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

Fancy a series of scrapbooking challenges? With three prize winners each week? But no worry that you have to participate every single week or anything else stressful? Then Play Along with Scrap Factor is just for you! While our Scrap Factor contestants have five days to create their layout in response to each week’s challenge, everyone else is invited to spend the whole week, use the contestants’ gallery for inspiration perhaps and just generally have fun with each challenge.

Each week, the three mentors from the teams (that’s Mary Anne and Dolly plus me!) will each choose a prize winner for our category – paper, hybrid or digital. All you have to do to enter is create your page in response to the week’s challenge and upload it to UKScrappers by Sunday night. When you upload a page, you’ll see a special gallery called Play along with Scrap Factor and that’s the gallery you want!

This week’s challenge is based on a colour scheme including sky blue, two shades of blossom pink and two spring greens. You can see all the fab pages created by the contestants here and if you have time to scrapbook this weekend, you could still enter this week’s play along contest.

Or you can jump ahead to next week’s challenge – taking inspiration from advertising. Choose a print ad (from a magazine, poster, leaflet, etc) and use it as the visual inspiration for your next scrapbook page. Our contestants have been busy with that challenge this week and their pages will go on display on Monday when voting opens for the week.

Remember, there’s a prize each week for playing along – one for a paper page, one for a hybrid page and one for a digital page! So all kinds of scrapbooking are welcome, and as you can only win once throughout the challenge series, there are plenty of prizes to go around! We’d love for you to join in with Scrap Factor this spring.

xlovesx

PS: Don’t forget to enter this week’s giveaway before Sunday night – that just takes a comment to enter!

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This weekend’s giveaway comes from SJ at Little Musings.

Little Musings is a digital and clear stamp store where all the musings from SJ’s mind end up as cute digital stamps for you to use on your craft projects!
She is offering you a three part prize – one of the new angel stamps she has designed, a set of Birthday themed stamps (which sold out on QVC recently) and also your choice of digital product from her store.

To enter, leave a comment on this post about something you often “muse” over.

Entries close at midnight Sunday (UK time) and the winner will be posted Monday night, so be sure to check back and see if this was your lucky weekend!

xlovesx

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I may have tricked a few of you with this week’s sketch. At Two Peas, a new garden of pages from the design team goes live each Monday and I often base the week’s sketch on my pages there. So maybe you were thinking it would look a little like this. But as it’s Easter this Sunday, it seemed the right moment to grab something a little different! This page features Hipstamatic photos from last Easter, and I figured the five-small-square-photos option would make for something a little unexpected in this week’s sketch.

The layers of the sketch are relatively simple and make it a good candidate for a patterned background with a cluster of colour. You can even make this layout from scraps and leftovers. It also gives you plenty of space to really work the title, if you want to try something lovely with lettering! The sketch includes five small, square photos, but you can change this to suit something else, of course! It could even work with a single panoramic shot replacing the row of five pictures.

I love the pages posted from last week’s sketch! Here are a dozen of those scrapbook pages. Click any of these to see them in more detail and say hello to these scrappers!
Top row, L to R: one, two, three, four.
Middle row, L to R: five, six, seven, eight.
Bottom row, L to R: nine, ten, eleven and twelve.
Sorry about the problem with these links – somehow I had them in the reverse order! But they go to the right place now. So sorry for the mistake.

As always, the weekly sketch is a no-stress challenge that’s just for fun! If you find this sketch useful and create something with it, I’d love for you to leave a link in the comments! And while we’re very Easter themed today, I hope you have a lovely holiday weekend!

xlovesx

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I love the first day of a new class. It’s also somewhat insane, because everything tends to happen at once, and all the technical stuff comes into play so there’s editing email addresses and resetting passwords and helping people get my messages out of their junk mail folder. But by now I have a bit of a system for everything so it doesn’t outweigh the amazing stuff that happens on day one. Just like the first day of school when everyone has energy and puts their best foot forward. I love seeing the results of day one appear on our class board and for this class that means it has hit the blogosphere too. Today my Google Reader has popped up plenty of entries that relate to our first prompt, so that has made me smile so very much.

