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

_{©twopeasinabucket.com}

All through October, Two Peas is hosting a SpookCRAFTular Halloween event, filled with projects, special guests and prizes. Today it’s my turn to share a project and start a challenge that is open to anyone who would like to participate.

This Halloween shadowbox is made with the Maya Road Trinket Box and a digital kit by Rhonna Farrer that is available for download at Two Peas. I also used buttons and pins by Jenni Bowlin and pleated ribbon by Pink Paislee. You can find all the details about this project here, including a full supply list and a PDF instruction sheet to download. Or if you prefer to watch rather than read instructions, you can watch a full video of the project from start to finish.

Your challenge is to create any Halloween-themed project that includes at least one Two Peas digital kit. There are plenty of Halloween kits available so you can find something right up your street. Print something out and make a scrapbook page, card, decor project, cupcake topper, tag or anything else — as long as it’s Halloween-themed and you’ve included something printed from a Two Peas digi kit, then you’re in. Upload your project to the gallery at Two Peas and remember to check the box for this challenge in step 4 of the upload process so you’ll be entered for a chance to win a prize!

In other news…
…The brand new online class will make its first appearance on the blog later tonight and you’ll be able to sign up any time from then! ETA:The class details are now here and registration is open!

…The last of the prizes from the last online crop (and some Banana Frog giveaways) will all be sent this week – the last of the boxes will hit the post on Friday and several others have already been posted this week. So if you have been waiting, I promise it will be with you very soon.

…If you fancy a bit of a scrappy bargain, there are some great Halloween deals here, tons of BasicGrey is marked down and today only, the Greenhouse collection is 50% off — it’s one of my favourites, filled with hot pinks and mod flower illustrations.

…I’m interested to know what you think about videos shot like this rather than from overhead. Does it just depend on the project, or would you in general like to see everything from one vantage point? And would you want to see longer videos like this regularly or better to stick to things that are short and sweet? Just curious as to what you would find most useful!

Have a lovely Wednesday!

xlovesx

Comment [9]

_{Includes Paper Girl collection from The Girls’ Paperie, Craft Fair collection from American Crafts, canvas flowers from Jillibean Soup, Dear Lizzy flair from American Crafts and vellum butterfly from Jenni Bowlin Studio.}

So where were we? You’ve printed or ordered your photos by now, right? Which means we’re ready to move on in our quest to get caught up with Document:2010. I certainly am, anyway!

The next step you can actually do without your photos to hand, so if you’re still waiting for them, you can go ahead and join in. This step focuses on the evidence pages – one page per month that includes an envelope or pocket to hold all the bits and pieces from life that month.

_{Includes Cherry Delicious collection by Sassafras, Wander collection by BasicGrey, scallop circle punch by EK Success, butterfly punch by Martha Stewart Crafts.}

I followed a similar plan for each of the five evidence pages I needed to create, but I think they look sufficiently different so it won’t necessarily be obvious that I made them all in one scrapping session. For each page I selected two patterned papers to be my primary focus, then built around that to create the page.

The trick at this stage isn’t to create finished layouts, but a near-finished state that can be easily completed with a photo or two, the evidence in your envelope and then maybe a bit of further embellishment if you fancy – or leave it just as it is.

_{Includes Seaside Retreat collection from Webster’s Pages, Amy Butler collection from K&Company, calendar die-cut from Jenni Bowlin Studio.}

Every evidence page needs an envelope or pocket that will hold ticket stubs, receipts, printed emails and anything else that might wind up at the bottom of your handbag. I kept it simple with an envelope from my stationery drawer on each page. August’s is the smallest, but I’m okay with folding papers to fit if they are too big (and I checked and I don’t have tons of things to keep from August).

_{Includes papers from Scenic Route and Anna Griffin, Thickers from American Crafts, Handmade collection by K&Company and an Artbox envelope.}

For May, June and July, I cut the titles with the Silhouette die-cutter. For August and September, I used letter stickers. Perhaps I should have mixed that up a bit, but I’m okay with it like this.

