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

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Quick reminder: today is the last day to enter to win a free pass to my new workshop, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scrapbooking! Click here for the post where you can enter. Thanks!

This week Glitter Girl was quite excited to see a discussion about photos from the seventies, eighties and nineties on the message board, and the adventure of the Vintage Photo Dilemma was born. This week’s adventure includes a look through some pages including older photos, a breakdown of how to look for papers that complement the warmer film tones of older colour photos and of course, a scrapbook page (complete with photos from 1986) right from beginning to end. The page construction in this week’s video might also be useful for you if you have a page on any theme with more writing that you have room for or want to show.

Come along for this scrapbooking adventure, won’t you?

Supplies to note this week include the Country Picnic collection from Pebbles (that’s what I used for the papers), journaling cards from Elle’s Studio, wood veneer pennants from Studio Calico and Glitter Tape from American Crafts. Oh, glitter tape. Or glitter ribbon. I’m not completely sure which name is the official name, but what I do know is that it sparkles like lots of glitter but with absolutely no mess. Which is cool. The first few colours are available now with lots more to come. And the large scallop border punch I love is back in stock too. All the supplies are listed here so you can add them right to your bucket if you see anything you need would like.

Scrapping the Eighties is something I’ve discussed in a different format before – we recorded an entire episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable about just that, last November. You can find that here if you like. You can also find more photos of the Early Years album featured in the video here, though of course I have added more pages since that post. But quite a lot of it you can see there.

By the way, just to put things into perspective, I have more photos from that parade in 1986 and one of them includes the local full-service petrol station in the background. Gasoline was sixty-six cents per gallon that week – and that was with someone else pumping it for you! Last I checked, the price at our nearest pump equates to something like $8.45 a gallon, which goes a long way to explaining both why petrol is not sold by the gallon in this country and why we do not own a car! Anyway, little things like that in the background of older photos always remind me of how the stories of our lives have so many layers and things hiding in the back of snapshots help all that come to life. I love getting a fabulously framed shot but I love just clicking without too much regard too, because otherwise the background might not be there. Even in these three images there are some posters for businesses in the background that sent me down memory lane, and I ended up searching for one online to see if it was still around, and sure enough Kansas City Costume is still in business – since 1925, except now with a website, Twitter account and a Facebook page.

This week, Glitter Girl challenges you to scrap one or more photos from the pre-digital era, especially the seventies, eighties or nineties. Then share the results in the gallery! Don’t forget to tick the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the uploading process. Feel free to share a link here too – you can leave one in the comments if you want to share.

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?

Comment [11]

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This week Glitter Girl takes on an adventure in picking a pack of patterned paper – something currently being discussed on the message board here at Two Peas in a Bucket. Her adventure takes her through a thoughts on choosing a less-than-obvious colour scheme from photos, picking the patterned papers and embellishments, then creating a page from start to finish.

Come along for the adventure, won’t you?

By the way, the notebook paper stamp I mention in the video is this one, and you can find all the other supplies here. (It appears Glitter Girl sometimes leaves the most important supplies off the list. Last week she forgot to list the chipboard pennants. Silly Glitter Girl!)

This week, Glitter Girl challenges you to pick a pack of patterned paper and put it to work! Then share the results in the gallery! Don’t forget to tick thebox for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the uploading process.

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?

Comment [14]

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This week Glitter Girl takes on the challenge of the chipboard – something currently being discussed on the message board here at Two Peas in a Bucket. Her adventure takes her through a quick look at chipboard product options, several different ways to embellish raw chipboard and a scrapbook page using those altered chipboard pieces and the brand new Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection from American Crafts.

Come along for the adventure, won’t you?

If you click through to the project page and scroll down, you’ll find plenty of ideas for supplies, including some special sale items.

For more chipboard ideas, check out two more videos from the Two Peas channel:
the chipboard episode from Shannon Tidwell’s Products you Love series
and Jamie Sorenson’s altering ideas for chipboard embellishments in the Tricks & Treats series.

This week, Glitter Girl challenges you to put some chipboard to work then share the results! Create something to share with the Two Peas community and in your project description, tell us how you got creative with chipboard. Be sure to click the challenge box when you upload a picture to the gallery. You can also leave a link here in the comments to share what you have made.

