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

Ready for another sketch? This one requires one big photo, but not to worry if you don’t have one ready to go or can’t print one today, since the challenges stay open until the end of the month (and the sketches aren’t going anywhere after that, of course). Onward then with scrapbooking challenge seven!

With one large photo (or space for a collage of photos to take up the same space), everything here is pretty straight forward. I almost always use stars on sketches to denote embellishment placement, but both special guests took this literally and embellished with star shapes. Will you go with stars or something else?

With two interpretations of this sketch, please welcome Kristine Davidson and Sally Dawkins.

I must admit I was a bit intimidated creating a layout with a large photo. I haven’t done that in years or possibly ever. I was going to take that photo placement and actually place pattern paper and use the smaller rectangle for my picture. Then I accepted the challenge. I’ve had this picture of my niece in a cow pasture for months and thought it was the perfect photo for this layout. Most of the supplies came from the Amy Tangerine Cut & Paste collection by American Crafts. I must confess, once I got started I really loved this photo format and creating this page! I’ll be using this sketch again soon. -Kristine

I love this sketch. I had been wishing to create a layout with this image for about a year so this was perfect timing! I changed up a few points to the basic design, like adding in a few more layers of pattered paper to give more colour and swapping the picture placement over to draw the eye down to the journalling. But the large photo meant the page came together really quickly! My papers came from the My Girl and Yes Please collections, with their cool summer colours. -Sally

Kristine Davidson lives in Quispamsis, New Brunswick Canada with her Hubby of thirteen years and also spoiled cat Eddie. She works full time as a sales and service agent for an airline company and loves to spend her spare time creating. She also loves travelling, anything with sugar, sunsets and city skylines. Kristine has been an avid scrapbooker for over seven years and of course she loves a good sketch challenge and creating that perfect page or project. She’s a DT Member for Paper Camellia and Creative Scrappers. Kristine’s personal blog can be found at Kristine Davidson. Her other networks are, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.

Sally Dawkins is an English scrapbooker who documents her life with her Disney princess-loving daughter and cycling-addict husband on 12×12 pages and in Project Life albums. School teacher by day, Ms Dawkins gets crafty on many levels, from scrapping to DIY jobs styling up her house. Find her new blog here.

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Still at least a month until school breaks up for summer in this part of the world, but many of you already have little ones at home until September, so our next challenge is to scrap something school related! Three fabulous scrappers have joined us to share their ideas for graduation pages, but you’re welcome to scrap anything with a school theme at all!

To start us off, please welcome Gina Lideros to the party.

When documenting special events, I like to keep my design simple and keep the emphasis on the photos. I choose my products based on color matching the photos and like to add in hand journaling and machine stitching to give it a personal feel. -Gina

Next is Yuki Shimada with a wonderfully bright layout, featuring watercolours.

I wanted to add a quote to the layout of my younger daughter’s graduation. At first I thought I’d use a printed quote, but I have decided to use a large die cut for this project. I added a touch of watercolor to it. I wrote my own words for my girl on a small tag and tucked it in the envelope put below the photo. It’s the perfect spot for a special message to someone whom you love. -Yuki

And Mendi Yoshikawas rounds off this edition!

I don’t scrapbook graduation themes often so I like that with a few basic themed embellishments and tone-on-tone papers to match the school colors in my photos, it was easy to create a fun layout without buying a lot of special one-time use items. -Mendi

Gina Lideros lives in Northern California with her military husband, two teenage kids and 3 dogs. She loves to spend time outdoors and in her craft room. You will usually find her with a Starbucks cup in hand. Gina designs for American Crafts, The Paper Bakery and is the owner of BoxCrops Events and Scrapbook Retreats. You can follow Gina on her blog and Instagram.

Yuki Shimada lives in Japan with her husband and two teenage kids. She loves to create 12”x12” layouts, cards, mini albums and home decor. She has started to keep memories in Project Life since last year. Yuki’s currently on design teams for Fancy Pants Designs and Elle’s Studio. You can follow Yuki on her blog.

Mendi Yoshikawa lives in Washington state with her husband and two girls. She has a passion for using sketches, loves linear designs and brightly colored tone-on-tone patterned papers, and has a self-described addiction to her sewing machine. You can find her at her blog, Pinterest , and see more of her work at her online gallery at Two Peas In A Bucket.

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A beautiful Sunday morning to you! For this final day of the weekend, there are more scrapbooking challenges coming your way. We’ll start with another sketch to brush off the cobwebs and get the paper moving!

