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

Happy Saturday, and welcome to our third scrapbooking challenge of this online cropping weekend: a simple sketch for three or more photos to start the day.

Again, it’s a design that can really feature a sheet of patterned paper! When I was drawing these, I was hitting a wall with papers I loved that ended up mostly covered by other elements, and yet coincidentally Suz made it work with white card stock again! She also demonstrated how it could easily work with twice as many photos as I originally imagined.

I decided not to rotate the design for my take on this sketch but did opt for a two by three grid collage photo arrangement instead of the row of three photos. I placed the triangle wood veneer clips where the stars were surrounding the photo arrangement. In place of the journaling at the bottom right of sketch, I grouped a large cluster of sequins and trim to mimic the gorgeous Florida Emerald Coast. For the outline around the photos, I initially thought I would machine or hand stitch this area, but instead used hemp cord which I think added to the organic feel of my design. I placed my journaling in a “flip up” located beneath my main photo which I adhered with pop dots for added dimension. As for my title work, I applied a wet embossing ombre technique using several Zing powders and then created a handwritten Silhouette cut ‘coast’ which I colored with metallic watercolors and watercolor pencils. I enjoyed creating with this sketch and hope you do too! -Suz

Suz Mannecke lives with her husband of 18 years and two sons in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. She is an optometric physician who turned SAHM after the birth of her second son. Suz has been scrapbooking for several years and enjoys documenting the EXTRAordinary in everyday life with photos + words + an eclectic mix of scrapbooking products. She likes trying new techniques and trends while staying true to her own design aesthetic. Her creations have been published in several issues of Scrapbook Trends, Create, and Cards magazines and she currently designs for Elle’s Studio and Come On Get Crafty . More of Suz’s designs can be found on her personal blog, as well as online at Studio Calico, Two Peas, Twitter, and Instagram; User ID “SuzMannecke”.

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Welcome back for our second challenge of this online scrapbooking weekend: scrapbook your significant other! It seemed a good balance after Corrie started us off with a round of scrapbooking ourselves! You can scrapbook whomever you like in any style you love, but we have three special guests who have created scrapbook pages to share with you today.

First up, Kasia Tomaszewska.

_My boyfriend is such an inspiring person- he is creative, he paints, draws, takes photographs and creates adverts for living. He motivates me to be a better person: to look at things with more distance,to exercise more, to focus on the good things in life. He really inspires me and I decided to focus my today’s layout on this part of our relation. The color combination- neutrals with a bit of neon- is so him! Also if you like the paint splashes on the page, I can tell you he was the one who taught me to play with paint like this! I cut the vellum shapes on my Silhouette with two cut files: Love Words and Love Cards -Kasia

Jessica Lohof makes me want to try something new with my title work!

The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about ‘my significant other’ was, of course, my boyfriend. I’ve used a picture of a summer vacation showing both of us, even though the pictures are a bit older now, I love using them again. My starting point for this layout was the ‘me & you’ title. I wrote it with a pencil on cardstock and cut it bold enough to write the title again with watercolors. The rest came together quickly. I used a lot of Crate Paper’s Love Notes collection – because I think pink is never wrong for a love themed page – and added a bit of turquoise. The butterflies are also sketched on cardstock, cut out, and watercolored. -Jessica

And this page by Jill Cornell is a great design for using some of those 3×4 cards that seem to multiply in our stash when we’re not looking!

I have been married for ten years and one of the things I love the most about my relationship with my husband is how much we laugh together. We have nearly the same sense of humor and know how to have fun with each other. This fall we had a family photo session and our photographer captured these photos of just the two of us laughing. I created this layout using a mix of Dear Lizzy Daydreamer and Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party – two gorgeous collections from American Crafts.

If you’re looking for an angle to get you started on your significant other storytelling, this page from the Glitter Girl archives may come in useful: write a love list. (That link also takes you to the PNG for that ‘destinations’ title if you’d like to cut it with your Silhouette. It’s a free download.)

By the way, that random tic in my hand and arm has gone now, like magic! File it under ‘weird stuff your body does when pregnant’ indeed. But now the little blips in my writing just tell me when I made the page which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Those two challenges will get us started, and challenge three will carry on with the scrapping on Saturday morning. See you then!

Kasia Tomaszewska works in fashion business by day and as a scrapbooker by night. She loves colorful patterned papers, paints and stamps the most and recently she really got into playing with her Silhouette Cameo! Scrapbooking is for her both- a way to document memories and an excuse to be creative! She designs for Citrus Twist Kits, Prima Marketing and Lemon Owl. She lives in Istanbul together with her soon to be husband, apart of scrapbooking she loves running and cooking! See more of her work on her blog.

