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

UPDATE: this sale has now ended. All three class are available at any time, however, at the full price. You can find a link to each sign up page in the text below. If you have any questions, please send me a message so I can help! Thank you for all your support. -S.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome back to more regular posting. I’m so happy to have heard things like ‘I haven’t scrapped in a year but I made a page today and now I’m hooked again’. Seriously, that Made My Day. What you’ve seen so far this week is the sort of thing you’ll see every week here now, with a new challenge every Monday, Glitter Girl always posting a video on a Wednesday, then an assortment of scrapbooking topics on the other days of the week. I hope that balance of a little bit of schedule, a little bit of spontaneity works as well for you as a reader as it does for me at my crafting desk!

Now there’s another post with new pages coming up a little later today, and you still have this weekend to participate in the Scrapbook a Selfie challenge, but I have one little extra for you: a sale! This weekend only you can grab some online scrapbooking workshops at a discount.

First, there’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scrapbooking. This is a class I taught at Two Peas and I haven’t had it available to purchase here until today. The Two Peas price was $25 and that’s what it will be here normally, but this weekend you can sign up for $18. The course includes 5 videos, each with a corresponding PDF, with a total of forty-two scrapbook pages found only in that workshop. You can read more about the class in this original post but remember to come back to this post to sign up! While this class will feature supplies that are no longer on the shelf in most shops, it is not a class that relies on you using the exact same products and is designed for you to adapt all the ideas to the stash you already have to hand.

Next up is Scrapbook Remix. Originally taught in 2012, this is a workshop all about mixing product from a variety of manufacturers and collections, with tips on what to look for to find things that will work together. Includes a series of eight videos and twenty PDFs (plus a few little extras), and is normally $25. This weekend, you can sign up for $18. The original post about Remix includes the breakdown of class materials, but make sure you come back to this page to sign up with the discounted price.

Then there’s Ready Set Scrapbook. This course came out in the middle of last year and it’s already really affordable – it’s only $8 full price for three videos. This weekend it’s just $5! Ready Set Scrapbook uses the True Stories collection in the examples. You can totally follow the steps with any products and papers you like, but if you have True Stories papers just waiting for you to get cutting and pasting, then watch these videos and have an easy time making pages! You can read the full class details here, then come back to this page to get the sale price.

HOW IT WORKS
All of these classes are in an archived format. When you sign up, you’ll receive a payment receipt through Paypal (you can pay by credit/debit card or from your Paypal account) then your registration will be processed by an actual person (me!) and you’ll receive a second email that welcomes you to class. If you’ve never taken a class at shimelle.com, you’ll receive one more email with your login details for the class side of the website. Once you have the email from me, you can sign in and access all the materials and work through them at your own pace. If you want to chat about anything or ask any questions, I’m just at the end of an email – send me a note or a tweet and I’ll help in any way I can! I aim to make sure you have class access within twenty-four hours of your purchase. If you can’t see an email in that time, let me know so I can get that sorted for you.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome back and I hope your weekend is filled with new happy memories!

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_{(made with the globe and explore text stamps from the Starshine stamp set. Stamped on plain white cardstock in Versamark ink and heat embossed with white detail powder, then coloured with Distress Inks and a foam ink applicator.)}

‘Blue and green should never be seen’ is such an old phrase, the internet seems incapable of telling me who said it in the first place. But it was able to tell me that it’s actually not a stand alone phrase like I have always heard, but some sort of colour rhyme involving red and yellow as a good combination to wear to ‘catch a fellow’ and pink and green should be worn by a queen. Suddenly I have far less worry about breaking this guideline on a regular basis.

My logic has always been that blues and greens work well together because it’s a combination we see so many times in nature. Green grass or trees topped by a blue sky. The way tropical waters look blue one moment, green the next, and back to blue. Blue and green are next to each other in the rainbow. So all this ‘should never be seen’ is definitely rubbish, no matter where it originated.

That rainbow thing holds more value though: blue and green are next to each other in the rainbow because they are next to each other in the colour spectrum when it comes to all things light. That means they are right there together on the colour wheel – blue… blue-green… green -right in a row. If you want to be more official about colour theory, that would make those three analogous colours. Analogous colours are any three in a row on the colour wheel and those sets of three will always look lovely to our eyes. But you don’t need to talk about it in official terms to be able to spot that those colours next to each other make lovely little sets. Blue and green definitely make me happy.

