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

One day you’re happily crafting along and the next a bulldozer arrives on your doorstep, ready to build a by-pass straight through your creativity. Wouldn’t it be useful to have some sort of guide for moments like these? A reference manual ready to snap you out of a creative slump and help you pick up those pieces of paper with ease and style?

Enter The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scrapbooking.

Over five chapters, the guide covers ways to pick papers, formulas for getting started (and looking like you totally know what you’re doing even if you feel you haven’t a clue), sketches and ways to adapt them, ways to take inspiration from your favourite pages and how to embrace and develop your very own personal style.

This is a little something different to my usual workshops. There is no set schedule and you won’t receive daily emails or feel you need to keep up (not that you really have to follow a schedule with any of my projects). Instead, the guide has been prepared much like a book – but a book plus a great deal more. As soon as you sign up you can access all the materials – in any order you fancy and at any pace you like. The workshop won’t disappear. It will remain available so you can sign up now or later (though do keep reading for a reason you might want to sign up soon).

But I said there was more than just a book, right? That extra stuff includes a video to accompany each chapter. In each video, there’s a review of all the layouts in that chapter and one layout shown and discussed from beginning to end. The book also has an easy-to-print reference section with colour combinations, starting points and sketches, ready to get you scrapping in seconds. Plus there is the interactive part: the forum.

On the class forum, you’ll already find a fun challenge and a few in-depth discussions, and this will continue throughout the year. Have a question? Ask away. Pick up a challenge if you don’t know where to start or just need a little motivation to make the most of your crafting time. Or join in any conversation you find. Right now we’re already discussing theme papers and how you usually choose papers for your layouts, for example. And all that has happened in just two days. I’m definitely excited to keep talking scrapping on the class forum, and I have a whole calendar filled with little extras that pop up there – challenges, writing prompts, maybe even some photography fun and special days in the bag.

Now I did say this class was a little different and that includes a different location. Rather than my own class forum, the guide is hosted at Two Peas in a Bucket, and everything can be viewed just like a layout in the gallery. There is even a new feature they have added for our private forum so you can easily attach pictures and share them just with other participants – perfect for days when you want a second opinion on a layout you haven’t finished, because you won’t have to show it to the whole world via the main gallery.

(By the way, don’t worry: my own classes aren’t going away. I’m just adding this self-paced option to the line up, and Two Peas have a great set up for that. I’ll still be teaching scheduled classes via shimelle.com. In case you were wondering.)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scrapbooking includes 42 brand new scrapbook pages – including both single and double layouts. There are plenty of 4×6 photos, with a few other sizes thrown in here and there. The guide gave me the chance to take all the things I really love when I’m scrapping – starting points, paper combinations, sketches, 4×6 photos, layering – and combine them into a single project with everything in the same place. So that might explain why I’ve been a bit absent with scrapping here on the blog: I’ve truly been scrapping like never before. And if I’m allowed to say this, this is my favourite group of layouts I have ever put together for a class. I hope you love them even half as much as I do!

So in summary, that’s five chapters with forty-two brand new examples, five in-depth videos, an easy-to-print reference section and a private forum with challenges and chat. All available as soon as you sign up, with permanent access. And it’s $25, by the way.

Now yes, you can sign up any time you like, but what about a little extra incentive to sign up now? Happy to oblige! If you sign up now, via this link, you can also receive an exclusive extra video called Layering for Hitchhikers. It’s a closer look at layering techniques, with new pages that are not included in the guide. To receive this video, you must sign up by following a link from shimelle.com, no later than the 8th of March 2012. Then forward your Two Peas receipt, including the order number and date of purchase to me by email. (You can delete the rest of the info if you like – I don’t need your mailing address or anything else that might on there – just the order number and date.) The video will sent to you via email on the 9th of March. (If you already signed up, you may very well qualify already! Go ahead and forward the receipt. I’ll let you know if your order isn’t on my list and otherwise, look forward to that bonus on the 9th.). So yep, that’s a free exclusive additional video for you, but once the 8th of March is gone, so is your chance. Don’t forget!

I think that pretty much covers it! Don’t panic: just join in and enjoy plenty of ways to be a froody scrapbooker, cropping at home, with friends or when visiting Magrathea!