Jessica Lohof loves all things creative and started to document daily life stories with scrapbooking in 2011. She is a German girl living in a small town in the middle of the country. If she is not making a huge mess on her crafting table, she enjoys improving her skills in taking pictures and spending quality time with friends and family. Jessica is currently proud to design for Gossamer Blue, Color Hills and Color Conspiracy. She shares her love for scrapbooking on her blog Talk About Priceless and through Instagram Facebook and Pinterest.

Jill Cornell lives with her husband of 10 years and 4-year-old twin daughters in Windsor Heights, Iowa. She has a degree and career experience in public relations and broadcasting but is now a stay-at-home mom. Jill has been scrapbooking and papercrafting for 10 years and has a soft, shabby chic style that incorporates linear design elements. She loves having girls to scrapbook because it gives her an excuse to use pink and feminine details on her work. Jill is currently designing for American Crafts, Webster’s Pages and Gossamer Blue. Visit Jill at her blog, Blessed Scrapper.

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Happy Friday scrapping friends! This weekend, I’m delighted to bring you a series of scrapbooking challenges so you can join in our online crop and scrapbook right along with us. You’ll see quite a few sketches as well as some theme and technique challenges, and you can work with any supplies, any photos, and any pace you fancy – no pressure, just inspiration and ideas from a group of lovely guest artists! There are couple challenges tonight then more throughout Saturday and Sunday, so please check back whenever you need a boost. For now, Corrie Jones starts us off with a sketch and layout!

When I plotted out this page sketch, I imagined it as a design that would work well with a sheet of patterned paper you really liked and didn’t want to cover (something I also covered in this week’s Glitter Girl Adventure actually), but Corrie made me realise it can work just as well with something simply and airy too. With one block for photos and writing then some banners in the opposite corner, this is a design that can be made with just one full sheet for the background and everything else made from scraps.

I love creating with sketches. I find that I can be incredibly creative with a sketch as a jumping off point. Instead of trying to come up with a design, I can just play with supplies. Sometimes, I will take one or two things that I am inspired by from a sketch and other times, like with this sketch, I will be more true to the overall layout. With this sketch, how was I not supposed to be more true. I just love the design with the white space and two elements. Totally my kind of page. This page is the continuation of my personal pages about me. I rarely scrapbooked about myself and honestly, except for these monthly pages journaling about myself each month on the 8th, I still rarely scrapbook about myself. But I like these. I like that I have a few pages that are more than what my kids are doing or what event we have going on. These pages are a glimpse of inside me that I am sure one day I will really be happy I have.

To share what you create with this sketch, upload it to a page gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, or your Instagram account, then link us up here. (If you’d like to start using Instagram for your sharing, you can find info on that here at Inlinkz, but it’s easy and just look for the Instagram logo, really!)

Corrie Jones lives with her dear hubby and three active girls in the ‘burbs of Atlanta, Georgia. She has been scrapbooking for four years, ever since two large plastic tubs jammed full of photos started laughing at her. Four sheets of paper, blue Thickers, some double-sided tape, and a scrapbook magazine later and she hasn’t looked back since! Now scrapbooking is her way to relax, to stretch her creative side of her brain, and a great reason to spend my time with her friends. Other than scrapbooking, Corrie enjoys being at the beach, photography, and reading.

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As promised, it’s today that all things NSD 2013 wrap up around here! The deadlines for all the scrapbooking challenges have passed, and one winner from each challenge was selected at random. I’ve also put together an inspiration pin board here with some of my favourite pages that were submitted to the challenges! But all the prize winners were chosen at random, with the caveat that if the same scrapper’s name was drawn more than once, a new name would be chosen. NSD is all about sharing the scrapbooking love, right? Do have a look to see if you or a friend are amongst the winners:

Challenge 1: Scrap in pink
Congratulations to Mel Bakes, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 2: Use 4×6 photos
Congratulations to Jamie Leija, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 3: Use mist
Congratulations to Michelleun, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 4: Write with repetition
Congratulations Caroline Faulkner, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 5: Use brads or eyelets
Congratulations to Kerry Lynn, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 6: Scraplift yourself
Congratulations to Lisa M. Zepponi, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 7: Use unexpected supplies
Congratulations to Karen Williams, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 8: Scrap about yourself
Congratulations to CEngland, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 9: Do some fancy cutting
Congratulations to Tasha, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 10: Use a mood board
Congratulations to SassyScrapper, a winenr for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 11: Make it sparkle
Congratulations to Donjawong, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 12: Write a letter
Congratulations to Miriam Prantner, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 13: Highlight your favourite papers
Congratulations to Kate, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 14: Try a double page
Congratulations to Lisa Jane, a winner for this scrapbook page .

