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

Often in the scrapbooking world, papers turn to browns and oranges and other autumnal colours from the first of September. It’s the first of September here and it still feels like summer, and indeed it is still technically summer till the 22nd of September in this hemisphere, so instead of switching to all things autumn, I wanted to put together one bright blast of colour to end the summer. Sound like a plan? With a bit of luck, I won’t have autumn photos to scrap until October anyway!

Unfortunately I left it a little too late to make up my mind on all the goodies for this month since the new stuff started to arrive in the store, and that means my box is still on its way here. I can’t make a video sharing these products together just yet! But I love all the colour plus black and white accents, and I hope you’ll enjoy scrapping with this set of supplies too.

Click here to shop the September 2013 Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

There are bright, colourful new papers from My Mind’s Eye, Bella Blvd, and Glitz, plus some colourful enamel dots. Then the accents are in black and white from Teresa Collins, Skipping5, Rhonna Farrer’s latest My Mind’s Eye collection, Glitz washi tape, and a new flair badge made in-house at Two Peas. But there are a few things to take note before you check out your cart…

…There are no letter stickers listed in this month’s kit! Shock! Horror! That’s because this month I want to focus on using black letter stickers. If you have plenty of black letter stickers in your collection, you’re all set and you can use September’s kit to encourage yourself to use them! If you’re lacking in black letter stickers, then pick a pack! There are plenty in the store, and you can find just the right set for your style and budget.

…If you feel some of the die-cut cards are too swoony in the wording for your liking, you can either swap for others you like better, or keep these and know you’ll be working with them for the colour and pattern rather than the words, so you’ll cover up those words if they don’t fit your page. Easy!

…The stamp set I added to the list this month is one I’ve had for several months, but I want to make sure I use more. You could elect to choose your own set of stamps from your own collection with that same ethos – have a flip through and see if there is a set you meant to use many times but haven’t really used all that much. Or if you want something new and want to grab a bargain, there are some great stamp sets that aren’t very old at all that are 50% off in the store right now, so take a gander here to see if something catches your eye while it’s a great bargain. My plan is lots of stamping in black ink to work with that bright colours + black and white accents approach.

…The images in this post are not to scale!

…Adhesives are currently 25% to 50% off. Great time to stock up on pop dots of course.

As always, all the projects I’ll make with my September kit (once it arrives) will be shown here on the blog totally free of charge. These will always be free, though not amazingly timely, as those of you who read here will know I have lots of August kit projects that need to appear here on the blog! (Yes, they will shortly.) I also have several paid workshops of various styles coming up, and wanted to both clear that up (I don’t use the Best of Both World kits in paid content, just the free stuff you find here and on my YouTube channel) and also give you a little advance warning should you want to follow along with one of those upcoming paid workshops with the same supplies that I’ll be using. One of the projects I have coming up soon features using the Glitz Wild & Free collection pack from start to finish. All collection packs – including that one – are currently on sale for 25% off, so that’s a great bargain on a brand new kit. I have no idea how long that discount is valid, I’m afraid. If Wild & Free isn’t your style, the project that features that collection kit could be used with any collection kit of your choice, so take a look at the complete list of options if you prefer. But just to make that really, really clear – that is a paid workshop and I will not be sharing the projects I make from that collection kit here on the blog. (Any questions, let me know, but I think that should make sense.)

Okay, I think that is most of the important info for Best of Both Worlds in September! You can find the kit here and add it to your cart. The Best of Both Worlds idea is that you’re free to make any changes you would like, so add more or take things away or swap for similar items that are more your style – whatever you prefer! If you purchase at least $50 in physical, non-phase out goods, you qualify for free shipping to US addresses or $5 OFF shipping to anywhere in the world. {ETA: I am SO sorry that I made an error there and originally made it look like $5 international shipping. $5 off. $5 off. I am so sorry!!!! It was just a typing error, but oh goodness what an idiot I am not to have caught it.} You will need to enter the code ZWPKWA for the shipping discount. International orders, you may find the shipping quote is higher than the actual postage price on your box when it arrives. If that’s the case, open a customer service ticket to request a refund of the excess – just to be sure you open the ticket within thirty days.

