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

Sometimes I worry about the things I repeat ad nauseum in videos and blog posts. At this point, I don’t really need to tell you that I love the power of three in design. I almost feel like I should just let you have a go at identifying just how many different three-is-a-magic-number moments can be found on a given layout.

But then again, for a long time I felt I was explaining inked edges in every single video and yet I still get at least a couple emails every week asking why I ink my edges and where to get that tool that I use for the job. (It’s the Ranger ink applicator with the foam option, by the way. I wasn’t convinced until I had to demo with one for a convention once, and instantly my mind was changed and I understood exactly why this product existed. No more messy and out of control inking by using the ink pad directly against the paper.) So I will continue to mention the power of three now and then, and I can’t imagine a time when you won’t see me using three areas of embellishment or three splashes of the same colour or three dots in a triangle on most of my pages.

This particular design shows just how much a little grouping of three can dress up an otherwise very simple and static layout design. In this case it’s three circles, but that’s not a necessity. You can replace the circles with any shape of embellishments you like!

And now for guest artist Christy Strickler, who has unknowingly combined at least three of our challenges into one page!

I used to approach scrapbook challenges with a bit of trepidation. This was especially true if the challenge was timed. Experience has taught me that focused choices produce layouts I love in a short frame of time. Today I was challenged to create a layout using eyelets and brads. My first step is always to choose my photos and then my supplies. I make it easy on myself by choosing the first photo that inspires me and the first collection of papers that fit the story. I often create vision boards on Pinterest. Set a time limit and choose an idea to lift. I chose to be inspired by some greeting cards which featured eyelet embellishments (See here ). As you work on your layout, don’t second guess your supply or design choices. Embrace any imperfections as they come along. I like to machine stitch to save time, but I can’t always sew straight. Instead of letting some of the imperfect lines on the circles get to me, I chose to stitch a few extra wonky lines to make it all look intentional. Your goal is always to create a layout with a story to share. Keep focused and don’t let options overwhelm you.

About the Artist
Christy Strickler currently resides in Nassau, Bahamas with her husband, son and three striped island cats. She designs for Scrapbook News and Review Magazine, Get It Scrapped and is a JBS Mercantile Ambassador. You can find her at My Scrapbook Evolution or on Twitter.

Your eighteenth challenge is to embrace the power of three! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [2]

Hands up: who collects fabric in much the same way as paper? I know I am not the only one. I am slightly better at using the paper than the fabric!

I haven’t had my sewing machine set up for quite some time, until just last week, so I’m happy to be venturing back into a more traditional way to use fabric on all sorts of projects, but I have to admit there are plenty of times when the fabric on my layouts doesn’t include a single stitch to sew it into place. Glue and staples work pretty well with fabrics, and I mostly love their texture amongst all the paper of a page. I need to find a way to get my fabric stash organised again and actually get using it, including a bit more going into my albums.

For as much as I love fabric, I think I have only filmed two videos that feature it! This example is Glitter Girl’s specific answer to incorporating fabric on your pages with ease – and sewing isn’t even required. I think if I were keeping a weekly Project Life album, I would be tempted to use fabric quite often as a way to vary the textures in the pockets. Though I would be tempted to start cutting up fabrics from ‘real life’ as a means of documentation, and I’m not sure how well it would go over in the house for our clothes, table cloth, curtains, and tea towels to be missing random 3×4 patches! (Please see this page for further details on this Glitter Girl Adventure.)

And now for guest artist Jen Kinkade, who clearly hasn’t had her sewing machine stowed away in a box for several months!