Challenge 15: Line it up
Congratulations to Mandalika, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 16: Record hope or gratitude
Congratulations to Marshatf, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 17: Scrapbook with fabric
Congratulations to PurpleJet61, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 18: Embrace the power of three
Congratulations to Cristina C, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 19: Paint it up
Congratulations to Jennie, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 20: Scrapbook smaller photos
Congratulations to Nina, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 21: Divide your page
Congratulations to Cynthia, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 22: Scrap with squares
Congratulations to Rhonda, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 23: Stretch your supplies
Congratulations to damitaprilurcool, a winner for this scrapbook page.

Challenge 24: Scrapbook a milestone
Congratulations to Adria Smith, a winner for this scrapbook page.

To claim your prize, please send an email, making it clear which winner you are (many of you are screen names or first names only and that may not be an obvious match to your email address), and include your mailing address. Use the subject line ‘NSD Prize Winner’ please. The prizes are a mix of physical prize packs to be sent in the post, gift certificates, and online class passes – they will take about a week to be all sent out and the various prizes will be randomly assigned to the winners!

About sharing the love: if you entered your page into a challenge on another site, that’s fine! If you won a prize for the same layout here and on another site, please consider giving this prize a pass so it can go to someone else who also participated in challenges but didn’t win anything yet. It’s not a firm rule and I’m not going to go looking. I just ask you consider it, and if you would like to pass your prize to another scrapper, let me know so I can arrange that. Thanks!

Thank you so much to everyone who joined in and shared their work or left a comment. I hope you enjoyed the guest artists especially, and don’t forget to add them to your regular blog reads or drop them a comment to let them know you were inspired by their creativity! And next May, let’s do this all again, shall we?

As always, happy scrapping!

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The big events in life are such an extreme subject for scrapbookers: either the fabulous memories and fancier-than-usual photos inspire us to work on some of our favourite pages, or the landmark nature of the event fills us with fear of ever starting anything, worried we might ruin something by doing a less than stellar job with those special photos. On the one hand, I’ve been remarkably casual about working on my wedding pages, and prefer to just do some now and then in my regular rotation rather than setting a deadline for a ‘complete’ album. But then again…

…this is what my high school graduation looks like in my album. So it’s not like I have some secret bit of fabulous advice on this subject really! It looks pretty much like I’m running 50/50, and I’m not sure how it all plays out with the other milestone moments in life.

I didn’t think of this event as a milestone straight away – after all, it’s a milestone for someone else, not any achievement of my own or someone I know personally! But after I posted it, several people got in touch and said they had been afraid to scrapbook their photos of the jubilee celebrations last summer, and that started to make sense. Although it wasn’t my own achievement, it’s something I won’t live to see again, unless medicine advances so significantly that both Prince Charles and I live a great number of years more than anyone would truly expect. I’m thinking that’s pretty unlikely. In which case, it does make sense why those photos could be nerve-wracking to scrapbook! But at least the photos are digital so it’s possible to have a do-over. That would have been a lot more complicated at the silver jubilee in 1977!

And now to guest artist Natasha Key, who advises to not treat the milestone moments special – just set yourself a quick deadline and dive right in!

There are a few tricks that I use when scrapping on a deadline. First, sketches can be a lifesaver. It helps to give direction and limit the number of choices that you have to make. This page was based on a sketch from an online class by Kelly Purkey. Second, I like to work with a visual triangle, and repeat products with that triangle. Not having to think of each embellishment cluster from scratch really helps speed up my process. Lastly, I type my journaling. I could hand write it but I will redo it fifteen times and still not be happy. Typing it out allows me to say what I want to say and get it on the page quickly.

About the Artist
Natasha lives in Arkansas with her husband, Jason, and their son, Riley. Having a niece, Becca, that is a frequent visitor allows her to play with all ranges of pretty papers. You can find her at her blog.

Your twenty-fourth challenge is to scrapbook a milestone! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

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One of the side benefits of working with a series of guest posters is that sometimes their projects combine to teach me a big lesson. In this case, it was these two layouts, by Riikka Kovasin and Diana Besemer, that reminded me how fabulous it can be to really stretch the supplies we purchase – our scrapbooking investments! I’m relatively good at using a kit until all the paper and most everything else is gone, but I definitely have plenty of punches in my drawer despite using the same half-dozen all the time and lately I’ve been trying to remember the ‘use it while you love it rule’ applies to stamps as well as paper. I’ve just started boxing up some older stamps that I’m going to list on Ebay and I’m ashamed at how many stamp sets I’ve purchased then only used one stamp in the whole pack. Sometimes I play that stamp game just the same as paper – maybe I should use it yet because a better project will come up soon. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for paper really, but it makes zero sense for a stamp – or any tool that can be used more than once! Let it never be said that I am the most logical scrapbooker in the world, I tell you.

