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

There may be no fireworks in my part of the world right now, but we can all embrace a bit of starstruck love. There is no such thing as too many stars in your stash, right? This week, I challenge you this week to go overboard with stars. Start with one, add a few more, and then let the stars just take over! Everything in your design is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Leigh Ann Odynski and guest artist Sherry Coogan.

I had so much fun seeing how many stars I could get on the page for this week’s “Go Overboard with Stars” challenge.

For the first layer of stars, I used Whipped Spackle texture paste, and a Silhouette cut file to create a star stencil.

Then I layered several other textures in star shapes as shown. When you look through your own stash, think about vellum, patterned paper, stamps, stickers, and embellishments like the acrylic stars. In the photo above I used an X-acto knife to trim around the acrylic star, and don’t you love how it is adhesive backed like a sticker? I do!

Next, I wanted to create more dimension, so I used the Counting Stars cut file from the Cut Shoppe, and backed it with True Stories and Starshine papers. Make sure to leave some of the stars open to add another layer of interest.

Using the Minc Machine to add gold foil to the Starshine cards created more texture on the page and repeats the star shape. Going for lots of repetition here!

Next some stamping near the three embellishment clusters around the page in navy and aqua for another layer of stars!

Here you can see a close up of the title and photo layers. The Fitzgerald Thickers are a favorite font of mine. Stitching down the vellum stars with a zig zag stitch, and adding the punched cork stars, gave lots of interest to the page with a variety of textures.

Choosing to add the stars in different textures around the page was a lot of fun! How many different layers of this repeating shape can you get on your layout? I can’t wait to see what you all have to share, and your take on this challenge!

Have fun!
- Leigh Ann

Stars are one of my favorite design elements, in scrapbooking, and a July 4th layout is the perfect opportunity to use them. Shimelle’s Starshine collection was the starting point for this layout, along with a cut file from The Cut Shoppe. to make the background.

I backed the die cut background with a fun mix of patterned papers and popped up the collage of photos to let the photos shine. A few acrylic stars were scattered across the layout. I used puffy letter stickers for the title. I love this layout for many reasons; especially seeing the changes in my children throughout the years.
- Sherry

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Sherry Coogan loves creating, pretty paper, and paint. You can find more from Sherry on Instagram, YouTube, and her blog.

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This week’s scrapbooking challenge comes from one of my favourite guests posts in our archives: a washi technique from Tegan Skwiat. While Tegan shares steps for creating the look above, this is a challenge that allows for following directions or going off on a complete artistic tangent.

This week, I challenge you this week to take inspiration from those colourful borders. Follow the same look or just let the idea take on its own format on your own desk. To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Gina Lideros and guest artist Anna Bradshaw.

I’m excited to share my challenge project with you today! I chose to take my inspiration from the supplies rather than keeping it contained to a border. This is a great way to give new life to your tapes and punches. To create my project first, I picked out an assortment of decorative tapes that coordinated well with the papers and embellishments that I wanted to use.

Then I tore two pieces of decorative tape and adhered them to a scrap of white cardstock in a horizontal pattern. Next I punched out circles using a one inch circle punch. This is the fun part where you can get creative – I repeated this step and punched out different washi designs using an assortment of patterns. I also punched out an assortment of patterned papers using different sized circle punches.

Once all of my shapes were punched, I adhered them to a pattern paper background. I used stamps, ink, paint, and hand embroidery around the title to complete my page.

Tip – don’t limit yourself to just red, white, and blue when working with Fourth of July layouts. Fireworks are colorful so your projects can be too! Instead of working with just one collection, I chose to bring in coordinating papers and elements from three of Shimelle’s collections.

I hope this challenge allows you to get creative with decorative tape and get creative with your punches too, whether you create a border, an embellishment, or an explosion of color across your page.
- Gina

After a recent washi-swap, I came home with a clear but now colorful acetate sheet of shared tape strips, and, while staring at a handful of manufacturer’s branding strips that happened to be lying near my photo, inspiration struck; I could use a few manual punches to create some custom embellishments with meaningful-to-me layers on this page documenting a recent road trip with my family.