Thanks so much for your continued support, and happy scrapping in September!

Comment [7]

I love to find household objects that can be used in my crafty projects. Either by using them as ‘tools of the trade’ or by incorporating them into a project, I gain satisfaction of re-using and re-purposing.

Today, I would like to share with you ways of using an old credit card, library card, or gift card.

Number One: Use an old card as a mask. You will need an old card(s) and spray mist.

You can layer and use multiple cards as a mask for a layout or card. For my layout I used 3 cards and placed them on top of each other to create a horizontal grid. Once you are happy with the placement of your cards, spray with mist and carefully remove the cards when you are done.

Number Two: Use an old card to apply paint, modeling paste, or gesso. You will need an old card, modeling paste, and your favorite stencil.

You can use an old card to apply product to a project. I love how evenly a card applies modeling paste with a stencil. Remove modeling paste from container and apply (paint) it over your stencil.

Carefully remove the stencil and you have great texture with modeling paste.

Number Three: Use an old card to create splatters and drips. You will need an old card and spray mist.

You can use an old card to create splatters and drips on a layout or card. Apply spray mist to card.

For drip effects, allow spray mist to ‘pool’ on the card, then slowly tip the edge of the card to your paper and allow spray mist to drip down.

For spatter effects, tip card upside down and tap the card to release the spray mist, creating splatters.

Number Four: Use an old card to create hash marks and lines on a layout or card. You will need an old card and acrylic paint.

Pour some acrylic paint to a paper plate or craft mat. ‘Swipe’ card through paint several times to load the card.

Swipe your paper with the card creating your hash mark/line design.

Number Five: Use an old card as an embellishment. You will need an old card, your favorite stamp, embossing ink, and embossing powder.

Using your favorite stamp, stamp an old card with embossing ink and apply embossing powder. Heat and let your unique embellishment take shape. I wanted a little bit of glimmer and shine to my layout, so I used gold embossing powder. LOVE! You can use the embossed card in many ways on your projects. I cut my card into smaller rectangles and adhered them to the edge of my layout.

How is that for super easy and super fun? Want another quick re-purpose idea? Plastic bread ties and clips make fantastic embellishments on your layouts. Think of the possibilities!

So next time you think about throwing away a normal, everyday household item, think about how you can re-use or re-purpose it into a crafty project.

Tina Walker lives in Sunny Salt Lake City, Utah, but is a mid-western girl at heart. Much of her crafty inspiration comes from her two French Bulldogs, Moose & Flikka, who have quite the reputation in the scrapbook world. She is currently a Design Team member for My Mind’s Eye and Jenni Bowlin Studio and owns and designs for Frog Dog Studio, a monthly Mixed Media kit club. You can see more of her work on her blog, A Dog’s Life and on her Mixed Media kit club blog.

Comment [15]

Every year, there are two classes that automatically appear on my class calendar: Journal your Christmas at the start of December, and Learn Something New Every Day at back to school time – September first. This will be the seventh year for Learn Something New, and it starts in a week! Whether 2013 would be your first or seventh year, I invite you to head back to school with us as we embark on a month-long adventure of learning from the world around us.

Most years, I’ve compiled my lessons in a minibook with small, simple pages and a quick entry for each day. Learn Something new is not a class that will focus on scrapbooking technique or page design. Every year someone misses this sentence and gets upset that it’s not thirty days of scrapbook technique tutorials. I don’t know how on earth I could come up with seven years times thirty techniques. I’m just not that complicated when it comes to pretty paper really! But what I can do is help you look at the adventure side of the scrapbooking experience, and you won’t need to write essays or spend hours getting introspective. We’re talking a few minutes a day, and when I worked in the minibook format, I would spend ten to thirty minutes per day on my entries, with the longer time spend on the weekends and the ten minute pages happening during the week when I had plenty on my daily schedule already.

