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

Here’s a very simple challenge for the early bird crowd! You don’t need to make a thing, but rather share something you have already made. Share a link to a favourite Christmas project you have made – whether it was this year or many years ago (just not something you have made this weekend).

From all the links posted, one will be randomly chosen to win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas to choose some new scrapping stash!

Be quick – this challenge ends tonight, not next weekend like the other challenges. Now link us up and show off something you have made!

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Most of the projects this weekend are brand new, but there are a few favourites from earlier Christmases that I just had to bring out from the archives. Like this tag garland from last Christmas. I loved this garland – both having it hanging in our home and making several different versions with friends and in workshops. I love the idea of a tag Advent calendar or even keeping your Christmas journal on tags by decorating the front and writing on the back. I love how they can hang on the wall or the fireplace or the tree.

We’re making a new kind of garland with the JBS team this year. Each of us has made our own single piece for the garland, but we had to make them all without knowing what anyone else had chosen. And we’ve sent them off to Tennessee where they will be strung together as one full garland. My link in this year’s banner includes layered rub-ons and a bit of stamping.

See the banner come together at the JBS Inspiration blog.

Your challenge: well, make a garland of course! Whether it’s something you will hang on the wall or an accent on a page or a card, there has to be garland involved. Make it, take a picture and upload it to your blog or a page gallery. Then link it up with the button at the end of this post. Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 20th of November. One randomly selected entry will win a prize pack of scrapbooking supplies!

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Let me say to start, there are those who love to prepare most of their Christmas album early and there are those who prefer to make something each day with little to no planning in advance. If this is your first year considering such a project, know right from the very beginning: either option can work. Over the years, I’ve tried various amounts of preparation, from making my pages completely in advance and just filling in the words each day to making each page from scratch at the end of each evening. Personally, I found my happiest method is right in between, and that means I prepare some embellishments – but not complete pages – in advance. I’ll share more about that specific process throughout this weekend. But the big decision comes in the size of your album.

My first Christmas journal was my smallest – a 5×5 inch spiral book with watercolour pages. In other years, I’ve created full 12×12 pages, 8.5×11 pages, pages in a mix of sizes, 5×7 pages and 8×8 pages. In fact, I’ve made three 8×8 albums and two of them are my favourites, and I have happily declared this as my favourite size. This year, I’m returning to 8×8 and I’ll be using a fabric-covered ring-binder in leaf green with plenty of 8×8 page protectors.

When choosing the size of your album, think about a few key factors:
…how many photos you will want to include,
…your preferred size for printing those photos,
…if you want to write a great deal or just a bit, and
…how much time you want to spend on your entry each day.

The more photos or the larger you want your photos, the bigger your pages will need to be. The more you writing you want on display, the bigger your pages will need to be. But in general, smaller pages can take far less time! So there’s a balance for you to choose. If you’re working in a digital format, you can narrow your options slightly by choosing if you will go for square or rectangle! If you opt for square pages, you can choose the size later when you print the book. (Just be sure to create the pages at the bigger size as you can print something smaller but if you try to blow up the image larger, it will loose a great deal of the quality.)

But really, you can go in absolutely any direction with this project. You can grab a notebook and doodle and write and paste things on the pages. You can get an album with page protectors – regular page protectors or fancy pages with pockets and different sizes. You can go extra-special and create a drawer full of library cards or fill a recipe box or a photo spinner! A journal doesn’t necessarily have to be in book form. And using what you have is fabulous. All different sizes and shapes will work!

