All of the products shown are available here, plus a collection of links to some of my favourite large-photo pages from other scrapbookers.
And while Glitter Girl may go around in hiding with a mask over her face, I may have to get on her case if she keeps scrapbooking embarrassing photos of my childhood, complete with interesting choices in hair styles! Oh goodness. Why yes, I did have a battery-powered curling iron in my cheerleading bag, now that you mention it.
This week Glitter Girl challenges you to scrapbook a photo 8×10 or larger and share it in the Two Peas gallery. You can also leave a link in the comments here if you like.
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
Just a note – the special discount code for free shipping and up to $10 off your order at Two Peas expires shortly! It’s code SHMRCKS and there are further details near the end of this post. Right. On we go.
This week Glitter Girl takes on the challenge of bold patterned papers, something currently being discussed here on the General Scrapbooking message board. This week her adventure takes her through a range of page examples then the create of one page from start to finish.
There’s a little something different for you this week – a PDF printable of scrapbooking sketches designed with bold patterned papers in mind. The collection of sketches includes both single and double page ideas. To download the sketches, go to this week’s Glitter Girl page and look below the picture but above the description. There’s a tab there that says ‘files’. Click on that and you’ll see the download link! Presto.
Anyway, shall we get on with the video?
For my bold patterned paper, I chose a floral from the Paper Heart collection by Crate. The woodgrain paper is from the same collection and most of the embellishment is from the Note to Self collection from Echo Park. The papers I used this week come in both 12×12 and 6×6 formats if you like the idea of the pattern but would prefer it on a smaller scale. (You can see all the supplies at the bottom of the page here.)
Now it’s your turn! What bold patterned papers have proven themselves challenging for you? This week Glitter Girl encourages you to create a page with a bold pattern – particularly if you’d like to try one of the sketches! Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
About the Two Peas discount code: The SHMRCKS discount code ends this Friday. Using that code will get you two things: free domestic shipping (or $5 off international shipping) on a $50 order (physical goods that are eligible for free shipping) AND a discount on your next order – $5 off a $50 order or $10 off a $100 order. You don’t have to place the second order right away, of course! So this is perfect if you would like to do some shopping now and some shopping later… and when it comes to scrapbooking supplies, who doesn’t want to do that, really? I appreciate if you use my link to Two Peas when you shop, as this helps support prizes, events and special guests here at shimelle.com. Thanks so much!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This week Glitter Girl is on a mission to help you get more pages from the older supplies you’ve saved for a rainy day, by finding current collections that complement some of your old favourites. This all started with this message board thread about Love, Elsie papers, but Glitter Girl threw in a few other favourites too, like Narratives and Scenic Route.
In this adventure, Glitter Girl put together several page kits mixing old and new supplies, but she only made one layout in the video. Don’t worry: she let me take the page kits when she was done, and those layouts will all be shown as part of this weekend’s online crop! Plus you can view all the product selections mentioned in the video here – just scroll down below the video. (You can also find the video she mentioned on creating a loose line of embellishments on that page.)
For this page, I mixed older papers from two different Love, Elsie collections with brand new collections like Amy Tangerine Sketchbook, the latest Studio Calico stamps and some new Heidi Swapp letter stickers. The layout itself is an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a few weeks – the idea that someday people will see photos from this era and see certain things that just suddenly were normal in pictures – like holding your phone in front of a mirror. In this case it was to share a sewing project I’d just made, although the writing on this page is about how that will seem a bit funny that all of the sudden pictures taken in mirrors with a visible phone or camera would be quite normal, it was the link between the project in the photo (this tutorial featured on Elsie Larson’s blog) that made me think of the Elsie shelf on my paper rack. Of course, no one other than scrappers themselves could ever make that connection, but that’s okay: it’s just how I got from A to B.
(For the record, that sewing project is even easier than it looks. I ended up using a fine-gauge, light-weight knit sweater, so I couldn’t leave the neckline as unstructured as the tutorial. I cut off the neckline then stitched it back on, with some pink satin piping between the two. I just used one doily – I stitched it once while whole, trimmed of the third that was over the edge and stitched that piece into place, then reattached the collar with the piping in between. The starting and ending spot for the piping wasn’t completely tidy, so I stitched a button over the top to hide it. And people always comment on the button being so cute, which cracks me up. It is only there because I messed up, really. Please keep my secret.)
