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

We’ve come to the point in my kit that I’ve run out of sheets to use as a background! Today I picked a neutral from way back in my very first collection with American Crafts, and built lots of layers on top with the remaining scraps of patterned paper and lots of die-cuts too.

Yet again, I filled a frame with something that wasn’t a photo! This time it was patterned paper. I also pulled out the rainbow stencil from a previous kit to add more of a particular colour to the mix.

For the supplies in the January 2021 Best of Both Worlds kit – including those washi tape flowers and the pack of die-cuts I layered here – see the second half of this post. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – it’s all good!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

The shortest video from January is this one – a 20 minute speed (for me!) scrapping session following one of the January PageMaps sketches. Even with the sketch, I didn’t get it nearly done in the 20 minutes, but I did get it finished off camera!

I added washi tape flowers after this video, as well as the title lettering and some of the Crate Paper stickers to embellish. This time I did use the frame die-cut for a photo!

For the supplies in the January 2021 Best of Both Worlds kit, see the second half of this post. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – it’s all good!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

Covering two-thirds of a page with one patterned paper and bringing lots of colour and embellishment to the remaining third of the page is a great formula for scrapbooking with just one photo – or possibly two small prints. This page composition is a great way to incorporate bold, colourful patterned papers you don’t want to cover up, but this time around I actually used a black and white paper to contrast against the literal rainbow of colour in that top third.

This was the only page in the January videos where I used the rainbow die but I have plenty of ideas to use it again in future. I love adding elements like stamps, stencils, dies, and ink pads as stash building elements, so we can continue to use those pieces in future!

For the supplies in the January 2021 Best of Both Worlds kit, see the second half of this post. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – it’s all good!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

I knew when I added the woodgrain patterned paper to the January Best of Both Worlds kit, I would use it as a background. Because I am nothing if not predictable. Or if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Somewhere between those two! Labels are another classic, and then I threw some camera motifs in too, because yep: this is just what always feels right to me.

In the video, you’ll hear me say I plan to stamp the title in white ink as well as writing the journaling with a white pen. I tried every white ink I had and none of them looked how I imagined on the woodgrain background, so I ended up adding some older white puffy Thickers to spell out the title, to at least keep the aesthetic I had in mind, but it did mean I had to step outside the kit there.

For the supplies in the January 2021 Best of Both Worlds kit, see the second half of this post. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – everybody is welcome!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

Bring on more Disney trip photos: it’s been a year now since I’ve been to a Disney park and in this dark and cold month of more lockdown, I will take all the happy and colourful memories I can get! Today it’s two 4×6 portrait photos of WB hanging out in Andy’s Room – the Toy Story area of Disney’s All-Star Movies resort. And our last stop before the Tragical Express back to the airport!

Don’t forget that frame die-cuts don’t have to hold photos! This film strip shape from Vicki Boutin’s Storyteller Ephemera was perfect for filling with small scraps and embellishments. This page features the January Best of Both Worlds kit. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – it’s all good!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

Schools haven’t reopened here this January and we are back to home learning, which means I’m back to having a small assistant in some of my videos! Today his class were studying Mondrian-influenced art, so we decided to see how I could take that influence over to a scrapbook page.

For the supplies in the January 2021 Best of Both Worlds kit, see the second half of this post. You can create a similar kit from your own stash or add things to your shopping cart – it’s all good!

To see the current kit, whenever you see this post, you can always find it on this affiliate link.

If you create something inspired by this scrapbook page or the kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw. I would love to see what you make!

Kicking off a new month with my first video unpacking the January Best of Both Worlds kit and putting it to use to make a colourful scrapbook page! These photos always make me giggle, because the photographer posed us quite seriously and we weren’t expecting that, so eventually we made sure to get an image that captures our true selves!

If you’re new to the Best of Both Worlds concept, every month I share a shopping list to create a scrapbooking kit. You can follow the list in a few different ways: you can add one of everything to your cart, check out, and have the same set of supplies that I will use throughout the following month. Or you can take the list to your local scrapbooking store. If you have a local store, support them, for sure! Or you can use the list to gather similar items from your existing collection of supplies and work with your own stash without the need to shop at all. Or you can combine anything there to make it work for you – if I have a stamp in the kit and you don’t enjoy stamping, for example, you just leave that out and save the cash for something you will love!

The current list is always on this affiliate link, and updates for the first live scrapping session of the month, so that’s either Monday around 1:30pm UK time or Friday at 9:30am UK time, whichever falls first in the calendar! That gives about a month for my kit to arrive (I order it just before the list updates!) and a month for you to gather your supplies, and then we scrap with it when the month rolls over!

Here’s what was in the January 2021 kit:

If you create a page inspired by this or using your own Best of Both Worlds kit, please tag me and add the hashtag #shimellebobw! I would always love to see what you make.