I love the texture that fabric can bring to any project!! When I decided to do this project challenge, I happily dove into my stash!! :) I was inspired by triangle trends I would see all over Pinterest, so I immediately thought to apply this trend to my layout using fabric. I began cutting varying sizes and colors of isosceles triangles, while knowing I wanted a few bigger ÒmainÓ triangles. Then, I placed them around my white cardstock until I was happy with my layout. Before I adhered the triangles, I stamped a few triangles on my cardstock using the Mama Elephant Trifecta stamp collection. I lightly adhered the triangles with some adhesive to keep them in place while I machine stitched each one down. I added the photo of my family using foam pop dots by American Crafts. The colorful triangles also complement the fun, summery colors in the photo of my family. I had some ÒleftoverÓ white triangle pieces from a recent project I had cut with my Silhouette Cameo and decided to use watercolor and acrylic paints to custom color a few triangles to fill in the spaces of the stamped images since they fit the space perfectly. I finished my layout by adhering my ÒLOVEÓ title and adding wood veneer embellishments from Freckled Fawn. I always finish a layout with a few paint splatters and/or drips!! ;) **Note: I trimmed off about 3/4 of an inch from 2 sides of my white cardstock then added the arrow patterned paper by Studio Calico behind it to complete the triangle theme of my layout.

About the Artist
Jen lives in West Virginia with her husband and 3 daughters. She loves all things paper, glue, and photography related and loves trying out new scrapbooking techniques. Jennifer currently designs for Two Peas in a Bucket, Pink Paislee, Ormolu, and scrapperin—a German-based scrapbooking line. You can find more from Jen on her blog, at Two Peas, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Your seventeenth challenge is to scrapbook with fabric! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [3]

I think it’s still pretty common to get started in this craft as an ‘event scrapbooker’, right? I focused on events for years – birthdays, graduations, weddings, performances, parties, and that sort of thing. And I actually think that’s a perfectly useful and practical way to scrapbook! It does, after all, create a record of the special events in life. But there is also this lovely simplicity of recording more everyday moments against a world that continues to pick up speed and technology. Scrapping from that perspective can be a sort of ongoing gratitude exercise – a way to slow down and pause life and spend time making something that in some way celebrates your gratitude for some simple, lovely moment in life.

That either makes complete sense or is total rubbish, but it is the sort of motivation I find ongoing in creating pages for my albums – wanting to create a record that keeps things humble and acknowledged and reminds me to be grateful for all the good even when life tries to get busy or stressful or pull my focus away from what’s really important. Even for pages that are more traditional ‘event’ scrapping, like a birthday party, there’s now that awareness while I’m making pages, working with photos, and writing the journaling. I think this kind of scrapping keeps me more grounded in life, and though I could always do with more grounding, it is a huge help to finding some balance in this crazy world!

It’s often the pages with the more lengthy journaling that really brings home the gratitude concept for me when I turn the pages of my albums. With travel experiences especially, I find that I write a great deal on the road about comparing and contrasting my life at home with whatever I’m experiencing that day, and there’s a a certain tone of learning and appreciating and being more aware that creeps in – it is what makes travel so meaningful to me and I suppose that’s a bit of a personal journey it itself. In any case, the writing for this project was one of those instances. (Please see this page for further details on this Glitter Girl Adventure. The journaling can be found here, in the form that I recorded while we were still on the road. I made a few changes when I printed it for the layout, because I always want to change something when I re-read my own writing. Which is a dangerous compulsion for a blogger, I tell you, but that’s an entirely different conversation.)

And now for guest artist Marianna Barone, who even has a step-by-step process for scrapbooking with gratitude but not taking all the live-long day!

Scrapbooking feeds my creative soul. I like nothing better than to sit down with a stack of photos and some brand new supplies and let my creative spirit soar. Best case scenario, I should have a pretty bit of paper that reflects my memories and my feelings within an hour or so. Worst case, I sit among the stacks of pictures and patterns and think, “How do I do this again?” Like most of you, I could probably scrap 1000 photos and never have to run out and buy a thing. All that product can be stifling to creativity when the possibilities are endless. Enter scrapbooking challenges. They help me narrow down my creative choices and focus on being productive. Here are five steps to getting that challenge page scrapped… fast.

Step One: Find a challenge that speaks to you.
A challenge about gratitude? That speaks to me on a soul level. Not sure if I have a photo for that! What else am I grateful for? Laughter! So I went in search of a picture about the people in my life that make me laugh. That’s how this page started. Gratitude also makes me think of Thanksgiving. Have you scrapped those photos yet? What else are you thankful for?

