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

I know we’ve had this conversation before: sticker books were one of my favourite parts of childhood. I can say that loudly and proudly in front of scrapbookers because you probably had ten one too. I loved collecting the stickers and trading the stickers and finding the right page and placement for the stickers. I especially loved the part of the process where I was far too young for a job and needed to find every available moment to convince my mother I needed new stickers. And I loved sitting in my room when I was supposed to be asleep, quietly turning the pages under the lamplight to catch all the little foils and glimmers and shines on the most special of all the stickers in my book.

Tell me this is not crazy talk and it has long been time to bring back sticker books. Sticker books should never have left.

So I’m rather excited by this new collection from American Crafts that is actually called #StickerBook and it’s made up of… books of stickers. Yep. Big books of stickers from all the different designers and collections you know and love: Amy Tangerine, Dear Lizzy, Heidi Swapp, Vicki Boutin, Maggie Holmes, Jen Hadfield, Paige Evans, 1Canoe2, and me too! Each book has thirty pages of stickers, so you can trade and stick on repeat for a long while before you’re running anywhere near low. These stickers also have a thinner profile than the cardstock stickers of our collections, making them great for things like planners where bulk can be a real concern.

My sticker book has over 2000 stickers, thanks to several pages that have lots of tiny pieces designed to be scattered around the page in the same way I often use enamel dots and mist. It has the same colour palette as the Glitter Girl collection, with lots of brights and also gold foil and iridescent holographic finishes. Because 1987 me was very serious about her iridescent holographic finishes, and just maybe this is my gift to her.

You can collect all the #StickerBook editions from HobbyLobby stores in the US, or your favourite paper craft retailer, like here.

I’ve used my #StickerBook on a few Friday Live pages now, and here’s the most recent – it is definitely possible to find plenty of stickers in this book that are not pink and purple. (But if you need pink and purple, when yeah: you are covered.)

Here’s the full Friday Live session if you want to see this page from start to finish, alongside plenty of random Friday afternoon chitchat! (This week Friday Live moves to a new time – 1:45pm UK time. You can join in live on Facebook.)

And now… which of these sticker books will make it to your collection? I can’t wait to see them on your desk and the stickers on your projects! I won’t even tell your mum if you’re up late looking at page after page of shiny stickers. I promise.

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While I’ve been all things Most Magical Scrapbook all the time, I’ve just saved enough time to do a Friday Live scrapbooking video each week on Facebook, but it’s only now that I’ve had a moment to update here! For those of you don’t do Facebook, no worries: here’s an ongoing feed of the Friday Live videos. If you’re used to the style I post on my YouTube channel or in my classes, be warned: Friday Live is very different. No editing. Lots of chit-chat with those who are watching and typing in comments, many of which have nothing to do with scrapbooking. But you can definitely see each layout come together from start to finish, just with a very different delivery method.

This layout came from a challenge I used earlier that day: to take a look at this Pinterest board of scrapbook pages and choose one for me to scrap lift. The gorgeous layout chosen was by Cassie Box and I adore hers and mine too, so many thanks Cassie for sharing your beautiful work! Supplies for this page are from the Glitter Girl collection, plus the ‘today’ word from a Dear Lizzy Thickers set, some older American Crafts pearl brads, and a few assorted enamel dots.

Next up: a challenge to actually use plenty of unicorns, because so many of you have told me you love them but have no idea where to put them on a page. From the looks of things, my answer to that is everywhere.

Everything on this page is from the Glitter Girl collection, bar a scrap of plain white vellum for the journaling!

Time to head back a bit and add something to my Harry Potter album from the studio tour several years ago. It’s a cupboard under the stairs page!

The papers here are from my Starshine collection, plus chipboard pieces, star stickers, and stamps from assorted Studio Calico kits over the years.

Another challenge that has come up with the Glitter Girl collection is how to use it for boy photos… and I’m definitely game for that! Today, my answer is to mix it with some very old favourites to pull out the greens and blues in the Glitter Girl colour palette.

