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

Click here for supplies and details.~

Yesterday was beautiful, warm and blue. Today is chilly, grey and rainy. Such is the onset of autumn and I think it is well and truly moving in for the season. So before summer has disappeared from my mind completely, I wanted to share these summer-themed pages I made for the garden over the past month. I say summer-themed but I wouldn’t blame you if you thought the theme was use turquoise paint, as they all have that in common! Truthfully I mixed up way too much paint when I made this page and I hated to waste it all so I scrapped about five more pages in a row all with that same paint until I finally reached the end of it!

This first summery page is a funny one and I know you’re immediately going to think WHAT A TERRIBLE PHOTO! WHY DID YOU SCRAPBOOK THAT? and I promise there’s an explanation. I’ve made plenty of pages with photos from this lovely little week on an island. We appear in only one or two photos in the entire album. Because every time I picked up one of the pictures we were in, I would put it back down because our hair was a mess, I wasn’t wearing any make-up (rather ten layers of sunscreen) and The Boy was all stubble. And eventually it dawned on me: we looked a bit of a mess because we were having too much fun thinking about other stuff. I suddenly understood why all those surf types had that same fluffy unkempt hair thing going: they weren’t worried about it either. It just seemed to be the attitude of the island. So I decided that alone was worth scrapbooking and the photo made it into the album. (And now onto the internet, about which he will probably be less happy.)

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and details.}

Then there is a summer photo that is filled with worry! It’s hard to see in this tiny little (actual) Polaroid from 1980, but I am so not a water person. I’m on a raft. With shoes. And a million life-preserver objects. And I’m still as tense as can be! I am really not a natural when it comes to the water. But I love that we found these photos of summer trips to the lake from a million (or thirty) years ago. I hadn’t thought about those trips for years and now I remember bits and pieces that are definitely worth saving. (This page also uses those new flower punch-outs from My Little Shoebox that I posted about during CHA. Love them!)

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and details.}

And summer memories for me are not complete without some kind of summer camp. I went to summer camps for so many different things – including cheerleading. But camping-themed scrapbook supplies are all the wilderness angle with campfires and tents rather than college dorms and such! So I picked just a few camp word stickers and mixed it with brighter colours and summer papers to try to come up with the happy middle ground. The colour combination comes from our school colours (purple and gold) plus something summery and fun – which is how the turquoise found its way onto another layout!

Have some summer pages you want to share? By all means link us up in the comments to share the summer scrapbooking love before we’re all making pages in the muted tones of autumn!

And… camera school starts today! Those posts are set to go live in the evenings so you can choose to read them of a night and give them a try the next day or you early birds can read them first thing in the morning. So check back for that very soon!

xlovesx

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Today was the first day of the autumn term for all the schools in my neighbourhood, and the oldest of the neighbour kids is about eight, so there is a certain bliss to hearing them chat outside my window, not yet old enough to have much attitude. Today they were comparing notes about how fabulous school was and talking about all the important stuff like the colour of their exercise books, the quality of school lunch and the extreme height of the older kids. Super sweet!

I love the back to school feeling so much that I may have pulled out a new notebook for a little something I’m working on at the moment, but even if I’m not going back to school in a traditional sense, there’s a whole bunch of back-to-class stuff on my calendar right now. There’s a chance it might be up your street too, so here’s what I’m up to this autumn!

True Scrap II (aka Spawn of True Scrap)
True Scrap is like a scrapbooking convention you can attend at home – no travel costs, no hotel bills and no one will know if you go to class in your pajamas. True Scrap includes seventeen workshop videos and live chat throughout the event, plus you also get access to all the recordings after the weekend too, so you can make it fit your schedule or you can come back to workshops you would like to watch again. My session is called Go with the Flow and it’s all about looking at any album in your collection, identifying any gaps and adding in the finishing touches to make it extra fabulous in both design and storytelling. So excited about that! The other teachers include Jennifer McGuire, Nichol Magouirk, May Flaum, Aby Garvey, Kelli Crowe, Kristina Werner and ten other awesome instructors, each presenting a workshop on a unique topic. Plus five make & take project tutorials on top of that. Plus an interview with Cathy Zielske. Seriously cool. True Scrap II will take place on the 20th – 22nd of October, and you can sign up here.

