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

The sun has set on Sunday evening here and that leads me to post this final challenge of this weekend’s online adventure! Just one last sketch for today, of a page design I must have used more than a dozen times and still love. It works so perfectly as a way for me to remember how to make a page when I’ve had to take a little time away. I usually feel I’ve forgotten how to scrapbook after three days or so – which I realise is a scarily short window of time. It was seven weeks, I think, that I didn’t even walk into my studio this spring, and I wasn’t sure I’d even remember how to work the paper trimmer. Thankfully muscle memory seems to have sorted that one out!

So here we are: two 4×6 photos, use of the rule of thirds, a triangle of embellishments to surround the important stuff, and a balance of vertical and horizontal flow across the page. It’s all my favourite design elements right there together.

Our final guest of the weekend is Manda Moore, who stepped up to give the sketch a spin in her own style!

I love working with sketches as a starting point for a layout especially as you can adapt them to suit your photos or your style. Because of the composition of my photos (of Shop Houses in Singapore), having one picture above the other did not look right so I flipped the sketch onto it’s side. This also meant the title had to be moved but I kept the journaling spot in the same place. I am a huge fan of layering and because I had quite a bit of white space above the photos I used some ephemera and photo overlays to fill in that area. (I find that a couple of ephemera packs can stretch over quite a few layouts so they are a great investment). This was a very versatile sketch to work with and I can see myself adapting it to use for a few other layouts. -Manda

Thank you so much for joining me this weekend! All the challenges remain open until the 30th of June – and the little countdown timer on the link ups should help you figure out what time in your part of the world. Of course you can follow them any time, but I’m going to try to work through them by the thirtieth, so if you want to see how many you can get done too, it would be lovely to see your work! Happy scrapping!

Manda Moore is a graphic designer living in a small country town in Victoria, Australia. She is the Creative Director of Life.Paper.Scrapbook a free online magazine that is published quarterly, a project she started to share her love of scrapbooking with other designers from around the world. She has always loved art and craft and has been making a crafty mess of paper, glue, paint, glitter and anything else she can use as long as she can remember! When she is not creating something with paper and glue she loves to cook, take photos, travel and spend time with her two kitties, Harry & Winston. You can find her at her blog Mandalika Designs, Facebook page or on Instagram

Comment [17]

Ready for a sketch that go from one extreme to the other? This next challenge is just that: you can stay right in line with the sketch as shown or take a leaf from guest Gina Rodgers’ book and go full tilt with the layers and details!

I often add titles right over my photos in sketches, and somewhere along the line I realised that is a reflection of something I tend to do when I have my camera in hand. I may take plenty of photos of whatever we’re really doing – be that people or landmarks or food (it’s probably food more than I should admit) – but in the mix I tend to take a few with some more jarring spacing, like filling two-thirds of the frame with a pretty wood flooring or the texture of the grass and capturing some small detail in that remaining sliver of the frame. Those shots are great for layering up with a title or journaling, since there’s space that won’t change the meaning of your story. It’s not at all like putting letter stickers across someone’s face!

Now the sketch looks really clean and graphic in that design, but Gina took it in her own style for something quite different!

I loved working with this sketch and changed it up a little by reducing the photos to just two and adding layers consisting of several tags and labels cut from the Crate Paper and Maggie Holmes Flea Market papers along with stickers, paper scraps, and washi tapes. One of the tags had the phrase ‘happy day’ which I thought was perfect as the title. Once I had things stuck down where I wanted them, I add a few touches of slightly watered down glimmer mists and splatters and a scattering of embellishments including Teresa Collins enamel dots, D-Lish Scraps pearl cabochons, SODAlicious wooden stars and Evalicious flair. I also added some stamping using the Amy Tangerine rotary stamp in place of one of the journaling blocks in the sketch. -Gina

Gina Rodgers lives in Tasmania, Australia and has been scrapping for about 6 years. She is currently on the design team at Citrus Twist Kits and is an Ambassador at Jenni Bowlin Studio. She shares her creative journey on her blog Daydreaming in Aqua and you can also find her on Instagram and Pinterest .