I also love that planning and researching and writing a class also gives me that back to school energy – just like lesson planning did when I was teaching. So many teachers dislike lesson planning and prefer to teach something that is already outlined, but devising new ways to present material was one of my very favourite parts of the job. Every once in a while I still get a chance to write academic curriculum and I still love it! So in writing the new class, I also have new things I want to share here, new pictures I want to take, new videos I want to make and so forth. Everything in a creative circle.

It’s also made me curious about you and why you happen to be reading this. That note over there to the top right (you know, that stuff you can’t see if you’re reading this through a blog reader – so jump over for a minute) makes it pretty clear I’m not ashamed to call myself a scrapbooker. It creates conversations that are always interesting, for sure! I’ve learned there are so many ways to explain what it means. So I’m curious… how would you define yourself, oh blog reader? Even if you’re reading there quietly and don’t really go in for leaving a comment, I’d love for you to click and let me know this tiny bit about you. (Again, you won’t see this in most readers, so click over just this once. Thanks!)

Have a fabulous week!

xlovesx

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This weekend’s winner is Laura Y, who wins a place for herself and a friend on the new online class, Beyond Blogging For Scrapbookers. Class started today but you can join at any time and have permanent access to the materials. We would love for you to join us on this adventure!

Please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) to claim your prize, and don’t forget your friend’s email 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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This weekend’s giveaway is a class place for you and a friend of your choice on the brand new online class Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers, which starts on Monday! In fact, I’ll throw in two passes for the first class Blogging for Scrapbookers so you’ll have all the reference material.

And don’t worry: if you’ve already signed up for Beyond Blogging and your comment is selected to win, I’ll send you a full refund – so you don’t need to wait and see if you won!

To enter, leave a comment on this post with the name of a blog you really love! It doesn’t have to be about scrapbooking – any blog you love to read!

Entries close at midnight Sunday (UK time) and the winner will be posted Monday night, so be sure to check back and see if this was your lucky weekend! Make sure you leave a valid email address as class starts Monday morning so I’ll get you added to the class before the post goes live here to announce the winner.

Good luck!

xlovesx

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Today I’m thrilled to welcome Michelle Clement to shimelle.com to share five beautiful ideas with a brand-new paper line. I hope you’re ready to get crafty, because all I wanted to do when I saw these projects was start cutting, pasting and stitching!

Lately, floral and vintage-inspired scrapbook goodies have been my muse! I decided to focus on one of Sassafras Lass’ newest paper collections, Sweetly Smitten, and five cute and wonderful ways you can use it on your projects! I contributed designs to this lovely floral-full paper line in conjunction with Sassafras, so I can tell you firsthand that there’s lots of love, handstitched details, and even a few doilies in there to give your projects lots of character as you work with the super-cute paper, stickers, and dimensional ‘foldies’. Here we go!

Use Stickers as a Background
I love love love me some pretty paper, but the ephemera-inspired stickers in this collection were just calling out to me to make a little collage with them as a background, instead! (There’s a cute little ‘memory star’ certificate, a vintage button card, and a few cute lined journalling spots that lent really well to a quick and easy collage!) No need to worry about cutting and gluing for this collage, though – just stick them down onto your cardstock, overlapping! Super easy-peasy, and it gives a layered look in a flash – to make a few of the stickers a little more dimensional on my page, I stuck them onto a thin white computer paper and trimmed around the edges, first, and then stuck them on.

Make it Masculine
Lots of times, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the ‘girlyness’ of a collection and miss seeing how versatile it really is! And believe me, this one is suuuper girly, so it’s easy to see just that. But can you still use it if you don’t have girls to scrapbook about? If you only have three boys or mister husband, or if you just don’t like flowers? Of course!