This sketch is designed for four small photos, but that is easily changed to a column of photos to fit your needs. A stack of two portraits instead of four landscapes could work just as well. The horizontal bar balances all that vertical flow and creates a corner perfect for holding your title and journaling. As Christin Grønnslett demonstrates, it’s also a handy starting point for all your layering work!

I am one of those people who get scared of many photos on a layout, and most of all scared of ‘using up’ all the space on a page, but you have to try something different now and then. I also didn’t use my usual white card stock for the background; I started with a Pink Paislee Color Wash patterned paper instead. The pictures for this layout were taken in late October, almost all the colorful leaves had fallen off and we decided to take a little photo walk around the neighborhood. I used Photoscape to combine the four photos in a row and add a sepia filter. I found a selection of pink, coral, orange and black papers and layered them. A collection of mists and for once I actually used them also for actual misting with the stencils, not just droplets. The real reason why I usually just drop mist on my pages is that my scrap table is just too full of stuff and I don’t want everything full of mist. The papers are all stapled to the background paper: it’s so much easier just to place all the papers you want and then just staple than try to remember when adhering them with tape or glue where you actually wanted to place each piece of paper. The pictures were adhered using foam squares, as I didn’t want the photo touching the staples. I used some rub-ons for the title as I prefer the pictures get the most attention, not a big title. Then I threw in some more embellishments in matching colors. -Christin

Now it’s your turn. I’d love to see you you interpret this sketch with your own style and stories. As always, this sketch is just for fun and everyone is welcome.

Christin Grønnslett lives in Røyken,Norway with two kids and a husband. When the kids are tucked in bed she escapes down to her scrap cave in the basement. Christin currently serves on design teams for Pink Paislee, My Creative Scrapbook, Papirdesign, Scrap around the world and Paper Issues. You can find her blog here and follow her on Instagram.

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Moving right along: it’s challenge five and we’re back to another scrapbook page sketch. Two fabulous scrappers have given it a whirl, and now it’s your turn!

This sketch may make you reach straight for your favourite 6×6 papers, since three boxes from a coordinating collection would look lovely lined up across the middle of the page, but of course it could also work with scraps to stretch your favourite papers to more pages. In fact, there’s much about three in this design, with three paper blocks, three photos, and a triangle of three embellishments to frame it all.

Our first guest to take on this design is Jen Naulls.

I was so pleased to see a sketch that featured multiple photos, as I often find I have several similar photos from one occasion and whilst I love that huge memory cards on my camera allow me to do that, it can be difficult choosing which photos to include on a page. My husband’s hobby is fencing, and our son loves to “be like daddy” and race around the garden shouting “En Guarde!” at the top of his voice. On this particular day he had found the fencing mask and put it on, and he looked so funny wearing it that I took quite a lot of photos. I pulled out a selection of supplies in blues and greys and started layering the papers up. I adore patterned papers so I like to include several on a page, and rarely use plain cardstock these days. I stuck pretty closely to the sketch, adding a couple of extra layers to the background to help separate the heavier patterns a bit, and combined my embellishments with my title and journalling blocks. This sketch is perfect for 6×6 paper pads (I love the smaller scale patterns you get at that size), and I would never have thought to place them at such an angle but I love how it has turned out! -Jen

For another look at this sketch, let me introduce Connie Mercer with her lovely Christmas interpretation.

_I stayed pretty much true to the sketch. I didn’t have three pictures so I used that third space for embellishments. I flipped the focal spots and put two on bottom and one on top. Such a fun sketch and so easy to change it up. The paper and embellishments are by Jenni Bowlin Studios. The small letters are by October Afternoon and American Crafts -Connie

Now it’s your turn. I’d love to see you you interpret this sketch with your own style and stories. As always, this sketch is just for fun and everyone is welcome.

Jen Naulls lives in a cottage in Suffolk, England with her husband, son, daughter, and the family cat. She works as a hospital doctor but is currently enjoying a period of maternity leave and spends most of her time looking after the kids! Jen always has lots of projects on the go, and has turned her hand to quilting, knitting, crochet and cross stitch as well as papercrafts. She discovered scrapbooking in 2005 whilst at university, and loved it straight away. More recently Jen has been enjoying Project Life style memory keeping alongside her usual 12×12 layouts, and she designs for Sarah’s Cards Ltd.