ETA: The same comment is coming up several times below and I’m guessing I just rambled too much and you missed something! If you already signed up before you saw this post, go ahead and forward your receipt. I’ve made that bold above now! :)

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A little digest of news from the Garden Girls – on the twenty-second of the month, we bring you Gardeners’ Digest, a blog-hop style wrap up of our favourite projects and products at Two Peas in a Bucket. If you’ve just arrived from Shannon’s blog, then hello hello! (And if you’re just starting here, you can following it around, of course!)

First a little look at something you’ll find shortly at Two Peas – a peek at what’s coming up in this week’s glittery adventure! You don’t have to wait long to see that adventure though – it will be live for you later today.

(Random aside: yesterday I had a missed call on my phone from a number I didn’t recognise, so I Googled the number and it came up as the London Mayor’s office. Intrigued, I asked for theories on Twitter and Facebook. My very favourite was the suggestion that the mayor is creating a butterfly symbol to shine into the London sky in times of need. Oh goodness that sounds like a lot of responsibility!)

This month I have found my jaw dropping at the layouts from one particular Garden Girl: Wilna is on fire this month! She is so inspired by hearts and the lovey-dovey themes of February and her gallery is filled with such beautiful work, including this new coffee cup album and several 12×12 pages. I love every single thing she is making right now. Definitely one for your bookmarks.

Since our last digest, I have to admit I have received not one but TWO boxes from Two Peas! As the new releases roll in they sell out quickly so I end up ordering more often to make sure someone else doesn’t pinch what I want in my albums. (Selfish, I know!) My orders have included letter sticker collections from Prima, plenty of the new Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection, Rhonna Farrer’s new line with My Mind’s Eye called Follow your Heart, plus papers and a few embellishments from the Country Picnic collection by Pebbles. Since last month Two Peas has also added a bunch of printable designs, especially for journaling cards. I’m particularly loving these from Polka Dot Pixel. Love that splash of bright colour!

Two things for you:
First, leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas. Easy! Enter before the end of Thursday and the winner will be posted on Friday.
Second, your next stop on the way is Wendy Sue. Go, go, go!

Gardeners’ Digest is a monthly update from the Garden Girls, the design team at Two Peas in a Bucket. To keep up with the Garden Girls throughout the month, check out the garden gallery, find us on Twitter or subscribe to all our blogs with just a couple clicks.

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Simple Stories wins my personal prize for the company that is just making so much sense right now. They are a younger manufacturer than many on the floor, though their company history does actually go back beyond the Simple Stories name, with earlier adventures in retailing and all things scrapbook, but Simple Stories is doing smart things with an identifiable style, and it’s exciting to see their new ideas as they mature as a brand.

Starting with paper lines, the new feminine line Fabulous (available now!) includes both full 12×12 sheets and a variety of cut-apart pages with journaling, title and accent cards and strips.

So whether you prefer to scrap traditional pages, pocket pages or a mix – you’re covered. Smart move.

Seeing all the cut-apart pieces like this makes me want to use plenty of them on regular pages, so it really is more versatile than ‘just’ a collection for pocket systems. The Fabulous collection has a bit of flower-power influence but it’s not over the top in colours, daisies or peace signs. There’s a good balance across the line – and everything is double-sided to minimise anything being left-over because it’s not quite the right title for your page.

And it makes my heart very happy to see so many designs in a collection that encourage writing, especially when the 12×12 paper option makes them a lot more affordable than some journaling-card notebooks.

This is the big news on the Simple Stories stand: the 6×8 pocket album. Look for this in so very many projects come next December, I do believe! But plenty before that too.

The page protectors in this system have a variety of pocket configurations plus the full 6×8 page, so there are many looks to try even on the smaller page size.

The binder itself has a fabric spine in black, brown or navy, plus a heavy-duty chipboard cover that can be customised in any way you like. Inside, a 3-ring binder makes it easy to add and move pages as you work.

Plenty of options for packs of papers designed to this size and the coordinating page protectors so you can choose your own mix.

This paper size also includes some options for pockets to hold things you want in your album but you don’t particularly want to glue to the page. I like the scrolled edges on the pockets that make them a little more formal than a plain edge.

And there are pocket pages available in the 12×12 size too!