Step Two: What’s the first thing you think of when you look your photo?
Is it love? What color is love? Red? Pink? Maybe you’re thinking about turkey? Turkey is brown…and gold. Ah….autumn colors. Aside from gaining direction from the challenge at hand, I also look to my photo to guide my creative picks, A seaside photo with pretty blues? I grabbed my newest, prettiest collection that I knew had blue in it and just decided, “I will use this.” Honestly, when you want to actually get a page done, you have to settle. There are probably several “perfect” choices in your stash. Stick with the first one that looks good. This just cut an hour off your average time, right?

Step Three: Is the challenge technique or embellishment driven?
The problem of deciding what to add to your page has just been solved for you. Recipe challenges are great for telling you exactly what needs to be on your page. Look at a page you have pinned or bookmarked. Copy that design and embellishment placement. Groups of threes and visual triangles are also solid design principles. I had a bunch of matching diecuts for the collection I picked. I dumped them out of the package and thought…banner. So that’s what I made.

Step Four: What’s your title?
Glitter Girl will tell you to use Thickers. They make every page look good. Just ran out? Black sticker letters work on every page unless your background is black cardstock. If that’s the case, use white sticker letters.

Step Five: What’s your story?
I bet you’ve been reliving the memory half the time you’ve been working on the page. Write down your thoughts or your memory on your page.

Another memory captured! Sit back and admire your creation.

About the Artist
Marianne Barone (aka Scrapnatya) lives an hour east of New York City with her husband and two teenage daughters. She has been scrapbooking and paper crafting for over fourteen years years and tries to carve out time to be creative every day. She is currently on the design team at the Color Me Scrappy Challenge Blog and hosts a weekly stash busting challenge on the General Scrappin’ board at Two Peas In A Bucket. She shares her scrapbooking creations on her blog at marianne in the moment.

Your sixteenth challenge is to record hope or gratitude! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [4]

The rhyme may go ‘pretty maids all in a row’, but in scrapbooking design terms, I tend to think it’s ‘pretty embellishments all in a row’, especially with those tiny bits and pieces we collect for our pages. Gathering them together in a row gives them more purpose and impact, so they don’t get lost!

Of course, gathering small embellishments in a line needn’t be restricted to orderly, grid-based designs! Banners allow that same idea to be a bit more freeform and organic, and they are perfect for using a collection of somewhat random embellishments.

Glitter Girl agrees with that idea of gathering things for a banner – and also believes in gathering ideas from the gallery and stringing those different ideas together to come up with a new page whenever the dreaded ‘scrapper’s block’ kicks in! (See this page for more details on this Glitter Girl Adventure.)

For a twist on this challenge, I also sent guest artist Lisa Truesdell this sketch – which also can be used to line up several small photos as well as the embellishments – but you’ll see that’s not necessarily required!

I have to be honest – I have a love/hate relationship with sketches. I love the idea of having a framework laid out for me, but I hate when I get so tied up in those guidelines that I lose sight of letting the page go where it needs to go. Before I started this page, I opened up the sketch image, and took in the main elements. A vertical block of journaling along the right, a grid of squares to the left, and a title underneath. And then I closed it and got to work. This method, as you can imagine, invites a little more wandering than if I referred back to the sketch to make sure I was staying on track.

I started with a piece of patterned paper from Studio Calico, stuck it in my typewriter, and began typing. Once I’d said all I wanted, I had a nice tall column of text, and I reinforced it by stitching around it. I then turned to the grid of squares. I tried a more literal take on the sketch by building a photo mat out of squares of patterned paper, but it really wasn’t working for me. I pushed the squares around for a bit and then abandoned them for a more imperfect grid made from two staggered photos, and bits of patterned paper and embellishments from Studio Calico, My Mind’s Eye and Cosmo Cricket. From there, I added a bit of washi tape and a title and called it done. While the elements of my page don’t really match the original sketch, you can see their similarities. The three main elements on my page carry the same visual weights as in the sketch, but the looser grid is more in keeping with my own scrapbook style.

About the Artist
Lisa Truesdell lives in Omaha, NE, in a midtown neighborhood filled with big trees and old houses. She has been married to Matthew for 15 years and is a drive them all over town mom to their three boys – Alex, Ben and Sam. When she’s not making pages or chasing her boys, she is slowly making progress on a never ending list of home projects. She subscribes to too many magazines and is useless from the moment she starts a new book until she finishes it.