Once you have chosen your album, there is one thing I do suggest doing no matter how much preparation you choose to do before December begins, and that is cut at least some paper to size so you have pages ready and waiting. You know how you prefer to create: with solid cardstock or patterned backgrounds; brights, neutrals or muted tones. Go with what you like in your general crafting! If you cut at least a small stack of pages to start, that’s one less thing you will need to think about on a daily basis – if you decide to create an entry every day. Remember, that is just one way to follow the project, and there’s no need to feel you’re not creating something worthwhile if you only create a page when your schedule allows. Cutting your page backgrounds in advance also lets you see exactly which off-cuts you have to work with as embellishment on other pages. If you know your largest page size is smaller than 12×12, you can also cut any other papers you’ve selected to that size, as you won’t need a full 12×12 sheet in an 8×8 album, of course! This is particularly helpful if you need to take your project with you throughout the month or pack it into a small space (or if you need a little extra encouragement to use your paper rather than keep putting it back on the shelf).

I’m creating 8×8 pages this year, and I’ve cut forty background sheets. I’m using just three colours of cardstock this year – olive green, berry pink and vanilla, to go with all the patterned paper I’m using from this selection of supplies and have since popped the background pages into the page protectors. All ready to go! And now it’s your turn…

Your challenge: choose your album and cut at least some of your background papers (if your album doesn’t come with pages already, of course). Take a picture and post about this part of your process on your blog or in a scrapbook gallery. Link it up with the little gadget below, and one randomly selected entry will win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 20th of November.

PS: UK friends, if you don’t have your album yet, there is a post for you tomorrow that might involve a bargain. You know… if you are still searching.

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For our first tutorial, I’m happy to welcome Melissa Mann, who has a favourite cardmaking technique to share. Don’t miss the challenge at the end of this post!

Hey everyone! I absolutely LOVE Christmas! It is by far my favorite holiday and I especially love Christmas cards! I love sending them and receiving them so I have worked up a little Christmas card tutorial that has a paper weave technique to it! This card can be made in a very simple fashion or a very detailed fashion. Let’s get crafting!

Cut a piece of red card stock to 10” x 7” and fold in half to create a 5” x 7” card.
Cut a piece of white card stock to 4” x 5”.

Using your sewing machine, stitch along the outside edge of the white block of paper. Set aside.

QUICK TIP: Draw in faux stitches using a pen – red stitches would be lovely!

Take the snowflake stamp and using Versamark ink, stamp all over the red card stock.

Liberally sprinkle UTEE all over the stamped images and spread around by shaking the card. Then, shake off the excess UTEE onto a scrap piece of card stock.

Using your heat gun, set all of the images that were stamped until the UTEE has melted. You will see a nice glossy watermark image of your snowflake on the red card stock.

QUICK TIP: Instead of going through the various steps of embossing your image, you could also simply use a shade of red ink and achieve the same tone on tone look as the embossing has.

Take the stitched white block of card stock and adhere to the center of the red card stock.

Cut out some strips of pattern paper in different patterns into various sized strips.
Snip some of the ends of the strips in a pennant style.

Weave the paper strips together. Lay down the three vertical strips and using some shorter strips of paper weave them horizontally through the vertical strips.

Sew the strips together with your sewing machine. I started with the very middle vertical strip of paper – this anchored all of the horizontal strips and made it easier to run them through the sewing machine. I also left the ends of my threads – it gave it more of a quilted, handmade look.

QUICK TIP: Instead of taking time to sew down each strip, you could also glue them together or staple them together.

Take the entire weaved paper piece and adhere down on top of the white card stock. Set aside.

Take the “Holiday in a Box” stamps and stamp out three images onto white card stock using red and green ink.

Cut out the images.

Use dimensional dots on the backs of the stamped boxes and place randomly on the front of the card.

This card is perfect to use up some of those strips of pattern paper that are lying around! And, since you are using stamped images on the front, it is super easy to just stamp out a ton of the little images! I challenge you to create a project whether it be a card or layout that uses the paper weave technique! Super simple but it has a big impact!

Your challenge: use Melissa’s woven paper technique on a Christmas project (a card, tag, scrapbook page or something else you create) and post it online. Share a link below to enter. One randomly selected entry will win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas in a Bucket.