In 2012, I used divided page protectors to add this month of documentation to my annual 12×12 album. It didn’t take a full album, since it’s just one or per pockets per day, and flows well with the rest of the events I’ve documented in the year’s scrapbook. This took less time per entry, and I did all the entries in one session, at the end of the month, rather than creating a card each day. My daily work for this format was to write one to five sentences in my notebook (most days I wrote just one, but sometimes I would write more if I wasn’t sure what the best lesson of the day might be, so I could leave it for a few days and decide which had the best impact) so that was merely a minute or two, and I tried to take a picture every day during the month. I succeeded most days but not all with the photos, and they were a balance of shots taken with my phone and my ‘proper’ camera.

This year, I’ll be posting my daily lesson to Instagram. My Instagram pictures also appear on my Twitter and Facebook timelines, so really you’ll be able to see them in any of those three places. The idea of one photo and one sentence is really the essence of this project, so Instagram is a great format for keeping the project going with just a few minutes each day. When the month ends, I’ll be adding these square photos and captions to my 2013 album in divided page protectors, but I’m thinking it will be in an even simpler and more compact way than last year. I’m imagining square photos, white mats to look a bit Polaroid in style, and the lesson captions hammered out on the typewriter.

I’m pretty sure most (if not all!) of you have seen this by now, but if this sort of concept – making every day, and the everyday, a scrapbooking adventure appeals to you, then this is a class you can find useful. Are you…

…a scrapbooker who keeps a Project Life album but sometimes loses direction with what to write and what’s worth recording when things seem pretty routine?
…a 12×12 scrapbooker in need of a creative kick to get out of a repetitive rut?
…wishing you had five minutes to stop and reflect on your day before running to the next thing?
…longing for scrapbook journaling to come easily and flow naturally?
…looking for a new project for the back to school season without dedicating a huge amount of time or money?
…wanting to return to scrapbooking after a break?
…someone who enjoys working on a project with other creative crafters?

If any of those describe you, then I believe you’ll enjoy Learn Something New Every Day.

You’ll get a full-colour PDF prompt delivered to your inbox daily throughout September. You do not need to log in each day to download the class materials – they come straight to your inbox. (However, should email not be your favourite thing, they are also available on the website and you can download them at any time you would like.) There is also some video content so you can see the strategy I used with 4×6 divided page protectors and a selection of supplies, for example. Class includes membership in a private forum where you can talk to other participants and share your work, if you so choose. Many participants choose to follow along on their own, but there is also a very friendly community on the forum to chat and share your work, and because some participants have been part of this project for a few years or more, they have a wealth of advice from personal experience of what worked for them in different situations. Membership includes access to all the previous years’ materials, including printables, digital scrapping goodies, and the galleries with a wide variety of project styles.

Learn Something New has a one-time registration fee of £10 GBP or $15 USD, and then you can participate as many years as you would like at no further cost. I’d love for you to join us!

These buttons will allow you to pay by your choice of credit/debit card or Paypal account – your choice. Please make sure you are using a valid email address. Registrations can take up to twenty-four hours to process. If you do not receive an email in that time, please check your spam folder, then email me at shimelle@gmail.com. If the email address on your paypal account is not where you would like to receive class materials, please let me know that too. You can leave a note on your payment, or send an email if you miss that bit. (If you would like to gift the class to a friend, just sign up as normal and in the comments or an email, let me know her email address. Simple as that.)

Alumni: you do not need to pay again; an email will be sent to you this week to confirm if you would like to receive emails this September. If you have changed your address in the past year, you can update that in the user control panel on the class form.

Learn Something New was inspired by the energy and hope that the back to school feeling has always brought me, whether I was a student, a teacher, or just watching from the sidelines. Like a new year in January, this time of year is such an opportunity for picking up something and running with it to make a bit of self improvement. Over the years, I’ve kept Learn Something New albums through extremely happy Septembers to Septembers full of grief, and I’ve always found something about this project that keeps me coming back. Whatever your plans this September, I hope your back to school is a success.

Comment [35]

Linear design and clean lines are traditionally how most of us scrapbook but I think it is a little bit exciting to incorporate something round to offset those square and rectangular shapes. Working with circles open so many possibilities and I have five ideas to share with you today.

1) Crop photos into a circle – For this layout, I created a simple template in Photoshop and placed each photo into the circle and printed them out. Another option would be using a circle template to cut the physical photo. I made a simple grid and then added a few circle embellishments in the form of a transparent doily and flair.