Comment [9]

Winding down to our last three challenges of this online weekend – how about a colour scheme or two? Or five? We asked four scrapbookers (plus Glitter Girl) to create a scrapbook page about themselveswith a colour scheme that included pink and then waited to see what other colours they would pick. Your next challenge is the same – create your own colour scheme including pink or use one of these!

First up, something delicate from Magda Mizera.

Scrapping about yourself isn’t that easy.. This time I wanted to note my strongest attribute: being able to live the life I really like. I wish I can stay strong and dream big for the rest of my life. I used two kits from One Little Bird to make this digital page – Rise & Shine and Beyond Measure – which threw in a little peach and green with my pink and white. One little tip for keeping pages delicate: use a dark grey instead of a true black for the neutral details like lettering and outlines so things stay soft! -Magda

And something bright from Stephanie Buice.

Since my challenges for this layout were to make it about me and the color pink that’s exactly what I did. I just turned 30 at the beginning of the month so I thought it would be fun to document a little about myself for a change. Hope you like it! My addition to the shades of pink was a touch of yellow – I used that for the stitches that hold the journaling strips in place. -Stephanie

Something lacy from Stephanie Howell.

I had an absolute blast creating this layout. As a mother of four girls…it should come as no surprise that I had a PLETHORA of pink scrapbooking product in my stash. It was a joy to use the pretty items for myself. That’s something I should do more often. Most of these items are Valentine themed products, and though this isn’t a Valentine’s layout, it is a layout about how much I love the life I’ve been blessed with, so it worked out perfectly. -Stephanie

And something bold from Melanie Ritchie.

I often think about my past – sometimes regrets or things I wish I’d realized as a child. I thought it would be interesting to have a layout where I journal the things I wish I could tell my younger self. I scanned photos from various ages and made them black and white. I used arrows to connect the words to the corresponding photo. I titled the layout “Note to Self”. I used a white background paper that has a lot of pink on the border. My patterned papers were either predominantly pink or had interesting pink highlights (bokeh, flowers, arrows/stars). I added pink embellishments as accent. I wanted the pink to pop against the starkness of the white background and black and white photos. -Melanie

Of course, my sparkly friend has a real weakness for a certain colour alongside her hefty doses of pink: turquoise. But this month, the Two Peas mood board challenged her to add a new colour to the mix, and orange made an appearance alongside all that turquoise and pink in this page about dancing with an ever-expanding waistline! (I went to class right up to the day before I went into labour, if you’re curious. In fact, that morning I got dressed to go to class and at the last minute decided maybe it would be better to stay home for a bit. I’m glad I conserved that bit of energy since that was Saturday and Wonder Boy didn’t arrive until Tuesday! But I love that I was able to keep up with so many classes right to forty weeks. Now I’m just in that sort of withdrawal wherein you really miss something but you barely have time to think about missing it, much less do something about it. I’ll be back when life allows, and who knows – maybe I’ll have a tiny dance partner eventually!)

_{If you’re reading via a reader and can’t see the video, click on through to watch! You can also find a supply list there at Two Peas.}

That punch and ink in the background is something I’m ready to try again already. I’m sure I need a butterfly version in my life! Inking through a punched scrap of paper was actually one of the very first techniques I learnt when I started scrapbooking, but the inks and tools we have now are infinitely better so there is far more freedom to the look than when all I had was a tiny teddy bear punch (no, I’m not sure why either) and a metallic gold ink pad!

Magda Mizera is 26 years old and lives in the most beautiful city in Poland. She has a great passion for all crafty things! Scrapbooking took stole her heart over two years ago and is still her beloved hobby. Magda is a young, natural light photographer who loves to capture beautiful moments in life. She can easily describe her style, both scrapbooking pages and her photographs are bright, fresh with pops of colpurs here and there.