So for a little change of pace as we near the end of the day, two guests who taught me a lesson! I hope they inspire you to get the most from your investment too.

The first thing I did for this layout was to punch out a stencil for myself. I used a piece of scrap cardstock and punched large holes in it with a circle punch. I used some punched borders to create texture to the background, too. Both the punched out shapes and the negatives are used in this layout. It’s really time effective – at the same time you can make your patterned paper layers and embellishments! The papers also have delicate, airy feeling, like lace and the layers can be seen through each other. If you can’t reach to the middle of the paper with your punch, cover the solid parts and create an illusion of a piece totally punched.

The embellishments in this layout are also made with punches. I decorated the edge of washi tape with a border punch. The flowers are made with a scalloped circle punch. I cut four pieces of the patterned paper and cut the petals loose by clipping little slits from the edge towards the center. Then I attached the layers with a brad and bended the petals a little to create 3D effect. I used the little circles made from punching the punchinella type paper as confetti to finish the layout.

About the Artist
Riikka Kovasin is a Finnish mixed media style scrapbooker who lives in Helsinki with her husband and two daughters. She’s happiest when she can combine her love for the beautiful products with the possibility to get messy with different paint media. She also loves to experiment with different, non-scrapbooking related products.
You can find Riikka also on her blog as well as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

_When scrapbooking with only one picture there is enough space to get some extra use of your favourite paper, an extra long title or journaling. In this case, it’s the title I wanted to focus on, with a eye-catching effect but also something that would give me hope for my collection of supplies. By just spelling out one short word each from a variety of different packs of letter stickers, I could get more use from a sheet of stickers that wouldn’t spell a whole title. It takes more planning to get out all those sticker sheets and figure out which fonts can spell what words, but after that stage, it’s rewarding to get another word from a set of stickers that can’t spell much really!

About the Artist
Diana, who is married and mother of two children, lives in a small village in The Netherlands.
Since 10 years scrapbooking is a big part of her life. Occasionally she loves to make cards with the scraps laying around on her desk.
She designs for cardandscrap.nl , and have a blog where she post on a regularly basis.

Your twenty-third challenge is to stretch your supplies! That might mean using tools you often ignore (like lesser-used designs of punches perhaps, but other things like stamps could be your weakness) or it might be a consumable product like stickers or paper that can be used for a clever look even when you don’t have a full pack or a full sheet. Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

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So far I haven’t joined the camp of scrapbookers who take pretty much all their photos with their phone, but I do take plenty with it. It’s just that I take a zillion with my ‘proper’ camera too! Though I don’t post anything near all of my phone photos to Instagram, I do tend to edit the images to squares, or take them in Hipstamatic, which only shoots square photos. And yet, I didn’t quite realise that square images are definitely in the minority when it comes to my albums. Just trying to find examples for this post proved a bit more challenging than I expected.

I have been on a kick recently of using my Instagram images having ordered a pack of prints from Origrami, and I have them sitting at my desk so perhaps being surrounded by the square photos made me think more of them had appeared on my pages! The project that did include plenty of squares in one place was my journal from last December, and I liked how the small square images meant I could still include plenty of photos even with the smaller page size. Useful!

Interestingly enough, the very first Glitter Girl Adventure featured a square photo, and I remember our discussion that this factor alone could make or break whether people were going to like the series! We had a lot of worried discussions in the weeks before making Glitter Girl live, actually. Maybe just a little overthinking, possibly due to my enthusiasm for a pretty oddball idea and then my surprise when my boss thought it sounded like a good idea. (Well, that’s what she said. It could have been that she was thinking something else entirely, like ‘where do I find these oddballs?’ but she was more polite about it than that!) Speaking of the boss…

And now for guest artist Kristina Nicolai-White, who is definitely pro-square when it comes to photos.