At the end of this process, I’ll come back to each of these monthly pages to finish them off and make each set of monthly pages have a feeling that they fit together, so I didn’t even tidy the offcuts away yet — I’ll want the papers I used for May’s evidence page handy as I put together the highlights of everything that month.

_{Includes papers from American Crafts and Love, Elsie by KI Memories, calendar die-cut from Jenni Bowlin Studio and die-cut cardstock by Bazzill Basics.}

I do have to admit I was quite tempted to go ahead and make pages for October, November and December as I was working on these, because it’s easy to just keep going once you have a system sorted. I didn’t in the end, but if you feel like that might help you keep up for the rest of the year, I would go for it!

If you’re catching up with me, feel free to use these pages as a basic sketch for your evidence pages – or to ignore them completely and create your own designs, of course.

---

_{Includes border stamps and birdcage stamps by Banana Frog, Letterbox collection from American Crafts, Nutmeg collection from Cosmo Crickets, digital photo frame by Rhonna Farrer.}

And just as a little extra, here’s a page I made for Banana Frog last week with some bits and pieces left on my desk + two lovely sets of Banana Frog stamps!

xlovesx

Comment [10]

Document:2010 is a year-long project I’ve worked on with UK Scrappers. It’s free to follow along and includes a PDF download each month with notes and a page of printable journaling boxes. The idea is very simple: scrapbook the year by creating four pages for each month. One evidence page includes an envelope of things you have collected that month. Two divided pages (one page or page protector, front and back) highlight up to a dozen things from your calendar. One highlight page shows a key event in more detail. Nice and simple, right?

Except somewhere in late spring, my personal album derailed. Now you know why my online classes are normally four to six weeks! That’s the length of time I can keep a project in working mode. Longer than that becomes a real challenge to keep up with something as other projects need to be on the table. It’s always there in the back of my mind, creating a huge amount of guilt and this feeling that there must be a way to get caught up, but life keeps steaming ahead with new deadlines and events and so it goes.

So here we go and you can mark my words: this week I am getting up to date with Document:2010, and I’m going to share the entire process with you over the next four days. If you’re behind, you can join in. If you never started but think it sounds like a cool idea, this is a great time to get started. If you’re totally up to date and have been cursing my name for not being able to keep up, well then I salute you and hope by the end of this week we can be friends again. Sound like a plan?

Today we’re going to start with the photos to get this big catch-up session rolling. I need to complete my pages for May, June, July, August and September. Why yes, I did just admit that in view of the entire internet. And now I exhale. I haven’t kept photos aside especially for this project, so I’m using iPhoto for this part of the process. If you’re a PC rather than a Mac, you could use Picasa or ACDSee — both are photo management tools that will help you navigate your photo library with ease. If you don’t use any sort of photo manager and instead keep all your photos in separate folders as you upload, I would highly suggest checking out these options, as they will save you a million headaches as a scrapbooker. I use iPhoto and I seriously would hate to go without it.

Once you’ve opened your photo library, give yourself some structure so you’ll be able to select and sort your photos easily even though we’re working on more than one month at a time. I created a folder called Document:2010 and within that folder made a new album for each month I needed to complete.

Now view your photos by date. I normally use my library to view by event, but clicking on ‘Photos’ at the top left gets rid of the events and lets you sort your images by date, file name, keyword and so forth. Sort by date and scroll to the first month you need to scrap. As you look through those images, you’ll start to get a picture of what you did that month. In May, I taught two scrapbooking workshops, spent a lot of time at the park while the cherry blossoms and tulips were in bloom, spent a few days in Dublin (then got stuck there when the airlines were all grounded), spent a day with SJ thrift shopping in Hastings, printed about twelve million (okay, two hundred) Hipstamatic photos, went to a concert, tried to find elephants in London, snapped a family photo shoot for a scrapbooker and went to the Southend Air Show with The Boy’s family. Some of those things I could tell by looking back at my calendar but others I wouldn’t have noted – and when I review the photos it’s all pretty obvious. The trick at this point is to take one to four photos from each event that month and drag them to the album for May. (By the way, in iPhoto, when you’re dragging the pictures to that album, you aren’t removing them from anywhere else — the album is essentially a collection of bookmarks, so you can add and delete with no worry about losing something from your full photo library.)