The stickers and papers have some beautiful masculine details to them – you just have to look past the flowers to see! The simple blue polka dot makes for a great masculine background paper, and the lined paper (even though it’s sewn) is a perfect neutral paper. There are lots of neutral and masculine stickers, too (the button card, the lined journalling tag, the stars, etc.) – and after collecting the boy-friendly bits from the collection, I added a teeny bit of orange and brown in, too, to set off the blue & yellow, and there you go! Boy-friendly!

Stitch the Details
If you’ve peeked at the details on the stickers and paper of Sweetly Smitten, you’ll see lots of hand-stitching already there. When you’re in a pinch and want to make a quick page – awesome! The handmade touches are done and you can just put them right on the page!

But if you’re feeling a little more crafty and have a moment to add a little ‘something extra’, try stitching your own details in – it works really well with the feel of things! For the layered flowers on my banner triangle, I cut them out of patterned paper, pierced some holes with my needle in the petals and leaves, and used embroidery floss to add a special little bit of dimension to them.

Layer it Up
There’s nothing I love more than layers on my pages (you could say I go a little crazy with it, sometimes…lol). Sweetly Smitten has tons of teeny little stickers that layer well together, and the new foldies that coordinate make layering even easier! They’re die cut, so you simply poke out the foldie you want, fold it where indicated, and then stick it onto your page using foam squares or another dimensional adhesive! So easy!

I also used multiple stickers to add dimension to this card – I stuck them onto plain white computer paper and just trimmed around the edges before adhering them with foam squares.

Paint or Dye It
This is something I do to nearly everything I work on, but for this card I decided to use one of the scallop sticker ‘extras’ (the part that was left on the sticker sheet after I used the scallop sticker) as a mask for some walnut ink. I stuck it onto my patterned paper and used a brush to paint walnut ink on the right side of the sticker ‘mask’. Once it was dry, I peeled off the mask and had a super-cute scallop dyed area with some of the patterned paper details still showing through! I also splattered a little bit of paint around for the finishing touch.

I hope you’re inspired to play with this lovely paper collection & scrapbook a bit, now! I had a blast both designing the papers & stickers and scrapbooking with them, myself – it’s so much fun! :) Thanks for having me share it with your readers, Shimelle!

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Michelle Clement is a 26-year old artist, and lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She works in children’s tv animation, and also freelance designs – she’s currently working on scrapbook paper collections for Sassafras Lass, as well as her shop-of-cute-things, Bubbly Shnooks. She loves living close to the ocean, getting her hands crafty in everything from scrapbooking to crocheting to sewing, and also enjoys summer jaunts out in the sun, like camping and napping on a cozy blanket. She has a weak spot for singer-songwriters, acoustic songs, hammocks, cinnamon dolce lattes, handprinted graphic tees, elastic belts, cardigans, thrift shops, floral linens, yellow, and anything octopus! You can find her daily ramblings and crafty adventures over on her blog, Scissor Quirk.

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I started blogging a bit after I started scrapbooking, and for quite a while the two things lived quite separate lives. Blogs very rarely had pictures back then, and perhaps that was why the leap to the visual took a while for me to grasp. Of course, my scrapbooking style has certainly evolved and likewise, the blogging changed too. Eventually I left that exceedingly random and picture-free blog behind and started things with a bit more thought here at shimelle.com… and now a thousand posts later I still find I have ideas I want to convert from head to notebook to blog to scrapbook (sometimes missing out any of those steps) and I think I’m far more in love with blogging now ever. Part of that is from Blogging for Scrapbookers, a project that originally started in late 2009, but revisited over the past month. Scrapbookers getting together to blog about what they love. I love it when things come together like that – it’s simply electric. And so, it’s time to push all that to the next level of inspiration. With a new class: Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers. It starts Monday.

Over three weeks, we’ll cover:

Getting to know your readers: who is reading and who do you want to be reading? We’ll make stats and analytics easy to use and understand, we’ll work with concrete ways to start conversations on your blog that get your readers talking in the comments and we’ll define exactly what’s best for how you want to blog, whatever that angle may be. Using videos, series posts and other ideas, we’ll make sure blogging is fun for you and your readers.