Join us every Wednesday for the Adventures of Glitter Girl, helping the world one crafting dilemma at a time. Each week Glitter Girl joins Two Peas via video to solve a problem posted on the message boards. Don’t miss out as she shares project tutorials, product comparisons and technique tips throughout the year.

BONUS CHALLENGE: If you’re a fan of the new Dear Lizzy line and already have some in your hands, don’t just admire it – get scrapping! Five lucky crafters will win a happy prize pack of American Crafts goodies! To enter, create a project with the new Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection and upload it to the gallery, being sure to give it at least five relevant tags and three related products, then tick the box for the Dear Lizzy Project Challenge in step four. (You’re welcome to tick the box for the Glitter Girl challenge too if you’ve used both Dear Lizzy and chipboard!)

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?

Comment [7]

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In this week’s adventure, Glitter Girl takes on the question of how much ‘stuff’ is enough ‘stuff’, an issue currently being discussed here on the General Scrapbooking message board at Two Peas. Her adventure takes her the completion of three layouts this week: one layout that just didn’t feel finished in the album and two pages from a basic starting point to the end result. Plus a review of products that make layering and grouping embellishments very simple – many of which are on sale right now at Two Peas, but more about that in a minute.

About those products… if you have a look at this page you can see a big shopping list at the bottom – it includes the specifics from the three layouts plus a bunch of products I turn to again and again for layering. Some of them are ridiculous bargains at the moment – like some colours of the Studio Calico label stickers are just 87¢, and the stamp set with that lovely woodgrain background is $2.99 – but keep in mind that the big trade show starts this weekend. That means two good things: big sales and new things on their way, but also a bad thing: if you miss something you want now, it probably won’t be restocked. I have learned that lesson the hard way more than once, so there you go!

This layout might look slightly familiar, depending on how much you pay attention! You can see it in its original form here and even then I made a note that it didn’t feel finished, but I added it to my album it has been there ever since, not nearly as dressed up as the other pages in the book. There’s actually nothing wrong with it, of course. It shows the photos and documents the story and it fits the colour scheme I was working with in that section of the album. It’s not a case of right and wrong. It’s a case of being happy with what’s in the album, and sometimes that means I go back and make changes. I am sure there are scrappers out there who would prefer the before with its cleaner design as well as scrappers who would like neither – but I prefer the made-over version and am happy for it to be in my albums. So for me, that was a good use of time and energy.

There’s a chance this page may look a little familiar too – but this one isn’t a makeover. It is, however, a bit like this page, which is also a wedding photobooth page on white cardstock with pink and black and glitter! Some similarities, but certainly not the same layout, which is fine by me.

Proof that I put my stash to use straight away: the Sassafras stickers and the KI Memories tape I mentioned in the recent digest are both here on this page. I have to admit I feel a bit victorious when I manage to do that! (Though not as victorious as I will feel one day when I magically use every single letter on a sticker sheet in genuine words.)

Doily paper is just amazing, right? I love it as a full sheet (like this) or cut into separate doilies to layer and embellish (like this). But I think it’s the title placement that is a bit of a surprise here. It’s not what I normally would expect from this starting point, which makes it seem like all that room on the right is just waiting for a title. But part of what makes layering details work is to keep things very close together, so with the photo facing that corner of the page, it created a little window of space just right for the title, meaning layers of embellishment can go to the right. And because the background is a pretty overwhelming pattern, lots of empty space doesn’t look empty at all.

This idea of adding an extra colour quite near the end is something I do more often than I care to admit. It sometimes feels like a lack of planning when I’m working on a page – I was just going along thinking ‘pink and kraft and cream’ and it just wasn’t enough. There needed to be some sort of visual contrast without adding something that was going to take over the page. So I started with the embroidery hoop embellishment, then added the punched hearts and presto: the addition of an entirely unplanned colour, and it brightened the page and kept it from falling into a dreary bit labelled ‘lack of tonal variety’. Don’t be afraid to add something entirely different when you feel a page is almost – but not quite – finished.