Repeat this process for each month. Don’t pay all that much attention to the number of photos you’re dragging to the folder, but keep that rough idea of one to four photos per event in mind. When you finish your first pass, go look at your monthly collections and see how many pictures you have selected. At first, I was okay for May through July but I had forty for September and only half a dozen for August. We want a happy medium in between those two, so I removed some of the September images and added to the August collection. This left me with 28 photos for May, 13 for June, 13 for July, 13 for August and 21 for September. (Apparently I like the number 13?!) I know this sounds like a ton of photos to scrapbook, and with the regular process of making pages, it would be. But for Document:2010 or similar ideas of scrapping a month over a few pages, this number is totally achievable.

Now there’s an optional editing step if you like to mix up things like colour and black and white or the size of the images in your albums. I altered two or three images per month to black and white, mostly chosen by just picking the images that didn’t have the truest colour or the highest quality, because black and white is a lovely instant fix to that. It’s far more forgiving than colour! I also made a note of some images that I wanted to print at a smaller size than my standard 4×6 format.

Which leads us to printing time! You can print your images at home or upload them to an online printer – whichever you prefer! I love my at-home printer, but it is more economical for me to order prints from Photobox, so it’s a decision I make with every project about whether I can wait the extra day to get my prints in the post. Some stores also offer an in-between option that lets you upload your photos to their website but pick them up in-store, like using the one-hour photo with the first step still being at home. I used this option a few times while I was visiting the States because there was a Walgreens just around the corner, but in my little corner of London there’s nowhere nearby that offers this service. It’s worth checking though! You could always put these images on a memory card or a CD and print them in store through a kiosk too. Anyway, I’m off the topic now — print those pictures. That’s what I’m saying.

Once you have them printed, stack them up by month and label them so you’re good to go, and tomorrow we’ll pick up from there!

If you’re new to this project, you can find the monthly downloads for Document:2010 on the UKS homepage and there is a forum to chat about the project too.

xlovesx

Comment [15]

_{Supplies: patterned papers by My Mind’s Eye, Bo Bunny and Cosmo Cricket, die cut and mini paper by Jenni Bowlin Studio, chipboard letters by Making Memories, letter stickers and border sticker by The Girls’ Paperie, bird sticker by My Mind’s Eye, word sticker by K&Company, label sticker by October Afternoon, lace rub-on by Hambly Studios and border punch by EK Success.}

As promised, a layout to start scrapping the photos from Laura’s wedding. I highly approve of her wedding colour scheme – I love scrapping with pink and green! I just had a few of the pictures printed so I could test out the various styles in the post-production. A few more little tweaks and I shall order prints of the whole lot! Exciting stuff. For a scrapbooker anyway.

In other news, there’s been a little switch up here at shimelle.com, so if you’re reading through a reader, stop by for a look. If you have any trouble with the changes, please let me know. Over to the right you’ll find all the online scrapbooking classes that are available. All the classes are available at any time – each class runs once on a ‘live’ schedule when the prompts are sent to your inbox each day, but you can also sign up at any date as an ‘archived’ class. You get full, permanent access to all the materials – you just download them from the website instead of getting them in your inbox. Two classes (Learn Something New and Journal your Christmas) run every year, and no matter when you sign up, you get to participate for as many years as you would like at no additional charge. So you can sign up any time!