One more plus for True Scrap: sign up by clicking through from shimelle.com (click here) then forward a copy of your receipt to shimelle@gmail.com and I’ll give you a class pass for your choice of any class hosted here too.

Teach Crafts like a Rock Star
Teach like a Rock Star is a course run by Sudie Alexander from UnKit. It’s aimed at those who want to take their love of crafting and share with others through fabulous classes, taught in person or online. Along with Sudie’s curriculum, there are also several guests contributing a session, and I’m one of those! I’ll be there with a video presentation with insight on teaching online. If you want to teach like a rock star, put the 22nd of September on your calendar and sign up here.
OR right now, sign up with this early bird special for half the price!

And the same bonus applies: sign up by clicking through from here (even the early bird offer) then forward a copy of your receipt to shimelle@gmail.com and you can have a class pass for your choice of any shimelle.com class.

But one last thing – and this one is right here and it’s completely free and I hope you’ll join me. It’s called Camera School. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be a full-time photographer or anything. I am not some amazing photography expert. But I love taking pictures. I love the process of learning something new on my camera or getting an idea for a shot and then making it real. I love shooting without thinking and seeing what I can get just as much as I love paying absolute attention to the most minute of details. Photography for me is so very fun and because of that I could talk about it all day. So I’ve put together a bunch of posts to run throughout the month to share my photo love. Little things I’ve discovered, what works for me and what doesn’t, things from other photographers that inspire me to create something more beautiful. I’m calling it Camera School because it’s back to school time, not because you’re going to walk away from the posts with a degree in photography, of course. But if you want to give some of the ideas a try, I’d be thrilled. Even if you just bookmark them for a rainy day. It’s free, so bring a friend, grab a camera and you’re all set. The first Camera School post goes live Tuesday! (Don’t worry, there is scrapbooking stuff too – this is in addition rather than a replacement!)

And to answer a question that has appeared in my inbox a few times this week – no, it’s not to late to sign up for Learn Something New Every Day! It’s never too late – you can join at any time!

Oh back to school time: I still love you so.

xlovesx

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Congratulations to Mollie, who wins the beautiful Collage and Badge from Julie Kirk.

Mollie, 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.

Have a great week!

xlovesx

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There is something you have to understand about Laura. She is so organised. I absolutely love it. I want to be like that when I grow up. She is a real live poster child for the girl guides, I tell you. (No really, she even makes adorable guide patches like this.) But to give you a full picture of Laura’s calm and organised nature, she got married on the fourth of September 2010. A week before that, she realised all the things on her to-do list were well and truly done, and that could only mean there was time to add something extra. So we arranged to spend the first of September trying out charity shop cameras and making a jar full of badges. Just because. Let’s just say that many days before my wedding I was convincing The Boy he really did need to get a suit and a haircut! (He did both, I promise.)

I love this little touch she came up with and I have a badge-maker, so between three of us, this project was done in no time at all really. We used the Badge-It badge-maker and a few packs of refills, plus a simple text design in the colours and fonts of the wedding invitations, which we printed onto white Bazzill cardstock then cut out with scissors and the handy-dandy tracing template that comes with the badge-maker. (I’m thinking now that the nested circle dies might make that job easier, but I didn’t have a set then plus I find chatting and scissoring to be a quite therapeutic activity but die-cutting takes too much elbow grease to be sociable at the same time.) Lots of turns on the badge machine and then a quick job to stick all the backs on and pop them into a jar made extra pretty with a pink butterfly rub-on.

The jar lived on the bar during their reception and sure enough, through the evening more and more people were identified with their Team Bride or Team Groom affiliation and the jar emptied. Such a cute wedding DIY project!

