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

Welcome to February! Today I have a new batch of scrapbooking product picks to make up the Best of Both Worlds kit for the month. It includes nine papers, all brand new releases, including some that hit the store just yesterday! It’s also a bit of a pink, turquoise, and grey party. I make no apologies: I will never have too much of this colour combination. There are some heart prints here that could go all Valentine if you wished, but I’ve selected these papers so that’s just an option, not a requirement. For example, that all-over heart print? The back is just wide textured stripes in shades of of pink. I used the aqua version of that paper for this layout and loved it so much I had to put the pink on this month’s list.

Click here to shop for the February Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

The embellishments this month are a desk full of happiness. I find turquoise to be one of the most versatile colours for letter stickers, so I went to town with those and there are turquoise Thickers, a pack from October Afternoon that includes both a larger script font and a small block font, and there are tiny turquoise letter stickers on the Amy Tangerine sticker sheet too. I can’t wait to work with those four all together. (But if that is seriously an overdose in one colour for you, I would suggest the option of swapping to these white Thickers which will also look lovely with the kit. They were my second choice.) In addition to all that sticker goodness, there are shaped paperclips, wood veneer hearts, and enamel shapes. Those wood veneer hearts are the same set Glitter Girl has used a couple times this January, here and here.

There is also a special wood veneer card you can only get at Two Peas with the artwork that appears in the new Amy Tangerine Plus One collection, with script writing by artist Kal Barteski. And the stamp set! This is a large stamp set so it is a higher price than some of the stamps I’ve picked over the past months (though not ridiculously expensive – it’s $9.99). Although my kit hasn’t arrived here just yet since quite a bit of this didn’t arrive at Two Peas until 48 hours ago, I had a chance to try these stamps at CHA and this is a really versatile set with a great look on paper. It takes on a completely different look whether stamped simply in black dye ink or dressed up with colours and embossing powders. Really striking! But if stamping is not your thing or if the kit comes up a bit out of your budget this month, taking the stamps out would be your biggest savings.

Speaking of which: if you’re new to the Best of Both Worlds kit, that’s basically the deal. There is no subscription and no requirement to buy everything on the list. If you want the kit just as suggested, add one of each to your bucket and place your order! But if there is something you already have or don’t love, you can leave it out. Likewise, you can add more of what you really adore (like extra papers for double page layouts, for example) or you can make substitutions (like trading turquoise letter stickers for another colour). The kit is posted here on the first of every month, and it’s first come, first served, so some items may sell out. They are usually restocked, but of course that doesn’t happen instantly. (The January kit is a mix of in stock and out of stock, for example.)

The February shipping discount code is 2AMEXK. You can use this with an order of $50 in physical, non-close-out goods. That’s a bit more than the kit, but there is plenty of brand new stuff in the shop, so it’s a good time to spend up a little if you like! If you’re in the UK and wondering about shipping prices, I ordered about $30 of extra stuff with my kit and the shipping was $25.36 before the discount code, and the discount code takes off $5 for international orders. Two Peas ships anywhere in the world and you can see the shipping price before you check out, so you can have a look and see if it works out for you or not.

I think that is pretty much it! There will be a guest artist again this month, and I will be posting pages when I am able. And something we’re trying this month is incorporating one of the printable designs. All of the Two Peas printables this month would go really well with the kit, but I’m thinking this one or this one are the best options. See if either suits your scrapping style!

Click here to shop for the February Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

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Hey guys!
Laura Craigie here today, and I’m excited to share five scrapbook pages that I made with the January edition of The Best of Both Worlds kit! I can honestly say that this kit was love at first sight. It has such a diverse colour palette, and the perfect amount of embellishments and alphas. I was able to make five pages, and I have SO much product left to work with, and the adorable stamps I know I’ll use again and again.