2) Cut circles in half – On this layout about one of my daughters, I used the halves of a few strategically placed doily stickers as embellishments. The rounded designs form a visual triangle.

3) Punch circles to form scallops – For this love card, I punched rows of 6 circles from patterned paper and adhered them so they ran off the card. I trimmed the sides and then embellished with stickers.

4) Make a circular statement – On this layout about my daughters and their daddy, I used a pre-made circle die-cut sheet by Jillibean Soup (use a die-cut machine to create a similar look). I backed several of the open circles with patterned paper and embellished other circles with dimensional stickers.

5) Create a cluster of circles – For this final layout, I took my inspiration from the pre-printed doily in the corner of the background patterned paper and created a cluster of patterned paper circles with a photo cropped into a circle.

Jill Cornell lives with her husband of 10 years and 4-year-old twin daughters in Windsor Heights, Iowa. She has a degree and career experience in public relations and broadcasting but is now a stay-at-home mom. Jill has been scrapbooking and papercrafting for 10 years and has a soft, shabby chic style that incorporates linear design elements. She loves having girls to scrapbook because it gives her an excuse to use pink and feminine details on her work. Jill is currently designing for American Crafts, Simple Stories, Webster’s Pages, Gossamer Blue, and Emma’s Paperie. Visit Jill at her blog, Blessed Scrapper .

Comment [3]

Two Tutorials is a series with two step-by-step craft projects: a non-paper project by Alice followed by a scrapbooking project by Shimelle. You can see previous posts here for further details. We hope you enjoy!

Every now and then we all look through our wardrobe and feel like it needs a bit of a lift: your favourite garment needs updating or maybe you wish you had more accessories! Well, look no further – this little simple collar is easy to make and perfect for customising any garment you wish. With free reign of fabric and embellishments, it can be made to suit you!

For this you shall need the essentials, such as scissors and pins. Then your chosen fabric, ribbon, embellishments and most importantly, collar template! There are plenty floating around on the internet you can use and this tutorial can suit all shapes. (Have a look here for a variety.) Because you aren’t sewing the edges of this collar, check to make sure you choose a fabric that doesn’t fray. (The no-hem tactic is what makes this ‘no-sew’ in my book. There may be a few stitches to come, but you can sew on a button, right?)

Place your collar template on the fold (P.O.F) and cut carefully around. Don’t remove the template until your happy with the shape. Also, you don’t have to use pins, you could draw around the shape with a fabric pen (one that washes off) or tailor’s chalk – you will still get the same shape whatever you use.

When you open it up, it should look like this. At this stage I ironed it out and tried it out for size. Next step: Ribbon!

I cut 2 pieces of ribbon, 32cm in length and placed the ribbon underneath the collar (as shown). I put 2cm of ribbon under each side and pinned in place. To hide the stitching you shall do for the ribbon, I decided to sew them with a button and it made it look a lot neater! It’s up to you which type of button you use, one hole, four holes! I used four holes, so it was all much sturdier.

How easy was that!? There you have it, the no sew collar with a big impact. You could easily make a ridiculous amount of collars and have one for each day of the week. I get excited just thinking about how many fabric and embellishment combinations you could use! I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and will join me again next week.

Taking inspiration from Alice’s project and heading to my paper this week gave me a little something at the start and a little something at the end of the layout! To start, I was taken by how the full piece of fabric in Alice’s project looked quite different to the pattern shown in the finished collar, and thought I might use this idea to make use of some patterns that wouldn’t necessarily be my very first choice. I started with the new Jenni Bowlin fishnet stencil, plus some white cardstock and grey spray mist.

With a few sprays, I ended up with this look. I sprayed too close to the paper in the centre, resulting in that section where the pattern isn’t at all clear. Easy to remedy with another try, but I didn’t worry about it since I was pretty sure the photo would cover it in the finished design.

I trimmed that down to the square (I like the frame that the edge of the stencil created, so I left it intact) and cut a larger box of paper in a brighter colour (High Five paper by Elle’s Studio)…

…and layered those two in the top left quadrant of a background patterned paper (Mix Tape paper by October Afternoon) that included both those colours – the neutral grey and the bright aqua.

