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

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and class details or click here for the message board thread.}

Have you checked out the latest edition of 4×6 Photo Love? In the fourth prompt of the year, we’re scrapping with four 4×6 photos. It’s a design concept that features just three photos at first glance, but the title is actually a card that opens like a door to reveal journaling and an addition photo. This month’s video shows how the page comes together with either portrait or landscape photos and how to customise your page protector to make this page work in your album. Have a look:

I love simple interactive pages like this that allow you to add just a little something unexpected to your layouts – it makes your albums a bit like a pop-up book when you turn the pages.

The first example uses four portrait photos and the journaling tells the story of how Laura was the logical choice for the Cheshire Cat, as I have never known someone to contort their smile into so many silly faces! She will probably kill me for scrapping that, but I figure if she’s going to make those faces for the camera, then she knows they will end up in my scrapbook, right? The pink, turquoise and yellow paper range here is Upcycle by Cosmo Cricket.

And this is the page I walk you through in the video. This page uses a mix of supplies, including October Afternoon, Cosmo Cricket, Jenni Bowlin Studio, Echo Park and Bazzil’s dotted cardstock. I love the baker’s twine for adding a little something to borders on a page. It’s available in so many colours now.

The creative Karen Moss is my special guest this month, and she used this month’s design concept to create both a paper page that follows the steps in the video but also a genius digital page that layers two printed copies of the same digital page (with just one change – swapping the title for the photo) to create a page that is both digital and interactive. I so happy to share her work and I hope you will add her ideas to your bookmarks.

So now it’s your turn! Throughout this month, I challenge you to create a page with four 4×6 photographs and an interactive title box. As an added incentive, you have two chances to win a prize too! When you upload a picture of your completed project to the scrapbook gallery at Two Peas, make sure to check the box for the 4×6 Photo Love challenge in step four of the upload process. Then come back to this post and leave a link to your page here in the comments. One person from all the entries at Two Peas and one person from all the links here will be chosen and each wins a gift certificate to go shopping for your favourite stash! You need to upload and link by the 29th of May for both chances to win. (I also have winners to post here for earlier class participation – look for those later this week!)

Would you like to receive an email reminder each month when my class is live? If so, please send an email to shimelle at gmail dot com with this subject line: 4×6 Photo Love Reminders. (Copy and paste that subject line, as you won’t get added to the list unless it’s just like that! Thanks!) You’ll get one message each month when the class has been posted – no other mailings and I would never, ever sell your email list or anything else evil, I promise. This month’s message will go out later today.

So what four photos will you choose? Can’t wait to see what you create!

xlovesx

PS: As this is a free class and it lasts all year long, I’d love for you to invite a friend to join in the fun. Click the share button, reblog the video or grab the badge there on the left for your blog’s sidebar. Thanks!

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_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and class details or click here for the message board thread.}

Have you checked out the latest edition of 4×6 Photo Love? In the third prompt of the year, we’re scrapping with three 4×6 photos. It’s a design concept that lines everything up and makes use of border strips, so you can get a big impact from relatively little stash – and it’s also quick to do! You can pretty much scrap right along with the video in real-time – just pause to grab your photos and papers perhaps. Have a look:

As always, this video includes random facts like why there is a swirl stamp permanently attached to my large acrylic block, blue nail varnish and paint spattering. Which may or may not be the true reason for wearing blue nail varnish. Oh, and making a layout with three 4×6 photos, of course!

The first page features some photos taken by SJ a while back. So much fun – a highly recommended post-wedding occasion to wear your dress again! But back to the layout: this month’s design concept using three photos and three borders. This page uses Crate Paper for the border strips and some lovely ribbons and trims (from Making Memories and American Crafts). And butterflies. Here’s a secret: I like my butterfly punch. I bet you never, ever knew.

And this is the page I walk you through in the video. No butterflies this time, I promise. Snowflakes seemed far more appropriate. This page uses October Afternoon papers and a border stamp by Studio Calico. Both pages use this EK Success border punch which is one of my absolute favourites.

The lovely Laura is my special guest this month, and she gets all creative with this month’s design concept – one option for using landscape photos instead of portrait and a second option for scrapping in 8.5×11 instead of 12×12. You can leave her a little comment love if you like her pages, you know! I love how her pages are always so bright and fresh.

So now it’s your turn! Throughout this month, I challenge you to create a page with three 4×6 photographs and three border strips. As an added incentive, you have two chances to win a prize too! When you upload a picture of your completed project to the scrapbook gallery at Two Peas, make sure to check the box for the 4×6 Photo Love challenge in step four of the upload process. Then come back to this post and leave a link to your page here in the comments. One person from all the entries at Two Peas and one person from all the links here will be chosen and each wins a gift certificate to go shopping for your favourite stash! (By the way, they have added a crazy amount of new stuff in the last week – like several thousand new products! Just in case you felt like you needed some new product to inspire your creativity!) You need to upload and link by the 29th of April for both chances to win.

So what do you think about three pictures? Can’t wait to see what you create!

xlovesx

PS: As this is a free class and it lasts all year long, I’d love for you to invite a friend to join in the fun. Click the share button or grab the badge there on the left for your blog. Thanks!