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About Melissa…
My name is Melissa Mann and I live on the beautiful Gulf coast of Florida! I live with my wonderful husband of almost 8 years and my two dogs and one cat. My day job consists of being a team lead for the reservations staff at a condo. started scrapbooking in 2005 and have been honored to be on several design teams and be published in Scrapbook Trends and Cards Magazines. I currently design for American Crafts, Blue Moon Scrapbooking, The Girl’s Loft, and SEI. You can check out my blog. I am also on Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook.

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Welcome to a weekend of Christmas Crafting! This weekend includes a mix of tutorials, challenges and ideas all related to Christmas – be it scrapbooking the season with Journal your Christmas, creating handmade cards or making handmade gifts. And every challenge includes a chance to win!

So let’s get the weekend started with giveaway! Leave a comment on this post listing just one thing you like about the holidays. Absolutely anything – but just one thing! One commenter will win a class pass for herself and two friends (three passes in total) for Journal your Christmas. Entries close at midnight UK time on Sunday, the 13th of November 2011.

What if I am already part of Journal your Christmas? You can still enter the drawing! You’ll have your choice of inviting three friends to join you (if you blog, you could host your own giveaway if you don’t have three friends in mind) or you can invite two friends to join you this Christmas and keep your class pass for any shimelle.com class in 2012!

Go on then – tell us something you like about Christmas!

Join in all weekend for Christmas crafting posts – tutorials, challenges, prizes and more! First tutorial coming up in just thirty minutes (7pm UK time).

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It’s the tenth of the month – and that means a bunch of us share ten things. Any things, as long as there are ten of them! (You’re welcome to join in!) This month, I’ve picked ten of my favourite Christmas journal entries from all my books over the years. I hope you enjoy!

First up: a reflective entry from Christmas 2010, with a photo from a very 1980s Christmas. (By the way, if you have eighties photos to scrapbook, have a listen to the most recent Paperclipping Roundtable, wherein Noell, Nancy and I talk about those photos and Noell and I are banned from singing the Jem theme tune for copyright reasons. But you know, we really are truly, truly, truly outrageous, even if we’re not allowed to sing on the air.)

My 2006 album doesn’t include many photographs at all, mostly because I didn’t have a very useful printer at the time! This photo was cut from the Christmas issue of Martha Stewart magazine that year, and somehow it inspired the rest of the design (really simple, yet I still really like it) and the thoughts about how Christmas is best enjoyed when embracing the same ideas that made it magical as a child.

From 2010, the chance to include a ‘first Christmas’ page with photos of our now-toddler nephew. Babies in Santa suits can melt even the hardest of hearts, surely? I love these page protectors (from the Pink Paislee portfolio album released last year) for not having to pick just one or two favourite images.

For my 2009-2010 album, I followed the same format throughout the book: one full size 8×8 photo and an 8×8 page with journaling and embellishment on each double-page spread. There is a bit of a delayed finish with this process, as once I had settled on the idea and printed a few example photos to make sure it would work, I decided I would wait until the journal was finished and order all the 8×8 prints at once so I could have the quality and the affordability of actual photos rather than home-printed images. So the book looked quite bare with every other page missing, until the very end of the project when I opened this amazing parcel of forty 8×8 prints from the Christmas just gone, and in the end this is my absolute favourite format for all the journals I have done. (ETA: The 8×8 prints came from Photobox – they have that in their list of sizes so they didn’t need trimming.)

I continue my Christmas journal through to the sixth of January, so it includes the new year. On the first day of 2010, we took an early morning walk to the river and this photo became quite important to my clarity through all that would come of a rather more-dramatic-than-usual year on the calendar.

I loved the full page 8×8 photos from 2009 so much that I tried to find ways to include them in 2010 too without using the exact same treatment. So instead of the plain photo on a facing page, I added the embellishment and journaling right on top of the 8×8 photo of a Christmas train display. The trains came from all different enthusiasts in my hometown, and they staged them together in this giant Christmas-themed train world and you could go see it at the big train station. Even to someone who doesn’t really imagine ever having a train set in her home, the finished product was very cool. Documenting community efforts like that – even if it’s just with a photo – is something that really makes me happy to have these albums.