Sticking with that same bright colour so far, I added droplets of ink following a loose horizontal path across the page, around the midpoint of the patterned paper block. I used metallic ink here but non-metallic for the grey at the beginning so it wouldn’t be too much sparkle overload, especially considering I already had the super glittery letter stickers waiting on my desk.

Next I added a series of blocky elements to fill the bottom half of the page. I started at the left and worked right, letting some element of each card help choose the next. The first card was inspired by Alice’s design, as the flowers looked like a collar to me (vaguely!) and the colour of the leaves was a great match for the mist and the patterned paper so far. The next block to the right is a Dear Lizzy sticker, chosen because the flowers here shared a similar look and colour. These two florals together strike me somewhat as two different artists interpreting the same bouquet, if that makes sense? The style of the illustration is different, and yet they both have similar colours and shapes repeated through the blossoms. The final block to the right is an Amy Tangerine sticker, chosen because the colour was a good match for the colour in the Dear Lizzy flowers.

Wanting to take that one-linked-to-the-other concept and move it to other areas of the page, I added the photos and topped the corner with a larger floral sticker from the same Dear Lizzy sheet, with the matching flowers.

Smaller stickers can be very useful for covering up any ink drops that didn’t wind up quite so aesthetically pleasing as the others!

If the trapped white space between the photos and the cards made you nervous, you can breathe now. That space fit the title, with the super sparkly Maggie Holmes Thickers, plus small letter stickers from the Dear Lizzy sticker sheet.

Even with the title in place, there was some trapped space that needed help. Border stickers were useful for filling the space to the right of the title and also just above of the small letter stickers.

Then I filled in the journaling card, and got so carried away that I apparently thought the word ‘all’ had three Ls, so I may have tried to turn one into an exclamation point. Can’t contain the excitement! (I guess.)

Then for the finishing touch to match Alice’s project: some button and twine detailing to that loop of flowers. I tack the buttons in place with normal adhesive while I punch the holes and stitch them onto the page. If you hate sewing buttons on, then glue dots will hold them really well, but I like my buttons to have string through them, and sewing through glue dots is just more trouble than it’s worth, I think.

Baker’s twine is a pain in the neck to thread through a needle. Either you have to use a giant needle, have the patience of a saint, or be very careful with a threader, else the baker’s twine will split into the two different colours and one will feed through the needle and the other will stay on the other side. I didn’t have too much luck using threaders with this, even with reasonably sized needles, and have found washi tape to be far easier. Run a bit of tape over the end of the twine and press it against itself so there is no sticky left. Then take your scissors and cut it into a really skinny triangle so the washi tape has a point that can go through the needle, but the twine is still sandwiched between the ends of the tape. Pull that through the needle, discard the tiny bit of tape, and you’re all set.

Buttons stitched in place, then thread tied into a cute little bow to mimic the collar! Of course this could also be done with ribbon, but I didn’t have anything that was a good match. I wished I had a lush yellow satin ribbon for a very pretty bow! Maybe next time.

Here’s my finished page for this week’s project! Supplies, apart from the twine, mists, and mask, are from the August Best of Both Worlds kit.

That’s it for this edition of Two Tutorials! We’ll be back most weekends with a new pair of step-by-steps, so if there is a craft or technique you’d like to see, let us know and we’ll keep it in mind. Happy crafting!

Comment [14]

Confetti has been a huge trend and it doesn’t seem like it is going to fade away. We can see it showing out on traditional layouts, on cards and even in pocket scrapbooking projects. I love it as it is such a great way to add some colour and happy detail to your projects but if you repeat it all the time the same way, it might get a bit boring and predictable. Today I would like to share with you Five simple ideas on customizing your confetti projects with some artsy techniques. Let’s take out some paints, washi tapes and punchers and get creative with confetti!

For the first project I used confetti mask and some paint. You will find similar masks with confetti inspired design among new products from Prima. Masks and stencils are great tool and a good investment as you can use them over and over again. To create a look of softly blended colours on my confetti, I used acrylic paints and a simple roller from DIY shop. I poured a tiny bit of paint of three different colours on my palette, rolled the roller in it and then rolled it on white cardstock over the mask. You could of course also use mists or ink to create your own confetti background.