Alternating branding strips from the Simple Stories’ I Am collection with WeR Memory Keepers aptly named Road Trip, and even a few from Shimelle’s first delightful line of papers, I also punched some sentimentally appropriate hearts in a variety of sizes from a wide gold polka dot pattern of tape and the new We Are Family washi tape strips, also from Simple Stories. A popular EK Success border punch with a thinner black and white polka dot washi pattern grounds that busy block at the bottom of my page. It’s awesome when we can use those tried and true tools and still get excited, no?

In Tegan’s example she used plain paper to back her tape before punching, and I’ll be honest, the clear acetate sheet as a punching mount did not give me a clean look – but I’m okay with that. Just like using ephemera and products with brand names that relate to my story, having a bit of the imperfect represented on this layout reminds me more of my “why” for celebrating this fun day alongside my mom and brother with a place in my scrapbook. It was our first road trip together, just the three of us, in ages, and I enjoyed it so much. The bouts of unrestrained laughter, seeing my brother trying not to enjoy making greeting cards and shopping for scrapbooking supplies, the unwanted advice-giving…yep, these are the perfectly imperfect moments that I want to remember in my family’s (many, many) albums.
- Anna

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Anna Bradshaw loves where she lives, teaching, and being with her biggest source of inspiration: family. You can find more from Anna on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and her blog.

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a specifically colourful challenge, and it’s also been a while since I’ve seen much other than a grey, grey sky. I’m ready for summer colour! I’ll take it only scrapbook pages if I can’t find outside my window. How about you?

This colour wheel may come in quite handy this week, and you can find a larger version to print if you would like one for your desk. A colour wheel is definitely not required for scrapbooking and scrapbooking collections tend to have carefully considered colour schemes anyway, so you can choose a mix of colours from a paper or embellishment and they will certainly look beautiful together. But it can be fun to start from scratch and take control of the colour and even know a little about why we’re drawn to certain tones together, and that’s where the colour wheel comes in useful.

We’ll talk more about colour in some other posts this week too, but for now, let’s start with just the challenge! This week, I challenge you this week to scrapbook with split complementary colours. Split complementary means choosing one colour to start, then going straight across the wheel to the opposing colour and instead of that central colour, choosing the one either side. If you started with red, you’d go across the wheel and have yellow-green and blue-green. If you started with yellow, you’d pair it with blue-violet and red-violet. You can start with any colour you like, go across and choose the two either side and they will always work well together, but they are colour combinations we don’t always head toward for scrapbook pages. Everything else about your page design is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Meghann Andrew and guest artist Daphne Wuenn Rihm.

I always find it easy to work with a chosen color scheme when those colors are apparent in the photo- the photo and the product I’ve selected just work together seamlessly that way. As soon as I saw this photo of my mother and daughter sitting on the beach, under a brightly colored beach towel, I immediately saw the split complementary color scheme (meaning the two colors adjacent to the complement of a given color) in the blue, reddish-orange and yellow-orange stripes in the towel.

Armed with my trusty color wheel, I got to work choosing product based upon those colors.

Instead of working with a complementary color scheme, which allows for two colors, this color scheme offers three colors and an interesting variation from the typical blue and orange combination. All of the product on this page reinforces my color scheme, down to the golden-toned woodgrain alpha that I used in my title, and everything works to support the colors found in my photo, creating a harmonious page, documenting a great day on the beach.
- Meghann

I am a big fan of bold colours combined with great patterns – this always makes my heart beat a bit faster! No change for this layout. I chose three colours from the split complementary colour scheme as a starting point: pinkish-red, turquoise-blue and greenish-yellow.