Eight years ago, she fell in love with a craft that allowed her to experiment with color & patterns, words and photographs. She is now thrilled to be able to immerse herself in paper + glue on a daily basis as a Creative Team member and Education Coordinator for Studio Calico.

Your fifteenth challenge is to line it up! Using the sketch is optional – do whatever inspires you most, of course! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [9]

Believe it or not, there were several years of my scrapping wherein I only created double page layouts! Somewhere along the line that changed, and now they are the exception rather than the rule, but I actually love for all my albums to have a few double pages mixed in with all the single pagers. Sometimes it’s a traditional two page layout in the sense of two 12×12 facing pages designed as one 24×12 canvas and other times it’s a mix of 6×12 pages or 12×8 pages mixed in to extend a single page to a double or triple, but I like how it’s a change of pace within an album and

We’ve been having a pretty in-depth discussion about double pages on the Two Peas message board, and I have to admit I’ve been reading and not having enough time to go back and write more at the moment, but I have a head full of notes and ideas to get back there once this weekend’s celebrations (NSD and a wedding!) conclude, so do jump in the conversation if you’re a two page scrapper who would like to see more inspiration out there in that format.

Here’s a look at an almost-recent Glitter Girl episode with a two page layout. No, I don’t see anything at all odd about the fact of all things that I decide I have enough photographs to stretch it to two pages, the photographs would be of a queue for a cheese toastie. Nothing odd about that at all, I’m sure. (See this page for further details on this Glitter Girl Adventure.)

And now for guest artist Lisa-Jane Johnson, who loves her pages two at a time!

_It’s no secret that I am quite partial to a double page layout. I often have several photos from the same perspective of an event but I am hopeless at deciding which ones to use. Creating a double layout means I can include more photos without restricting the story or inhibiting the design. Using two pages also gives you some design versatility by either stretching the placement over a wider canvas or making two more separate but still cohesive pages. Doubles don’t need to be a mirror image of each other and if the pages can stand alone then I leave them in their respective pockets. If the design is stretched over the two pages though then I use double sided tape to join the seams of the pockets together for continuity. Using D ring albums means I can move the pockets as a whole which is great for me because I don’t scrap chronologically but I do file layouts in my album in roughly chronological order. This way I don’t feel a pressure to make sure that the next layout in the album starts and finishes on the right page unless it would really interfere with the flow of the story like a new baby layout coming before a pregnancy story. _

Because this challenge was about scrapping at a pace, I was inspired to be quite specific about my decision making and avoid getting into the cycle of “but what about this (design, photo, paper, embellishment, etc)? I didn’t have time to scan my books and files of sketches, or to peruse Pinterest and get distracted by cup cakes, so I flicked through my own albums to find a double layout that I loved. This is definitely something I will do again because it really speeds up the initial process. I chose a design that flowed across the larger canvas so that I was thinking about one continuous layout rather than two linked pages. In this instance, the original layout was one of my favourite single page designs using quadrants. I mirrored the design and then tweaked the elements once the base layers were in place. Once that was decided, I knew I needed 4 bold portrait pictures. As the black and white photos were travel themed, the colourful Studio Calico Snippets collection with its arrows and geo-tags was an ideal match. It was then simply a case of following the original layout. I didn’t want to waste time finding the right colour and size of letter stickers for my title and then try to spell something sensible from what was available – we’ve all been there, right? Instead I cut my title on my Cameo using a typeface I was familiar with so that I wasn’t spending time experimenting. I added some American Crafts ribbon and finished off with some of the Snippets arrows. Using one collection like this is really efficient – you don’t waste time looking for something that is just right because it is already perfectly coordinated. This also helps with the continuity across the pages too by easily repeating colour and pattern. Replicating elements helps lead the eye around in much the same way as a single layout and really helps the pages to come together as a whole. Flowing papers and even the title across the gap between the two pages also helps it to feel like one continuous design. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you produce a layout. By reducing your decision making process and by using what you know, you can still make beautiful pages in a limited time.