The copper vellum on this page is from my Go Now Go collection, and everything else is a mix of Glitter Girl and some vintage products from the days of Love, Elsie and KI Memories. (Nope, I have no shame in keeping supplies for ten years if I still like them!)

I can’t believe I am scrapping first day of school photos, but I am! I started with three photos for this page but ended up making two layouts that face each other in the album, one this week and one the next. Also, the connection went very skewif midway through the broadcast this time, so the video is in two parts.

Supplies for this one are a mix of Glitter Girl (just without the pink elements!), Go Now Go, and Elle’s Studio – the yellow background paper is an older Elle’s Studio paper and the stamps are that amazing Title Builder stamp set that I love so much. Plus green letter stickers from my old favourite, Sassafras!

Then another boy page to face that one – this time really working with the green rather than the lighter shades!

The green paper in the background is ancient, from Scenic Route, and the rainbow of stripes down the side is equally vintage, from KI Memories. But the darker cloud paper is from my Starshine collection and the rainbow cloud print is from Glitter Girl, as is the funky star paperclip. Red letters are Sassafras, gold foil Thickers from 1Canoe2, woodgrain papers from LilyBee, and a few stickers from something coming to stores soon that I wasn’t really supposed to show you yet but I didn’t realise. Whoops.

Then there was the week that it seemed like computers were plotting against me. I started the video in landscape and it moved to portrait. So I started again and it went to portrait again. I tried a third time and it was not the charm… so in the end, I just scrapped sideways so you can see it the right way but oh man it was a weird week.

Mostly Glitter Girl supplies here, plus a background stamp from October Afternoon, the Title Builder stamp set from Elle’s Studio, pink Thickers from Amy Tangerine, and an awesome Inkadinkado coffee stamp I’ve had for years and haven’t used nearly enough!

And then I found the answer and the video didn’t flip this week! HUZZAH!

Again it’s the Glitter Girl collection minus the pink… but plus florals so who knows what’s happening there. The florals are one of my favourite products of all time – Foldies from Sassafras. I have a good stockpile of them still. Plus some die-cuts and 3×4 cards from last year’s Studio Calico kits.

Annnnnnnd that brings you up to date with what I’ve been making! Perhaps I’ll see you this Friday for Friday Live! You can find me live pretty much every week here on Facebook and there’s also the Scrapbook like a Superhero Facebook group for sharing what you’re making too.

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Hello October! This brings my one little slip when I must start talking about Christmas before November – this week is the time to pre-order if you’d like a 2017 Christmas in a Box kit or any of the stamps! This year there are a few options: the full, complete kit, including the word and number stamp sheets plus papers and embellishments, to ship either from me here in the UK or from Blue Moon Scrapbooking in the USA; just the word and number stamp sheets, or a third sheet of stamps that can be added on or purchased individually. Let me tell you more!

Shall we look at the stamps first? This is the word sheet…

…and this is the number sheet. These are 4×6 inch stamp sets and are both included in the full Christmas in a Box kit. They can also be purchased as a set without the kit, if you prefer.

And here’s something new for 2017: a stamp add-on! This Christmas Carol stamp set is also 4×6 and is NOT included in the kit. It can be purchased in addition to the kit, in addition to the other stamps, or all on its own.

Here’s more of what you’ll find packed into Christmas in a Box: lots of 12×12 paper, including red, a few shades of green, and some aqua and blue for balance, enamel dots, flat letter stickers and Thickers, puffy stickers, and more embellishments. Everything is chosen for a mix of specifically Christmas things alongside patterns that can be used year-round for the everyday. This way you can incorporate your leftover supplies into your stash in January without building up year after year of supplies you only use at Christmas.

I am happy to report that the US option for kits this year will be a full kit rather than having to shop for the kit contents. If you do prefer to shop for individual items, I will make that list available next month.

Christmas in a Box is the kit I use to make my Christmas journal, and if you’re following along with the Journal your Christmas class, you’ll see the kit in action every day in the class videos.