The inspiration to pick these bold colours came from the photos, which are from a recent walk along the cliff top in the South of the UK, just about 10 minutes from where I currently live.

I started building up my layout with a geometrical-patterned background, layered the turquoise and the red on top, with the green strips behind the three polaroid-style photos. When I first put the papers together, the red seemed too overwhelming on its own, so I looked out for a stamp which I could use to create my own patterned paper. Shimelle’s globe stamp from the Starshine collection was the perfect candidate for this purpose!

The three embellishment clusters are scattered with hearts in different shapes and appearances, I even found this paper washi tape with hearts in my stash!

I also wanted to include my love for photography and added some cameras: The strip behind the photos is from True Stories and the little camera badge next to the title is from Starshine.

The journaling found its way onto the layout, just before I added some ink sprinkles and scattered tiny epoxy hearts.
- Daphne

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Daphne Wuenn Rihm loves frothy cappuccinos, walking along the beach for hours, and maths. You can find more from Daphne on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and her blog.

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Welcome to a new week and a new challenge! Have you been scrapping much recently or could you do with a push to get a page off the ground? This week’s challenge is a great one for finally putting a paper you love into your album, because you won’t have to worry about covering it too much with everything else.

I challenge you this week to scrapbook using just a third of the page. Imagine your page divided into a 3×3 grid, like a # symbol, then choose just one row or one column. Vertical and horizontal both work. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! The design above is shown in more detail with a video, if that’s useful help. It uses about a third of the page, though you’ll notice some elements do extend and that’s okay, of course! Make it work for your style and your albums. To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Sheena Rowlands and guest artist Antonia Sherlock.

Here in England we never get as many sunny days as we would like, but when we do we tend to make the most of them, spending time in our gardens, eating picnics, and having barbecues.

For this page I wanted to emulate the blanket shown in this photo of my eldest son eating al fresco. I used many of the branding strips from both the Starshine and True Stories collections, and wove them together to create a large mat for my photo and title on just the left third of the page

As I felt this page was already busy enough, I created a little vellum pocket behind my photo to hold journalling with the date and place details, which can be viewed using the clip and camera as its tab.
- Sheena

This photo of my daughter having cream tea with her best friend in our back garden last summer captures such a special memory of a perfect day and I really wanted to do justice to it on my layout. I knew I wanted to use a floral paper for the background, but I was worried about the photo getting completely drowned out by the busy pattern. So I used a trick I picked up from this Glitter Girl video. I chose the B side of the Exploration paper from the Starshine collection to counterbalance the business of the floral paper.

I worked across the top third of the page. As the space I was using was limited, I put the photo, title, and journaling next to each other, overlapping at times. I arranged the embellishments (the teacups, epoxy buttons, and the word stickers) to form jagged horizontal lines to allow the eyes to travel from photo to title to journaling. I used my Silhouette and Minc machines to create the larger teacup with the foiled title, and then incorporated it into the embellishment.

I could have left it at that, but the layout felt quite top-heavy, so I added a small embellishment cluster to the bottom of the page for balance.
- Antonia

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Antonia Sherlock loves spending time with her family, scrapping the memories, and having cream tea (well, coffee). You can find more from Antonia on Instagram, and Pinterest.

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Since February, each week’s challenge has gone out in advance to one of the eight contributing designers and one guest artist. Then I have the exciting part of opening their emails to see what they made! But this week’s really made me chuckle. I had guessed which direction they would go and I was so wrong! Their layouts are brilliant but very different to where my mind went with this challenge. So now I’m extra curious to see where you’ll take this challenge!

This week, we’re working with something from the archives. I challenge you this week to take inspiration from this scrapbook page sketch. There’s a video and two sample pages in that post, if that gives you a bit of extra help. How you take inspiration is completely up to you, so you can go in any direction you like! Will you work with the idea of a list of favourites or focus on the design elements? To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Sheena Rowlands and guest artist Heidi Cocca.