For the second project I wanted to combine confetti with the ombre look, I thought both trends worked together beautifully. To do that I first painted white cardstock with different shades of turquoise watercolour paint, I left it to dry and then punched a bunch of confetti with a simple single hole puncher. I tried not to mix the colours so when it came to placing confetti on my tag I could arrange them in the gradient order starting from the darkest shades in the bottom left corner going lighter towards the top.

The third idea came inspired by the second one. I really liked the ombre look of my confetti so I wanted to play with it a bit more, this time on the layout. But all these tiny dots surrounding my picture didn’t look appealing to me, so I decided to enlarge some of the confetti pieces. After all who said that confetti has to be small? You can play with sizes and experiment, few bigger confetti dots will definitely add interest and great dynamic to your project! The other idea is to play with shapes – don’t feel limited to circles, you could make confetti hearts, stars or so trendy triangles!

If you don’t feel like getting messy with paint you can create unique confetti using some of your favourite washi tapes! I picked some colours of tape which were matching with the concept of my layout and placed the stripes on piece of vellum paper, then I punched confetti with my puncher. By using washi you create very light and airy confetti which I think worked great on this layout with lots of white space, the little pieces look like they are floating around the photograph. You could combine this washi confetti with previous ideas – make it ombre by mixing lots of tapes in different shades of one colour or enlarge it for some extra dynamic on your project!

My last idea for artsy confetti is by far the simplest one. To achieve this look you will only need some thick acrylic paint and a pencil with eraser. Squeeze some paint, dip your pencil’s eraser in it and use it as a stamp to add scattered confetti to your project. You can control the size of confetti pieces by pressing the eraser lighter or harder. Remember to clean it well with a baby wipe before using another colour of paint to prevent colours from blending.

As you can see there are many ways to play with confetti, you don’t have to limit yourself to punching it from patterned paper only! If you think outside the box you can create your own confetti in limitless number of shapes, colours and patterns and make it match your project perfectly! Try to experiment with mixing different elements among your confetti- sequins, small wood veneer pieces, buttons, brads, enamel dots – they can add fun dimension to your projects and make your confetti designs stand out among the others!

Kasia Tomaszewska is a scrapbooker from Poland who fell in love with paper and crafting 6 years ago. Since then she has been moving around and travelling between England and Turkey where she currently lives. She loves experimenting with papers, adding fun and artsy touches to her projects and playing with various layers. She mostly makes layouts and mini albums which help her to keep memories of everyday happenings together. She currently designs for Chic Tags, Prima Marketing, Lemon Owl, Scrap Around The World and she is also a Inspiration Girl for Citrus Twist Kit club. You can find her on her blog worqshop and stop by at her Facebook and Instagram .

Comment [16]

I can’t believe a week has gone already since we last looked at your responses! This week, let’s look to sketches seven and eight – Scrapbooking with a patterned paper you don’t want to hide and Making a Banner with Photos.

How appropriate is Mel’s patterned paper in her layout! Photography is pretty key to scrapbooking and I always love a camera motif! The colours here have great contrast too – it feels energetic and happy. Violeta’s layout took the sketch and decided to make the most of using several different patterned papers. There are six different patterns in all, with colours that blend well, making the bold lettering really stands out amongst all the pinks. Melissa has enlarged the focus of the sketch and made it angular, which really works! The design is clean and works well with multiple photos printed at the smaller size. There are some lovely little details, such as the stamping and the added ribbon.

The idea in this sketch is a simple idea, and something I wanted to adapt from purely embellishment to try with photo placement too. The banner is such a versatile element, you don’t have to use it just on photos, it’s a project that can be used with other paper products too.

In HevBell’s Layout she has added little extras to the banner! Putting it to full use by hanging the journaling, instead of writing it on the background, and also attaching punched embellishments. I love how the patterned paper is used more than once but for different things such as the diagonal pattern that she’s used for both the butterflies and the border strips. Both the remaining pages use tags as a main embellishment, but in different ways. Peggy placed tags in the background on her layout, along with small details such as ripping the paper slightly, and the tiny metal embellishments. The banner has been made smaller and the journalling made wider in Snoozi81’s layout. For a more orderly look, she has made the banner straight and used the tags more like photo frames than journaling cards.

