Lisa Truesdell just launched her mini-workshop at Two Peas. It’s called Divide and Conquer and it’s all about scrapbooking with pockets, creating a smaller format album and making sure you actually finish that mini project you keep saying you’ll start! It’s normally $12 but this weekend I have one free place to give away to a reader.
To enter, just leave a comment on this post listing something (anything!) you would like to finish.
Entries close at midnight Sunday UK time this week, so don’t wait to enter.
Good luck!
Congratulations to Sue SG, who wins last week’s prize provided by adorable bead company Cute Cornwall. (By the way, Cute Cornwall have added some very sweet rubber stamps to their shop and I adore their crazily cute Hello Kitty charms!)
Sue, 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.
I know: calling it scrapbooking sketch of the week at this point is entirely too cheeky. But I don’t know what to change the graphics to say, so for the moment let’s just say I have a really creative definition of a week. Or something.
This time around, I had a few bits and pieces left over from working with the May papercrafting kit from JBS Mercantile, including most of a printed transparency sheet. I love transparencies but don’t love just layering them all the time – sometimes I like keeping the transparent element in the album, but that takes a little thought about what can go on the back of that page, else it can end up pretty awkward as you turn the pages. So this sketch was designed with a transparency in mind, with a simple design to the rest of the page so it can be repeated on the back to keep that transparent element in the album. Of course, that works best with a pattern that works from both the front and back of the page! Stars, chevrons, lines, checks, polka dots, clouds and all sorts of geometric patterns work better for that than anything with text!
Of course, you don’t have to use a transparency to use the sketch. You could simply piece together the background layer with two pieces of cardstock or two patterned papers. Easy enough! But if you do have a transparency kicking around that needs to be put to use, consider this your challenge!
(Oh, and I may have posted things in a different order to what I expected, so that starting point is already live for you! Find it here.)
As this goes live, a few each of both the main kit and the dime store kit are still available. You can find the main kit here and the dime store kit here, and you don’t have to subscribe to order either kit.
I loved the absolute variety of page themes posted for the last sketch. Here are four favourites: one, two, three and four. Give them a look to see each page in more detail and meet the scrappers who created them!
Sketch of the Week (or whenever!) is always just for fun, and you’re invited to join in with some photos of your own. Grab any supplies you want to use, create a page and share it with us via an online page gallery or your blog. We would all love to see where this sketch takes you on your scrapbooking adventures!
I’m sure Glitter Girl was born with all her scrapping skills fully developed, but that is definitely not the case for me. Especially when it comes to handwriting. I got in so much trouble at school for terrible handwriting. Even though it got so much better with repetition, I had such a complex about it, thinking it still looked like that third-grade scrawl that I would have to rub out and trace again, over and over. On my first few years of scrapbook pages, everything is carefully pencilled and printed. Then I gave up handwriting entirely and typed every bit of journaling for the next few years after that. It was only when I was faced with life without a printer that I started to write by hand again and since then, I’ve never gone back really. I think I’ve printed my words three times in the past seven years? Something like that. I still don’t think my writing is perfect but I have reached a point where my penmanship and I are on speaking terms and we understand each other. I’ll take that as a win.
So this week, Glitter Girl takes on a question about what to do with written mistakes. The simplest answer? Write it again and paste it over the top! Easy. Again something that would never happen to Glitter Girl, but one of my most embarrassing moments demonstrating at a craft show involved a customer looking closely at a sample page for ages, then announcing that she had counted and there were thirteen layers on paper in one spot. And I immediately knew why: I had made twelve mistakes. Sometimes less is more, but on my scrapbook pages? Usually more is more. More mistakes, more second chances, more layers, more patterns, more colour. All sounds fine to me!
Today’s video has three parts – the kit of supplies at the beginning, then the step-by-step process of the layout and then we start talking about handwriting once the layout is about two-thirds complete. (If you’re only interested in certain parts, you can of course skip to what you want to see!) If you fancy crafting with that specific kit of goodies, you can find the Pieces of Me kit listed here. Just scroll down the pages until you reach the supply list and pop it in your bucket! Glitter Girl also shares some of her top tips for handwriting on that page too. (And if you’re interested in learning more about what to write rather than just how to write the alphabet in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, you might consider True Stories, my journaling workshop that can be taken any time in a self-paced format.
