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

The winner of the Pencil Lines Sketch Book giveaway is

Claire Williams Says:
23 February 2010, 16:13
I love to scrap holiday photos, it brings back all the happy memories!

Congratulations! Claire, email me your mailing address so I can get your brand new book in the post!

Thanks everyone who entered! Check out Pencil Lines for sketches, inspiring pages and order their new book!

xlovesx

Comment [5]

You probably already know Pencil Lines is a sketch challenge blog that delivers beautiful layouts every week to keep you scrapping and inspired. Now they have a lovely new book with 40 new sketches and layouts to match. It’s hardbacked and spiral-bound so it lays flat on your scrapping table too. You can find more details here.

I was honoured to be featured in their book and even more fun, I have a copy to give away!

To enter, just a leave a comment on this post answering this question:
What is your favourite topic to scrapbook?

Comments will close at the end of this Friday, UK time.
Entries are now closed. Winner will be posted Saturday evening!

Good luck!

xlovesx

Comment [310]

This week I’m hosting the photography challenge at Two Peas and the challenge is Cloudy with a chance of…. Just point your camera toward the sky and see what magic you can find. It’s a challenge that’s easy to participate (well, as long as it’s not chucking it down with rain at your place like it has been here today!) but there’s plenty of room to get creative too. And one lucky sky-snapper will win a prize too!

You can check out the challenge here and be sure to tick the box for this week’s photo challenge when you upload your images to the gallery so you can be entered to win!

In other news, I’ve set up a Q&A page here and I’ll have a giveaway here tomorrow, so be sure to check back!

Have an amazing week!

xlovesx

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For the past week, this scene has been pretty constant around here. Lots to get done, not as many hours in the day as I would like and of course there seems to be more to life than work too! But I can’t complain as it has all been very exciting work and it’s probably a bit difficult to pull me away from it right now. Let’s see if I can do a bit better with posting now that the pages are in from the call (I’ll start sending those happy emails later today).

One little bit of excitement has been a big change over at Two Peas. There used to be two major places to go to see layouts there — the gallery (open to all members) and the garden (just the design team). Now the two have merged and the Garden Girls’ layouts are right there in the gallery — they just have a little frame around them so you can spot them quickly. Which means for the first time, you can leave comments on these pages and tell us what you like or ask us questions when you want to know more. Our pages will also be spread throughout the month so there is something new every single day rather than just lots of stuff on two set days each month. (By the way, if you go to the gallery and look over at the options on the left side of the screen, you can click Designer Projects and find all the Garden Girls’ projects with just one click.)

My first page in this new system went live yesterday, and it features a quick tutorial on making a fabric flower from the Studio Calico FabRips, which are a bit like border stickers but made with fabric instead of paper. You can check it out here!

I also posted this card on the Banana Frog blog. Check out this post for all the details on making a quick and cute rocket ship card! (And to find out if you won last week’s Banana Frog giveaway!)

By the way, all my Banana Frog stamps are in stock here if you are looking for them. I need to get thinking about some new designs actually!

In addition to those projects, I’ve obviously been working on the books and also preparing for upcoming workshops in London, Southampton and Germany... but what if I said I was also working on a new online class? And sign-ups would start next week? Would that be a good thing, perhaps?

xlovesx

Comment [20]

With book one nearly ready, I’m currently on the lookout for layouts for our second volume which will be in stores this summer.

If you’re interested in submitting to this call, please email me with a photo of the pages you would like to submit. An image around 600 pixels wide is ideal — please do not send full-size photographs straight from your camera. (If you don’t know how to resize the image with your own software, you can do this at Picnik online.)

Submissions of both digital and paper projects are welcomed from anywhere in the world. Please keep in mind that paper pages will need to be posted to the UK for photography. Your pages will be returned when the book goes to press.

I’m currently looking for layouts for these themes and techniques:
Girls (any age)
Boys (any age)
Summer
Outdoors
Pets
Love
About Me: Crafting (layouts about your crafting projects, be they scrapping, sewing, or anything else creative)
Pages with machine stitching
Pages with detailed borders (the border can be anywhere on the page)
Pages inspired by this template (paper or digital)
Interactive pages
Pages with an interesting focal point, like a unique frame or large photo or anything else that draws the eye to one point on the page

Please keep in mind that all submissions should be unpublished and your own work. A little clarification about whether pages posted online can be submitted: yes, given a few guidelines. We would prefer pages with fewer than 100 views in a gallery or on your blog but will consider those with up to 1000 views. You will need to be able to take your pages offline until the book is out if your pages are chosen. Pages shouldn’t have won contests or been posted on websites where you can’t take them offline. If your pages posted online fit those guidelines, you’re all good to go!

This call closes on the 17th of February. Successful submissions will be requested on the 18th and 19th via email.

Looking forward to seeing your favourite pages!

xlovesx

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Greetings from beautiful downtown Anaheim! (Well, not quite downtown. Convention/Disney town is more like it. Apparently downtown Anaheim is on the other side of the motorway. But this is much closer to beautiful downtown Burbank than I usually happen to be, so I am just going to go with the beautiful downtown thing and let it be.)

Over the last two days I’ve said the same few sentences over and over again as a few hundred ladies made monogrammed luggage tags with me and my favourite butterfly punch. We’ve talked about all sorts of projects they’ve been working on and we’ve shared pages and all sorts of fabulously good crafty energy. And apparently I’ve also decided to wear gigantic necklaces.

Tomorrow everything shifts gears as the public show is now closed and the trade show opens in the morning. That’s when all the new releases will be seen and all the super exciting stuff happens! Watch for lots of blog posts over the next few days as I’ll be posting pictures and sharing my new favourites from the show!

xlovesx

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Just a quick little note to let you know the next post in the This is Why series will be up very soon!

In the mean time, I have three new layouts in the garden today! You can find them here, here and my favourite is here.

Back in a bit!

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These two 99 cent kits in the shop today: Aged Labels includes a printable for paper scrappers and a png for digital scrappers and the Remember page template makes digital pages in minutes. The Baker’s Dozen has been scrapping away with this template and they’ve already made these pages!

_{Pages by Kate, Yvonne, Karen and Taly.}

And for those of you who asked last week when I would start some sort of digital class, well here’s something to get you started – step by step tutorial to walk you through the process of using digital page templates.

Click here for a step-by-step tutorial on layered page templates.

…and something exciting tomorrow!

xlovesx

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