The first page I made kind of fell together. I opened the package of 3×4 Simple Stories cards and started pulling out ones I was drawn to, and the four of them just worked so well together I decided to base my whole page off them. Because the four cards fill up so much space on an 8.5×11” page all I had to do was add a few quick embellishments, some journaling and the page was complete!

The second page I made was simply a lot of fun to do! I love the Pink Paislee paper with the cutouts, but couldn’t really get it to work as a base for a page so I used some circle dies and cut out a number of the circle elements and raised them with adhesive foam so you could really see the star cut outs better. I also fussy cut the “love” script word from a Simple Stories card and adhered it over my photograph. When it came time to create my title, I knew I wanted to alter the products and I started by using a black marker to colour over the green alpha stickers to match my page better. I also decided to heat emboss the “boy” with a colour that would make the title really pop on the page.

I decided to keep things pretty simple for this page, and wanted to let the photographs shine. I did however want to create a fun title on the page and layered that over some negative space in the photographs. I have a ton of journaling to add for this page about life on my brother’s farm, but I ran out of printer ink and will simply create a secondary journaling page for the other side of the spread when I put it in my album.

I have been on a ‘hearts & scallops’ kick these days, and even though I’m a boy mom I don’t let that stop me! This kit had such great heart elements including stickers and a polka dot heart on the 3×4 card that I used here too. I used the scallop stamp from the stamp set with a navy ink and stamped that on the side of my photo. I think it would be adorable to stamp that around the entire photo too. There are also adorable chipboard scallops that I use on my next page too.

I saved my personal favourite page for last. The red/yellow/blue colour combo is so bold and definitely a favourite of mine right now. I loved the October Afternoon paper with the clocks and thought it would lend it self nicely to a page about time itself. In this case, how fleeting moments are. I swore I only blinked, and ten years has flown by. I tried to create a visual triangle with this page by using red and yellow elements in three spots around the photograph. I again coloured the green alpha stickers black to match my page, and used the gorgeous yellow chipboard frame to highlight part of my title.

I hope you are inspired to dig into your kit and I hope you share your projects, I would love to see them! This is truly such a lovely and versatile kit, which made it so very easy to create these pages, and many more I’m sure.

Laura Craigie lives with her husband and three busy boys on the west coast of Canada. She started scrapbooking in 2004 while pregnant with her first son, the rest as they say is history. Laura is proud to design for Pebbles, October Afternoon, and work as a Garden Girl at Two Peas in a Bucket. She loves nothing more than a quiet evening scrapbooking or making cards, once her kiddos are in bed. You can catch up with Laura on her blog PaperLulu or on Instagram as Justlulu.

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Please welcome artistic scrapbooker Jina Jean, all the way from Seoul, to shimelle.com today. She has some simple steps for a technique I never would have dreamt of, and I can’t wait to give it a try. We hope it inspires you too!

I’m excited to share with you how to make an artsy embellishment using tissue paper and gel medium. Tissue paper is one of my favourite materials for efficient expression of various details. As you know, tissue paper mainly has soft texture and transparent property, so it’s fit for airy and dreamy effects on your pages. But today I’m going to show you a different way to use tissue paper. I bet you’ll find it fun and unique!

You will need a few basic supplies: tissue paper, gel medium, watercolours, brush, any die-cut shape you want. (I chose stars cut with the Silhouette Cameo.)

First, I slightly painted over the tissue paper using watercolours and a wet brush.

Add more bright colours for beautiful effects.

Spread a thick layer of gel medium over the star cuts.

Then attach the tissue paper, adding more gel medium to make beautiful creases and rich texture.

Here you can see another dimension of tissue paper. The more it creases as it dries, the more fun it will be.

And paint gesso on the surface of stars with dry brush. It makes the texture a little bit shabby and I really like the technique.

Finally splatter gold ink to complete the tissue paper embellishment.

These are some of my favourite stars I created using tissue paper. It would be a unique accent for your project. Awesome!

And here’s my completed layout.