This week Glitter Girl challenges you to use your own handwriting on a crafting project- no matter what happens – and share it in the Two Peas gallery. You can also leave a link in the comments here if you like.
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
PS: Glitter Girl will be looking for a few extra good topics over the next couple weeks, so don’t be afraid to ask away!
Last month I put together a little video that I thought would make quite a few people roll their eyes. It’s just forty minutes of me scrapbooking, starting with a kit and working on pages until it’s all gone. That was eight layouts later, starting with a kit of about $40 (including two long-term items – a stamp set and a bottle of mist). I had no idea that it would strike such a chord.
First Jenn at Live.Teach.Create. started this challenge and invited her readers to create a similar kit from their own supplies, then scrap until it was gone. And this month, the Counterfeit Kit Challenge decided to make it their June project, and they invite you to join in the fun and see how many pages you can make… all by choosing things from your existing stash of scrapbooking supplies.
Now, just in case you use those supplies and fancy something a bit new, you can also purchase the original kit in my video here. Just add one of each element that you want, and presto: a kit for getting crafty! (And just a little advance notice: I’ve just picked out the supplies I’m using for a new project along these lines, so this sort of flexible kit may become a regular thing at Two Peas if enough people like the idea!)
Anyway, I just wanted to say how humbled and thankful I am that so many scrappers find the videos like this to be useful and helpful in using that stash. I love to hear scrappers say they are creating more and collecting less. (Not that there’s anything wrong with collecting if you have plenty of space to save all that pretty paper! I have days when I am definitely envious of a big space to store such prettiness!) If you found this idea useful, I hope you’ll take up one or both of those challenges and I hope your stash proves exceptionally useful!
Oh I do love a good patterned paper that can be cut into pieces and used for pretty much anything. Like the dreamy days paper in the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection, which has plenty of little Polaroid-style frames, each with something different in the centre. There are also a few in the chipboard pack, but with the sheet of paper there are so many just for the sheet of a single piece of paper, so that wins my vote. So when American Crafts asked me to come up with a way to use one of their products for a series of different handmade cards, they probably expected me to pick a pack of embellishments or a 6×6 paper pad or a sticker book. Instead I chose that single sheet of paper. Whatever works, right?
Here’s my answer to three cards that would be similar in design but each unique: each one uses that not-quite-a-square rectangle as a central feature, then has a different arrangement of other papers and embellishments. I used Neapolitan for all these cards, but you could certainly use the same sketches with plenty of other collections.
For this one, the repetition of circle embellishments, plus some little heart motifs and word blocks. If you like the idea of more scattered-yet-small embellishments, you might like this post from May Flaum, by the way. She uses sequins and I’m looking forward to giving her tips a try.
Speaking of sequins! These come on the ribbon card in the Neapolitan collection. And a chipboard piece adds texture and dimension. Plus this card is a flash to create, so a great sketch to keep handy for emergency cards!
And something a bit more plain that can be easily worked to be more masculine than the other two or just less embellished for a recipient who is a bit no-nonsense! That greeting stamp is from one of the Amy Tangerine collections and works great for non-specific cards.
Any favourite cards you’ve made recently? Or do you have a patterned paper you love cutting into pieces to make all sorts of goodies? I’d love to hear!
After last week’s Paperclipping Roundtable, I’ve been having all sorts of discussions about scrapbooking in random locations. The knitters get organised with this sort of thing and celebrate with worldwide Knit in Public day, but we seem to be less ready for such an event… but I promise it really isn’t all that difficult in the slightest.
With my crazy over-zealous page kitting recently, I know just reach for my most basic of tools when I head out for some away-from-home scrapping. If I want to scrap in the park, I will a) celebrate that it has finally stopped raining and b) pop my scissors, pens and adhesive roller in my handbag. If I can manage it, I’ll also take either my brown or black ink pad and applicator, since I tend to use that on pretty much everything, but it does require the added step of putting it in some sort of protective bag otherwise everything in my handbag shall be covered in ink. I’m all for organic art, but that’s a step too far.