Connie Mercer has enjoyed crafting for as long as she can remember. Working with her hands and creating have always been a big part of her life. She has been scrapbooking for 13 years and has served on several manufacturing design teams. Currently Connie serves on Clear Scraps, Darkroom Door, Avocado Arts and The Curtsey Boutique design teams. She has five fabulous ‘grands’ as she calls them. Her and her husband Randy live on a ranch in Texas. Connie enjoys junkin’ almost as much as she does craftin’!! You can find more of Connie’s work on her blog Crafty Goodies.

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Ready for your next challenge? This time we’re heading to technique land and challenging you to scrapbook with mist or ink on your next page! Four lovely ladies have stepped up to inspire you with their beautifully inked pages.

First to share with us today is Christin Goslett.

I love to use mist when I scrap, but you will hardly ever find a page where I actually use it to spray. The first way I use it is almost as I would use watercolors. I start with adding a layer of clear gesso. The clear gesso give a very different texture than white gesso and it doesn’t give the white cardstock a yellow tint. While mist almost runs off white gesso – the clear gesso sucks the color right in. I used a water brush to add water and spread out the mists to a wash. When it all dried, I added drops of mist. If you add drops of mist before it has dried, you will get an ice crystal effect – the color will spread out like an ice crystal. Then my tons of layers were added, in the same colors as the mist. I actually picked out a lot of the papers and embellishments after I picked out the Mister Huey mists. My biggest secret when it comes to scrapping is to staple the layers. That is what gives me the freedom to add small pieces in between here and there. -Christin

Next up: Kim Jeffress with her fun, superhero inspired layout.

First use a word cut from your Silhouette Cameo. I cut out the Superhero word several times and then laid it on my white cardstock. I used some scrap paper to mask off the area I wanted to mist and then sprayed over the words with Color Shine mist, then removed the words to reveal the white underneath. You can also use a stencil with your mists. Here I used the same stencil (in my case a star) and misted it in one colour then moved it to another area of my cardstock and misted it with a new colour. This can be repeated as many times as you like. Next I grabbed some empty paint dauber tubes that I bought at my local craft store and poured a few colours of Color Shine mist into them. I then grabbed a journaling card and slammed the tube down onto the card to create a splatter effect with the mist. Once dry I used my typewriter to add the words over the splats. Finally I have misted over some resist shapes also from Heidi Swapp. The shapes are coated with a special resist material so once misted parts of the shape remains white while the other takes on the colour of the mist! -Kim

Jamie Pate shows how only using two colours can work perfectly.

Something found on my studio table almost all the time are mists. I am most partial to the Heidi Swapp Color Shine. The little ball at the bottom really helps mix up the shine that adds such a fabulous sheen to my paper projects. For this layout, I had to share the photos leading up to the photo. It’s not easy trying to take a decent shot of five kids and their dad. Mist can be found all over this page. I often mix it with acrylic paint and swipe along the distress edges. Stencils are used to add interest to pattern paper, as well as vellum. Resist embellishments are easy with mists. Die cutting white card stock and spraying with mist adds great effect. A misted manila tag can be found on here to help it fit the colors of the pages, oh, and don’t forget the string. Yep, a little bit of mist love found here is not hard at all. -Jamie

And a beautiful project by Celine Navarro.

For this layout, I use dome Studio Tekturek products, which is a Polish company that I love, some October Afternoon embellishments, and the brand new Brother ScanNCut cutting machine to create my title and some die-cuts I have on this layout. I simply wrote my title, ‘Hello Life’, on a piece of white cardtock with a big black pen (such as a Posca pen), scanned it with the Scan’n’Cut machine, outlined the outside and inside of the words and made the machine cut my title in two different patterned papers! Isn’t that fun?! -Celine

Glitter Girl uses mist and ink at least every few weeks, but there are two adventures that come to mind for this challenge. If you’re brand new to mists and want a rundown of brands and basic tips, then Mists of Magnitude is a resource video to get you started. If you’re ready for something a bit more involved, then this adventure includes masks, stamps and sprays:

Find the supplies and further details here at Two Peas.

Christin Grønnslett lives in Røyken, Norway with two kids and a husband. When the kids are tucked in bed she escapes down to her scrap cave in the basement. Christin currently serves on the Design Teams for My Creative Scrapbook, Papirdesign, Inzpira magazine, Scrap around the world and Paper Issues. You can find her blog here and follow her on Instagram.