About the Artist
Lisa-Jane is a full time mum, part time Open University Student and aspiring writer. She lives with her 2 young children and soul mate husband in Southampton, Hampshire, where she scrapbooks from a tottering pile of family photographs. Scrapbooking is her therapy and combines her love of storytelling with her obsession for playing with pretty paper. Her other therapy is fitness training and she is developing a certain fondness for kicking and punching imaginary opponents and running away from zombies at the gym. She is on the design team for S J Crafts and shares her papercrafting projects and other activities on her blog.

Your fourteenth challenge is to try a double page! If you are happiest working on single pages, perhaps choose a single page you’ve already made and make a coordinating page that will sit opposite this in your album. Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [5]

Sometimes you just fall in love with a scrapbook line so much that you barely even look at the paper previews before you add it all to your shopping cart. I’m that way with American Crafts papers, and they’ve been some of my most-used papers for many years. I love that their collections vary enough that there’s always a new look to be created, but they are also consistent enough that they mix and match well from season to season, collection to collection.

From bold patterns to delicate pastels, there’s just something for all themes. And they have a brand new collection that has just hit Two Peas yesterday. I may have it all in my bucket right now, just deciding which pieces will stay there and which ones I’ll have to skip so that bucket comes back into my budget!

Glitter Girl often uses American Crafts papers on her pages, but mixed with other brands in most instances. This video from the Sketch to Scrapbook Page archives focuses solely on American Crafts products. It’s also an example of scraplifting a page in my own album.

And now for guest artist Paige Evans, who falls in love with paper on pretty much a daily basis!

Perfect challenge for me! I chose to go with the Sundrifter line by Studio Calico. The pastel color palette paired with pops of brights and black/white matched perfectly with my Easter photoshoot pictures. I’ve never scrapped about Easter before so I was really excited to make this layout! The scalloped background die cut looked like stacked Easter eggs and I thought it’d be fun to back the shapes with patterned papers for a unique focal element.

To create this page, use a circle punch to trim away the corners of a cream cardstock background then go around the edges with a black pen, adding a few trios of “x“s here and there. Die cut a scalloped background from white cardstock and back most of the shapes with patterned paper as well as patterned vellum from the Sundrifter line by Studio Calico. The 6×6 patterned paper pad is great for cutting tiny shapes because the patterns are smaller. Add photos behind Polaroid die cuts and adhere them on the layout. Embellish around each photo with matching colored elements like jewels, pearls, crocheted doily trimmed in half, acrylic flower, additional die cuts, a brad, a badge, and more as shown. Drop matching colored spray mist around each photo cluster. Create a title on the largest photo using Thickers and gold mini alphabet stickers. Stamp the date below the title on a pennant tag. Type journaling on a typewriter, cut it into strips, and glue them on the empty space of the photo.

About the Artist
Paige Evans scored her very first job at a local scrapbooking store in Redmond, WA called Yesterdays when she was just sixteen. She’s been addicted to scrapping ever since! Paige works full-time from home for Northridge Publishing, who create Scrapbook Trends, CARDS, Simply Handmade, Bead Trends, Cricut, Cricut Idea Books, Create: Idea Books, and Signature Series. She also serves as the American Crafts Blog Hostess/Design Team Coordinator and is a Garden Girl for twopeasinabucket.com. You can follow the adventures of Paige and her family of husband Chris, son Fox and daughter Jane on their blog, plus find Paige on Pinterest , Twitter @PaigeTEvans and Instagram: paigetaylorevans.

Your thirteenth challenge is to highlight your favourite papers! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [9]

Writing a letter can be one of the simplest ways to get out of the feeling that writing on a scrapbook page is some sort of exam or essay that will be marked and red penned. I probably write more handwritten letters to places (see also this page) than to actual people, which is probably something I should address in my own world, but nevertheless, it serves me well when trying to get my ideas across on my scrapbook pages.