I built some layers and added my star accents and various embellishments to finish this page. Also I attached leftover tissue paper I painted on the corners of this layout. It seems to be original texture of tissue paper, soft and airy, different from the more manipulated star embellishments. That’s exactly the look I like, with multiple looks from the same product on one page, for a variety of textures.

I hope you enjoy this technique using tissue paper and I can’t wait to see your unique embellishments of tissue paper. What shape will you try?

Jina Jean lives in Seoul, South Korea with her family. She is single and is persuing a PhD in Literature. She started scrapbooking in 2009 and currently designs for Gossamer Blue and Write. Click. Scrapbook. You can see more of Jina’s projects on her blog, Atelier B .

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It happens to all of us, doesn’t it. All of those little bits of scrap papers pile up while we happily craft away. We are then faced with the beautiful mess on our desk that logic tells us should head straight to the waste basket…

Oh, but some of those papers are just too pretty, aren’t they? And, what if you are trying to make the most of your stash? Bottom line, sometimes we just can’t part with those lovely little scraps.

Well, I am excited to share a favorite technique of mine with you today! Please take a look at an easy way to put all of those little pieces and scraps to good use on a completed page…

I do hope that video inspired you to make to most of your scraps that you are having trouble parting with.

Here’s to making the most of our stash and using our favorite papers to the very last piece!

Thanks for joining me!

Ashli Oliver (aka soapHOUSEmama) is a recovering graphic designer, a homeschooling mother, wife, daughter, coffee addict, knitter and gardener with an extreme passion for mixed media paper crafting and memory keeping. Ashli finds great joy in both the creative process and the final piece. Most of her craft time is found in the wee hours of the evening when all of her kiddos are in dream land. Although, Ashli never misses an opportunity to grab a snippet of time during the day to shuffle some paper around. Ashli has been an artist her entire life. She followed her dreams and attended art college. While Ashli mostly wanted to play with paint and glue, she chose a more sensible major of Digital Multi-Media and Photography. After working in that industry on and off, Ashli put her computer and brushes aside to start her family. Never in a million years did she think that scrapbooking and the paper craft industry would re-awaken her inner artist that she had put away so many years ago. Thanks to a good friend who showed her the ropes just a lcouple years ago, Ashli has jumped into a pile of pretty paper and is never looking back! When Ashli is not blogging, you can also find her on Pinterest , Instagram, and Twitter .

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For as much as love single pages with single photos and more room to write, more room for pattern, more room to embellish without it feeling too crowded, I also have a big stack of photos I want to scrapbook. In fact, ‘big stack’ is laughable, because there is no way anyone could just put my 4×6 photos in one big stack. I keep them across four drawers and tend to deal with a little bit of overspill all the time. (Right now it’s those wedding photos from last May that have a special box all their own rather than fit into the drawer just yet.) Suffice to say, when I hear ‘but I have too many photos to just put one on a page’, I hear you.

I think the difference is just that one photo on a page doesn’t bother me, and then I include other pages that make up for it with plenty of photos. To go opposite that last page I shared, I made a pocket page with four 4×6 photos, while still having room for a 4×6 title card, a 3×4 journaling card, and a 3×4 wood veneer card just for fun. I also challenged myself to just turn on the camera and film while I scrapped rather than my normal process of scrapping upside down and explaining as I go, so today I have a short video to share with you to show how this pocket page came together.

This page uses supplies remaining in my August Best of Both Worlds kit, plus a divided page protector. (For those keeping tabs, I have one more 12×12 page from that kit to share with you, then I’m moving on to the next set of supplies.)

This finished page sits to the left in my album where the ‘midday milkshakes’ layout sits on the right. All the photos here are taken from where I would sit there on our little middle of the day break, with a view of the river, the menu, and the street. Since the story of all this is explained on the facing page, the pocketed page protector is there just as a very easy way to include more photographs that bring back the memory of this place, but it’s the one I put on its own that brought the story to mind, so I singled that one out and grouped all the rest here.