Kits ship from the UK and the US, stamps on their own ship from the UK. If you’re in another country, you can choose where you would like your kit to ship from, and the additional shipping will be billed at the cost from the postal service. From the UK, this about £9 for Europe and £14 beyond Europe for the full kit.

When you pre-order, you pay a deposit of half your kit price now and the remaining half when your kit is boxed and ready to ship. For UK addresses, that’s £20 now for a total kit price of £40. For US addresses, that’s $25 now, for a total kit price of $50. Those prices include shipping.

If you have plenty of Christmas stash and would just like this year’s stamps, that’s available too. The set of two sheets – words and numbers – is £18, which includes postage anywhere in the world. The deposit to pre-order is £9, with the remaining £9 due when they are packed and ready to ship to you.

The Christmas Carol stamp set is available as an additional item or on its own. That’s £9, including postage anywhere in the world. The deposit to pre-order is £4.50, with the remaining £4.50 due when ready to ship to you.

Pre-orders have now closed. Thank you! A very limited supply of kits and stamps will be available without placing a deposit, but those numbers are truly very few. If you would like to reserve a kit with no worry, pre-ordering is your friend.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me and I’ll help in any way I can.

Thanks so much, and I promise you can now go right back to autumn and not think more about Christmas until at least November!

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Black cardstock is totally what comes to mind when you decide to scrapbook with rainbow-print patterned paper, right? Yep, that’s what I thought too.

Or maybe that’s not where I started at all. But that’s where the last Friday Live scrapping session took me!

The supplies for this page are a mix of the new Glitter Girl collection, Amy Tangerine’s Oh Happy Life, and green glitter Thickers in the Eclair font, which I may have been holding onto for longer than I care to admit.

Friday Live happens on my Facebook page and I’d love for you to join me! The next Friday Live is the 11th of August at 3:45pm UK time, 10:45am Eastern.

Happy scrapping! And let me know what you pair your rainbows with, of course!

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It doesn’t matter how often you create pages or how many years you’ve been scrapbooking, certain events are just extra special. It might be a wedding album or a baby album or a special travel adventure, but these special times bring up all the emotions for scrapbookers: so excited to scrapbook these photos; so nervous about getting it just right.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened when I came back from very special holiday to Disney World last October. So, so excited and absolutely bursting with stories and in love with so many photos. I wanted to get all the feelings from my heart and all the moments from my head and get them on paper in a way that captured it all with exactly the right… everything. Which is maybe just a little, tiny bit intimidating. Where on earth could I start?

But I caught my breath, approached things with a balance of practicality, order, and creative spontaneity, and recorded the entire thing from start to finish to share with you. It’s my most magical scrapbook ever.

In this class, you’ll receive colour PDFs with all the layouts in my scrapbook, sketches for those layouts and some variations thereof, and notes on design, journaling, and photography. And then there are the videos. More videos than I’ve ever assembled for a class! That includes a video on photo and printing organisation, album planning, then all the process videos for every layout in the class. Even if you have no interest in ever scrapbooking a theme park trip in your entire life, you’ll have a library of more than forty brand new page videos that are only available in this class. The layouts include single pages, double pages, and pocket pages. There are small photos, 4×6 photos, and large photos. There are pages with one photo and pages with many photos. I use a varied range of supplies throughout the album and share different techniques so every single page and video has its own unique focus. (I agree, forty pages of the same supplies would be pretty uninspiring viewing, and not nearly as fun for me to make either!)

In case you are a Disney fan and are planning a trip in the future, the class materials also include my top tips that I call ‘Disney for Scrapbookers’, including how and where to get super scrappable photos, where I fuel my Disney inspiration when I’m thousands of miles from the parks, and quick habits for during your trip that can make the process of making your album later all that more magical and enjoyable.