Blues and greens aside, I once had an epiphany while scrapping that made it so much easier to use my supplies. I’d been scrapping about two years when Bazzill announced their new line up of scrapbooking cardstock. It came in sixty-four colours. Sixty-four colours blew our minds because previous cardstock options were really only like the small box of Crayolas and this was the big box with the sharpener build in on the back! We were allowed the 64 box with the sharpener in fourth grade at my school. I have many specific memories about opening new boxes of Crayolas, but that one is my favourite. I digress. Shades of one colour, like choosing a colour of paint then slowing mixing in more and more black paint to create a whole set of new tones, made it so much easier for me to use my supplies because I could let go of the mindset that came with just a dozen colours. With a dozen colours (and even with sixty-four, if I’m honest), we seemed to spend hours of our scrapbooking time trying to find just the right paper to match the exact colour and shade of an embellishment. Then something hit me that actually, all the shades of one pink look lovely together and all the shades of one blue look lovely together, and so on… and that meant instead of having one correct combination in all of my stash, there was far more freedom in this dark pink embellishment goes with this much lighter pink paper, and I tell you, it was like a children’s choir appeared in the corner of my craft space and sang hallelujah. Instant relief of stress. Zero pressure to make everything match to the exact tone.

This set of colours was on my desk every day as we worked on Starshine. The blues and greens with that inspiration from nature backed up by a bit of colour theory; the rose that offers a stark contrast while staying so soft. Without the rose, it’s not nearly so feminine, but by using different quantities, like just a tiny bit of the rose, then it’s still very possible to use this set of colours without having some sort of pink Lelli Kelly explosion on your project. It’s most obvious in the globe paper with every globe filled in with shades of blue and shades or green, and quite a few globes accented with a rose-coloured floral detail.

After loving them but looking at them on screen for ages, it was time to try this combination in terms of paper rather than pixels. I still love those colour together. And so I asked special guest Zinia Amoiridou to also give it a go.

My biggest challenge was where to start, since I looked at the products on my desk and nothing included this colour combination. After digging through my stash, I found some paper scraps and partial patterns thin shades of blue, green, and rose, so I decided to use them and hand-cut some heart shapes to use as embellishments. I placed the hearts diagonally on the page and I though it would be a nice distraction from my messy cutting to make them a bit more dimensional. So I folded them in the middle and stuck them with some hot glue, making them look as if they want to “fly” out of the page. To finish the layout I added a few more heart embellishments and word stickers to bring everything together.
-Zinia

Today’s Guest Artist: Zinia Amoiridou loves ice cream, colours and her little family. You can find more from Zinia on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and her blog.

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This week Glitter Girl sets off on a quest with two purposes: to turn her paper scraps into unique embellishments and then to make them work on a page with her favourite products. The question was posed by Tori Bissell, a scrapbooker with her own YouTube channel, who loves making her own embellishments from small scraps of paper she stores in a cookie tin. I love this both because a cookie tin means she is far more controlled with the amount of paper scraps she has left (mine take up an entire basket) and it makes me hungry (mmm cookies).

Cookies aside, Glitter Girl delved into the scraps and used stamps, scissors, and punches to create the embellishments on this selfie page, but there are store-bought supplies in the mix too: enamel hearts, stickers, and a transparency sheet in addition to all the patterned paper. Come along for the adventure, won’t you?

It’s a lot of embellishment. It was very much a more-is-more feel to the workflow, but if that much embellishment puts you a little on edge, there are a few things to consider. First, I think you can add as much or as little as you like as long as you enjoy making it! Second, I really like a mix of very embellished pages in my album alongside pages that are very simple and 12×12 photo prints. I love that mix together and I feel it makes me look at everything with a closer eye when I flip from page to page in the book. (The book in scrapbook is so important to me that it’s very difficult for me to break it down to one page at a time, actually!) And third, if all else fails remember you are in control of your pages and you can learn by your reaction that you don’t want that much embellishment on your page! It’s definitely easier and cheaper to learn that lesson by watching rather than doing. Anyway, I love a little more is more when I’m in a paper groove.