Simple ways to serious storytelling: how to eliminate boring blogposts forever. You are worth more than that! Taking your blog posts to the next level makes a direct impact on your scrapbooking, as it becomes second-nature to tell stories in meaningful ways. We’ll even cover a list of things never to write so you’ll have a warning system in place to prevent blog post boredom! Photos also come into play in your storytelling, both on your blog and your scrapbook pages. We’ll look at ways to take engaging photos (no matter what your camera) and how to best display them on your blog so they grab everyone’s attention and develop your style.

The blogosphere: blogging is very much a community and the more you contribute to that, the more the community gives back to you in comments, links, praise and support. In recent years, this has developed its own little world that includes social networking and sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, just to start. Some bloggers can get great benefit from these tools – but they are no means a requirement of having a great blog. We’ll work together to find the right balance for you and make sure you’re sharing just what you want to share with the audience you want. If you want more readers for your blog, this will include how to find them while always staying within the happy lines of internet etiquette!

Of course, blogging takes time and sometimes blog posts come easier than others. We’ll look at forward planning, brainstorming and how and when to take a break from your blog – without losing your readership! If you’re interested in making a bit of spare cash from your blog, we’ll cover that too – just at an introductory level so you can be aware of your options and choose what’s best for you. (If you really want to focus on earning from your blog, you can also join us in May for a special online business workshop.)

And we’ll always keep the focus on scrapbooking, so you’ll get scrapbook pages as inspiration in the daily prompts, we’ll cover many topics that will apply both to the way you blog and the way you scrapbook and we will continue to make the two work together, just like we started in Blogging for Scrapbookers.

A note about that actually: do you have to take Blogging for Scrapbookers in order to join us for Beyond Blogging? I’m not going to enforce this as a strict prerequisite. If you want to jump in now, go for it! However, we aren’t going to go back to the basics that are covered in the first Blogging for Scrapbookers class. If you’re new to blogging or you find the technical side of changing your template or formatting a post difficult, then I would highly suggest you sign up for Blogging for Scrapbookers as well, so you can download the Blogging Blueprints workbook as a manual and have a look at the prompts so you know where we’re coming from. You can sign up for Blogging for Scrapbookers at any time and have full, permanent access to the class materials and the message board. A quick review of the first class will also help you embrace the ‘assignment’ format for the classes. At the end of each prompt, there are suggestions of how to put that day’s topic into action. But we are all busy people with varied amounts of time to apply to different things! So each prompt has three options for how to apply what you’ve just read and watched. The first is a quick option for just five to ten minutes! The second option has a bit more detail for someone who wants to spend thirty minutes to an hour on a fun project, and the third option requires more time but is meant for a longer-term project, like planning future posts and developing your style over time. There is absolutely no pressure to keep up with any sort of daily assignment on a deadline and the schedule is entirely up to you – just know there are options for improving your blog just five or ten minutes at a time when you can’t devote hours!

In Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers, I’m excited to share two new elements with you: a series of videos that cover additional material and profiles of fifteen different scrapbooking bloggers, who share their perspective on blogging and how it works hand in hand with their scrapbooking. There are also more options for customising your blog design covered in this workshop, in case you fancy giving things a bit of a visual shake up! But mostly, I hope you’ll join me to create some amazing blog posts over the next three weeks.

Class includes:
…15 full-colour PDF prompts delivered to your inbox, Monday to Friday
…Series of videos with further instruction
…A special series of profiles of a variety of scrapbooking bloggers, discussing why they blog, their creative process and other insights.
…Blog graphics in a choice of themes that you can customise to create your own blog design
…Private message board for class members
…Permanent access to all class materials

Class starts Monday, the 18th of April, but you can join at any time and have full access to all the materials. If you would like your class materials sent to a different email address than that of your paypal account, please be sure to leave that information in the notes to seller box or email me to let me know. Class registrations can take up to 24 hours to process. Thanks!

If you have any questions, please let me know and I’m happy to help you decide if this is the course for you!

Hope to see you in class on Monday morning!

xlovesx

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