For now, the back of that page protector won’t have anything showing. As I work on photos in that section of the album (my albums go in chronological order, even within a special event album like this) I will decide to either fill the reverse with photos and journaling cards as well, or to cut a 12×12 patterned paper to the right sized boxes to fill the spaces. Because the wood veneer card looks best without anything behind it, I think I will opt for the first option, and I’ll figure out at some point what photos are best there. But it doesn’t bother me at all to see the backs of the photos and the papers right now when I flip through the album – won’t be the first or last time that happens, so I just embrace it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. For those who haven’t seen it yet, Two Peas announced their education and inspiration programme for 2014 earlier this week. Glitter Girl videos are still on Wednesday. They are changing just a little bit and I’ll share more about that once this week’s is live. You can see the whole schedule here, and it’s a schedule I’m very excited to have in front of me. We’ve been working on a lot of projects behind the scenes for Two Peas’ fifteenth year, and there is much inspiration coming your way. I hope you enjoy!

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Moving right along then with the August kit and some long overdue sketches, I came up to a design for a single photo and knew just the thing I had in mind, filed away under ‘somewhat random but still important’ as a story I wanted to include in my backpacking album, all about our midday routine while in Luang Prabang, Laos, which included milkshakes while sitting on the riverside. Yes, I’m scrapping about milkshakes. You’re right, I probably have lost the plot a bit.

This sketch is designed for a single 4×6 landscape photo with an accompanying story. It’s another design that is purposely meant for those patterned papers you love but don’t want to cover entirely – there is plenty of open space to let a pattern breathe.

Pretty much everything for this page comes from the August Best of Both Worlds kit. I know, I know: it is far from August. I can but move forward! The good news is most of that kit is still in stock and 25% off until Sunday the 5th of January too. I added a sheet of 12×12 kraft cardstock for the background and then the black ink pad of course.

I know it may seem strange to devote an entire page to one seemingly random 4×6 photo – it’s hardly a beautiful portrait or an amazing bit of scenery. It’s milkshakes of all things. But for me, it makes sense to take the space when there is a particular memory that is important, even if it’s not a traditional milestone. This image represents something that was very important for me to get written down in my backpacking album. There is quite a bit of open space on the page (in the form of the patterned paper) and that gives me two things that will work well for those sorts of important stories: one, if the story hadn’t fit in the space that it did, there is the potential to add more elsewhere, and two, using one pattern with relatively few colours and a repeating design can help direct your eye to the writing and emphasise its importance. It’s not a story tucked away in a corner of a page with lots going on – it has a space all its own.

That said, I had some more random memories and photos that went alongside this story in the form of a divided page protector for the facing page. I’ll share that next so you can see the balance between this more minimal and that one with more stuff in the same space.

For a second look at this sketch, let me introduce Jill Sprott with her interpretation in beautiful yellow.

This is my kind of sketch! It emphasizes the basics — a photo, some journaling, and a few accents — while also allowing room for interpretation. I sized down the sketch to work with an 8.5” x 11” layout, and reduced the margins around the photo and journaling block a bit. Since there is so much open space in the photo, I added the title to the photo itself rather than below it, and replaced the title block on the sketch with a sunburst pattern (from October Afternoon) that parallels the rays of sunlight in the photo. I built on the blocks in the sketch by adding layers and strips of patterned paper (from American Crafts, October Afternoon, Farmhouse Paper Company, and Studio Calico). Some of the patterns repeat the colors in the photo, while others serve to reinforce the theme of the layout. I also backed the photo with a rectangle of vellum, to add a shimmery quality to the sun-centered layout.

The most important aspect of this page, in my view, is the journaling. It begins with a ‘surface’ view, commenting on the photo itself, but it starts to move beyond that, commenting on the photo as a metaphor for the mindset that I wish to embrace as another school year begins. I usually try to avoid talking about the act of taking a photo in my journaling, since I would rather focus on telling stories or sharing my thoughts and feelings. I want to say more than, ‘So-and-so took the time to smile for the camera.’ In this case, however, the act of taking the photo and what followed from that is part of the story, contributing to the overall meaning of this page.

