When I saw the bold background of hearts across this layout by Jill Sprott, I thought she had stamped one design over and over then filled in a few of the hearts with markers. I thought this was a great idea and made a mental note to look for a stamp in my own collection that could be repeated in a similar way. And then when I scrolled down to the supplies, I felt really silly. It’s not stamped: it’s a printed and flocked transparency by Fancy Pants. And I only felt silly because I have actually held that very transparency in my hands, yet somehow I just didn’t recognise it on Jill’s page at all. Either way, I love the look. (And I’m still going to try the repeated stamp idea sometime soon.)
So here’s a challenge for those of you who like something a bit more prescriptive: scrapbook two photos on a bold background! You can scraplift Jill’s page directly or you can create an original design. As long as there are two pictures and the background is something that isn’t fading into the distance, you’re onto a win!
Your background can be a bold patterned paper, a bright and bold colour, a stamped design… just nothing pale and minimal!
To enter this challenge, create a new project inspired by Jill’s layout, with a bold background and two photos. The rest of the design is up to you! Whenever you’re finished, leave a link to your project to enter this challenge. Entries close at the end of next weekend.
I love the concept of inspiration points: looking at a scrapbook page you like and identifying different points that could inspire something of your own. It can be anything from something small, like seeing a layout with pink and suddenly feeling like you would love to create a pink project to scraplifting the placement of all the elements of the page.
I’ve been coming back to this page by Wilna Furstenberg in my bookmarks, thinking I loved the design but worrying that I wouldn’t like something I might make like this with my own photo because the picture makes it extra amazing. The expression of joy on her daughter’s face is just fabulous! But in coming back to the idea of inspiration points, I thought maybe I could give it a try after all… and I would love for you to give it a whirl with your own choice of points!
There are so many things you can identify on Wilna’s page and use just one, a few or a whole bundle. I started with the combination of the white cardstock, the side strips and the panoramic landscape photo, even though I didn’t have a beautiful picture like her page. (By the way, if you’re starting to see a theme in these layouts, you’re not wrong, and all will be explained before the weekend is out!)
Now it’s your turn: take a little or a lot from Wilna’s page. You could easily adapt this design to include two landscape 4×6 pictures instead of one large print. You could try the tone on tone punches that I didn’t put to use on my page. Adapt as much as you like to make it work with your own style, photos and pages!
To enter this challenge, create a new project taking at least one point of inspiration from Wilna’s scrapbook page. Upload it to a gallery or your blog and leave a link on this post. Entries close at the end of next weekend!
How about a colourful challenge this morning? But instead of giving you a set combination to follow, it’s a bit like a choose-your-own-colour-adventure. So don’t be scared from this little preview: I promise you don’t have to work with purple unless you choose to do so!
Instead, your challenge is to scrapbook with yellow, grey and one other colour of your choice. Yellow and grey has been a fashionable combination for a couple years, and this year I’m loving how designers have started to inject other colours with this combination to keep it fresh and new. Yellow and grey look great with turquoise, pink, red, navy… so many different looks. For this older Easter photo, I went with purple (you can see the supplies here, at the bottom of the page). As I obviously don’t have a clear memory of the moment captured in the picture – and I also don’t have lots of photos from Easters growing up – I used this page to record a variety of jumbled Easter memories from childhood, even if they didn’t come from this particular year.
For this challenge, you have two chances to win from just one layout! Two Peas are also making this their challenge of the week, so if you upload your page to the gallery there and tick the box for that challenge, you can also be entered to win a gift certificate there.
Speaking of which, how about a special discount for shopping at Two Peas? Throughout the crop, you can fill up your bucket, then when you check out, enter code SHMRCKS to receive a special bonus: you’ll get free domestic shipping off an order of $50, but even more exciting, you’ll get an extra discount for your next offer – $5 of a $50 order or $10 off an order of $100. Perfect to order something now then look forward to more new things later, knowing you can take that discount off the top! (Thank you so much for shopping at Two Peas through my links: it is what makes it possible to hold events like this. I earn a small percentage of the orders placed through my links, and that’s what pays for the hosting costs of the website and for all the prizes and special guests that come as part of the weekend! I love that I can share it back out with all of you who come to read my little corner of the web.)
To enter for a chance to win here, create a new project in yellow, grey and one other colour of your choice, then upload it to a page gallery or your blog and leave a link below. Entries close at the end of next weekend.
This week Glitter Girl is on a mission to help you get more pages from the older supplies you’ve saved for a rainy day, by finding current collections that complement some of your old favourites. This all started with this message board thread about Love, Elsie papers, but Glitter Girl threw in a few other favourites too, like Narratives and Scenic Route.