Stephanie Buice, lives in AL with her hubby and sweet two year old son. She loves to scrap and document her everyday life. Stephanie feels so blessed to get to design for three of her favorite companies. You can always find her work on her Instagram and her blog . Hope you’ll take the time and check them out.

Stephanie Howell is the blog hostess of My Mind’s Eye and Social Media Director for Gossamer Blue. But mainly she’s a mama of four little girls. She is currently living la bella vita in Italy. Her life is one big adventure because she is married to her real-life hero (and action figure) Jimmy. Because he’s in the Army, each year brings something and somewhere new. Her mantra is ‘you have to laugh, because if you don’t, you’ll cry…’ And laugh she does. She spends most of her days chasing her twin toddlers, securing ponytails, picking up Barbies, and doing pink loads of laundry. Scrapbooking is her escape and her sanity, and she believes it should not be taken too seriously.

Melanie Ritchie studied Visual Arts in college and university in Ontario, Canada. Art and Design have always been a focus in her life. As a child, she sold hand drawn greeting cards at the end of her driveway instead of lemonade. She kept journals of lists, collaged notebooks, kept scrapbooks of her idols, and created a family newspaper on her mint green typewriter. Her childhood dream was to illustrate the covers of novels. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that Melanie first entered the aisles of the scrapbook section at a new big box craft store. She has been hooked on the hobby ever since. Melanie spends most of her time raising her two young children and the remainder of her time documenting life while oohing and aahing over pretty scrapbook supplies.

Comment [5]

Ready for another sketch? This one requires one big photo, but not to worry if you don’t have one ready to go or can’t print one today, since the challenges stay open until the end of the month (and the sketches aren’t going anywhere after that, of course). Onward then with scrapbooking challenge seven!

With one large photo (or space for a collage of photos to take up the same space), everything here is pretty straight forward. I almost always use stars on sketches to denote embellishment placement, but both special guests took this literally and embellished with star shapes. Will you go with stars or something else?

With two interpretations of this sketch, please welcome Kristine Davidson and Sally Dawkins.

I must admit I was a bit intimidated creating a layout with a large photo. I haven’t done that in years or possibly ever. I was going to take that photo placement and actually place pattern paper and use the smaller rectangle for my picture. Then I accepted the challenge. I’ve had this picture of my niece in a cow pasture for months and thought it was the perfect photo for this layout. Most of the supplies came from the Amy Tangerine Cut & Paste collection by American Crafts. I must confess, once I got started I really loved this photo format and creating this page! I’ll be using this sketch again soon. -Kristine

I love this sketch. I had been wishing to create a layout with this image for about a year so this was perfect timing! I changed up a few points to the basic design, like adding in a few more layers of pattered paper to give more colour and swapping the picture placement over to draw the eye down to the journalling. But the large photo meant the page came together really quickly! My papers came from the My Girl and Yes Please collections, with their cool summer colours. -Sally

Kristine Davidson lives in Quispamsis, New Brunswick Canada with her Hubby of thirteen years and also spoiled cat Eddie. She works full time as a sales and service agent for an airline company and loves to spend her spare time creating. She also loves travelling, anything with sugar, sunsets and city skylines. Kristine has been an avid scrapbooker for over seven years and of course she loves a good sketch challenge and creating that perfect page or project. She’s a DT Member for Paper Camellia and Creative Scrappers. Kristine’s personal blog can be found at Kristine Davidson. Her other networks are, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.

Sally Dawkins is an English scrapbooker who documents her life with her Disney princess-loving daughter and cycling-addict husband on 12×12 pages and in Project Life albums. School teacher by day, Ms Dawkins gets crafty on many levels, from scrapping to DIY jobs styling up her house. Find her new blog here.