Jill Sprott lives on Oahu, Hawaii, with her husband, daughter, and their menagerie of pets. She is a high school English teacher, which makes for pretty busy days, but on the weekends, when not grading papers, Jill shifts from working with words to playing with words and pictures, surrounded by patterned paper. Like teaching, scrapbooking is a creative, challenging, colorful, and rewarding endeavor. Jill is currently on the design teams for October Afternoon and Jenni Bowlin Studio, and is a Garden Girl at Two Peas in a Bucket. You can follow Jill on her blog, Use Your Words.

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.

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Jumping back a little, I have a big stack of pages and scrapbooking videos to share with you over the next few days! Today I’m starting with the video I included as a preview link in the last post – but now it’s here properly so you can also see the finished page and download the sketch to give it a try.

When I originally drew this sketch, I was on a real kick of printing multiple photos on a 4×6 photo print, and in landscape I prefer the 3×2 ratio to the 4×3, if that makes any difference to you, so that’s what I had in mind when I put the sketch together. Except I did that in the earliest days of 2013, and by the time we got to August supplies, I had moved on a bit and found myself with a big stack of 4×4 photos that really need to be scrapped. Then today’s guest used this sketch for 4×6 prints, so the happy part of this story is that this sketch seems to work really easily with a range of print sizes! Pair two prints with one background paper you really love and don’t want to cover up, and you’re halfway to a completed layout already.

This page was made with just supplies from my August Best of Both Worlds kit, most of which is currently in stock and 25% off, including my ‘Nailed It’ stamp set.

The 4×6 boxes as slightly messy layers behind the photo isn’t something I had planned when I drew the sketch either but I think it makes a huge difference to the page design. With a page that has plenty of white space, a little goes a long way in terms of small angles and just a few layers. And if you’ve watched the video and realised I said I would add the date and location before I finished and then I didn’t… I did realise the next morning so you can see it there at the top right corner. Things like that make me glad my head is screwed on tightly, or I would leave it on the train.

As far as the title – we made a bit of a promise to ourselves in the last year or so that we would get in the picture more often. Sometimes it works really well! Other times it is not quite awesome. This particular day I imagined some amazing pictures but in reality, it just wasn’t going to happen. The Boy made silly faces. I told him he could keep making silly faces, I would scrapbook them. I’m just keeping my word as a wife, clearly.

For a second look at this sketch, let me introduce Rachel Hull with her interpretation in another pretty blue floral!

I love following sketches & this was a great way to get back into scrapping after having my daughter. The kraft backing and photos were easy to select and then I slowly built up the embellished areas with stickers, washi tape, ribbon and punches and layered a project life card over a simple office tag for my journalling. I have been scrapping for over five years now, and whilst I don’t always get as much time as I used to, I like to keep on top of my Project Life album. However 12×12 pages will always stay close to my heart and I will always fit them in when i have time as I find them much more enjoyable.

Rachel currently lives in Leeds with her husband Rob and brand new baby daughter Martha, she has been scrapbooking for several years and divides any free time between scrapping and knitting. She runs her own blog, Rewarding Memories, including notes on plenty of crafty endeavours.

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.

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Welcome to a new year of Best of Both Worlds – my humble version of a scrapbooking kit! If you’re new to this idea, the name ‘Best of Both Worlds’ comes from the set up. If you want the ease of a kit, you can have it: on the first of the month, I share a list of supplies that I love together, and you can simply add one of each to your basket and check out your order – super simple. But a kit with a subscription doesn’t work for everyone – maybe you would use or can afford a kit some months and not others, maybe you already have a few of the items in the kit or would prefer something different that makes paying for kit items you don’t want less than ideal. If so, this can really help, because there is no subscription and you’re free to use the shopping list as a guide, adding more of what you like and not bothering with the things that aren’t your style. Hence the ‘best of both worlds’ moniker!

