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

So glad we have a three day weekend to coincide with {inter}National Scrapbook Day! Only managed to make this today because it needed to be delivered today!

But got the perfect dose of sunshine today and am ready to scrap away for the rest of the long weekend.

xlovesx

PS: You know how I love free digi kits! There is a special NSD kit here by The Queen of Quirk, so share the love with anyone you know who loves a free kit to download.

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Wow, what a week it has been! Definitely looking forward to the three day weekend to chill and breathe after a very demanding week back at school. Even better that I finished all my marking this morning so I can really scrap without guilt for the next three days! Well, if I also manage some housework that would be true scrapping without guilt. We’ll see how that goes.

I think we’ve all decided one day for NSD (National Scrapbook Day) just isn’t enough, so Two Peas is throwing a three day party—today, tomorrow and Sunday are filled with prizes, challenges and inspiration for scrapbookers.

Check out:
Pages inspired by other scrappers in a special NSD gallery (I got to take inspiration from Candice Greenway and ScrapTigz—loved it!)
New layouts in the garden featuring die cuts and the latest product releases
My NSD challenge—go circle crazy on a project! (Go on – there’s a chance to win a prize from one of the NSD sponsor manufacturers!)

...and there might just be a bit more blog posting here this weekend as I recover from the shock of working for someone other than shimelle.com!

Hope your weekend is a lovely one!

xlovesx

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Just a quick Saturday night thank you to all the ladies that scrapbooked with me today at the Scrapping Angels retreat at Wyboston Lakes! It was lovely to spend an hour with you working on a project with lots of punches, die cuts and stamps as well as some natter time in the crop room! I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

That’s Annie scrapping away.

And that’s Anna with me—Annie and Anna host the weekend along with a few other Scrapping Angels, one of whom kindly took our photo.

Thanks again!

xlovesx

PS: My apologies to a few who had emailed me earlier about class kits—I didn’t come home with any spares this time! I do have some spare kits from the Paris classes that I will get online very soon.

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_{Supplies: Spring by Crystal Wilkerson and Scrap Canvas 4 by The Queen of Quirk}

_{Supplies: Spring by Crystal Wilkerson, 2Organic by Rhonna Farrer and Antique-It Photo Overlays by Jen Allyson (and I’m under strict instructions to give The Boy photo credit!)}

The sun is still shining here! The kind of days when I don’t mind getting up early to make the most of real springtime weather. The set up for the London Marathon has started—the starting line is just metres away from where we live and the village becomes insane on race day! Just packed with people. Hoping this lovely weather sticks around for Sunday so the marathon can run smoothly. I am so not a runner but I have so much respect for those who can finish a marathon. My brain can hardly fathom such a thing, and my muscles definitely don’t want to imagine it!

Loving the papers in this free digital kit this month. Just printed some out for some hybrid happiness to share with you tomorrow!

xlovesx

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Beautiful weather + a class who picked up right where we left off two years ago + two big scrapbooking deadlines = not enough time to blog!

But I’ll be back here tomorrow! Working on a little something now, but need to head to bed so I can get up early for school tomorrow!

Hope you’re having a lovely week!

xlovesx

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Today was a day with a little something old, a little something new. Back to a traditional classroom, just for a while.

Without a doubt, the most difficult thing about leaving full-time teaching was the terrible feeling that I would be abandoning my students. I had two classes that I had taught for several years, so of course I was a little attached to them. I lost a great deal of sleep over those two classes, but by the time my last day arrived it looked like they were all set and things were in place and everything would be fine.

Long story short: everything didn’t go quite so well as I had hoped.

Not long ago I got a call with the conundrum that my class was short a teacher for the few weeks before their national exams. So today I went back and returned to whiteboards and exercise books and a group of students who I swear are much taller than I remember.

When I was teaching, I could never sleep the night before a new term. Even if we only had a week off, I would be convinced that I would go back on Monday morning and not remember how to teach a lesson. If I had that fear then, you can only imagine what I felt like this morning. But sure enough, class started, they picked up their pens and we actually accomplished what I had planned.

Thirteen lessons to go until their big exam. Still hoping I can remember how to do this.

xlovesx

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Thanks so much for joining us at True Scrap 3! I hope The Perfect Collection helps you get more from your collection packs and your paper collection in general.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CORRESPONDING PDF WITH CUTTING DIAGRAM, STARTING POINTS AND SAMPLE LAYOUTS

Cutting suggestions
There are plenty of ways to cut your paper of course, but I find these sorts of dimensions help me get the most of my collection pack.

All dimensions are in INCHES.

11.5×11.5 (gives you two spare strips)
10×10 + 12×2 + 10×2
6×12 + 6×6 + 6×6
6×6 + 6×6 + 3×12 + 3×12
9×12 + 3×12
4×4 + 4×8 + 8×9 + 8×3
5×12 + 5×7 + 7×7
4×6 + 8×6 + six 1×12 strips
6×12 + 6×12
two 4×6 + two 4×12
8.5×12 + 3.5×12 (gives you a big piece to go through an electronic die-cutter, etc)
10×10 + 4 extra strips (if a pattern has a frame around the edge, cut the 10×10 from the middle to remove the frame. those pieces can be used as border accents.)
4×12 + 8×12

If you are familiar with my work, you may know my philosophy is that I only teach and share with real examples from my work, so this is a real album I am currently working on. (Thank you for letting me share that!)

If you bookmark this page, you can come back to it and see each layout as I complete it! I’ll be scrapping throughout True Scrap 3 and posting the pages here, so you can see them get added to this post as I go!

But you’ll need to bookmark the page as this is not visible on my regular blog – this post is just for you.

So these are the finished pages you saw in the video.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CORRESPONDING PDF WITH CUTTING DIAGRAM, STARTING POINTS AND SAMPLE LAYOUTS

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Such a beautiful day that we took our work and reading outside to pretend these were our own personal fields of tulips.

And once I had to come inside, I could spend a few minutes away from that work and pretend it was still sunny. Love how these templates work—super quick to just paste in papers and click to make clipping masks. I used the Old Boris papers, which I am loving this week!

xlovesx

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