In this adventure, Glitter Girl put together several page kits mixing old and new supplies, but she only made one layout in the video. Don’t worry: she let me take the page kits when she was done, and those layouts will all be shown as part of this weekend’s online crop! Plus you can view all the product selections mentioned in the video here – just scroll down below the video. (You can also find the video she mentioned on creating a loose line of embellishments on that page.)
For this page, I mixed older papers from two different Love, Elsie collections with brand new collections like Amy Tangerine Sketchbook, the latest Studio Calico stamps and some new Heidi Swapp letter stickers. The layout itself is an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a few weeks – the idea that someday people will see photos from this era and see certain things that just suddenly were normal in pictures – like holding your phone in front of a mirror. In this case it was to share a sewing project I’d just made, although the writing on this page is about how that will seem a bit funny that all of the sudden pictures taken in mirrors with a visible phone or camera would be quite normal, it was the link between the project in the photo (this tutorial featured on Elsie Larson’s blog) that made me think of the Elsie shelf on my paper rack. Of course, no one other than scrappers themselves could ever make that connection, but that’s okay: it’s just how I got from A to B.
(For the record, that sewing project is even easier than it looks. I ended up using a fine-gauge, light-weight knit sweater, so I couldn’t leave the neckline as unstructured as the tutorial. I cut off the neckline then stitched it back on, with some pink satin piping between the two. I just used one doily – I stitched it once while whole, trimmed of the third that was over the edge and stitched that piece into place, then reattached the collar with the piping in between. The starting and ending spot for the piping wasn’t completely tidy, so I stitched a button over the top to hide it. And people always comment on the button being so cute, which cracks me up. It is only there because I messed up, really. Please keep my secret.)
Looking for more examples of pages that mix old and new collections? You can find a list of links here.
Now it’s your turn! What older collections have you been keeping for something special? This week Glitter Girl challenges you to mix your older supplies with something more current. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This week, Glitter Girl’s scrapbooking challenge was something very specific: how can we embellish pages without using premade embellishments that can quickly add up if you’re scrapping on a budget or just don’t like their look? And the answer is my staple product: patterned paper!
In this week’s video, Glitter Girl shares two layouts: one that makes an embellishment similar to something you might buy and another that depends more on the mix of colour and pattern in paper scraps than any specific embellishments added on top.
This video starts with a look at the new collections from LilyBee – so lovely! Layout one starts at 5:28 and layout two at 14:59, if you’re stuck for time. You can find all the new LilyBee products (plus the new Thickers I used and a variety of brads that would work for pinwheels) here. Just scroll down to the bottom of that page to shop!
While my reload of kraft cardstock is in transit, I’ve switched back to some older travel photos, including these two shots from our honeymoon. I’m already stunned at how young we look in the pictures! I don’t remember us getting any older in the last few years, so how on earth could this have happened? Or perhaps everyone just looks young on honeymoon. Do you think it would work if we booked a trip now and just called it a honeymoon? I am totally willing to do this as research for all scrappy girls out there who would appreciate looking extra young and happy in their photos.
Does this page format look a little familiar? That’s because it started in the same place as this page, but I wanted to take the challenge of creating a similar design but without any stamps or premade embellishments that drove up the ‘price’ of making the layout. Stamps and punches are tricky when it comes to questions like this. They are far more expensive than patterned paper and a fair bit more expensive than most premade embellishment packs, but they can be used so many times that their price per page can end up so much less. Seems like the best plan is to have a few of these little investments but to be very sure it’s the shape or design you will love to use on plenty of projects and not tire of at the sight of a new trend. But for this page, they were out of bounds, and the only thing that is really an embellishment is cut from a sheet of patterned paper – and the rest of the page is made entirely from patterned paper scraps.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to create a project using just patterned paper for embellishment – nothing premade allowed. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This week Glitter Girl comes across some multiphoto mayhem, spurred on by this discussion of ideas for scrapping plenty of travel photos. Her adventure takes a look at various strategies she has used in a travel album plus creating a page using the divided page protectors from We R Memory Keepers.
Come along for the adventure, won’t you?
Depending on how long you’ve been reading (or watching?) you’ll have seen more or less of that album at the beginning, but this gives you a look at how the first volume is coming together. I’m currently on three full albums and need to start the fourth as this one is a bit overstuffed for my liking right now! But I’m just keeping all the pages in chronological order of our nearly-four-month adventure, and adding a divider page whenever we cross a border into a new country. Or at least that is the general idea: I’ve actually only made two of those divider pages and I’ll need ten more, but I’m not in any rush so it’s okay, right?