Looking for more examples of pages that mix old and new collections? You can find a list of links here.
Now it’s your turn! What older collections have you been keeping for something special? This week Glitter Girl challenges you to mix your older supplies with something more current. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This week, Glitter Girl’s scrapbooking challenge was something very specific: how can we embellish pages without using premade embellishments that can quickly add up if you’re scrapping on a budget or just don’t like their look? And the answer is my staple product: patterned paper!
In this week’s video, Glitter Girl shares two layouts: one that makes an embellishment similar to something you might buy and another that depends more on the mix of colour and pattern in paper scraps than any specific embellishments added on top.
This video starts with a look at the new collections from LilyBee – so lovely! Layout one starts at 5:28 and layout two at 14:59, if you’re stuck for time. You can find all the new LilyBee products (plus the new Thickers I used and a variety of brads that would work for pinwheels) here. Just scroll down to the bottom of that page to shop!
While my reload of kraft cardstock is in transit, I’ve switched back to some older travel photos, including these two shots from our honeymoon. I’m already stunned at how young we look in the pictures! I don’t remember us getting any older in the last few years, so how on earth could this have happened? Or perhaps everyone just looks young on honeymoon. Do you think it would work if we booked a trip now and just called it a honeymoon? I am totally willing to do this as research for all scrappy girls out there who would appreciate looking extra young and happy in their photos.
Does this page format look a little familiar? That’s because it started in the same place as this page, but I wanted to take the challenge of creating a similar design but without any stamps or premade embellishments that drove up the ‘price’ of making the layout. Stamps and punches are tricky when it comes to questions like this. They are far more expensive than patterned paper and a fair bit more expensive than most premade embellishment packs, but they can be used so many times that their price per page can end up so much less. Seems like the best plan is to have a few of these little investments but to be very sure it’s the shape or design you will love to use on plenty of projects and not tire of at the sight of a new trend. But for this page, they were out of bounds, and the only thing that is really an embellishment is cut from a sheet of patterned paper – and the rest of the page is made entirely from patterned paper scraps.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to create a project using just patterned paper for embellishment – nothing premade allowed. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This week Glitter Girl comes across some multiphoto mayhem, spurred on by this discussion of ideas for scrapping plenty of travel photos. Her adventure takes a look at various strategies she has used in a travel album plus creating a page using the divided page protectors from We R Memory Keepers.
Come along for the adventure, won’t you?
Depending on how long you’ve been reading (or watching?) you’ll have seen more or less of that album at the beginning, but this gives you a look at how the first volume is coming together. I’m currently on three full albums and need to start the fourth as this one is a bit overstuffed for my liking right now! But I’m just keeping all the pages in chronological order of our nearly-four-month adventure, and adding a divider page whenever we cross a border into a new country. Or at least that is the general idea: I’ve actually only made two of those divider pages and I’ll need ten more, but I’m not in any rush so it’s okay, right?
You may also start to see why I was in a panic recently when I realised I was completely out of kraft cardstock. When I had last stocked up, I bought 250 sheets. But it turns out, it is possible to burn through that much in about five months if you use it constantly. (Not to worry, have now reordered!)
You can find all the supplies and plenty of divided page protector options here. And of course you can use this same design as a sketch on a 12×12 page without the fancy page protector – just use three portrait 4×6 photos along the bottom and work with the 6×12 space at the top separately. Either way, you end up with four 4×6 images on a 12×12 page, plus room for title, writing and embellishment.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to try this four photo design – either with the special page protector or on a 12×12 page. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
Scraps have been a pretty hot topic on the message board recently – including this discussion that inspired this week’s adventure, but also this discussion and this one, both about how to sort, organise and store all those bits of paper that end up left over after a finished project. Time for Glitter Girl to spring to action, and on her adventure this week she shares three strategies for page designs with all those scraps!
Each of these designs can be adapted to suit your style and photo needs, or used in slightly different ways on a variety of pages without every page looking the same. Always useful!