Kim Jeffress lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and two sons, who are her inspiration for scrapbooking. Kim likes to capture the everyday memories of my family. She designs for Heidi Swapp, Jillibean Soup , Pebbles Inc, Scraptastic kit club and Jot magazine.

Jamie Pate lives on the Front Range in Colorado. She has five kids who fuel many of her creative story telling. Jamie has a love for all things paper and most especially love using it to document her every day and not so everyday life. The community of creatives she is lucky to be apart of blesses her everyday. Jamie is on Instagram as ‘jamiepate’ and she’d would love for you to drop in and say hi on her blog.

Céline Navarro is a Scrapbook & Mixed Media Artist and Instructor, travelling all over Europe and the World to teach unique & colorful classes full of techniques. She is the co-owner of the French quaterly publication {entreARTistes)magazine, the french community and eshop www.entreartistes.fr, and also designs for Studio Calico and Two Peas in a Bucket. Check out her Blog / Pinterest / Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / YouTube.

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Happy Saturday, and welcome to our third scrapbooking challenge of this online cropping weekend: a simple sketch for three or more photos to start the day.

Again, it’s a design that can really feature a sheet of patterned paper! When I was drawing these, I was hitting a wall with papers I loved that ended up mostly covered by other elements, and yet coincidentally Suz made it work with white card stock again! She also demonstrated how it could easily work with twice as many photos as I originally imagined.

I decided not to rotate the design for my take on this sketch but did opt for a two by three grid collage photo arrangement instead of the row of three photos. I placed the triangle wood veneer clips where the stars were surrounding the photo arrangement. In place of the journaling at the bottom right of sketch, I grouped a large cluster of sequins and trim to mimic the gorgeous Florida Emerald Coast. For the outline around the photos, I initially thought I would machine or hand stitch this area, but instead used hemp cord which I think added to the organic feel of my design. I placed my journaling in a “flip up” located beneath my main photo which I adhered with pop dots for added dimension. As for my title work, I applied a wet embossing ombre technique using several Zing powders and then created a handwritten Silhouette cut ‘coast’ which I colored with metallic watercolors and watercolor pencils. I enjoyed creating with this sketch and hope you do too! -Suz

Suz Mannecke lives with her husband of 18 years and two sons in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. She is an optometric physician who turned SAHM after the birth of her second son. Suz has been scrapbooking for several years and enjoys documenting the EXTRAordinary in everyday life with photos + words + an eclectic mix of scrapbooking products. She likes trying new techniques and trends while staying true to her own design aesthetic. Her creations have been published in several issues of Scrapbook Trends, Create, and Cards magazines and she currently designs for Elle’s Studio and Come On Get Crafty . More of Suz’s designs can be found on her personal blog, as well as online at Studio Calico, Two Peas, Twitter, and Instagram; User ID “SuzMannecke”.

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Welcome back for our second challenge of this online scrapbooking weekend: scrapbook your significant other! It seemed a good balance after Corrie started us off with a round of scrapbooking ourselves! You can scrapbook whomever you like in any style you love, but we have three special guests who have created scrapbook pages to share with you today.

First up, Kasia Tomaszewska.

_My boyfriend is such an inspiring person- he is creative, he paints, draws, takes photographs and creates adverts for living. He motivates me to be a better person: to look at things with more distance,to exercise more, to focus on the good things in life. He really inspires me and I decided to focus my today’s layout on this part of our relation. The color combination- neutrals with a bit of neon- is so him! Also if you like the paint splashes on the page, I can tell you he was the one who taught me to play with paint like this! I cut the vellum shapes on my Silhouette with two cut files: Love Words and Love Cards -Kasia

Jessica Lohof makes me want to try something new with my title work!

The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about ‘my significant other’ was, of course, my boyfriend. I’ve used a picture of a summer vacation showing both of us, even though the pictures are a bit older now, I love using them again. My starting point for this layout was the ‘me & you’ title. I wrote it with a pencil on cardstock and cut it bold enough to write the title again with watercolors. The rest came together quickly. I used a lot of Crate Paper’s Love Notes collection – because I think pink is never wrong for a love themed page – and added a bit of turquoise. The butterflies are also sketched on cardstock, cut out, and watercolored. -Jessica

And this page by Jill Cornell is a great design for using some of those 3×4 cards that seem to multiply in our stash when we’re not looking!

