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

Today I’m delighted to welcome back Mendi Yoshikawa, with the first in a new series of Inspired By posts! These guest bloggers have chosen their favourite posts from the shimelle.com archives and created something new to share with you as a result. (Don’t worry, I still have layouts and videos to share too, but there is room for a few guests so we can get back to a lovely balance of always having something to show you!) I hope you enjoy these new twists on something you may or may not have seen, and I’d love for you share what you’re inspired to create.

Take it away, Mendi!

For my layout I was really inspired by Shimelle’s Sketch Twenty-Five. I love the grid design with the little blocks and how they can be used for either photos or paper. As it happens, I only had one photo for this particular page so I chose to use them for some embellishments and show off more of the pretty papers that I had purchased for my page. In fact as I was working, I felt like I hadn’t used quite enough of that paper so I chose to continue the grid and add another row of squares to the top and bottom which bleed off my page. I love how doing this also helped ground my page.

I was short on extra matching embellishments for my squares so I decided to fashion my own by punching holes around a simple heart die-cut with my paper piercer. I then took a needle and some embroidery floss to stitch my trio of hearts. When I was done I decided I might as well keep going and added the cross stitch border down each side. While it can be a bit time consuming, I was able to do all my stitching in just over an hour while I watched some TV with the family, and I love the texture it gives.

I knew I wanted to use the large pale blue letters for my title, but I didn’t have quite enough room for them over the top of my photo like the sketch called for so I decided to flip the locations of the title and the journaling which worked beautifully. I would have loved to type my journaling over the top of my photo before printing it, but unfortunately my photo had already been printed beforehand so as a solution I printed my journaling on vellum and used 3M Spray Mount (US // UK). I love how this product covers the entire surface so there are no adhesive lines to hide. I hope I’ve inspired you to take another look at all of Shimelle’s wonderful sketches. She has so many great ones to get your creative mojo going.

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 Scrapbook.com

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Dusting the stress along with the cobwebs this Monday morning and moving forward after last week’s news. It was just ten days ago that I posted a weekend of scrapbooking challenges, and yet it seems like another world! So I’ve taken some time to get back to those projects, and the challenges are open for your submissions until today. (The link up tool at the end of each post tells you how much time is left, so that’s the easiest way to see it in your timezone!)

This sketch was the post that kicked off those three days of challenges, with Corrie Jones supplying the first interpretation. Find that post here to share your page inspired by this sketch.

I realise I’ve always encouraged my readers to use the gallery at Two Peas as a place to upload your pages, and that’s all a little awkward as I write this. I haven’t come close to fully exploring the options for other places to share your work. There are page galleries at many scrapbooking sites, including Scrapbook.com and Studio Calico. You can upload and share via your own blog or Instagram account. There are options to try.

If you are interested in preserving your entire Two Peas gallery, you may be interested in this announcement that would copy all your uploads to the gallery elsewhere. I haven’t tried this so I can’t say from experience how easy it was, but have a look to see if it is something you might find helpful. I know many of us have layout galleries that provide an interesting look at our evolution as crafters.

Here’s my interpretation of this simple sketch, and a return to that original idea I mentioned that a patterned paper could remain largely on show and the rest of the page could be made with just scraps from other papers. This page was made with the last papery bits of my kit from last August, which brings me to something else that is changing – my product links have always gone to Two Peas and that will be a lot of links to change. It also means I don’t have a nice and easy way to post a Best of Both Worlds kit tomorrow, of course. I have some investigating to do as I want to make sure I am happy with any retailers I recommend, so I appreciate your patience as I find the best way forward. Of course you can find products via a search of Google or your store of choice, so this layout was made from Carta Bella’s Hello Again and Fancy Pants’ What a Wonderful Day collections, plus stickers from Dear Lizzy’s Lucky Charm line.

If you’ve created layouts from the weekend challenges, I hope you’ll share them with us! Find those challenges here.

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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

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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 .

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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