While we’re on the subject of handmade embellishments from scraps, don’t forget to check out Tori’s YouTube Channel and her Scrap your Scraps series for more ideas on working with those little pieces of paper you love way too much to put in the recycling bin.

You can ask Glitter Girl a question any time by commenting here, on her YouTube videos, or in the Facebook chat group, Scrapbook like a Superhero.

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I’m so grateful for the positive response to new things here, and seeing the first few layouts for this week’s scrapbook a selfie challenge pop up on Facebook made me grin from ear to ear. (Don’t forget to link them up at the end of yesterday’s post so everyone can see!) Today it’s my turn, and this video has been a long while coming – it’s the page I made right around my birthday, which isn’t itself a problem until you realise my birthday was in October. Oh well!

I’ve always used a selfie of just myself for this page in the past but at the last minute I was happier including someone small in the photo as well. For those who initially balked at the idea of scrapbooking a self portrait, maybe that would help! Take a picture with your child, parent, significant other, pet, some random guy on the street… whatever makes it feel right for you!

This is an As It Happens video, so unlike Glitter Girl, I’m a bit extra rambly and indecisive, but it gets there in the end. I do as little editing as possible in the As It Happens episodes so you can see everything in pretty much real time and the only thing I plan before I start filming is some of the supplies I will use and the photo!

Speaking of supplies, this one features mostly things from my True Stories collection, which is hard for me to admit is basically a year old now. We released it in January 2015 but it didn’t ship until later in the spring, so I guess there’s a technicality if you have too much of it on your desk! It hasn’t been there a year, I promise! I’ve added some buttons over there on the right to online shops who carry my products, and you can still find True Stories if you see something you missed before but fancy now. In fact, it will probably be on sale. (Disclosure: Those boxes are affiliate links, which makes it possible to pay guest artists for the work they share here.)

There’s still plenty of time to snap a selfie and scrapbook it, so put on that lip gloss you save for special occasions, stand next to a window for beautiful light, and look up to the camera. Then get cutting and pasting and all things scrappy!

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Welcome to February, and welcome to what feels like a new year here! Along with the Starshine release at CHA, this past month has been filled with putting together all those pieces to bring you the reenergised dream I shared with you on the first of the year. Scrapping. Filming. Editing. Scheduling. Collaborating. Commissioning. So many things I’m excited for you to see here on a near-daily basis, and it all starts today.

Scrapbooking challenges are no new thing in terms of motivating crafters to stop staring at the pretty paper and start sticking it to other pretty paper. I think it must be nearly fifteen years ago when I was starting to put my small stash to work following challenges on DMarie, UKScrappers, and Two Peas. Talk about ‘back in the day’. But it’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of set challenges here, and it feels like the right time! Every Monday, you’ll find a new scrapbooking challenge right here along with two examples to inspire you: one from a contributing designer and one from a guest artist. Then you’ll often see my version on Tuesday – this week it’s complete with a new video too.

Speaking of contributing designers, I’m delighted to introduce eight talented artists who you will see here throughout the year. I’ve spent the last month having a creative pow-wow with these ladies and their individual passions for this hobby. I love that they love this craft. They love telling stories. They love beautiful design. And they love talking about it. I think you will love their work. You’ll see each of them about once a month here, but they post much more frequently on their own blogs, of course. Please welcome Meghann Andrew, May Flaum, Heather Leopard, Gina Lideros, Nicole Nowosad, Leigh Odynski, Sheena Rowlands, and Kirsty Smith.

And now, on to the challenge! We’re starting at the centre of it all – there would be no scrapbook without you making it! I challenge you this week to scrapbook a selfie. Make a new page with a photo of yourself. Everything else is completely up to you, so you can take your inspiration in any direction you like! A few years ago, I scrapped about our self portraits needing some work, and phew – they really did get better! If you don’t rate yours right now, have faith and take the time to experiment. I know it won’t take you as long to get to grips with selfies as it took me! To get you started on this week’s challenge, take a look at these examples from contributing designer Leigh Odynski and guest artist Leanne Edwards.

My selfie scrapping inspiration came entirely from my ‘one little word’ for 2016: aspire. Once I had that direction, I was ready to run with the idea!