From 2009, one of my favourite entries in terms of embellishments. Viewmaster still says Christmas or sight-seeing to me, as I would look forward to new reels as a Christmas present and my favourites were tourist reels from different cities of the world. I had quite a few reels of amazing natural places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, but London and Paris were my most cherished and I would click through them hundreds of times, by the light of a bedside lamp and huddled under a pink electric blanket. When I found someone selling off an old Viewmaster collection a few years ago, I used the duplicates as fair game to scrapbook, and turning to this page brings me back to such a specific memory.

This page from 2006 makes me giggle to see how my perspective has changed in just a few years. Not that I don’t still extol the virtues of the occasional eggnog latte and indulge in any excuse to bake gingerbread latte cupcakes, but that I make a page with this same thought most every year, and its tone has changed from tangible luxuries to things that are far more grand and important in the world. Together, they would read a little like comparing red cups to world peace, and that makes these journals a true documentation of my own changes over the years.

From 2007, a page I love purely because it felt luxurious to use my favourite transparency as a full page. I love that the repetitive nature of this project has made me brave enough to try things that may or may not work. This particular album is not my most polished (and I have Christmas journals that I don’t feel work visually at all and have not a single page represented here), but I learned a great deal from making it (and the writing in those less-than-great visual journals is still valuable to me).

I love pages that are more than what they seem. This looks like just embellishment, and while it does use a combination I adore (woodgrain letters on Christmas green paper), its real meaning is completely hidden, as the back of each of those flashcards is folded with an accordion of paper, filled with handwritten memories of Christmases past. But you wouldn’t know that unless I told you or you were being a little more nosy inquisitive than the average bear. This is from my 2009 album.

An extra page I created for my 2006 album when I realised we had participants from thirty different countries. There are even more now and every new country makes me so excited! The simplistic journaling came from a conversation in one my English classes earlier that day, when we were discussing how poets use colour and how sometimes the symbolic meaning of a colour is more obvious than others, and there had been a lovely bit of student debate wondering if green or blue was more appropriate for poetic imagery of the planet, and someone had made a beautiful point that while percentage-wise, there may be more blue sea than green land, our viewpoint is that of the land, and unless the poet wanted to make a specific point about the sea, then green would be more relevant to both reader and writer. It was a beautifully organic moment that I can’t really recreate, but this reminds me of the wholeness of that very good day.

Journal your Christmas starts again on the first of December and you can join us at any time. Or see other Ten Things posts from throughout 2011.
xlovesx

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It’s time to draw the Garden Girl Blog Hop to a close and post a winner! You had to guess how much I spent on my last order at Two Peas in a Bucket and I promised a $15 Two Peas gift certificate to the person who guessed the closest. And you were so close! First there was Ruth, who guessed $138.32. Then Kelly Morris guessed $140.35. But Gina M. pipped it with a guess of $138.99, just thirty-nine cents off my shopping total of (deep breath) $139.38!

What was in my order? Twenty-seven different sheets of stickers. Sixty-one 12×12 patterned papers. Four sets of Thickers. Two stamp sets. Two packs of chipboard shapes. And a handful of die-cuts, rhinestones and buttons. Brand-wise, I ordered a mix of American Crafts, Simple Stories, My Mind’s Eye, Studio Calico and October Afternoon. Some of the items I’ve used in my travel album were on sale, so I went ahead and ordered them again since I still have plenty of pages to make for that ongoing project. I don’t often order the same paper or sticker more than once, so that’s quite a rare occasion. I placed my order after the close of business on the 31st of October. It left the Two Peas Warehouse on the 1st of November via USPS arrived at UK customs on the 6th. I’ve paid my customs bill this morning and it’s scheduled for delivery tomorrow, the 10th. (Or I could go pick it up in person today, but my local depot isn’t all that local so I just wait for it to be delivered the next day.)