That leads us to the more masculine 12×12 collection – Awesome. (Available now – find it here!) It’s a similar format to the feminine line, but with a more primary-influenced colour scheme and circles and stars in lieu of flowers and peace signs.

It’s general enough that it should be easy to use on a variety of pages – it doesn’t require the boy in question to be a skateboarder or a fan of dirt bikes or any of the other specific themes that seem to turn up on boy collections so often.

Best name badge ever, right?!

Paper collections are shipping now and the album will hit stores from later this month. This was a very popular item at the show so I would expect it to sell out and be restocked at stores throughout the year. Simple Stories promised they would be making more since it was such a hit!

Click here to shop for Simple Stories products, including these new lines and the Year-ography and Documented lines, perfect for year-long scrapping projects.

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Today for the giveaway we have a BasicGrey Picadilly Collection pack. Picadilly is a symphony of sweet American coziness and down-home country-fresh flavors in lemonade yellow, cherry red, cornflower blue and new grass green.

The pack Includes 18 sheets of 12“x12” double-sided papers, one sheet coordinating alphabet stickers and one sheet coordinating element stickers worth $21.99. You can find the BasicGrey Picadilly collection here at Two Peas in a Bucket.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post describing your perfect picnic: who would be there, or what would you take with you?

Entries close at midnight Thursday UK time and the winner will be posted Friday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!

Good Luck!

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Congratulations to Amelia, who wins PRIZE from Oh My.

Amelia, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your address.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment.

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This week Glitter Girl takes on the challenge of the chipboard – something currently being discussed on the message board here at Two Peas in a Bucket. Her adventure takes her through a quick look at chipboard product options, several different ways to embellish raw chipboard and a scrapbook page using those altered chipboard pieces and the brand new Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection from American Crafts.

Come along for the adventure, won’t you?

If you click through to the project page and scroll down, you’ll find plenty of ideas for supplies, including some special sale items.

For more chipboard ideas, check out two more videos from the Two Peas channel:
the chipboard episode from Shannon Tidwell’s Products you Love series
and Jamie Sorenson’s altering ideas for chipboard embellishments in the Tricks & Treats series.

This week, Glitter Girl challenges you to put some chipboard to work then share the results! Create something to share with the Two Peas community and in your project description, tell us how you got creative with chipboard. Be sure to click the challenge box when you upload a picture to the gallery. You can also leave a link here in the comments to share what you have made.

Join us every Wednesday for the Adventures of Glitter Girl, helping the world one crafting dilemma at a time. Each week Glitter Girl joins Two Peas via video to solve a problem posted on the message boards. Don’t miss out as she shares project tutorials, product comparisons and technique tips throughout the year.

BONUS CHALLENGE: If you’re a fan of the new Dear Lizzy line and already have some in your hands, don’t just admire it – get scrapping! Five lucky crafters will win a happy prize pack of American Crafts goodies! To enter, create a project with the new Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection and upload it to the gallery, being sure to give it at least five relevant tags and three related products, then tick the box for the Dear Lizzy Project Challenge in step four. (You’re welcome to tick the box for the Glitter Girl challenge too if you’ve used both Dear Lizzy and chipboard!)

Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!

The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board. She’s currently looking for a topic for next week. What should it be?

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In a world where scrapbooking supplies are divided between cute and sophisticated, Little Yellow Bicycle lives right in the space where those two collide, with products that can be easily adapted to either pure and simple cuteness, or rich detailed designs, depending on what you choose.

Saturdays (available here) is the first collection to ship from this release, with a denim blue base and plenty of kraft and cream accents. Perfect for family portraits, but versatile enough for all sorts of photos of things that aren’t too formal. Everyday or a little special – there’s something here that could work.

And lest you assume the denim factor makes it too masculine, check out these feminine looks made from those very same supplies.

Little Yellow Bicycle find something that works and then adapt it to all sorts of themes, like the ’5 things’ pockets that make list journaling easy and attractive, plus spinner accents, die-cut shaped papers and word stickers (those are my favourite).

The Paradise collection shipped just before the show, to warm up your winter with all things tropical.

The ’5 Things’ pockets with the shadow box? Love that idea. That’s exactly what I mean by the meeting point of cute and sophisticated.

One of these days I really need to actually make one of these mini book kits. Every time I see them, I love them! They include a good mix of pages and envelopes and would be just right for something like a week of memories from any sort of adventure.