I got the idea to create an envelope effect at the top of the page, sort of like you are opening a letter from a friend, and inside is a scrapbook page. I am sure I am not alone in thinking these are the hardest pages to create – the ones about ourselves. This photo was taken a year ago,and it’s amazing how time flies without the person behind the lens ever getting in front of the camera, so I’m glad of challenges like this that give me a much-needed reminder.

The vellum journaling strips from Shimelle’s True Stories Tags, made for quick and easy journaling. I ran this page through my printer to add more journaling, but you could just as well add it with a typewriter!
- Leigh

In the past I was all about scrapbooking and recording every little thing. Then I had two kids and became a working mum. Trying to balance my hobbies, I had to take a step back and work out how I could make this work for me. I think I am finally settling into a system which works for our family life: at the end of the year I do a stock take on all the photos I have printed and find the stories I want to tell. I can usually find themes among those photos, and one of the many themes in our daily life is selfies. My husband and I love them!

I have a nice stack of photos of the two of us from the past year, and pulled together four on the layout, taken at various points over the past year, seasons and various events. Making them into a grid with a mat gave me the focus for the page. All the layers behind that were from my bag of scraps – go me, remembering to use my stash! As the photos had no real colour theme I just went with what I liked. The red heart paper from Shimelle’s first AC collection is one of my all time favourites and I am now down to these last few bits and pieces of that paper. Mixing red with green can sometimes look a bit Christmassy but adding the navy and pinks from Elle’s Studio from the Thankful collection soften the colour palette.
- Leanne

You have a week to complete the challenge and share a link – but of course you’re welcome to set your own time schedule. Whatever keeps you happy and creative!

I’ll see you tomorrow for a brand new video to share how I took on this challenge!

Today’s Guest Artist: Leanne Edwards loves being a mum, caffeinated drinks, and collecting hobbies. You can find more from Leanne on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and her blog.

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It’s just a few hours now until I pack my last few things into my bag and head to the airport, bound for CHA – the annual Craft and Hobby Association trade show in California. CHA is a convention floor filled with the newest releases across a variety of crafts, ready for store owners to order for the year ahead. I’m very excited to be there to debut my fourth scrapbooking collection with American Crafts, Starshine.

Inspired by starry nights and big dreams, Starshine brings together many shades of blue with pink, green, yellow, and red – something for any fanciful adventure you might encounter. My hope is that you’ll find things here for scrapping boys and girls, recent and retro, and that there might also be one or two things that suit your aspirations for the year ahead while we’re in this mindset of new beginnings – because Starshine will be on its way to stores straight away.

For Starshine, we’ve filled globes with a variety of different images, and with the clear stamp set, you can fill a globe with just what you fancy. Plenty of word stamps that you can use on journaling cards, on your calendar, or to add a little detail to embellishment clusters, plus a big sentiment and the empty globe to fill with stars, cameras, flowers, or hot air balloons.

These flair badges are tiny in size, and balance beautifully with a label or two.

In the last two collections, we topped wooden buttons with epoxy designs. This time we’ve moved over to paperclips, and they are flat enough to use in the embellishment of a layout but also strong enough to actually hold some paper and keep your desk beautiful.

There are two sets of Thickers: a multicoloured Marquee style, and my favourite Fitzgerald font now in turquoise glitter.

The small sticker sheet includes phrases, a teensy tiny alphabet, and a few strips of stars for your pages’ finishing touch.

The large sticker sheet has larger sentiments, icons, and border strips.

And the chipboard sticker set has so many stickers in this not-too-thick chipboard that makes it a perfect balance for adding some dimension without creating some towering stack that will never fit in a page protector. Includes a floral boot for all your adventures, of course.

The ephemera set is a mix of designs on white cardstock and printed on clear acetate, for lovely layering options.

Oh this. This might be my favourite. It’s washi tape, but it’s die cut into shapes more like a border sticker. These two designs come in one box so you don’t have to pick.

These are something new for us too – acrylic shapes with lofty motifs for all your dream documenting.

You can never have too many roller stamps, right? This one has a variety of phrases and comes with a notepad for journaling or notes.