I’ve always been a fan of sketches & I particularly liked the layered shapes on the right of the photo in this sketch. I thought it would be perfect to use lots of the die cut shapes, stickers, and journaling cards from both the Starshine and True Stories ranges to complement my photo choice.

I used a 6×4 portrait photo instead of two landscape and gathered all the elements to it allowing more of the lovely background paper to show. The die cuts provide a subtitle for my photo and I’ve written my journalling on the back of this layout as I feel there is enough going on on the front.
- Sheena

When new supplies arrive, I group them into small layout kits, including the photos, so I don’t forget what I had intended when I purchase it. But then what? This is where a sketch can come in handy, helping me pull together the materials that I’ve selected with the photo or photos that I want to include on the layout. The best part about sketches is that they are completely reusable, as two layouts using the same sketch will never look the same.

In Shimelle’s layout, Thai Style, she started with two landscape 4×6 photos, but I decided to go with a portrait 5×7 photo. Similar to Shimelle’s layout, I had one block of patterned paper that included all of the colors of the layout, and then brought those colors out in the embellishment cluster that runs through the middle of the page. As a nod to the 2013 style of the original page, I did round my corners and inked the edges of the patterned papers, but then I put a more modern spin on it by including some ink splashes and faux enamel dots.
- Heidi

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Heidi Cocca loves her two boys (well three, if you count her husband too!), coffee and traveling anywhere and everywhere. You can find more from Heidi on Instagram, and Twitter.

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I’m busy in the classroom at the moment as we continue with the new Scrapbook Process class this month, but I’m delighted to share this fab Starshine scrapping project with you today, created by guest artist Paula Brown!

My most prized possession has to be my smart phone, you can pretty much always find me with it on my person. It’s not just my phone. It’s my camera, diary, phone book, anniversary and birthday check, a note pad, a reading book, a radio, mp3 player, alarm clock, encyclopaedia… in fact it does almost everything but most importantly it keeps me in touch with one of my most dearest friends in Australia no matter where I am (with no huge bill attached). With that in mind, I think it deserves a place in my scrapbook album!

I used the Shimelle Starshine range as my starting block as I wanted to document a particular reason why it’s so special, the map print seemed right. I mainly stuck with this range of supplies but did add in a few extra pieces from American Crafts, Hero Arts, Studio Calico, Paper Artsy, and Simple Stories. I clustered three areas of interested with two photographs and one shaker mobile phone embellishment made from a die and stamps, which folds out to show hidden journalling inside.

Underneath each small cluster I had stamped hearts and mini paper aeroplanes to add more detail and interested to the layout, I thought the paper planes added a ‘flow’ round the layout from the top left photographs round to the left then back to the bottom right cluster. Inside the mobile shaker, I stamped and cut emoji faces and text speak rather than just including the usual sequins or small beads.

I love using hidden journalling on a layout, especially when I have lots to say and it’s particularly heartfelt. It’s a great place to pour feelings out that you might not want everyone to read and that’s okay because once it’s in a page protector not many people would realise it’s there!
- Paula

Today’s Guest Artist: Paula Brown loves Mondays, anything creative, and going to the gym. You can find more from Paula on Instagram, and Twitter.

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Happy Monday! We have a new challenge for your scrapbooking this week! But first tell us: do you use stamps or do you just… collect stamps? This week, we definitely want to put your collection to use!

I challenge you this week to stamp a frame. It can be something quite literal like a frame-shaped stamp or it can be any stamp design added to the page in a way that frames a photo, title, or journaling. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! The stamped frames above have a full tutorial you can see in the archives, but to get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Meghann Andrew and guest artist Anastasia Muratova.

Stamping is a staple technique that I use on every layout, but typically for words, phrases or titles. On this layout, I used watercolored and stamped wave images to emphasize the importance of this photo of me as a child on the beach, by creating a frame.