This week Glitter Girl challenges you to make a page with ‘stuff’ too. You can add more to a layout in your album that didn’t make you happy or you can start from scratch. Create something to share with the Two Peas community and in your project description, tell us about how you found inspiration there. Be sure to click the challenge box when you upload a picture to the gallery. You can also leave a link here in the comments to share what you have made!

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.

Comment [9]

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In this week’s adventure, Glitter Girl tackles creative block, an issue currently being discussed here on the General Scrapbooking message board at Two Peas. Her adventure takes her through the reasons why creative block occurs, how to find inspiration here at Two Peas and how scraplifting can become a useful step in the creative process.

To create the layout in this week’s video, Glitter Girl selected six layouts posted at Two Peas and took one piece of inspiration from each. The product choice of the Peachy Keen collection was inspired by Say Cheese by hyperstarre, the white cardstock and splash of ink was inspired by Hello Lazy Mornings by 4Shanna, the garland of buttons and mixed paper elements was inspired by Lookalike by Jen Chapin, the title came from BrianaJ’s Time Flies layout, Wilna inspired the photo strip with a mix of colour and black & white images with her page Ten and Chasing the Morning Sunshine by MaryGrace inspired the final touch of lace to complete the page.

_{Click here for supplies – and a bunch of them are on sale, by the way.}

I wouldn’t normally make such a prescriptive list of inspiration points, and would rather take just one element perhaps. But this was such a fun page to create and the more detailed challenge created by all those elements made it come together quickly. I love the look of the finished page and how it looks different than any of those original pages. Proof that creative block can be crushed when we need it to be!

This week Glitter Girl challenges you to take inspiration from something you have found at Two Peas in a Bucket. Create something to share with the Two Peas community and in your project description, tell us about how you found inspiration there. Be sure to click the challenge box when you upload a picture to the gallery. You can also leave a link here in the comments to share what you have made!

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.

Comment [6]

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In her second adventure, Glitter Girl tackles the mists of magnitude, an issue currently being discussed here on the General Scrapbooking message board at Two Peas.

This adventure takes her through the differences in various mist and spray product lines, including which white sprays show up on black cardstock, and on to create two scrapbook pages with an assortment of misting techniques.

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On this page, the obvious ideas of spraying the background and splattering bigger drops of ink, but also my favourite thing about cream coloured mist, which is painting a white-based sticker cream to match another collection. In this case, that means BasicGrey stickers (which are printed on white) can match with October Afternoon stickers (printed on cream) and act as if they always existed in harmony. This minor concept makes me happier than I can explain.

_{Click here for supplies. Oh, and that smile sticker is incorrectly identified in the video. It’s by KI Memories, not Doodlebug. You can find it here and Glitter Girl apologises for the error.}
And a second page this week, to demonstrate how white mist can be particularly useful with patterned papers, and because I’m not ready to put that snowflake punch away with the Christmas decorations!

Any more ideas for mists you would like to share? Please do! Glitter Girl would love to hear from you in the comments. And she challenges you to share a layout or a project with your favourite brand of mist in the gallery this week.

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.

Comment [13]

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In her first adventure, Glitter Girl comes to the rescue of Chrispeas, who shares her concern with organising and scrapbooking a mountain of memorabilia. (See the discussion here.)

Along her adventure, Glitter Girl tackles storage solutions, finds useful products and creates a scrapbook page with new year memorabilia.

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For pretty pieces of memorabilia you would like to keep out and enjoy, a shadow box or printer’s tray from 7gypsies may be just the thing. Just cut photos to size then stack on the memorabilia you would like to save. This box is tiny (the large photo is just smaller than 4×6) and includes tulle from a bridal veil, a wedding favour and ribbons from the wedding stationery, plus the four photographs.

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Pockets are handy for adding memorabilia to scrapbook pages, and this new pack is especially cute. Glitter Girl used the smallest and largest size from that set on this layout. (And I am rather excited to have my first page in our 2012 album!)

Any more ideas for memorabilia you would like to share? Please do! Glitter Girl would love to hear from you in the comments. And she challenges you to share a layout or a photo of your memorabilia storage system in the gallery this week.

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.

Comment [28]