Sometimes my journaling on page feels like a letter in my head without actually writing the ‘Dear…’ at the beginning and the ‘Sincerely yours’ at the end. That works too. I could definitely write a letter of admiration to the good folk at Sensory Lab in Melbourne. Except I would need to be careful because it would be really easy to ask an honest question in that letter. When can we move in? (I am rather grateful that they have opened a sister coffee shop and restaurant here in London, but there was something extra fabulous about our twice-daily sojourn to this spot while we were there.)

And now for guest artist Jill Sprott, who knows a thing or two about writing letters!

On every layout, we pose and compose ourselves, and thus, the journaling that we include on layouts is, by nature, personal. Journaling in the form of a letter is, perhaps, the most personalized approach to documenting our feelings. On this layout, I took up a challenge that I had been posed a few years back — to imagine a letter written to me by a future student — and so absorbed did I become in the process, that it filled an entire page! In that moment, a two-pager was born, with one side featuring the journaling, and the other including some surprise snapshots my daughter took of me at my desk the other day, worked into the page with patterns and colors that remind me of school. I love that the words “voice” and “teach” happened to peek through the die-cut letters as I assembled the page. Kismet!

About the Artist
Jill Sprott lives on Oahu, Hawaii, with her husband, daughter, and their menagerie of pets. She is a high school English teacher, which makes for pretty busy days, but on the weekends, when not grading papers, Jill shifts from working with words to playing with words and pictures, surrounded by patterned paper. Like teaching, scrapbooking is a creative, challenging, colorful, and rewarding endeavor. Jill is currently on the design teams for October Afternoon and Jenni Bowlin Studio, and is a Garden Girl at Two Peas in a Bucket. You can follow Jill on her blog, Word Play Word Work.
Your twelfth challenge is to write a letter! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [22]

You know, for someone who loves sparkle as much as I do, I have a relatively low glitter factor on my actual pages. In almost every case, the glitter on my scrapbook pages comes in the form of glitter Thickers letter stickers, which is a relatively low-mess way to add a bit of sparkle to any design. Definitely less messy than the glue-cover-pour-back-in-the-jar method we all learned as kids. I’m quite a fan of that process, but not such a fan of the complaints I get from anyone who steps foot in my home and wonders why their feet are now so sparkly. Frankly, I don’t see why this is a problem. To me, it sounds like a reason to celebrate. To each their own, I guess.

I think I’ll continue to celebrate all things sparkly, so here’s a bit of inspiration from the glittered archives. It’s a card that ends up quite sparkly, but surely the idea could work for the background or embellishment on a scrapbook page? (And back in our die-cutting post, you might have noticed a way to use glitter as a finishing touch – perfect as a replacement for gems, pearls, or enamel dots.)

And now for our guest artist, Jennifer Grace, a fellow fan of all things sparkly!

A sparkly challenge is right up my alley – to me projects don’t feel finished without a little bit of twinkle! Of course I still had a challenge to work quickly, and I pushed myself to use several types of sparkle without overwhelming the page. I store my stash by manufacturer; each brand has a pizza box that’s filled with papers and embellishments all together. So when I’m crafting quickly I grab one of these boxes – for this challenge I used Crate Paper – and I use mostly their supplies for the project. If I remember something else I want to use, like the wood veneers or the Glitz rhinestone then I will go and get them, but I don’t go looking through other supplies without knowing what I want, or I’d be there all day! I made sure I used fast drying glue like Mod Podge and Glossy Accents, so adding glitter to wood veneers didn’t slow me down. I also use my newest supplies as they are the ones I’m most excited about – those Maggie Holmes glitter alphas make the layout feel perfectly finished, even though it was all put together quickly!

About the Artist
Jennifer Grace is a mum-of-two from Dorset, UK. She blogs at www.jennifergracecreates.com, where she shares layouts and other papercrafts, as well as holding online bi-annual blog events with tutorials, giveaways and more – there’s one coming next weekend! She Designs for SJ Crafts, The Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog, and PaperHaus Magazine, and has had projects featured in books, magazines, and on manufacturer blogs like Crate Paper, My Mind’s Eye and Glitz Design. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Your eleventh challenge is to make it sparkle! Entries close at the end of next Sunday, the 12th of May. Please check back on the 14th of May to see if you have won a prize.

Comment [2]