But there are other times when I don’t have page kits ready and that’s when I take my lunch box. It’s filled with basic tools plus an assortment of things that can be useful, so I can pretty much make something with only a little bit more. Add just the journal itself for journal entries, or some card blanks and a 6×6 paper pad for making cards, or larger papers for scrapbook pages. When I used this on a regular basis, I also kept a small tote bag (really small – not something heavy, just something small and easy!) with scrap papers, and that would be plenty to work on whatever projects I had in mind. That was probably the start of my good use of scrap papers, actually. Before that I spent a lot of energy keeping them separated by colour and pattern and although I spent a great deal of time putting things away, I very rarely took the scraps back out again!
I emptied the lunchbox just as it is – untouched for several months really – and this is what was inside, starting from the top left. A journal. Mister Huey spray ink in white. Empty mini spray bottle for mixing up different colours, walnut ink, etc. Pack of mini brads. Square of sandpaper. Mini stapler. White eraser. (Moving to the second row, from the left.) Jenni Bowlin paint dabber in chewing gum pink. Selection of pen-sized tools, including nail file, craft knife, stylus, paint brush, mechanical pencil, brown and black writing pens, foam paint brush. Set of letter stamps. (Back to the left for the next row.) Post-it notes and mini to-do list notepad. Super duper silver Pritt stick (still my favourite for paper to chipboard). Two rolls of decorative tape. Mini adhesive roller (this kills me: it’s Kokuyo in star shaped dots instead of the normal little circles. I picked it up on holiday.) Glossy Accents liquid adhesive/gloss finish. Double-sided tape (on the large roll). Turquoise glitter. Black and brown embroidery floss and a sewing needle. Scissors (smaller than my usual pair). Distress Ink in vintage photo brown. Random little accent of several tiny file folders. (New row.) Bag of 7gypsies scrabble-style letter tiles. Pack of Making Memories metal frames with brads. Staz-On ink pad in black. Adhesive ribbon-finish tape from Martha Stewart. Black rick-rack. Cotton wool. Assortment of small die-cut circles and tags. A few coloured paper clips and some buttons.
That all fits into the lunchbox without any trouble! I’ve packed more in there by piling stuff into the space at the top, like a watercolour set, a roll of coloured pencils, a pack of odd playing cards… but really there is plenty here to make quite a bit!
So I promise you really can have a lot of creative freedom even while you’re on the go… but what would you pack in your lunchbox? And I think the answer of ‘lunch’ is considered cheating.
Good morning! Kicking off the new week with a new scrapbook starting point, and something a little different this time – one area of the page already more embellished than the rest. This is my final layout to finish from this JBS Mercantile kit, mixed with the minibook kit. But of course you can select any supplies you fancy!
I started by trimming a half inch from two sides of the chevron patterned paper and attaching that to the middle of a sheet of kraft cardstock. Then a patterned border across the whole page, about three inches from the bottom, topped with an 8×10 portrait piece of patterned paper. Then to start this area of embellishment! Working from the bottom layer to the top, it is: a strip of patterned paper, washi tape, a vintage hotel registration card, some dark kraft cardstock, part of a border sticker with a notebook paper edge, a sticker, a journaling card, a few layers of vellum, some baker’s twine and a big sticker right on the top!
I finished this scrapbook page with two 4×6 photos – one portrait, one landscape – and a smaller area of layered embellishment with the writing at the top left. Most of the pieces included there are repetition from the starting layers – the large camera repeated with a few smaller cameras in the same style, the rest of a border sticker first used at the bottom right, and so on. So although there are plenty of layers, it’s actually pretty kind on the supplies as most things can work as a little here, a little there. And I liked that there was still enough room for a title in some smallish letter stickers.
So many lovely pages were shared from the last starting point. Here are a few favourites. Click the corresponding link to take a closer look and get to know the scrappers behind these pages: one, two, three and four.
If you use this week’s starting point to create a scrapbook page of your own, I’d love for you to share it here! (By the way, I’m always looking for a nice detail shot for the round-up!)
One of the conversations that caught my eye on the message board this week was all about packing for a crop – a day (or more) of scrapbooking away from home, surrounded by other crafters doing exactly the same. I love seeing what various crafters plan to take for such an event, as we all have our different tolerance for how much we like to plan in advance or how much we care to pack up, transport, unpack and then repeat to come home again. Over the years, I’ve found myself taking less and less and being happier with what I make away from home, so minimal is what works for me (and I don’t think it’s the most minimal way possible, by a long shot).