And now it’s over to you! Take a look here to find plenty of sketches, and be sure to leave a link to you can show off your own personal work! I hope you are now full of inspiration to go get scrapping in the week ahead.

Comment [5]

Today I’d like to introduce you to something and someone a little new. Way back when last December, I was making a masterplan for 2013, and I knew this was going to be a challenging year in terms of time and work and all those things that life throws at us. This year has involved so much that falls into the category of never thought I’d do that, and just a lot of non-work stuff that was going to take up so much time. On one hand, that’s a great time to be working for myself, because there’s no need to worry about a boss thinking I’ve lost focus and need to work more. On the other, if I don’t have time to work, I don’t have a business. That’s not very useful! The answer seemed pretty obvious: I needed some help in 2013! Enter a lovely lady called Alice, who was looking for a job that would give her experience in the crazy world of being self-employed, making and crafting, and still keeping the lights on at home. Thank you, 2013, for throwing some pretty good stuff in the mix!

So far, everything Alice has worked on has been behind the scenes, so few of you have spoken with her. (Don’t worry – if you had an email from me, it’s actually from me!) She’s a very talented crafter, but Alice works with fabric and thread for most of her projects rather than paper and glue. Over the last few weeks we came up with a little project that would let us combine the two: a series of joint tutorials. For each of these so far, Alice has created her project and step-by-step tutorial first, then I’ve taken inspiration from her project to create a scrapbook page tutorial in response. We’re not sharing the same ideas in two formats, but it’s really an exercise in how one thing can inspire something else quite different, so there are two step-by-step tutorials you could follow, or you might be inspired to take another step to your own idea. We hope so, anyway!

That’s enough rambling for today, but I we hope you enjoy this new series, whether you’re a dedicated scrapbooker or you take up all sorts of crafts! Today we’re taking you through floral headbands and paper pinwheels, so please welcome Alice Partridge for her first tutorial, followed by my scrappy steps.

The genius of this project is it doesn’t require much doing, yet you get a lovely creation at the end of it! For the headband, I bought a simple silver alice band and two packs of small stemmed foam roses. You can always add extra decoration, but I will go into that later on.

Before you start to put the flowers on the headband, figure how you want them arranged. Do you want a pattern, like three of one colour then two different, or perhaps all one colour? They can be quite fiddly to remove, so make sure you’re happy with your pattern beforehand.

It’s fairly easy to attach the flowers. Simply place the flower where you want and hold it down. Wrap the stem around the headband. You may find that it’s still quite loose, but this will change once a few more surround it and you can push the stems closer together. It can be fiddly but once you’ve done one, you get the hang of it.

Continue to add on as many as you wish! Whilst making this, I kept trying it on my head to see if one or two more flowers were needed to even it out. Always handy to check and add more on then rather than before you’re about to wear it out!

Ta-dah! The finished headband. Doesn’t it look lovely?! If you wanted to add some ‘glam’ to the headband, why not add some beads onto the petals and a sparkle of glitter? Or if you wanted to get the kids involved for a little summer project, instead of using an alice band, get some pipe cleaners to make a headband with funky shapes on top, such as hearts or stars.

I hope this has inspired you to get out your inner flower beauty and has made you feel all summery! If you make your own summer headband, I’d love to see.

Taking inspiration from Alice’s project, the first thing that came to mind was a design with paper flowers, but I felt I needed to keep thinking for two reasons: first, that it was just too obvious, and also that after a long expanse of using paper flowers on nearly every page, I haven’t used any in a long while and I haven’t really been missing them. I returned to my thought behind the July kit of creating embellishments with punches, and remembered one punch that is great for creating embellishments with dimensions: the pinwheel punch by Jenni Bowlin for Fiskars.

Other supplies I gathered included that text print patterned paper by Pebbles, the neon enamel dots by Freckled Fawn, a few scraps of patterned paper in bright colours, baker’s twine, and some foam squares.