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One of the lovely things about online classes is that they can truly be self-paced and fit your schedule — which means if you’ve just heard about 4×6 Photo Love now (or you’re reading this next year), you can join in any time. As a little added bonus to participating at a later date, you can find further inspiration from all the participants who have shared their interpretations of each lesson. And with that, I think it’s about time for some highlights from the first month of this free class for 2011!

Here are nine of my favourite scrapbook pages that were uploaded to the Two Peas gallery during the first month of class. Follow these links to see each page in more detail and add them to your bookmarks or click that like button to make some scrappers’ days!
Top row, L to R: one, two, three.
Middle row, L to R: four, five, six.
Bottom row, L to R: seven, eight, nine.

Each month there are two chances to win – one winner is randomly selected from al the participants at Two Peas and another is randomly selected from those who leave a comment and a link here at shimelle.com. These are our two lucky crafters for the first month, and I love both their pages! LadybugUK (the layout on the left) is the Two Peas winner and Scrap Maman (the scrapbook page on the right) is the winner here! (Please email me at shimelle at gmail dot com so I can get your gift certificate over to you! Thanks!)

Lesson two is live now, so join us in scrapping two 4×6 pictures this month… or any time it fits your schedule!

xlovesx

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_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and class details.}

With February already drawing to a close, it’s time for the second edition of my free scrapbooking class for 2011, 4×6 Photo Love! As it’s the second month of the year, we’re creating layouts with two 4×6 photos, a number I just love.

Two photos are my default option for pages, because two images can show two different elements of any one moment or event. If you’re a fellow lover of crazy shallow depth of field, you can create a diptych of two images that show the same scene, but with different points in focus, so one focuses on the foreground and the other shows the background. Or you can show one detail shot and one wider shot of an entire scene. Or two different people at the same party, two angles of the same monument, one shot from the beginning and one from the end of the day, one in-progress picture and one of the finished item… so many ways to pair two photos to tell a story!

In this month’s video, we look at one design principle that works well with two 4×6 pictures, and I walk you through the creation of the Lady Liberty layout. I hope you enjoy!

If you prefer a written version to the video, you can download the class materials as a PDF and view it on your screen or print it out to have right there on your table as you scrapbook. You can find the PDF download link here. There’s also a thread on the message board for chatting about this month’s class.

Throughout the year, some special guests will be showing their own take on the design principles outlined in 4×6 Photo Love. This month, dear friend SJ had an early peek at the class and created two layouts in her beautiful style. I love them! I still have another month before I am back to my scrapping supplies but these pages just make me want to get scrapbooking right this second. Sigh! Please visit SJ’s blog to say hello and read a bit more about her creative process.

Now, each month you have two chances to win a prize for participating in class. (And you don’t need to have participated in the first class to take part in this month’s class!) Your first chance is to upload your page to the gallery at Two Peas and be sure to click the box for 4×6 Photo Love in step 4 of the uploading process. Your second chance to win is to then post a link in the comments here on this blog post to your layout (in the gallery or on your blog, etc). At the end of the month, a winner is randomly chosen for each way to enter and wins a gift certificate to Two Peas, so you can go shopping for whatever you like!

And one little request from me: since this class is free, care to invite a scrappy or crafting friend to join in? You don’t need any certain supplies to participate and can use whatever you have on hand and most of us have at least two 4×6 prints sitting around somewhere. Use the share button at the bottom right of this post or just email a friend with a link. I’d love for anyone to join us for this year of fun! Thanks!

Happy scrapping!

xlovesx

PS: I know some of you love to collect badges for your blog sidebars, so you can add one for 4×6 Photo Love if you like! Copy and paste this html into your blog sidebar to display it:
<a href="http://www.shimelle.com/category/4x6-photo-love/" title="online scrapbooking class :: 4x6 photo love"><img src="http://www.shimelle.com/images/1868.jpg" alt="4x6 photo love" /></a>

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Do you love 4×6 prints? They are still my favourite for scrapping, and this year I’ll presenting a year-long free class all about just that! Each month we’ll add one more photo, so in January it’s all about one 4×6 photo, in February it will be two and right up to a dozen pictures in December! Each month includes a video, PDF and chat thread at Two Peas in a Bucket, plus two chances to win! One chance at Two Peas and another here at shimelle.com!

This class is free and open to paper and digital scrappers with any style. You can use your own supplies and adapt things to make everything work for you, as always!

Click here for this month’s pages and PDF and here for the message board chat.

If you would like a monthly reminder about this class, you can find those details here. I will be sending this month’s reminder message by tomorrow. The class goes live on the 30th of each month, except for February which will be the 28th.

Now… how you can win. Make your page inspired by this month’s class and upload it to the gallery at Two Peas and check the box for this class in step four of the uploading process. That gets you entered to win a Two Peas prize! Leave a link to it in the comments on this post on my blog and that gets you entered to win a second prize – a $25 gift card to shop for scrapping supplies! Both of these have a deadline of the 27th of February 2011 for this month.

I hope you enjoy and can join me for a year of scrapping those 4×6 prints!

xlovesx

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