Making badges from shimelle on Vimeo.

And so we draw Wedding Week 2011 to a close! And I have a little something up my sleeve starting Monday. But you’ll have to come back then to find out what on earth it could be!

xlovesx

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So this became this, just in time to wish this lovely and her mister a very happy first anniversary. There’s an awful lot of swoon packed into wedding week! (By the way, I’m pretty excited about what starts tomorrow to follow wedding week… but I’m not telling until Monday!)

On top of all those rectangles of scrap paper, I added two 4×6 photos and a host of premade embellishments – die-cuts, stickers and a flair badge. I find I now automatically think of their wedding when I use pink and green together, and I still have a stack of prints from their day so why go against what seems to work? I love how the wooden letters they had as a decorative touch will also work well as an introductory page in my album. (I’m sure that’s exactly what they were thinking, right?)

~Sources: one, two, three, four, five and six.~

Here are six of my favourites from the last starting point. Click the corresponding link to see the page in more detail and get to know the scrapper behind the layout.

Thanks to everyone who took on the first starting point challenge! The current starting point can be found here. Upload your layout by Friday and it could be featured in next Saturday’s post!

xlovesx

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I’ve been having a few thoughts and discussions about this idea for starting points. Someone pointed out it could be very cool to see what everyone makes if I don’t show the finished layout along with the starting point. I agree. But I also know some scrappers are more inspired by completed pages than partially-finished layouts. So I think I’ve come up with a solution: posting the starting point on Saturday and the finished page on Sunday. I’m going to give that a try!

So here’s a starting point for today, and it’s one that comes from a bit of diving through my basket of scraps and off-cuts. I selected several scraps in one colour scheme then rather than cutting them to purposeful sizes, I just took each scrap as it was (mostly in oddball shapes!) and cut it down to whatever rectangle was possible. That left me with some strips, some big boxes and some small boxes. Perfect. Then I just layered them all up at the bottom of the page. The cardstock background is the only full sheet I used and there are a few more scraps from these same papers that I can put to use as I finish the layout. I love layouts from scraps – it feels a bit like getting a bonus page out of all those older supply purchases, and it prevents overthinking when I start cutting the papers to size.

Now it’s your turn: take this starting point and recreate it (or something similar) with your own stash of papers. You can work in any theme or colour scheme. Finish the page from there and share it with us!

Stop by tomorrow to see the finished layout and some of my favourites from the last starting point too!

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This weekend, one commenter will win this gorgeous prize of a handcrafted Collage and Badge from Julie Kirk.

Julie Kirk & The Carousel Zebra is a shop stocked with collages, badges and greetings cards made from interesting, retro, vintage, re-cycled and found materials. Each unique item is made from a combination of new papers mixed with illustrations and patterns taken from Julie’s collection of old books, magazines, dress-making patterns and fabrics. She says that the words she adds to her work, also cut from vintage sources, are an important element in her attempt to tell new stories using old materials.

Julie is currently working on an online class which will look into combining scrapbooking with the interesting, vintage materials she uses in her work.

You can read more from Julie on her blog or on Twitter.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling us what your ‘power animal’ is.. be inventive!

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

Good luck!

xlovesx

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Learn Something New :: Printable 4×6 Cards

Click here to download a zip file with 32 4×6 cards.

Once you download the file, you will need to unzip it to a folder. Most computers will automatically do that by double clicking. Some systems may require an unzipping utility.

In that folder, you will find thirty-two JPG files – just like photographs. The easiest way to print these is to import them to your photo library like you would your regular photographs – like Picasa, iPhoto or any other library you use.

From there, you can print them just like you would print a photo – though you will probably want to print them on cardstock rather than photo paper.

Once you have printed your set of cards, you can add just words to each card or add a mix of words, photos and embellishments, depending on your style and how much time you want to spend on your daily entries.

The cards use a neutral colour scheme so you can add brighter colours if you like or keep it as it is.

Enjoy!

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