My album includes pages from our travel to Florida, the four main Disney parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom), the two main Universal Parks (largely the Wizarding World of Harry Potter but also a few other snippets like Dr Seuss and Jurassic Park), and our hotel (we stayed at Port Orleans Riverside), covering about twelve days with lots of detail. But nothing in the class is so specific that you need to have the same experience and memories. Everything is based on tailoring the inspiration to what will suit you, and that may be a theme park trip that becomes a theme park album like mine, or it could be another type of holiday or intimidating event to scrapbook, or you could use the inspiration from each page for completely unrelated photos you’re scrapping in a variety of albums. There’s no wrong way to participate!

All my classes include permanent access to the class materials and access to a private message board to chat and share what you’ve made.

Class starts Wednesday the 16th of August and runs through the end of September, but there is absolutely no need to keep to that specific schedule. The materials can (and should!) be viewed at your own pace and you can return to them at any time. You can choose your preferred currency: $30 US dollars or £23 British pounds. If neither of those is your home currency, you can check exchange rates at XE and use either button. It will automatically convert to your own currency and you do not need to do anything special. You can pay by credit or debit card or from a Paypal account.

Although the class does not begin until the 16th, when your class registration is processed (within 24 hours of payment), you’ll find a resource in the classroom to keep you entertained while you wait: there is a section with all the Disney and Harry Potter related videos I’ve published in the past, including not just the few from this trip but also many pages from previous trips to Disneyland in California and the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour.

(For those who also do Learn Something New each September, the two will overlap. While I wouldn’t overlap two classes featuring full size pages, I keep Learn Something New very small and true to its original aim of no more than ten minutes per day, so in this case the schedule feels fine.)

If you have any questions at any time, don’t hesitate to send me an email.

I can’t wait to see you in class. Or should I say see ya real soon!

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In June, I started a little something that has become a new habit: Friday Facebook Live. On a Friday afternoon (well, it’s afternoon for me!) I create a page with very little planning and plenty of live discussion with those watching on Facebook. It’s a little different to how I share videos in classes and on YouTube – it’s very rough around the edges, there is absolutely no editing, and I don’t set out with a clear mission of where I’m going. I change my mind, I take suggestions from the audience, and I answer questions so we sometimes go on big tangents all while I’m cutting and sticking. It’s perfectly Facebook in its unpolished and chatty nature, so I don’t want to move it anywhere else. However, Facebook is a little difficult in terms of searching back to find older posts, with its love of all things right-this-second. It seems high time to make an archive here. I will post each one in its own post going forward, but for the sake of being complete, here’s everything that has come so far.

Did I mention Friday Live is not a polished presentation? It’s so unpolished that it took me a couple weeks to figure out how to see the comments as they were coming in live and in the very first week, the video is sideways. SIDEWAYS. So you would need to watch on a phone or a tablet and turn the screen, basically. If you want to see that very first one, knowing that it’s sideways, you can find that here. It’s the layout above, by the way.

Then I learned how to broadcast in landscape and things got better. Phew.

This was a blast back to my backpacking albums, where everything starts with a sheet of kraft cardstock. It fell on the ‘page with no people’ day of the June scrapbooking photo challenge. That map paper is still one of my favourite things in the Go Now Go collection.

Then we had a day of everyone running to find their copy of Cat in the Hat, which multiple people were able to do, and I didn’t find ours until the next day. (It was under his pillow.)

The facing page that I mention in this video is a layout that you’ll see in the upcoming class, just in case you need more Cat in the Hat cuteness in your life.

Then I used a sketch while we discussed Disney Princesses. As you do.

I was most excited to use the Elle’s Studio Title Builder stamp and embellishment set on this page. You can find the pin board where I collect useful scrapbook page sketches here.

Then there was the day when I dropped the entire bowl of flair badges on the floor. That was dramatic and in no way a pain in the neck to tidy up later.

I love that camera paper from Maggie Holmes so much I bought three sheets. I might need more.

Then there was a day when I made a double page layout! On white cardstock! WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO, I ASK YOU?!

This was the first time I used a little something from the new Glitter Girl collection too, so that was extra fun. I didn’t get to finish the full layout in the video time but it got me back on track for scrapping.