You may also start to see why I was in a panic recently when I realised I was completely out of kraft cardstock. When I had last stocked up, I bought 250 sheets. But it turns out, it is possible to burn through that much in about five months if you use it constantly. (Not to worry, have now reordered!)
You can find all the supplies and plenty of divided page protector options here. And of course you can use this same design as a sketch on a 12×12 page without the fancy page protector – just use three portrait 4×6 photos along the bottom and work with the 6×12 space at the top separately. Either way, you end up with four 4×6 images on a 12×12 page, plus room for title, writing and embellishment.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to try this four photo design – either with the special page protector or on a 12×12 page. Take a photo of your project and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
A little digest of news from the Garden Girls – on the twenty-second of the month, we bring you Gardeners’ Digest, a blog-hop style wrap up of our favourite projects and products at Two Peas in a Bucket. If you’ve just arrived from Nancy’s blog, then hello hello! (And if you’re just starting here, you can following it around, of course!)
First a little behind the scenes look at something you’ll find shortly at Two Peas. Any guesses on what aventure this may have started? All to be discovered next Wednesday!
This month I’ve found myself clicking on all of Amy Heller’s pages to see all the details she packs in to each design. I don’t think I’ve ever met an Amy page I didn’t like! You can find her gallery here. Be sure to click that with a bit of time on your hands, because you’ll find plenty to add to your bookmarks!
Another little new thing at Two Peas that isn’t a product: lots of people said they wanted a place to follow the Two Peas blog in a super easy format, so you can now find the Two Peas blog here at Typepad, so it’s nice and easy to add to your subscriptions! (If you read on the Two Peas site, no problem as you’ll find it there too!)
Three things for you:
First, leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas. Easy! Enter before the end of next Thursday (the 29th of March) and the winner will be posted on the following Friday (the 30th).
Second, there are three giveaways that end tonight, so find them here, here and here so you’re in it to win it! Those will all be announced here tomorrow night.
Third, your next stop on the way is Jill Sprott. Go, go, go!
Gardeners’ Digest is a monthly update from the Garden Girls, the design team at Two Peas in a Bucket. To keep up with the Garden Girls throughout the month, check out the garden gallery, find us on Twitter or subscribe to all our blogs with just a couple clicks.
Scraps have been a pretty hot topic on the message board recently – including this discussion that inspired this week’s adventure, but also this discussion and this one, both about how to sort, organise and store all those bits of paper that end up left over after a finished project. Time for Glitter Girl to spring to action, and on her adventure this week she shares three strategies for page designs with all those scraps!
Each of these designs can be adapted to suit your style and photo needs, or used in slightly different ways on a variety of pages without every page looking the same. Always useful!
Take the example of a collection of one inch strips: the same idea can be used to cover the front of a card. It can be turned to become a vertical column of horizontal strips, which could be a rainbow of bright colours or make a great place for writing in paler colours. And it doesn’t have to be a big border – it could easily be a box or a circle instead. If I only had two 4×6 pictures for this page but wanted more space to write, I could move the collection of strips to take one of the photo spots and open up all that space at the top for as much journaling as I want to include.
This technique of repeating one shape in a contained explosion is one of my favourite techniques for scraps. This page from a few years back uses the very same idea and it’s still one of my favourites, so I was excited to try it again, this time with punches and dies rather than cutting everything from a paper with scissors. However, I know this kind of embellishment overload isn’t everyone’s style. Just take it back a bit: fewer, larger shapes to cover that same space will be less chaotic, as will repeating a few patterns more rather than trying to cut every piece from a different design. The same can be limited to a smaller part of the page, either for less embellishment or to dedicate more space to photos or writing.
And this final strategy starts from something different: in the first two instances, I chose my paper scraps based on their colour. In this case, I was looking for the shape – all long narrow strips of paper. From that I could find a good mix of colours that would work but I was generally less fussy about the colours I was choosing. This page design is not dramatically different from many other pages I’ve made, but I would usually include at least one large block of paper in the middle somewhere – but in this case it is entirely strips with the single exception of the flower cut with scissors from a sheet of patterned paper. By starting with those strip borders at the top and bottom of the page, you can adapt the middle to any requirements – different number or size of photos, more or less embellishment, and so forth. You can also bring ribbons, tape and border punches into the mix. This older page does that with a larger photo too.
Now it’s your turn! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to put at least one of these three strategies to use with your own scraps and off-cuts. Make a page and upload it to Two Peas and check the box for the Glitter Girl challenge in step four of the upload process to share it with us all – and you’re also welcome to share a link in the comments here if you fancy!
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
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