Take the example of a collection of one inch strips: the same idea can be used to cover the front of a card. It can be turned to become a vertical column of horizontal strips, which could be a rainbow of bright colours or make a great place for writing in paler colours. And it doesn’t have to be a big border – it could easily be a box or a circle instead. If I only had two 4×6 pictures for this page but wanted more space to write, I could move the collection of strips to take one of the photo spots and open up all that space at the top for as much journaling as I want to include.
This technique of repeating one shape in a contained explosion is one of my favourite techniques for scraps. This page from a few years back uses the very same idea and it’s still one of my favourites, so I was excited to try it again, this time with punches and dies rather than cutting everything from a paper with scissors. However, I know this kind of embellishment overload isn’t everyone’s style. Just take it back a bit: fewer, larger shapes to cover that same space will be less chaotic, as will repeating a few patterns more rather than trying to cut every piece from a different design. The same can be limited to a smaller part of the page, either for less embellishment or to dedicate more space to photos or writing.
And this final strategy starts from something different: in the first two instances, I chose my paper scraps based on their colour. In this case, I was looking for the shape – all long narrow strips of paper. From that I could find a good mix of colours that would work but I was generally less fussy about the colours I was choosing. This page design is not dramatically different from many other pages I’ve made, but I would usually include at least one large block of paper in the middle somewhere – but in this case it is entirely strips with the single exception of the flower cut with scissors from a sheet of patterned paper. By starting with those strip borders at the top and bottom of the page, you can adapt the middle to any requirements – different number or size of photos, more or less embellishment, and so forth. You can also bring ribbons, tape and border punches into the mix. This older page does that with a larger photo too.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to put at least one of these three strategies to use with your own scraps and off-cuts. Make a page and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
…Paper dulls needs faster than fabric (same goes for scissors, which is why it’s useful to have separate fabric shears if you do much sewing at all), so be sure to keep extra needles on hand. But you don’t need anything special – just the standard needle size for your machine.
…Adhesive is the only thing that can be problematic. It’s not a big problem, but if you’ve ever tried to clean adhesive off a table or other surface, you’ll be familiar with those stages of stickiness and residue and how it can see almost impossible to get right back to square one. Well… sewing through lots of adhesive will get all that residue on your needle and eventually it can transfer to the other working parts of the machine that surround the needle… or it can end up on the presser foot (the bit that clamps the paper/fabric down) or the feed dogs (the bits that move the paper/fabric along as you sew) and then you can wind up with glue on your next sewing project… which might be paper. Or it might be a wedding dress. Oh goodness. So less is totally more with adhesive on layouts you will stitch. You’re going to stitch things into place, so all you need is a little bit to hold things in the right spot while you sew.
…The tension might be different on your machine for paper versus fabric. Because paper is thinner and rigid, which could cause your stitches to look wonky on one side (or both) even when they look fine on fabric. No big worry: just adjust and try again on a scrap of paper. Or don’t stress and if it looks fine on the front but messy on the back, just don’t worry about it since that part won’t show anyway. Which is one nice thing about sewing on paper!
Anyway, time for a video adventure! It starts with some beginner sewing info then goes through three scrapbook pages, so if you already know how to use your machine and just want to skip to the layouts, zoom over the first six minutes and you should be on track.
If you think your sewing machine is broken, do yourself a favour and stop before you do anything else and change the needle. Needles are weird. They might look the same and you’ll swear it’s still sharp if you stick your finger with it, but it may be slightly bent, bowed or blunt. Any of those things can make your stitches a total mess or even make your machine stop sewing or show error messages. Yes, sewing machines need to be serviced now and then and sometimes they need actual repairs. But sometimes a new needle fixes all woes, and that only costs thirty pence. So try that first, okay? (Then if it still doesn’t work, head to an expert. A service will make your machine run like new again and it’s not all that expensive for most machines.)
Local friends, if you have never stitched and want to try before you commit to the idea of buying a machine, there are regular workshops at The Make Lounge and you can use their machines to get an idea of the experience. That’s for sewing on fabric, of course, but you’ll come away with a finished project like a patchworked pillow or a dress, so lots of good things in a couple hours in Islington.