These little gadgets are rub-on pens. I used so many of these when we travelled to Japan years ago, and I’m happy to see them hit the scrapbooking world. Just roll on the design like an adhesive roller, but it’s a picture instead of glue.

And of course, there is paper! This is just a sample of the full paper range, and the papers are available by the double-sided sheet or single sided in 12×12 and 6×6 paper pads.

I’ll be sharing more projects and videos with Starshine soon, including coverage from the show floor at CHA. The best place to catch what I’m seeing at CHA is on Instagram, but I’ll post the most important bits here too whenever I have time.

American Crafts are blogging about Starshine today as well, and they have a Starshine prize pack to send to one of you! Leave a comment on this post to enter, and let us know which piece of Starshine you’d most like on your desk! Entries close this Sunday, the 10th of January, at 11:59pm GMT (UK time). One entry per person and you can live absolutely anywhere. (Now if only someone on the ISS would enter!)

Thanks so much for taking a look at Starshine!

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Happy New Year! We’ve been out for our traditional New Year walk and yet somehow have become so practical that it included a stop for groceries. That’s thrilling trivia, I realise, but I tell you this because the important part is the cupboards were not entirely empty. This was not buying groceries in a panic to get something two hours after a regular time for lunch, but a stop to get what we needed for tomorrow and the day that follows. And that, dear friends, is a huge difference to life on the first day of this new year compared to 365 days ago.

I know twelve weeks of baking posts here was a bit off topic, but it started to get my mind set in a good place again: making, sharing, keeping a schedule. I don’t care that I didn’t win – I baked something for every one of the twelve challenges. I didn’t just start and get overwhelmed by the rest of life partway through.

More on topic, however, has been Journal your Christmas. All the years of this class, and this year was the first that I have filmed and shared the making of my entire book. It’s not quite finished yet (class finishes on the sixth) but there is a video for every day, and my album is more complete at this point than it has been in years. Again, it’s a turning point for making, sharing, keeping a schedule. Only this time it hasn’t been weekly efforts, but daily posts. And while there may have been a few nights when I really wasn’t sure if I could keep on top of everything, it has worked! It’s been an actual joy. I cannot begin to explain how happy this makes me feel.

I’ve never lost my love of pretty paper, but having a messy-from-working (as opposed to messy-from-stacking) desk this December has made me swoon. Cutting and pasting and stitching and stapling and stamping and layering and writing and painting… YES. YES TO ALL.

But I’m learning from this slow path back to productivity. I’m not announcing anything. No big packed schedule. No massive intentions with no wriggle room that lead me to tears and disappointment on a day that I can’t make things happen as I imagine. Instead: I am here. I am making stuff. I want to share.

That’s enough for a New Year declaration, right?

Oh. Wait. Okay.
I’ll announce one thing.

I hope 2016 is feeling positive for you too.

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It’s just hours from my favourite time of year – Journal your Christmas time! The 2015 forums are open and discussions have started, and there are even two new videos posted for members that show my process for getting ready (it doesn’t take long) and staying organised with this project amongst the busy days of the Christmas season. But let me slow down just a minute.

Journal your Christmas is a project that has been near and dear to my heart for twelve years now. It was first a journal I created just for myself as I worked to ‘take back Christmas’ and rekindle the feeling I remembered in the season but wasn’t finding in everyday life at that particular time. That journal turned everything around for me and my love of Christmas has stayed with me ever since. The following year, I used that journal to develop a set of writing prompts for scrapbookers and journalers with the idea that you could write every day or just some days, choosing the topics that spoke to you most. There is no pressure to create an entry for every day or every topic in any one year, and you’re encouraged to go back to that book that you started with good intentions but didn’t get anywhere near Christmas day in your documentation. With that in mind, I set out from day one that this would be an annual project and if you joined in once, you could participate as many years as you wanted at no extra cost… which means there are a few people who have gone through the class more than ten times all from that initial purchase! I’m so honoured that JYC is part of Christmas for many of you.