Swoon, a new wedding collection, ships in March. Lots of white and silver.

Hello Spring hits stores in April – and that wreath is so lovely!

Such happy, bright colours in this collection.

Splash ships in May, with a beach or poolside theme…

…but looking at the individual elements, I think there’s a great deal that could work outside that theme, actually. Those die-cuts and rosettes, for starters.

And though the stickers are pretty specific, the border strips are just a nice splash of colour, whether there is any actual splashing in the photos or not!

Escape is the new LYB travel line for early summer. Particularly liking that little pennant kit. We’ll see more of this when it gets closer to its release.

So all in all, quite a full schedule of new things to come from Little Yellow Bicycle – something new to hit the shelves every month! Which are your favourites?

Click here to shop for Little Yellow Bicycle products, including two of the brand new collections already!

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On the tenth of the month, a bunch of us share ten things. Any ten things. All different kinds of ten things. And you’re welcome to join us.

For February, I’m running late. I have a sort of megadeadline for a big project staring at me right now and I’m still trying to wrap up all the CHA posts (look for the rest of those through the weekend – I really want to be all done with that by Sunday and get back to other posts on Monday!) and I’m also wanting to get those boxes from earlier today out the door and into the post as soon as possible. So we can do basic things like… walk to the kitchen. It will be awesome.

I also wanted to write a sort of wrap-up post with my overall notes from CHA so in terms of efficiency, it’s time for two birds and one stone. Except I don’t want to throw stones at birds. Not ever. But I do want to tell you ten things that struck me at CHA this year.

1. Everybody loves a chevron.
This was the most obvious trend and it appeared at almost every booth, and it cracked me up that it was unanimously termed the ‘chevron’ and never the ‘zig-zag’, though if someone said ‘what’s a chevron?’ the answer was invariably ‘you know, a zig-zag’. Love it. And clearly I’m loving this trend as I really didn’t see a single chevron paper that I didn’t want to add to my shopping list. Look for 2012 to be the year of the zig-zag layouts.

2. Tape and twine must have an awesome profit margin.
I only say that because nearly every manufacturer added washi tape and coloured twine to their collections this year. (Trust me, nothing really has an ‘awesome’ profit margin in scrapbooking. But it did make me giggle that so many companies must have looked at those two products and thought they made good business sense.) And when I was working for Jenni Bowlin, who didn’t add tape and twine to her collections? Buyers specifically said ‘and where is the tape and twine?’. In a serious tone. Not sarcasm. And this happened multiple times throughout the day. That’s just how much tape and twine was scattered around the show floor.

3. Hype marketing is gone.
The show takes up physically less space now than a few years ago. I think the non-paper craft manufacturers have really decreased in exhibitors – I’m sure two years ago we were still seeing a lot of cake decorating and wood blanks and more yarn companies on the floor, and of course we’ve lost many companies in the scrapbook world too. The show used to include the basement, but everyone is on the same floor these days. There used to be so many exhibitors that it was difficult to see the full show in three or four days, so companies really tried to hype their booth so you would seek it out. They would give away t-shirts and badges and bags and hats and all sorts of things with their name and booth number so you would see it and be reminded that you needed to get there and check out their new stuff. To encourage people to wear all that branding, there were lots of on-the-spot prizes given to random people wearing the free stuff. Sometimes enough companies would do this sort of thing that it seemed like people were walking billboards! And really, there wasn’t much of that this year at all. Just an observation. My guess is that if the show is small enough to see everything, the expense of the hype marketing goods and giveaways just isn’t worthwhile. (But that’s my guess, of course.)

4. We like a good comeback.
There was a lot of good discussion about the return of Heidi Grace Kress and Heidi Swapp. Literally every single comment I heard about both designers and their respective lines was positive. There was good buzz about some other things that made a return after a bit of an absence too – like the new Dear Lizzy line (which just hit Two Peas here by the way!), the return of BasicGrey after their decision to skip the summer show and Margie Romney-Aslett now happily designing at Bazzill.

5. Some companies are sorely missed.
We all have our favourites who aren’t in this game any more. Mine is Sassafras. I’m sure I’ll get over it some day, but it’s not now. KI Memories were missing from the floor but haven’t closed their doors – they recently launched a new digital set-up and shipped the Hot Date paper line to stores. Let’s hope this is a successful regrouping and we see them back very soon.