I have been married for ten years and one of the things I love the most about my relationship with my husband is how much we laugh together. We have nearly the same sense of humor and know how to have fun with each other. This fall we had a family photo session and our photographer captured these photos of just the two of us laughing. I created this layout using a mix of Dear Lizzy Daydreamer and Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party – two gorgeous collections from American Crafts.

If you’re looking for an angle to get you started on your significant other storytelling, this page from the Glitter Girl archives may come in useful: write a love list. (That link also takes you to the PNG for that ‘destinations’ title if you’d like to cut it with your Silhouette. It’s a free download.)

By the way, that random tic in my hand and arm has gone now, like magic! File it under ‘weird stuff your body does when pregnant’ indeed. But now the little blips in my writing just tell me when I made the page which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Those two challenges will get us started, and challenge three will carry on with the scrapping on Saturday morning. See you then!

Kasia Tomaszewska works in fashion business by day and as a scrapbooker by night. She loves colorful patterned papers, paints and stamps the most and recently she really got into playing with her Silhouette Cameo! Scrapbooking is for her both- a way to document memories and an excuse to be creative! She designs for Citrus Twist Kits, Prima Marketing and Lemon Owl. She lives in Istanbul together with her soon to be husband, apart of scrapbooking she loves running and cooking! See more of her work on her blog.

Jessica Lohof loves all things creative and started to document daily life stories with scrapbooking in 2011. She is a German girl living in a small town in the middle of the country. If she is not making a huge mess on her crafting table, she enjoys improving her skills in taking pictures and spending quality time with friends and family. Jessica is currently proud to design for Gossamer Blue, Color Hills and Color Conspiracy. She shares her love for scrapbooking on her blog Talk About Priceless and through Instagram Facebook and Pinterest.

Jill Cornell lives with her husband of 10 years and 4-year-old twin daughters in Windsor Heights, Iowa. She has a degree and career experience in public relations and broadcasting but is now a stay-at-home mom. Jill has been scrapbooking and papercrafting for 10 years and has a soft, shabby chic style that incorporates linear design elements. She loves having girls to scrapbook because it gives her an excuse to use pink and feminine details on her work. Jill is currently designing for American Crafts, Webster’s Pages and Gossamer Blue. Visit Jill at her blog, Blessed Scrapper.

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Happy Friday scrapping friends! This weekend, I’m delighted to bring you a series of scrapbooking challenges so you can join in our online crop and scrapbook right along with us. You’ll see quite a few sketches as well as some theme and technique challenges, and you can work with any supplies, any photos, and any pace you fancy – no pressure, just inspiration and ideas from a group of lovely guest artists! There are couple challenges tonight then more throughout Saturday and Sunday, so please check back whenever you need a boost. For now, Corrie Jones starts us off with a sketch and layout!

When I plotted out this page sketch, I imagined it as a design that would work well with a sheet of patterned paper you really liked and didn’t want to cover (something I also covered in this week’s Glitter Girl Adventure actually), but Corrie made me realise it can work just as well with something simply and airy too. With one block for photos and writing then some banners in the opposite corner, this is a design that can be made with just one full sheet for the background and everything else made from scraps.

I love creating with sketches. I find that I can be incredibly creative with a sketch as a jumping off point. Instead of trying to come up with a design, I can just play with supplies. Sometimes, I will take one or two things that I am inspired by from a sketch and other times, like with this sketch, I will be more true to the overall layout. With this sketch, how was I not supposed to be more true. I just love the design with the white space and two elements. Totally my kind of page. This page is the continuation of my personal pages about me. I rarely scrapbooked about myself and honestly, except for these monthly pages journaling about myself each month on the 8th, I still rarely scrapbook about myself. But I like these. I like that I have a few pages that are more than what my kids are doing or what event we have going on. These pages are a glimpse of inside me that I am sure one day I will really be happy I have.

To share what you create with this sketch, upload it to a page gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, or your Instagram account, then link us up here. (If you’d like to start using Instagram for your sharing, you can find info on that here at Inlinkz, but it’s easy and just look for the Instagram logo, really!)

Corrie Jones lives with her dear hubby and three active girls in the ‘burbs of Atlanta, Georgia. She has been scrapbooking for four years, ever since two large plastic tubs jammed full of photos started laughing at her. Four sheets of paper, blue Thickers, some double-sided tape, and a scrapbook magazine later and she hasn’t looked back since! Now scrapbooking is her way to relax, to stretch her creative side of her brain, and a great reason to spend my time with her friends. Other than scrapbooking, Corrie enjoys being at the beach, photography, and reading.

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