_I am addicted to square photos. Once I got my iPhone and started using the Hipstamatic app, I was done for. I was taking photos with it constantly. I grew even more enthralled with the arrival of Instagram. At this point, even if I am not instagramming my photo, I am still editing them in an app or program and cropping them into a square. There is just something that feels so right about it.
As a result, I have a lot of edited photos that are square. I really like the way they look on a scrapbook layout. (No surprise. I think I would like them anywhere really). I am an 8.5×11 scrapbooker, and I can fit two 4×4 inch square photos across the middle. If I do a two page layout, which I usually am doing, I like to do 4 across. If you are doing a 12×12 page, you can nicely fit three 4 inch photos across. or you can fit nine on the whole page._

_All of the photos I printed for this page, which I knew was going to be about how I capture pieces of life with my iPhone camera, turned out to have no people in them. I had not done that intentionally, but I really liked it once I realized that I had been doing that. For me, it really adds to my feeling that I really do capture every piece of my everyday, of my life, whether there are people around or not.
I used two plain kraft card stock sheets as the starting point for this line of photos. I created layers of papers and other bits to lift and accent the photos. I used the heavier pattern—the thick black and white stripe on the bottom to create the weight there rather than at the top. Most of the product used is neutral, grays, whites, cream, tans and a little black. I used the red pieces in the lower left corner, hoping that your eye is drawn to the orange in the farther upper right corner and then to the aqua in the lower right. All of the bits and pieces that contain words create somewhat of a sentiment if read all together. Capturing little moments that happen, awesome this & that._

About the Artist
Kristina Nicolai-White has been scrapbooking and memory keeping in various forms for most of her life. Founding and owning the online scrapbooking company Two Peas in a Bucket has kept her active and part of the scrapbooking industry for more than fifteen years. Kristina loves using her iPhone to document the craziness of her everyday life with three active teenage children, two giant dogs and her high school sweetheart husband. Her work is usually full of color, products and blurry photos. You can find more of Kristina’s work in her Two Peas gallery, of course, and her new blog We Blow Kisses.

Your twenty-second challenge is to scrap with squares! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

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Whatever did we do before divided page protectors? I am not exactly sure. I didn’t sit around thinking I needed my page protectors divided into handy-dandy pockets, but they do seem to come in ever so useful that now I wouldn’t want to give them up.

I’m particularly fond of using them to go back to existing layouts and improve them with a bit more writing or supporting photos – or sometimes using them right alongside the process in a case like this where the photo is large but the story is also of significant length. The divided page protector makes room for both of those plus pretty paper and embellishment. Happy times!

Glitter Girl has a few tips for using divided page protectors to help with stacks of photos that you really want to get into your albums, and I applaud her doing that because well… that stack of a thousand photos she mentions in this video isn’t really shrinking much despite all the layouts I’ve made! Turns out a thousand is a pretty big number when it comes to photos to scrap. (Please see this page for further details on this Glitter Girl Adventure.)

And now for guest artist Linda Auclair, who is going a bit meta and scrapbooking about scrapbooking!

On National Scrapbooking Day a unique opportunity to interact with scrapbookers from around the world, unconstrained by the limits of packing and travel, is merely a click or two away. Participating in online challenges is one of the highlights of the holiday for me. I enjoy working with a set of guidelines defined by the challenger and find it incredibly freeing. Having an organized worktable and a variety of photos printed and ready to go are an advantage if there is a time limit involved – working within a specific “kit” of favorite products and papers that are close to hand makes it even easier. I have been working with divided pages a lot this year; creating weekly Project Life pages using a wide range of products specifically designed for this scrapbooking format alongside my favorite “traditional” products. My page for this challenge uses Echo Park Paper’s Photo Freedom collection, Happy Go Lucky. The addition of buttons, washi tape and twine personalizes the pre-printed elements and lets me tell my story without a lot of fuss. I embellished my scrapbook room photos with stickers and phrases from the collection. It always surprises me how quickly my divided page layouts come together, and I attribute that to being able to focus on one 4 ×6 section of the page at a time. My scrapbooking mantra has been “Glue and Go!” for a long time, and this format makes that philosophy a reality.

About the Artist
Linda Auclair has always loved pretty paper. Long before the scrapbooking hobby took over her life, she kept illustrated journals with photos and clippings. One of her favorite jobs was in the Product Development department of a greeting card company. Working with all those great artists, colors and textures drew her into the paper-crafting medium, and once the hobby took hold, there was no turning back. In the past decade, she has had the opportunity to work for a variety of companies, such as Fiskars, Creative Imaginations, Epiphany Crafts, and her current Design Team post at Echo Park Paper, as well as a number of online retailers. You can follow Linda via her blog and Pinterest.

Your twenty-first challenge is to divide your page! It might be with a divided page protector, but you could also use the idea of a blocked page design to inspire your work on a standard 12×12 or 8.5×11 page too. Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

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