When I ordered this patterned paper, I knew I wanted to use just a single photo with it, so much of the design could still be appreciated. It’s summer themed, and this Instagram photo fit that. The text on the patterned paper makes it a bit difficult to include a title in my normal style (though large or very bright titles would still work well) so the text that was already on this photo seemed to make it the best match. A few mats in the colours of the event branding (pink and turquoise, thanks Team London!) help to keep the picture from disappearing into that busy background.

Then scrap punching! With this punch, you’ll either need patterned papers with both sides that you are happy to show, or punch double and glue the different papers together before you create the pinwheels. Luckily these scraps were all double-sided in colours and patterns that would work together. I punched three pieces from each of three different papers.

To build the pinwheel embellishment, add a foam square in the middle. They can also be made with flat adhesive in the centre, but I prefer that little bit of dimension.

Then curl the four corners into the middle. The adhesive of the pop dot will probably be enough to hold it all together, but if not, it’s easy enough to add more adhesive to make sure it’s secure.

Top with an enamel dot. These just stick on, so that’s super quick and easy.

Repeat with all the punched pieces. For this design, it helps to fold at least a few in the opposite direction to the rest, so they don’t all look completely identical. If you want something orderly, like pinwheels in a grid, or a realistic scene where they are caught in the wind, then you might want them all facing the same way.

When Alice attached the flowers to her headband, all the loops of wire really caught my attention. I didn’t want to bring wire onto my page, but liked the idea of loops. Lately I make my loops from baker’s twine, so I unrolled it here to see if I liked the look of this twine with all these papers, and decided it would indeed do.

Cut the thread to a little longer than the space you want to cover so you’ll have room for the loops. I love spray adhesive for loops of twine, but it’s really not indoor-friendly, so I use my normal dot adhesive on the roller. It’s messier and uses more of the adhesive than I would like, but it’s quick, convenient, and doesn’t require an extractor fan for fumes!

Continue looping and pressing into place until you are happy with the look. Err on the side of going just slightly overboard, because some of it will be covered by pinwheels. Tuck the edges on the right side under the photo mats.

Add the pinwheels, dotting them about the loops. I used seven in this section of the page.

So far, everything on the page has formed a horizontal line across the bottom third of the page. Now work up from the photo on the right side, building the page into a corner design. The writing here is on a 3×4 card.

Repeat the loops of twine and the pinwheels on a smaller scale, next to the writing. For my page, two pinwheels was a good balance, but I might have broken things with six and three if I had left more room to the right of the photo.

Some mists just disappear on black papers, but there are some that are quite opaque. I used Tattered Angels Chalkboard Mist for this and the hot pink colour stayed visible over the pattern. Start with some mist that connects the journaling card to the top right corner of the page, running off the right edge just below the corner. Then add a few more drops to the bottom left of the page, with all the pinwheels.

That’s it: the finished design. There’s no real need for lots of extras with the busy patterned paper in the background.

That’s our first edition of Two Tutorials! We’ll be back most weekends with a new pair of step-by-steps, so if there is a craft or technique you’d like to see, let us know and we’ll keep it in mind. Happy crafting!

Alice Partridge is a young designer-maker from southeast England. She hopes to make a living doing what she loves, and spends most of her time reading blogs, drinking tea, or stitching with a needle in her hand. In addition to working behind the scenes at shimelle.com, her recent work includes Kirsty Neale’s upcoming craft book, Hoop-La: 100 Things to do with Embroidery Hoops, out at the end of this month. She’s busy working on her own blog to share with you soon, but looks forward to sharing her first crafting tutorials here over the coming weeks.

Oh, one last thing! Today and tomorrow, everything at Two Peas is 20% off. That includes brand new releases from summer CHA, like My Mind’s Eye’s new collections, the new exclusive stamps and flair from Two Peas, digital printables and cut files, and all the workshops. You don’t need a code, which means you can also use the shipping code VHHSFE. This gets you free shipping within the US when you spend $50 on physical items (so not digital files or workshops) that are not being phased out (when you look at your shopping cart, you’ll see anything like that marked as ‘phasing out’, and most of these items have further clearance discounts). If you’re outside the US, that same code gets you $5 off the international shipping, and the same requirements apply. Hope you find something good!

Comment [16]