The video above has a little explanation of the basics and what you’ll receive this year – and that’s a daily PDF and a new daily video. There is already a library of daily 3×4 cards from last December, and these are new videos with a different format. Still on the shorter side to make them fit in your holiday schedule, but rather than just a card each day, each video has a balance of crafting – sometimes an embellishment, sometimes a stamping technique or a journaling technique or working with a photo – and the theme explored in that day’s PDF. It feels quite cohesive for me this year, looking at the PDF and the videos together, and I’m excited to work in my journal alongside you. (I am working ahead a little so my journal can still be very much the real events and photos and thoughts of Christmas in our home, but in a way I can share with you without a delay.)

When you sign up, you receive access to all future years but also all the archived material from the past years of Journal your Christmas, so if you want to sign up now and look through the daily videos from last year or read all the prompts in one big binge session tomorrow, you definitely can. There are also printable and digital files in the archives and you can see the gallery from each year where participants share their work.

What’s included in Journal your Christmas?
Thirty-seven days of inspiration delivered right to your inbox. We start on the first of December and run to the sixth of January, which is the twelfth day of Christmas.
Each daily email includes a full-colour, printable PDF that covers a particular topic in depth with ideas for journaling, photographing, and crafting. This year, it also includes an accompanying video.
There is also a private forum to chat and share your work with other JYC participants.

What makes your classes different to others?
All of my classes include permanent access, something I have always taken very seriously. That means when you join the project, you can participate for as many years as you would like at no extra cost.

I donate £1 for every class purchase to The Girls’ Fund at Plan, a charity that helps millions of girls who otherwise wouldn’t have access to education or basic survival needs.

The PDF prompts come right to your inbox – you don’t have to sign into the website daily to view them – though they are archived for you online so if you need to go back or want to download several to work on while you’re offline for a while, that is always an option. (You may or may not be able to see the videos straight from your inbox – it depends on the device you’re using and your mail software settings, but likewise, the streaming videos are embedded in both the emails and the class forum so you can view them at the time that works best for you.)

We really embrace variety and doing what works best for you. You can just take pictures or just write words or you can create a beautiful canvas every day – it’s completely up to you and I love every way the project may be approached. That includes how many entries you will make. You can certainly add something to your album every day if you would like, but it’s not a requirement. When I started this project, I designed it with the idea that you would cover a few of the topics in the first year, then in your second year pick a few more, and so on until you had a very full album you loved that documented many years of Christmas celebration. So whether you want to create every day, just now and then, or just take notes in December then put it all together at a quieter time of year, you are welcome to take the avenue that makes you happiest!

How do I join Journal your Christmas?
Easy! Just choose your currency and click the button below for your choice of UK pounds or US dollars. If neither of those is your currency, you can still join us! Choose either and the payment will convert automatically when you make your payment.

You can pay by credit/debit card or Paypal account. If you would like your prompts to come to a different email address than the one on your Paypal account, please be sure to leave a note in the message to seller section with the email address you would like to use. (If you miss that, send me an email to let me know, with both email addresses. Orders can take up to 24 hours to process. If you haven’t received your class registration after 24 hours, just email me and I’ll make sure your registration is completed and ready for you to get started!

Can I give Journal your Christmas as a gift?
Yes! Just click to pay above as normal, then leave the email address for the gift recipient in the notes section. If you miss the notes, email me. If you’d like me to send an email explaining that the class is a gift, I’m happy to do so – just let me know your preference of being named or anonymous!

Is there a deadline for signing up?
No. You can sign up any day of the year. The class starts on the first of December, so if you want to be in on day one, that can be part of the fun, but if you sign up later, you’ll still have access to all the materials, and you can do them in order or skip around – there is thought to the order but it’s not so regimented that you can’t change it up!

As a previous participant, what do I need to do?
If you participated last year and your email address has not changed, you don’t need to do anything to join us again. (The first message sent also has instructions on how to unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive the emails this year.) If your email address has changed since last year, you’ll want to update your account on the forum. If you need any help getting your email updated, please send a message to this special address and include both the old and new email address so your account can be corrected.

Previous participants can access the class forum any time. If you do not remember your login details at the forum, click at the top right of the forum screen to log in. When that page loads, there is a forgotten password link below the boxes. Follow the instructions from there and your username and a new password will be sent automatically. (If you don’t see it straight away, check your spam folder.)

Any other questions, please let me know. I’m looking forward to creating a Christmas journal full of happiness this year, and I’d love for you to join me and so many dedicated Christmas journalers for JYC2015.

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