A few of you have asked about customs charges, and yes I pay import tax (VAT) and occasionally duty on my orders. There are two things to keep in mind here: the current regulations for paying import tax on items sent to the UK from outside the EU: goods with a value over £15 is liable to import VAT (20%), anything with a value over £135 is also liable to a customs charge of £9 or more (it depends on the materials you’re importing). But the second thing is we all know not every single parcel seems to get picked up for VAT, when you talk to a variety of people. Because I import large quantities for workshops and such, I pay VAT on everything I receive – my address is on file and it’s something that goes into my taxes and so forth. But that’s one of those weird things about being a full-time scrapbooker and if you are just ordering normal amounts of scrapbook supplies, you won’t have that part of the equation. You may be asked to pay import tax and you may not. My advice is to figure it in, and if you don’t get charged, then you can put that extra 20% back into your crafting budget. Sorry, I know that’s really boring, but it’s a question that comes up often from those here in the UK so there is my definitive answer!

To those who guessed I would spend in the thousands – egads, no! I wonder what one could buy for that much in one order? And how big of a craft room must one have to accommodate such grandeur? Amazing. This month’s order is at the high end of normal for me, and I tend to place an order every month so I have the right supplies for assignments (we choose our own products from the Two Peas inventory rather than being told what to use, so every Garden Girl can stay true to her own style) and I did place one obscenely large order to arrive when we came back from our trip, but I promise it was under $500. Receiving that order was a joyous day indeed, with lots of collection packs and punches and stamps that I wouldn’t ordinarily let myself buy. I’m much more a papers and stickers girl. But that one giant order was essentially four or so months of orders combined into one big box since I hadn’t been around craft supplies for all that time and had a to-do list approximately seventeen miles long! I’ve never, ever come anywhere close to spending that much on any other scrapbooking order in the history of my life. Never ever. I think what’s most important is sticking to a budget that works for you and buying things you love and use. My supplies are worth far more to me in my albums than on my shelf.

Thanks so much for following the hop and playing along with the guessing game! Gina, I’ll be in touch with your gift certificate!

And I’ll be back later today with a new sketch and video!

xlovesx

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My favourite class of the year is very nearly upon us: Journal your Christmas. I would love for you to join me and so many other scrappers in this holiday adventure.

Journal your Christmas started from a personal journal I kept just for me, as I tired to rekindle the magic of Christmas in what had otherwise been a rather unglittery time. It worked. I found myself remembering exactly why I loved the holidays and how they could bring hope to the darkest of winters and I realised the magic of Christmas did not belong to children alone. Christmas can be magical at any age, no matter what the circumstances.

Journal your Christmas became an online class in 2004, and has continued every December since. That means this is our eighth year of reclaiming Christmas on our own terms, celebrating the very best of the season and taking the time to enjoy both Christmas present and our favourite memories from many Christmases past. I am so very happy to welcome those who have been writing their Christmas memories for those past seven years right along with brand new faces and everyone who has joined us between then and now. I truly look forward to this project all year long.

What is Journal your Christmas?
Journal your Christmas is an online scrapbooking class to celebrate the holiday season. It starts on the first of December and finishes on the sixth of January, with thirty-seven daily prompts sent by email.

Each prompt is a full-colour PDF file you can view on your screen (on your computer, iPad, smart phone or anything else that lets you view such files) or print onto paper. Each daily prompt follows a specific theme of the day, with the thirty-seven days covering all sorts of holiday aspects, from food and decorations to music and gifts. Every day there is something for you to consider and ideas to make the writing come easily. The topics can be applied to this year for documenting the current Christmas or you can get nostalgic with your Christmas memories – and most crafters write a bit about both.

The daily prompts are delivered to you at the same time each day by email, so you don’t have to spend any time logging into a website to download each day’s content. Should you have the time to chat with other participants or share your work, there is a private message board for class participants, and you can spend as much or as little time there chatting to other crafters enjoying the holiday season. Each prompt includes several examples of pages created in response to that very topic, so you can see a range of crafting styles (including paper and digital pages) on the same theme. You can gather ideas from any of them or go in your own unique way entirely. There is zero pressure to make anything in the same style as any of the examples, including mine. Everyone and every style welcome!