It’s the first of November! Time to start talking about something special. We all need a little glimmer of brightness shining through the holidays this year, and for years my Christmas journal has brought me just that. Some years have been tales of happiness and some have brought more than their fair share of tears, but my journal has always kept me grounded and helped me remember where and how to find my Christmas joy. Part writing, part photography, part crafting, that journal is a little oasis of calm in my December days. But what if making a book isn’t part of your Christmas joy? Could there be a way to take this same spirit and put it in the palm of your hand, no scissors and glue required? So this year, I’m actually offering two Christmas classes: the classic Journal your Christmas scrapbooking project, and a new Share your Christmas project, that lets you document your holiday joy with your phone.

Journal your Christmas

This year I will make my seventeenth Christmas journal! If you’d like to join this project for your first time, you can sign up and then participate for as many years as you would like at no extra cost. This way you are welcome to either make a full book each year or to create just a few entries each year that go into one overall Christmas album. There’s no such thing as falling behind and adapting ideas to your style, time, and calendar is most definitely encouraged.

Each day, you’ll receive an email with a PDF that walks you through a topic of the day. These topics are revised every so often and as it’s a very different year, there are indeed several new topics on the calendar. This should keep things relevant and refreshing even if you’ve been keeping a journal since those earliest years of the class. Class runs from the first of December to the 6th of January (the twelfth day of Christmas) though you are welcome to finish your journal on any day that feels like the close of Christmas to you.

There are also near-daily scrapbooking process videos, where you’ll see my album come together one entry at a time. (I don’t post videos on days like Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so both you and I can focus on enjoying those days with a live first, scrapbook second mentality!) You’re welcome to follow along with any supplies and format you like, and if you want to use similar supplies to mine, I will publish a list of those tomorrow afternoon.

Once your registration is processed, you’ll also have access to the full class archive, which includes hundreds of examples from different participants’ journals, assorted printables and cut files, and all the previous prompt topics, should you wish to make an early start. Please note that registrations are not automatic, and I will email you within 48 hours (usually 24 or sooner) with your login details. If you don’t hear from me in that time, please check your spam folder and if nothing’s there, please email me at shimelle@gmail.com.

Just choose your currency and click the button below for your choice of UK pounds or US dollars. If neither of those is your currency, you can still join us! Choose either and the payment will convert automatically when you make your payment.

I donate £1 for every Journal your Christmas class purchase to The Girls’ Fund at Plan, a charity that helps millions of girls who otherwise wouldn’t have access to education or basic survival needs.

Share your Christmas

I know that over the years, many who joined the Journal your Christmas project have largely left behind their paper craft hobby, as well as friends who have laughed to me about wanting to join the project but having no plans to make a book or glue any paper to another paper. I know I have come to use my phone for memory keeping right alongside my camera, my pen, and my scrapbooks, and that’s where a brand new class, Share your Christmas, comes into play.

Share your Christmas is not a scrapbooking class and does not include videos about making paper pages. Instead, it is a 24 day journey through finding Christmas joy and documenting it through your phone. You can also use your ‘proper camera’ if you like, but it’s not a requirement. You don’t need a super fancy latest edition phone, but you will need a smart phone that can take photos and short videos.

Share your Christmas begins the first of December and includes daily prompts for 24 days: finishing on Christmas Eve. Just like Journal your Christmas, class includes permanent access so you don’t have to worry about things expiring or disappearing.

The Share your Christmas prompts will take you through five themes: guided photo styling, caption concepts, portrait practice, video challenges, and staying positive. Prompts will be delivered to you by email, and include a mix of PDF and video content. It’s up to you to decide if you would like to share your project with friends and family via social media, and we’ll cover the pros and cons of different options there as we get started. But if you have been looking for a way to bring meaning and positivity to your social media posts, this is definitely a road map for doing just that. If you follow along, you’ll have a range of photographs, videos, and captions that document what’s most important to you this holiday season.

I will donate at least £1 for every Share your Christmas purchase to my local Trussell Trust Food Bank to share Christmas joy with those finding it most difficult this December.

For both classes

You can pay by credit/debit card or Paypal account. If you would like your prompts to come to a different email address than the one on your Paypal account, please be sure to leave a note in the message to seller section with the email address you would like to use. (If you miss that, send me an email to let me know, with both email addresses.) If you’re a past participant and you have changed your email address or forgotten your login details, send me an email for that too. Thanks! If you’re a current pass holder, both classes will be available on your account from this week.

I’ve had to close commenting on blog posts because they just get hundreds of spam messages and I lose the real questions! But you can always email me, or come along to a Facebook Live (Mondays 1:30pm and Fridays 9:30am, UK time) to chat about anything that will help you!