For getting started, sewing each layer separately and then gluing it together like any other layout works well. If you’re worried that something will go wrong, you’re only working with one piece at a time – so the worst that could happen is you need to replace that single piece rather than fix a layout that’s nearly finished. Not that you’ll have any trouble with the stitching! But just in case you’re nervous. For this page, everything is stitched separately then adhered like anything else. Plus you can combine stitches and pop dots with this technique – and I do not recommend sewing through pop dots. I may have tried that out for experience in the past. It’s not the wisest move.
If you love layers, you can add stitching to each layer as you go. This is the same technique I used on this minibook cover and it works really well on cards too. That repeated stitching can transform a stack of scraps into something extra special.
Sometimes stitching is a great finishing touch to a layout that is just lacking a bit of something. In this case, I started with everything here except the stitching, but the lack of contrast made the page fall flat. The stitched frame and details in the high-contrast black thread help take it from in between to definitely finished.
(Also, don’t freak out but that is two weeks in a row that I have used themed supplies for their theme. Bicycles last week and cupcakes this week. Whatever will happen next?)
If you’re interested in more projects and information about using your sewing machine on your scrapbook pages, check out the Sew Happy Scrappy workshop at Two Peas – it’s self-paced, available any time and it’s just five bucks. (It’s taught by Jen Johner and you’ll find it listed with all the other supplies if you scroll down past the video here.)
This week Glitter Girl challenges you to sew on a project of your own! Upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board. She’s currently looking for a topic for next week. What should it be?
This week Glitter Girl tackles the Tricky Transparency, after a member of the Two Peas community posted that she was flustered with what to do with all these clear supplies she had collected.
The basic trick with transparencies comes in how to write or stamp on them and how to attach them – but once you catch those tricks, you are good to go! For writing, you’ll need a permanent pen that can write on that surface, like an American Crafts Slick Writer or a Sharpie. For stamping, Staz-On ink is your friend for working with the acetate material – and have the cleaner on hand, as if you slip while stamping on the transparency, you can remove the Staz-On and try again once the transparency is dry.
As for attaching, you need something that won’t show through – so you can use your regular adhesive only if you’re going to cover it up with another layer on top. But other options will hold it in place without that worry: staples, brads, stitches, paperclips and washi tape are all easy answers. Or use it with pockets, like a 4×6 transparency over a photo or index card in a divided page protector… or possibly on the 12×12 scale too, as Glitter Girl discovered this week.
And if you pop over to this adventure at Two Peas, you can scroll down to see all sorts of transparent products for your stash, including some special offers like discounts on Hambly overlays and more. (And check the new stuff while you’re there – BasicGrey, Lawn Fawn, Hero Arts, Jenni Bowlin Studio and October Afternoon are among the new things this week!)
This 12×12 transparency sheet can be cut into separate frames for six different pages, of course, but I liked the idea of giving it a try as a 12×12 sheet and making it act a bit like a divided page protector. This is my January-in-Review layout for 2012, with five photos plucked from my library and an Elle’s Studio index card to write a bit more about what isn’t in the pictures. (By the way, I’m loving the happy accident of the photo at the middle-left. I had an email to say I could go stand in a queue at a certain place and certain time and perhaps have a free ticket to see a play that night – but I wouldn’t know what it would be or what my chances were. But I could make it, so I queued up and snapped that picture with my phone while I was waiting. I was early enough in the queue to get a ticket, and I drew a free ticket to Legally Blonde the Musical, so definitely an interesting day all told!
This version is a bit more like the majority of my pages, but includes two transparency elements: one 4×6 frame and a strip from a 12×12 Hambly overlay. But the 4×6 frame can still work as a separate element rather than over the obvious 4×6 photo. In this case, I had two Instax shots, so it was never going to work as a frame for those, but I loved how the design looked on kraft cardstock so just went from there. In my album, this page is opposite the only other bicycle picture we snapped, which I printed at the full page width, and I love how the two extremes work together across the double page. In supplies, the only thing they have in common is the kraft cardstock and the small doily stamp.
This week Glitter Girl challenges you to use a transparency in your work and share it! If you would like to share a link in the comments here too, that would be fabulous!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board. She’s currently looking for a topic for next week. What should it be?
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