage right now, and using gold foil in scrapbooking has become a staple. I’d been toying with the idea of using actual gold leaf in my scrapbook projects for a while and recently decided to give it a try. In doing so, I found that it’s actually quite easy to work with. Now I’m adding gold leaf to almost all my crafts and may even prefer the texture over gold foil!

Below is a three part video series where I create a mini book using some of the lovely products from Shimelle’s new scrapbook collection. In all three videos there are examples of the simple process I use to add gold leaf in any shape to my projects.

Part one is the mini book cover, where I add gold leaf in the shape of a jeep with flourish design (which I created on my computer).

Part two is adding gold leaf letters and shapes directly onto some of the mini book pages and photos.

Part three is design and assembly of the mini book as well as a flip through of the completed project.

One of the things I like the most about this mini book is that I only use three 12×12 papers, and two embellishment packs (all from Shimelle’s collection) in the design. Of course, I also used photos, page protectors, and an album cover, but the basics are only made up of those five elements with almost no waste. I think it’s such a cool idea.

Some helpful notes/details about this project:
・I use contact paper that is sticky on only one side. Silhouette makes a double sided adhesive sheet if you don’t want to trouble with adding adhesive to the non-sticky side of the contact paper.
・ I am able to add gold leaf to any surface type (paper, wood, plastic, metal, glass, etc…), because of the adhesive I use for the backside of the contact paper. This all purpose wet adhesive is called The Ultimate.
・ Make sure that your contact paper has the sticky side facing towards you and the non-sticky side towards your background.
・ I use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out most of my shapes, but instead you can hand cut out any shape you like.
・ You can use a protective sealer over your gold leaf, but I personally haven’t found one yet that does not cover up that beautiful gold leaf texture.
・ Sometimes it is easiest to line up your cut design (if it consists of multiple pieces), by using the opposite cut as a guide. If this doesn’t make sense there is an example of this in the Part Two video when I’m working with the word “FUN”.
・ I used my typewriter for the journaling.
・ Trimming page protectors to custom sizes, and adding tabs to the smallest helps create depth, interest, and makes the pages easier to turn.

Carrie is a YouTuber who loves to take photos and create little pieces of art with pretty paper.  She enjoyed teaching scrapbook classes when she lived in San Diego, adores her family, and thinks where she now lives in the Pacific Northwest is breathtakingly beautiful. When it comes to memory keeping her imagination usually takes over and helps her see outside the box. Carrie is expecting her first child around the new year, likes having blue mermaid hair, thinks that rain smells sweet, and still has a crush on her sweetheart of 20 years. You can check out her work on her blog, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.

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Just a quick update to let you know the Shimelle collection is now available here at scrapbook.com, and is currently at a discount.

Have a fabulous weekend!

_{(That’s an affiliate link. Thanks for your support if you choose to use it!)}

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Oh, hi. Originally that die-cut said ‘hello’. I had to explain that I pretty much never say hello. I say ‘oh, hi’, and if extra excited, ‘oh haiiiiii’, but that wouldn’t translate to so well to a die-cut. And thus, dry embossed hearts on pink squares that say ‘oh, hi’ and make me very happy.

I also have finally been able to finish the editing on a new scrapbooking video, and that makes me happy too.

_{Reading somewhere that doesn’t show the video? Click through to watch!}

Although I’ve really enjoyed scrapping with just my own products, my true style for many years has been to mix and match brands and collections to get a look I love, so throwing this all together was a whole new kind of scrapping adventure.

Supplies for this page include text background paper, heart patterned paper, map patterned paper, die cut pack, colour rub-ons, gold rub-ons, elephant card, cloud card, hello card, sweetness card, true story card, gold sequins, journaling pen, and turquoise mist.

I hate to repeat what I said in the video, but I will anyway. Because I love this photo and I love it a little bit more for having totally missed it for quite some time. I don’t remember it being taken (apparently this was while I having vitals checked or something), though I do remember the midwife giving The Boy instructions for dressing Wonder Boy and then getting a bit short with him when he didn’t know the difference between a vest and a sleep suit, and then shorter still when he told her I didn’t bring sleeveless vests, but Wonder Boy did eventually end up clothed. He was wearing a panda outfit that was the very first gift he ever received, such an early gift that I was quite terrified by it and I buried it at the bottom of a drawer for many months because otherwise I would have spent those months looking at it and clutching it and being ridiculously emotional. Instead I get to be ridiculously emotional now, seeing it on him at the hospital, seeing it in the photo, and seeing it now in the box of teeny-tiny outgrown clothes. I need to write all that on another page, but on this one I wanted to document just a bit of my feeling that although the process of his arrival was many miles from what I imagined in my head, it didn’t matter for a moment. …and to think it was just tiny panda-printed clothes that made me ridiculously emotional.