Comment [5]

Still at least a month until school breaks up for summer in this part of the world, but many of you already have little ones at home until September, so our next challenge is to scrap something school related! Three fabulous scrappers have joined us to share their ideas for graduation pages, but you’re welcome to scrap anything with a school theme at all!

To start us off, please welcome Gina Lideros to the party.

When documenting special events, I like to keep my design simple and keep the emphasis on the photos. I choose my products based on color matching the photos and like to add in hand journaling and machine stitching to give it a personal feel. -Gina

Next is Yuki Shimada with a wonderfully bright layout, featuring watercolours.

I wanted to add a quote to the layout of my younger daughter’s graduation. At first I thought I’d use a printed quote, but I have decided to use a large die cut for this project. I added a touch of watercolor to it. I wrote my own words for my girl on a small tag and tucked it in the envelope put below the photo. It’s the perfect spot for a special message to someone whom you love. -Yuki

And Mendi Yoshikawas rounds off this edition!

I don’t scrapbook graduation themes often so I like that with a few basic themed embellishments and tone-on-tone papers to match the school colors in my photos, it was easy to create a fun layout without buying a lot of special one-time use items. -Mendi

Gina Lideros lives in Northern California with her military husband, two teenage kids and 3 dogs. She loves to spend time outdoors and in her craft room. You will usually find her with a Starbucks cup in hand. Gina designs for American Crafts, The Paper Bakery and is the owner of BoxCrops Events and Scrapbook Retreats. You can follow Gina on her blog and Instagram.

Yuki Shimada lives in Japan with her husband and two teenage kids. She loves to create 12”x12” layouts, cards, mini albums and home decor. She has started to keep memories in Project Life since last year. Yuki’s currently on design teams for Fancy Pants Designs and Elle’s Studio. You can follow Yuki on her blog.

Mendi Yoshikawa lives in Washington state with her husband and two girls. She has a passion for using sketches, loves linear designs and brightly colored tone-on-tone patterned papers, and has a self-described addiction to her sewing machine. You can find her at her blog, Pinterest , and see more of her work at her online gallery at Two Peas In A Bucket.

Comment [3]

A beautiful Sunday morning to you! For this final day of the weekend, there are more scrapbooking challenges coming your way. We’ll start with another sketch to brush off the cobwebs and get the paper moving!

This sketch is designed for four small photos, but that is easily changed to a column of photos to fit your needs. A stack of two portraits instead of four landscapes could work just as well. The horizontal bar balances all that vertical flow and creates a corner perfect for holding your title and journaling. As Christin Grønnslett demonstrates, it’s also a handy starting point for all your layering work!

I am one of those people who get scared of many photos on a layout, and most of all scared of ‘using up’ all the space on a page, but you have to try something different now and then. I also didn’t use my usual white card stock for the background; I started with a Pink Paislee Color Wash patterned paper instead. The pictures for this layout were taken in late October, almost all the colorful leaves had fallen off and we decided to take a little photo walk around the neighborhood. I used Photoscape to combine the four photos in a row and add a sepia filter. I found a selection of pink, coral, orange and black papers and layered them. A collection of mists and for once I actually used them also for actual misting with the stencils, not just droplets. The real reason why I usually just drop mist on my pages is that my scrap table is just too full of stuff and I don’t want everything full of mist. The papers are all stapled to the background paper: it’s so much easier just to place all the papers you want and then just staple than try to remember when adhering them with tape or glue where you actually wanted to place each piece of paper. The pictures were adhered using foam squares, as I didn’t want the photo touching the staples. I used some rub-ons for the title as I prefer the pictures get the most attention, not a big title. Then I threw in some more embellishments in matching colors. -Christin

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.

Christin Grønnslett lives in Røyken,Norway with two kids and a husband. When the kids are tucked in bed she escapes down to her scrap cave in the basement. Christin currently serves on design teams for Pink Paislee, My Creative Scrapbook, Papirdesign, Scrap around the world and Paper Issues. You can find her blog here and follow her on Instagram.