And with that, let’s get on to the kit for January 2014! Right now is a great time to go shopping, as there is a massive 25% off sale in the shop for the next few days, so I’ve been able to pack more into the kit than usual. For January, I wanted to mix warm neutrals (like woodgrain, of course) with a rainbow of happy colours to brighten up the short winter days. There are products from October Afternoon, Simple Stories, Fancy Pants (yes, that fancy paper is die-cut in the centre), Studio Calico, Pebbles, American Crafts, and one new addition made just for the kits: new Best of Both Worlds flair badges made by Two Peas.

Click here to shop the January Best of Both Worlds product picks!

_{Paper a-sides and b-sides.}

I am really enjoying texture on my pages at the moment and wanted to include a few different finishes in the embellishments. The pack of chipboard stickers from October Afternoon is literally one of the best scrapbooking products to hit my desk in months. The colours are rich, the pieces are a good size to add detail without overwhelming the photos, and the chipboard is great quality. The woodgrain chipboard letters are that same quality, and the flat green letter stickers actually include two small alphabets in the pack – one with individual script letters and then another in the same colour that is small blocks with the letters on each tile. The washi tape is a different texture and this design is one that could be used for so many things. Plus there are wood veneer and plastic pieces, so there is a real variety. I haven’t added any gems or enamel dots to the kit this month, so if that’s something that has become integral to your finished pages, you might consider a rainbow pack to match.

And then this new bit of fun! Some flair! These are all individual pieces like all the Two Peas flair, so you don’t have to have them all and can just pick the ones that would work for you. (You can get them all though, of course! Go right ahead!) When you click through to the shopping list, you can see the individual pictures of them, so don’t be alarmed by the reflections here in a quick little snapshot from the production line! (The plan is for the Best of Both Worlds badges to be a regular thing every month, but what with today’s earlier announcement, I’m not making any promises about that, just in case!)

Click here to shop the January Best of Both Worlds product picks!

If you need to bring the price down, the stamp set is the most expensive item. It is 25% off its full price currently, but if you don’t stamp, then of course the bargain doesn’t matter!

The shipping discount code for January is 5SSYWX. That will give you a discount on shipping if you have $50 of physical product that is not on clearance (‘phase out’). Most of the 25% off items are not on clearance, just on sale, so they count toward your $50 total.

Everything is first come first served – once it is in your shopping cart, it is not reserved and can disappear if the item sells out, I’m afraid. Two Peas has started restocking items in the kit when they sell out, but obviously when the sale ends, those restocked items would no longer be at the discounted price, so now is a good time if you’re up for shopping!

One thing I mentioned briefly in today’s earlier post was that there will be extra ideas for using the Best of Both Worlds kits this year: each month a guest designer will be joining us to share what she makes with the supplies. In that true good-idea-but-not-quick-enough style of mine, this month’s guest’s kit is currently making its way from Two Peas to her home! But I love what she makes so I have a feeling her projects with these supplies will be fabulously fun… and just a different look to what I’m making with mine! And for mine… yep! I’m scrapping with this too and will be sharing that here throughout the month. (Speaking of which, I’ve been on a huge video editing spree to catch up with all the things I haven’t yet shared here. I think there have been enough blog posts here today so I’ll just give you a sneaky link to one video here, and the corresponding blog post can be for tomorrow, yes? I’ve also been drafting up a big guide that has all the 2013 kits and all the pages I made from them in a nice, easy-to-see format, so I should have that ready to share with you shortly too. It’s a lot of pages even before I got behind with sharing, so seeing it all together boggled my mind a little!)

I have my first page from this kit ready to share with you tomorrow, so do stop by!

And thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for all your sweet messages today. I have felt about a million feet tall reading them all, even if I’m most comfortable curled up on the sofa! I cannot say thank you enough.

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