I’m down to my last few days of this September visit to my hometown, and I’ve been able to meet up with some of my oldest friends, which was super lovely. I’m looking forward to heading home (and The Boy), but not until after the Britney episode of Glee, obviously! Ha.

xlovesx

Comment [16]

_{Supplies: Dotted Swiss cardstock by Bazzill Basics, patterned papers from Echo Park and the new Cosmo Cricket Togetherness collection, die cut by My Mind’s Eye, Thickers letters and pearl brads by American Crafts and labels by October Afternoon.}

Here’s a little start to the wedding scrapping for September! One pink and green wedding and another in yellow and grey, so I’ve stocked up on cardstock and patterned papers to match, of course!

Wearing yellow for this wedding had its own little story. Pretty shortly after Tami asked me to be a bridesmaid, she asked what colours I would or wouldn’t want to wear. I figured my vote didn’t matter really – that’s the bride’s vote! But I said something like ‘oh, I don’t mind — I just don’t usually wear yellow, but I’m fine with whatever.’ Of course a few weeks later she chose yellow! Darn the power of suggestion!

She let each of us choose our own yellow dress, so we had three very different styles. One breezy and summery, one dressy and tailored and for me, something vintage. I didn’t even go looking for this dress particularly. All I remember is looking up something on ebay and the next thing I knew, vintage yellow dress was in the search box. I’m not sure how that happened at all!

_{All photo credit to The Boy, bless him!}

So I don’t usually wear yellow, but this one I like! Do you have colours you don’t usually wear? Just curious!

Now if I don’t get the snaps from Laura’s wedding uploaded, I’ll be in trouble. Better get on to that!

xlovesx

Comment [21]

_{Supplies: Mini papers and journaling die cuts by Jenni Bowlin, glitter die cuts by My Mind’s Eye, letter stickers by BasicGrey and butterfly punch by Martha Stewart Crafts.}

One tiny little shopping trip yesterday afternoon and I picked up enough to finish this page. Still pretty minimal for me but that’s okay now and then! (And I did manage to get a set of four patterned papers in there, so you know I’m happy really.) The journaling on this particular page is all about the vocabulary rather than the event. You can’t really see what’s written on the signs in the photo at this size, but it includes a bit of current vocabulary: for the win. I’m sure I won’t be saying that in five years… possibly not in one, so I just wanted to take that little bit of time to explain how this phrase became so prevalent in my vocabulary in 2010.

Do you have any phrases that might need explaining? My mind is storming a bit with ideas of other vocabulary elements that might be scrappable, and how it can work for teens and adults in addition to the more traditional ‘cute things you say’ pages for younger children.

And lest you think I had wasted the opportunity to scrapbook about the sheer wonderment that was the photobooth at Laura’s wedding, I promise I still have plenty more strips to go! This is just a sampling. Hurrah for unlimited photo opportunities, fake moustaches and good friends!

In other news, the special project I mentioned yesterday is available now — I was a guest on the Paperclipping Roundtable. It’s a podcast with scrapbookers discussing a different topic in each episode. We discussed using scrapbooking to help achieve a goal or work on a project, so that’s very much in line with how I scrapbook! If you discovered my blog via the podcast, welcome! This post is a great place to start as it points out some of the most important posts here. And you can find all the details (including the sign up button!) for the current online scrapbooking class right here. If there’s anything else I can help with, please just ask! It’s lovely to see you!

xlovesx

Comment [28]

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Supplies: Dotted Swiss cardstock by Bazzill Basics, patterned papers by My Mind’s Eye and BasicGrey, scallop circle punch by EK Success and scallop border punch by Fiskars, stickers by Bella Blvd, stamps by Prima, pleated ribbon by Pink Paislee, die cuts by The Girls’ Paperie, brown pen and pop dots by American Crafts.}

Doing a little catching up and I’m pretty sure I haven’t shared these two pages that I made for the garden at Two Peas. One with plenty of neutrals and one with primary brights! Click on either to see the full page and details.