Comment [11]

Moving right along: it’s challenge five and we’re back to another scrapbook page sketch. Two fabulous scrappers have given it a whirl, and now it’s your turn!

This sketch may make you reach straight for your favourite 6×6 papers, since three boxes from a coordinating collection would look lovely lined up across the middle of the page, but of course it could also work with scraps to stretch your favourite papers to more pages. In fact, there’s much about three in this design, with three paper blocks, three photos, and a triangle of three embellishments to frame it all.

Our first guest to take on this design is Jen Naulls.

I was so pleased to see a sketch that featured multiple photos, as I often find I have several similar photos from one occasion and whilst I love that huge memory cards on my camera allow me to do that, it can be difficult choosing which photos to include on a page. My husband’s hobby is fencing, and our son loves to “be like daddy” and race around the garden shouting “En Guarde!” at the top of his voice. On this particular day he had found the fencing mask and put it on, and he looked so funny wearing it that I took quite a lot of photos. I pulled out a selection of supplies in blues and greys and started layering the papers up. I adore patterned papers so I like to include several on a page, and rarely use plain cardstock these days. I stuck pretty closely to the sketch, adding a couple of extra layers to the background to help separate the heavier patterns a bit, and combined my embellishments with my title and journalling blocks. This sketch is perfect for 6×6 paper pads (I love the smaller scale patterns you get at that size), and I would never have thought to place them at such an angle but I love how it has turned out! -Jen

For another look at this sketch, let me introduce Connie Mercer with her lovely Christmas interpretation.

_I stayed pretty much true to the sketch. I didn’t have three pictures so I used that third space for embellishments. I flipped the focal spots and put two on bottom and one on top. Such a fun sketch and so easy to change it up. The paper and embellishments are by Jenni Bowlin Studios. The small letters are by October Afternoon and American Crafts -Connie

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.

Jen Naulls lives in a cottage in Suffolk, England with her husband, son, daughter, and the family cat. She works as a hospital doctor but is currently enjoying a period of maternity leave and spends most of her time looking after the kids! Jen always has lots of projects on the go, and has turned her hand to quilting, knitting, crochet and cross stitch as well as papercrafts. She discovered scrapbooking in 2005 whilst at university, and loved it straight away. More recently Jen has been enjoying Project Life style memory keeping alongside her usual 12×12 layouts, and she designs for Sarah’s Cards Ltd.

Connie Mercer has enjoyed crafting for as long as she can remember. Working with her hands and creating have always been a big part of her life. She has been scrapbooking for 13 years and has served on several manufacturing design teams. Currently Connie serves on Clear Scraps, Darkroom Door, Avocado Arts and The Curtsey Boutique design teams. She has five fabulous ‘grands’ as she calls them. Her and her husband Randy live on a ranch in Texas. Connie enjoys junkin’ almost as much as she does craftin’!! You can find more of Connie’s work on her blog Crafty Goodies.

Comment [21]

Ready for your next challenge? This time we’re heading to technique land and challenging you to scrapbook with mist or ink on your next page! Four lovely ladies have stepped up to inspire you with their beautifully inked pages.

First to share with us today is Christin Goslett.

I love to use mist when I scrap, but you will hardly ever find a page where I actually use it to spray. The first way I use it is almost as I would use watercolors. I start with adding a layer of clear gesso. The clear gesso give a very different texture than white gesso and it doesn’t give the white cardstock a yellow tint. While mist almost runs off white gesso – the clear gesso sucks the color right in. I used a water brush to add water and spread out the mists to a wash. When it all dried, I added drops of mist. If you add drops of mist before it has dried, you will get an ice crystal effect – the color will spread out like an ice crystal. Then my tons of layers were added, in the same colors as the mist. I actually picked out a lot of the papers and embellishments after I picked out the Mister Huey mists. My biggest secret when it comes to scrapping is to staple the layers. That is what gives me the freedom to add small pieces in between here and there. -Christin

Next up: Kim Jeffress with her fun, superhero inspired layout.