How much time do I have to devote to this project?
You can devote as much or as little time as you like. Some participants create a entry or a page every day, and that’s a fab way to follow the class prompts. However it’s certainly not required. Since the class has permanent membership, I encourage scrappers who don’t have the time or the desire to create something every day to just choose the prompts that speak to you (or your schedule) most. You can make a few pages this year, a few pages next year and so on to fill a whole album. Or you can make a mini album every year. Or something that falls in between. You can blog your writing (either to the world or just to yourself) and choose later to add something crafty or not. You can take pictures daily and put together a photobook at the end of the project. We’ll cover many ways to make this work, and you can choose the options that work best for you.

What if I don’t scrapbook?
You are still very welcome to join us. Reading each day’s prompt, you might choose to respond in the form of a blog post or a plain written journal. My original book was nothing more than penned words and a tiny bit of colour here and there, so this can certainly be useful! Some participants follow the class from a photography angle, and use it as their inspiration to take a series of meaningful photos throughout the holidays. And still others read each day’s prompts just to be more mindful and aware of Christmas and use the class purely to keep them in the right mindset for enjoying the season for its real merits rather than letting commercial pressures and the stress of a busy calendar overtake their Christmas magic.
Truly, anyone is welcome.

What is included in Journal your Christmas?
Journal your Christmas includes permanent membership – so you sign up once and can join in as many years as you would like at no additional cost. That also means once you sign up, you can access the prompts and extras from earlier years at any time, via the class forum. Those extras include printable accents, digital kits and photography challenges.

For 2011, class includes:
…thirty-seven daily PDF prompts for writing and crafting
…thirty-seven daily PDF prompts for holiday photography (like getting an online photography workshop as a bonus)
…exclusive digital kit for this year, including layered page templates, papers, titles and accents
…exclusive printables for this year, including a basic page framework in two sizes
…two exclusive crafting videos with a range of techniques and ideas
…private forum to chat and share your work
…online chat to start the project (of course your attendance is optional)
…bonus offers from some of my favourite websites
…£1 donation to The Girls’ Fund via Plan, helping provide education and well-being to girls in difficult circumstances around the world.

And I’m happy to say the class is the same price as last year.

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. Orders can take up to 24 hours to process, though we are usually quicker. If you haven’t received your class registration after 24 hours, just email me and we’ll make sure your registration is completed and ready for you to get started!

If you participated last year, you don’t need to do anything to join us again. This week you will receive an email with some updated info and reminders for you.

Can I gift Journal your Christmas to a friend?
Yes, of course! Just use the same button to join, and leave the email address of the friend in the notes field of the payment. Or if you miss that step, send me an email. If you would like me to send a personal email to the gift recipient to reveal your gift (or keep your Secret Santa identity a secret), I am happy to do either. Just let me know.

Do I need to prepare in advance?
You don’t need to, no. Some crafters really like to prepare a book in advance. Some don’t. This year, I’m scheduling an online weekend of Christmas crafting, and that includes preparation projects for Journal your Christmas. It’s coming up this weekend!

From this coming Friday to Sunday, stop by shimelle.com for special projects, videos and tutorials all with a Christmas theme. You’ll see the exact preparation I have done for my album this year, and also some ideas from other class participants. Everyone is welcome: you do not need to be signed up for Journal your Christmas to take part in the online scrapbooking weekend. Though I hope by the end of the weekend you will want to join us for a whole thirty-seven days of such crafty Christmas goodness, of course!

Any other questions?
If you have a question I haven’t answered, feel free to ask in the comments or send me an email.

If you have participated in Journal your Christmas and there are pictures of your project online, please leave a link in the comments! We would love to see your album.

I very much hope you’ll join me and journal your most magical Christmas yet!

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