To keep the “beachy” feel of the layout, I stuck with pink, orange, yellow and blue tones, and used watercolor paper to create the soft background for my stamped images. To keep the emphasis on my framed photo, I left the embellishment simple, using a few stamped stars, wood veneer, stickers and enamel hearts. The “sunny, sandy, happy” stamp was inked in three colors, stamped onto a watercolored background, cut out and placed on top of the negative space on the right side of my photo.
- Meghann

Once upon a time many years ago we used film to take photos. And then we took it to photolabs to be developed and printed. A friend of mine was learning photography and she needed a model for a photoshoot. So one (very) sunny day we set off to explore the city and chase shadows. She used black and white film and then she developed and printed the photos herself. Some of those photos turned out to be of my all time favourites, like this one.

When I saw True Stories collection I knew it would work perfecty with this photo. The colours are bright, but also a bit muted by memory and time, with numbers and cameras and text strips to cut out. I used number paper because it reminded of years passing so quickly. It also made me think of Goethe’s famous quote: “Stay a while! You are so lovely!” – and I added it as a title.

But the challenge task was to make a stamped frame for my photo. I lightly marked the frame with a pencil and then stamped words and dots and arrows along the lines. In the end I coloured the butterfly with watercolour pencils. To finish the page I added flowers I cut out from another True Stories paper and rub-ons and enamel dots from my stash. I love the end result and I love that I could use so much red, because it’s balanced with black and white.
- Anastasia

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Anastasia Muratova loves summer, books and all shades of blue. You can find more from Anastasia on her blog.

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With nine challenges over the NSD weekend and our usual Monday spot, you have ten challenges to keep you scrapbooking this week! All of these are open until the end of this coming weekend – you can always check the time remaining on the link up button. Though of course you can use the challenges for your own scrapping fun any time!

If you weren’t around at the weekend, here’s a quick guide to those nine:
Scrap with fabric or lace
Add stamped images to your photos
Repeat a shape on your page
Use 3×4 cards on a 12×12 page
Make a messy background
Scrap some scenery
Scrapbook with shaped paperclips
Scrapbook with woodgrain patterns
Scrapbook with red and blue

And now, on to the challenge for this week! This week, I challenge you this week to scrapbook with square photos. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! Some sketch posts from the archives might be useful, like this and this, and the complete page for the photo above can be found here! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Meghann Andrew and guest artist Nancy Sinclair.

I am a major foodie, so taking photos of our eating adventures, whether home or away, is a must! A lot of the restaurants that we visit may not be conducive to snapping quality food photos, so I also try to remember our meal with photos of the outside of the restaurant or a focal wall that stands out inside the restaurant. On a trip to Boston recently, we had some awesome eating experiences, so I wanted to document our top four from the trip.

I love, love square photos, and using 3” x 3” photos allows me to easily fit four different photos neatly either vertically or horizontally across the page. To remember each of our favorite food experiences from our trip, I added small journaling labels to the left side of each photo and documented what we loved about each spot.
- Meghann

I loved the willow patterned cups that were at a small tea room that I took my mum to for Mother’s day, and I knew that I had to get a shot of them with the amazing massive slices of carrot cake. I like capturing these small details of bigger memories, like spending the day with my mum and catching up on life. Food photos are things I scrap a lot as well as include in my Project Life.

I love a busy background and the more patterns and colour the better. I grounded the bright Jillibean Soup Hello Healthy background with some inking through template and some Kelly Purkey coffee themed stamps. I then layered papers from the Galileo paper from the Starshine collection and it works great for creating multiple layers behind my photos.

I also used stickers from the original Shimelle collection which I’ve been hoarding in my stash for a long time, and it works perfectly on this page. I added some Jillibean Soup wood veener and some old flair from my stash to finish.
- Nancy

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

Today’s Guest Artist: Nancy Sinclair loves paper, crochet, and sarcasm. You can find more from Nancy on Instagram and YouTube.

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