6. This isn’t the time for new exhibitors.
Newer names in scrapbooking, like Ormolu and Elle’s Studio, are following a very different business model these days. Is it possible to become a major player and never sell at CHA? Possibly – if the company is happy to grow at a steadier pace rather than go to the show in hopes of becoming a major player straight away. But really, there were very few new exhibitors and many that were technically ‘new’ were comebacks of some sort. So we can still have new in the industry without new at the show… which is a shift.

7. Things are simpler.
This show is expensive enough when it comes to paying for the booth space and fixtures, shipping everything in giant crates, employees, travel and so on and so forth. It appears that manufacturers have chosen to reserve the extra expense that comes in commissioning huge booth endeavours with custom carpentry and so forth. Instead, we see companies using displays they can use at multiple shows, with simple branding and products and project samples easy to see. Not so many layouts blown up to four feet square, not so many walls in crazy accent colours or anything like that. That said, in general there were fewer sample projects and in talking to store owners (and sometimes just listening to store owners as they shopped), I think there are certain products that would have been better sold with examples that effectively showed a product in use. Simple booths can be great, but not at the expense of letting buyers see just how awesome it would be to have this amazing piece of paper that will let you make this fabulous project. I do wonder how many manufacturers are aware of which projects on their booth did and didn’t sell product. (I know, if I didn’t have things like that on my mind, combined with a lifetime of random song lyrics, I could totally find the cure for the common cold or something. But sadly, this is what plays on my mind.)

Of course, we’re also seeing simpler innovations rather than big risk products. In almost every case, I think that’s a good thing for this point in the market. There were a few things out there that confused me a little, but by and large the floor was filled with products that will be attractive to the scrapping masses rather than something totally oddball that will only appear to a select few.

8. Hexagons are cool.
They are. They aren’t circles. Nor rectangles. Nor squares. So we can throw them into layering as something new. Simple, but different. Hexagons were big with Jenni Bowlin Studios and Rhonna’s line for My Mind’s Eye and a few bits and pieces elsewhere too.

9. If my normal life were like CHA, I would be exhausted and not fit into any of my clothes.
I am never prepared for the crazy hours that happen at CHA. It seems like you can get so much done in four days, but it’s almost every hour of those four days. At the end, no one has slept properly for at least a week, as the last few days of preparation are usually a bit mad too. And all the big meetings happen over food. CHA is basically the only time in my life when I schedule every single meal for several days. I love the energy and the ideas and the getting to talk to people I don’t see the rest of the year, but oh my goodness, at the end my body is seriously asking me to lay off the cheesecake and go to bed. (In fact, after the show closed, I meant to just sit and veg for a couple minutes while I went through my notebook, at about 6:30pm. I still needed to book my ride to the airport the next day. Next thing I knew it was 6:30am and I still had my notebook on my lap. Oh wow, that was not the plan.)

10. I never get tired of looking at paper.
A few of you have commented on things like ‘doesn’t it all blur into one?’ and I’m sure it does for some, because there really is a lot of stuff entering the brain at once. But I really do have a childlike love of paper and every new line that I like still makes me exclaim. I talk to paper at trade shows. Not like an actual conversation, I hope. I assure the paper doesn’t usually talk back. But all those words I overuse in life? Lovely, amazing, cute, lush, brilliant, fab? I find myself saying them time and time again. So every year when I decide if this trip will be worthwhile, I finish the show thinking it has been more worthwhile than ever. Looking at paper is almost as awesome as making things from paper.

And if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s about time I go do that now.

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This weekend, one commenter will two cute brooches from from OH MY illustration and crafts.

Kayleigh O’Mara is an illustrator and crafter who has a wonderfully distinctive style. Her jewellery is funky, modern and feature foxes to rain clouds, from typewriters to Jammie Dodgers. Something for everyone!

To enter, just leave a comment on this post describing when you last took a polaroid picture or typed a letter.

Entries close at midnight Thursday UK time and the winner will be posted Friday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!

Good luck!

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And the winner of last weeks giveaway is…..

Congratulations to Angi who wins the cards from Little Black Heart

Angi, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your address.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment.

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