And that brings us up to date! I’ve added a new tag so you can find all the Friday Live posts in one place too, in case you’re ever feeling the need to binge on overly enthusiastic chatting about pretty much anything while I cut and stick paper to other paper in (hopefully!) an aesthetically pleasing manner. Thanks for watching!

Of course, you can join in with Friday Live actually Live on Facebook. I’m currently scheduling this for 3:45pm UK time on Fridays but it IS schedule to change (like I know already I will have to pick a new time this week) so I try to announce the time as soon as I can, especially if it’s a change of time. But you can always watch later!

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I know, I know, it’s called ‘Glitter Girl’ and it’s very girly. There’s a lot of hot pink. Really a lot. But I promise you there are other colours in there too and I really want it to be possible to use the Glitter Girl collection on things that are not all hot pink unicorns. This became today’s challenge for Friday Live, a weekly video on Facebook where I create (or attempt to create!) a new scrapbook page with little to no advance planning and plenty of interaction from those watching and chatting along.

At the moment, I am starting Friday Live sessions at 3:45pm UK time (10:45am Eastern, and adjust to your timezone from there) and I plan to keep that schedule through most of August. I’ll need to find a good time to move it to when the summer ends as I’m going to lose my long Friday work day, but I’ll cross that bridge and announce the time when I come to it. For now, it’s Friday afternoons for me!

You can join in on Facebook and clicking the ‘follow’ button there should let you get a little notification with the live sessions start, should you want to receive that. Or you can always stop by to watch them after the fact.

Happy scrapping, and I look forward to showing you more unexpected Glitter Girl colour schemes for your scrapbooking and paper crafting projects!

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I always buy the 12×12 sticker sheets in my favourite collections because they are always so eye-catching, but I have trouble using more than a few stickers at a time. I need a strategy quick or I’m going to be overrun with stickers! I’d love a style of layout I could create now and then to really embrace my sticker love rather than trying to ration them out indefinitely. Glitter Girl, can you help?

Of course she can! It would probably be overkill to use most of a large sticker sheet on every layout, but there’s no reason not to embrace your sticker love in an explosion of pretty things on a chosen page.

I used the sticker sheet from Little by Little for this challenge, along with patterned papers from Pebbles. The Thickers are from many years ago, I’m afraid, and the tiny letter stickers were from a Studio Calico Documenter kit.

If you’re trying to create your own page with a surplus of stickers, I’d suggest these top tips:
Make it a single photo page. You’ll need plenty of space on the page to work with the stickers, plus you need that photo to hold its own. Of course you could print smaller photos to still have the same page space, but then everything in the smaller photos is more likely to be lost amongst all the designs of the stickers. Something with a simple visual composition to the photograph will work best to hold its own.

Select your sticker sheet wisely. If the set of stickers is just too varied, it will be difficult to pull all the randomness together. Look for a mix of things that are easy to use across lots of topics – labels, banners, and simple geometrics help. Florals can work beautifully if they are your thing. A sticker sheet with a typewriter, a mailbox, a bicycle, a birthday cake, and four birds is going to be far more difficult to pull together than some flowers, feathers, and labels.

Find a line on your page and stay on the line. If you’ve been scrapbooking for a while, you may have heard of the old ‘sticker sneeze’. It was a description of a certain scrapbooking look, where pages were made by first matting and arranging the photos, then taking a sheet of small stickers and just dotting them anywhere and everywhere in the gaps. I have an early page like this where I scrapbooked photos of a beautiful rose garden and filled the gaps with tiny frog stickers. (Of course.) Admittedly, it’s quite fun in that embrace-your-inner-pre-teen sort of way, it can leave your eyes not knowing where to look. For a look that says ‘I meant to do this’ rather than a sneeze, find a line somewhere on your page – probably with the photo on the line but it can work elsewhere – and build your stickers from that point. Foam squares are your friend for adding dimension to all your layers of design.

Have you made a page using at least half a sheet of stickers? Share it with us!

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