Thanks for watching.

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For an expat, I find I mix with surprisingly few other expats here in London, but from time to time stumble upon someone with a similar experience of growing up stateside yet living here as an adult and how some things in that combination just become a little humorous or unexpected or occasionally downright frustrating. The writer behind Angloyankophile is one of these types perfect for these conversations, but we’ve only ever conversed on Twitter and, to our knowledge, have never been in the same place at the same time. I was very honoured when she asked me to participate in the ‘Writing Process Blog Tour’ by taking a week to answer some questions about how and why I write.

I started immediately.

It took me two weeks.

I think this says all you need to know about my writing process, but should you wish to know more, I can humour you!

What writing are you working on?
I’m getting back to my true inner voice. She disappeared a bit before Wonder Boy arrived and she is only starting to reappear. I’m okay with that: there are so many jokes about ‘baby brain’ for a reason, and it is something I have found very challenging. My mind is muddled, it’s difficult to focus, and broken sleep even leads me to get stuck in the middle of a sentence because I can’t remember the word I wanted to use. On the whole, none of this bothers me too much, because I assume it will gradually fall away. Some friends have told me it all falls away; others say they have never felt as sharp as before. The only worry I have had is that I really don’t want to forget the stories from those early weeks, and as a result I’m making some compromises in writing things more simply and succinctly than might have a year ago. (Though, looking at this paragraph, I can clearly still ramble.) My hope is that the scrapbook format means I can go back and add in more detail as I find my voice again, and I’ll be able to document everything I want in a way that sounds right to my ear at some point.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?
There are as many writing styles as there are scrapbookers, surely? I remember when we originally pitched ourselves as a team at Scrapbook Inspirations magazine (obligatory sigh), we each had a subtitle of ‘the one with…’ and I was ‘the one with all the words’. I love pages that have longer stories, though I certainly don’t have a long story on every layout. I love that I jump around and tell stories in bits and pieces, in this strangely organic way of building my life story as I reflect and learn from my experiences. Perhaps the part of my process that differs from many is how often I refer to my existing pages. I don’t make pages to file away and rarely look at them again. I make a page and put it in its home and when I decide to scrapbook something, I go to the album to find the place where that page will go. I read the journaling on the pages immediately before and after the spot where the new page will live. It directly informs how I will write on that page: it’s how the story builds over time, and it also prevents something that plagued me years ago. I would make multiple pages of an event at different times and then when put side by side, the journaling was pretty much the same. Now I know what has and hasn’t been said about that particular event and I can make a choice over what to write next to make that story more full and vivid.

Admittedly, I don’t think there is anything in particular that is exceptionally unique about the way I work from every single other scrapbooker out there! But we all have our own little patterns that feel right, and those are mine.

Why do you write what you do?
Because I don’t have the patience to write a novel. (I tried a few times when I was younger. I always failed, even if I bought a really special notebook and pen for drafting.)
Because scrapbooking is really my therapy. (It helps me remove the drama from life and focus on what is truly important.)
Because I am an observer. (The Boy and I can be somewhere together and we will remember the experience so differently. I always remember what people were doing and saying, for some reason.)
Because I am very, very fearful of what it would be like for my memory to slip away. (Honest admission. It has kept me awake at night since I was a very little girl.)

How does your writing process work?
I have notebooks all over the place. I write in a different voice in longhand than typing (something I loved reading studies about when I was teaching and I tended to be pretty vocal about long-term plans that took the vast majority of writing to the keyboard) and I don’t do well with keeping one ongoing book (which is probably part of why I can’t write a novel). The Boy is a dedicated one-notebook-at-a-time person, so he carries his from room to room and place to place all the time. I keep one in every room. Then sometimes I switch them around to help my train of thought. I cut and paste (literally, rather than with keyboard shortcuts) and scribble in arrows and replace words. Most of that process doesn’t flow to typing for me, so the stuff I write by hand feels more genuine and composed to me. What I am realising as I write this explanation is that I’m pretty haphazard and all over the place. And also, I love fine point pens.

And now… I’m meant to nominate two other bloggers to find out about their writing process. It doesn’t have to be a scrapbooker, but there are two scrappers who came to mind, so I’m going with them: Jill Sprott and Julie Kirk and hoping they will answer these questions on their blogs. But if anyone out there is reading and would like to take on these questions for fodder, please don’t be shy! I’d love to read about your writing process, be it for scrapbook pages, blogging, or some other worldy words on which you’re working!

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