_{©twopeasinabucket.com Supplies: patterned papers by Cosmo Cricket, from the Garden Variety and Snorkel collections and an accent sheet from Bella Blvd, Photo Label Punch by EK Success, brown pen, plus American Crafts Thickers letters and chipboard word by Chatterbox (from older collections).}

I got up this morning and started on a new page with some photos from the photobooth at Laura’s wedding (scroll to the bottom of the post to see). Loving the relaxation and return to normal that scrapping provides, but of course I only have a few crafty supplies with me so I’m feeling a shopping trip might be the key to getting the page just how I imagine it! And I’ve ordered prints from the second September wedding – Kansas friends Tami and Ben. It included bowling, cake pops and a yellow vintage dress! So I think I will be officially back in the scrapping groove this week. Sounds good to me.

Also just a little nervous about a special project today… but I can tell you all about that in a day or so!

xlovesx

Comment [9]

My grandpa was a man who loved a good project. I don’t know anyone who embraces every part of the process in the same way, from an outlook that saw an opportunity where the rest of us saw a problem, through brainstorming for ideas to mocking up a working model, testing it out and improving it until it was just perfect. Many grandparents might ask about the grandkids’ school work, but my grandpa wasn’t doing it to be polite — he was asking because he knew some of that school work would include some projects! Science projects, especially. When the rest of the class just did the homework to read an article about dinosaurs, Grandpa took me to the natural history museum at KU. We walked around with a notebook and a camera, taking notes, drawing diagrams and making timelines, and on the way home we stopped at the library where Grandpa challenged me to find the dinosaurs from our notes and match up the research we had done at the museum with what was printed in the books. And once we finished that, we came home and built dinosaur models from balsa wood and glued them into displays with moss and rocks, just like the museum displays only smaller. I promise I definitely got an A on my homework the next day.

But my favourite project that we worked on together was making a mousetrap car in the seventh grade. We talked through the basic physics of how a mousetrap could power a little model car and then he stood back while I made my first model. It worked and it went far enough to beat everyone else in my class, but of course it was no amazing accomplishment of mousetrap engineering on a worldwide scale. A week or so later, Grandpa said I had to come over to see his latest project. He’d been curious about how to improve on the design of that first car, so he built a new and improved version, made entirely of things found around the house. The frame was made of old yardsticks, the wheels were made of records, and the darned thing went so far that we had to take it out of the house because it would run into the wall at the end of the longest hallway. My original had only travelled about 12 feet! So Grandpa let me see it run, but he wouldn’t tell me how he made it work. I could look at it just for a little while, and then I had to try to recreate it on my own. I could ask questions, but Grandpa would only answer them if they were the right questions! I got there eventually and I know I learned more about torque and traction and scaled ratios from that project than I ever did in my toughest physics lesson.

I’m sure that some of my own love of projects came from Grandpa, even though my own projects tend to involve paper and glue or a needle and thread rather than mousetraps and dinosaur bones these days. When Grandma and Grandpa came to visit in the week before my wedding, Grandpa helped me with those last minute projects, including making little books for the guests’ favours. I had started to work on them, and after watching for about ten minutes, Grandpa had quietly worked out a way to make the process more efficient. I left the room for a second and came back to find my assembly line had been optimized and I had a foreman willing to work for nothing more than chocolate!

I know I am not the only person to have learned so very much from the way Grandpa took on a project and solved problems without ever being overwhelmed. I hope I can have just a fraction of his calm and logical attitude when faced with the big projects of the years to come and am so very thankful to have had the world’s most amazing grandpa as the father figure in my life.

Miss you.

---

I know many of you were aware (via Facebook or class) of why I hadn’t been posting here as usual. My grandpa passed away on the 11th and he is dearly missed. I was already scheduled to be in my hometown for a wedding, but hadn’t really imagined this turn of events on this visit. Today I took The Boy to the airport to fly home to Londontown (I am staying here a while longer) and made a concerted effort to get back to work on things. That includes blogging and scrapbooking and all the other things that go along with it. Thanks for sticking around while I took a little break from the online world.

xlovesx

Comment [62]