First use a word cut from your Silhouette Cameo. I cut out the Superhero word several times and then laid it on my white cardstock. I used some scrap paper to mask off the area I wanted to mist and then sprayed over the words with Color Shine mist, then removed the words to reveal the white underneath. You can also use a stencil with your mists. Here I used the same stencil (in my case a star) and misted it in one colour then moved it to another area of my cardstock and misted it with a new colour. This can be repeated as many times as you like. Next I grabbed some empty paint dauber tubes that I bought at my local craft store and poured a few colours of Color Shine mist into them. I then grabbed a journaling card and slammed the tube down onto the card to create a splatter effect with the mist. Once dry I used my typewriter to add the words over the splats. Finally I have misted over some resist shapes also from Heidi Swapp. The shapes are coated with a special resist material so once misted parts of the shape remains white while the other takes on the colour of the mist! -Kim

Jamie Pate shows how only using two colours can work perfectly.

Something found on my studio table almost all the time are mists. I am most partial to the Heidi Swapp Color Shine. The little ball at the bottom really helps mix up the shine that adds such a fabulous sheen to my paper projects. For this layout, I had to share the photos leading up to the photo. It’s not easy trying to take a decent shot of five kids and their dad. Mist can be found all over this page. I often mix it with acrylic paint and swipe along the distress edges. Stencils are used to add interest to pattern paper, as well as vellum. Resist embellishments are easy with mists. Die cutting white card stock and spraying with mist adds great effect. A misted manila tag can be found on here to help it fit the colors of the pages, oh, and don’t forget the string. Yep, a little bit of mist love found here is not hard at all. -Jamie

And a beautiful project by Celine Navarro.

For this layout, I use dome Studio Tekturek products, which is a Polish company that I love, some October Afternoon embellishments, and the brand new Brother ScanNCut cutting machine to create my title and some die-cuts I have on this layout. I simply wrote my title, ‘Hello Life’, on a piece of white cardtock with a big black pen (such as a Posca pen), scanned it with the Scan’n’Cut machine, outlined the outside and inside of the words and made the machine cut my title in two different patterned papers! Isn’t that fun?! -Celine

Glitter Girl uses mist and ink at least every few weeks, but there are two adventures that come to mind for this challenge. If you’re brand new to mists and want a rundown of brands and basic tips, then Mists of Magnitude is a resource video to get you started. If you’re ready for something a bit more involved, then this adventure includes masks, stamps and sprays:

Find the supplies and further details here at Two Peas.

Christin Grønnslett lives in Røyken, Norway with two kids and a husband. When the kids are tucked in bed she escapes down to her scrap cave in the basement. Christin currently serves on the Design Teams for My Creative Scrapbook, Papirdesign, Inzpira magazine, Scrap around the world and Paper Issues. You can find her blog here and follow her on Instagram.

Kim Jeffress lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and two sons, who are her inspiration for scrapbooking. Kim likes to capture the everyday memories of my family. She designs for Heidi Swapp, Jillibean Soup , Pebbles Inc, Scraptastic kit club and Jot magazine.

Jamie Pate lives on the Front Range in Colorado. She has five kids who fuel many of her creative story telling. Jamie has a love for all things paper and most especially love using it to document her every day and not so everyday life. The community of creatives she is lucky to be apart of blesses her everyday. Jamie is on Instagram as ‘jamiepate’ and she’d would love for you to drop in and say hi on her blog.

Céline Navarro is a Scrapbook & Mixed Media Artist and Instructor, travelling all over Europe and the World to teach unique & colorful classes full of techniques. She is the co-owner of the French quaterly publication {entreARTistes)magazine, the french community and eshop www.entreartistes.fr, and also designs for Studio Calico and Two Peas in a Bucket. Check out her Blog / Pinterest / Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / YouTube.

Comment [3]