But it was one specific answer that had a real wow factor. This one. It’s definitely a comprehensive list. You would be never be short of anything you could need. But it’s so comprehensive that I don’t even own about half of what is listed! The idea of bringing shelving or light bulbs or so many things that require electricity that I also need a power strip and an extension cord? That is totally foreign to me. But keep in mind: I don’t have a car. Wherever I’m going, I’m going there by train or bus or maybe even a plane, so it’s hardly easy to move my entire craft stash to a new location for the weekend.
As such, I’ve taken some 10 Things on the Tenth inspiration to create my personal list of what to pack for a scrapbooking crop or retreat!
1. Scissors. And usually just scissors – no paper trimmer. Sometimes I will pack a small paper trimmer, but I don’t take my normal paper trimmer, though it does have a handle and it’s not heavy. It’s just bulky! And I don’t scrapbook anywhere with giant table space. I tend to scrapbook in far cozier conditions, where we all sit around one table – or a few tables pushed together – so we are close enough to have one conversation at a time. So I just use my scissors as much as possible, and if I need to cut a straight line, I look for the patterns that give a guideline as part of the design, like grid and ledger papers and evenly spaced polka dots.
By the way, I do think it’s worth finding a pair of scissors you really love then always using them for your scrapping. They will become less awkward and more an extension of your hand that way! I get quite a few laughs for using my big Fiskars pair, but they work for me!
2. Adhesive. Forgetting this one can totally ruin a scrapbooking day, especially if there is nowhere you can go to buy some! So don’t forget to pack your favourite adhesive and refills. But I don’t think you have to take every single kind of adhesive possible. At a crop, I only use my regular adhesive roller and pop dots. Everything else stays home and I can’t say I’ve ever been stuck wishing I had liquid adhesive or double-sided tacky tape or my spray adhesive. But of course, your style might be different enough that you use one of those on pretty much every page… in which case that would definitely be important to pack.
3. Pens. I actually have my journalling pens with me all the time – I keep some in my purse and my backpack as well as with my scrapping stuff. I use the AC Precision Pens in black and brown ink, but pens are another thing where it’s important to try a variety and see what feels best to your hand. If I’ve packed a lot of dark paper colours, I’ll also pack a white gel pen, but otherwise I leave it at home. You can always add more writing to a page when you return, and that can be a useful strategy if your crop is too loud or busy to focus on your words, but I find I will forget to finish many things I bring home partly completed and I don’t tend to have the writing as my very last step, so I usually add the writing while I’m there.
4. Black and brown ink. Paper just doesn’t look right to me any more without inked edges, and at home I have a huge drawer filled with inks of different colours so I have the potential to find a good match for anything, but I generally just use black and brown… so those are the two I take with me. I take the ink pads and the applicator tools to make things easy. (Be sure to pop them in a separate bag of some sort to avoid accidentally inking the rest of your supplies while in transit!)
5. Acrylic block. I pretty much always use the same size of acrylic block for all my stamps, so I have one ready to go in my crop kit all the time, and then I include the different stamps in the next step. I don’t tend to take wood-mount stamps with me to a crop since they are bulkier, unless there is a specific design I know I am planning to use.
6. Page kits. This is what has replaced packing separate batches of paper, stickers, embellishments and so forth. Page kits are just a way to put together a bit of this and a bit of that and know it will work together, which also makes it possible to work more quickly at a crop because you’ve already made those decisions of what to scrap and with what supplies. Leanne is one of the most efficient crop scrappers I know and she has been a queen of page kits for years! I loved how it worked for her and I started to find a page kitting system that would work for me… once I got there, I loved this process! Glitter Girl has a remarkably similar process to how I pack my own page kits… and the concept of having either a larger or smaller kit can both work for scrapping away from home, just depending on what you want to work on and how much variety you need to keep it interesting! When packing a page kit for a crop, I would include the photos, papers, stickers, embellishments, stamp sets and everything else flat right there together. I err on the side of a few extras rather than not enough, but not to the point of packing an entire collection pack when I only want one or two sheets. (Though a collection pack works great for a big series of pages!) If you want to read even more about my specifics for packing page kits, you can find that in this post, where there is also some great stuff in the comments.
7. Album. Or this could be a 12×12 box perhaps, but I find an album easiest. The thing that worries me most about scrapping away from home is getting those new pages home safely, and I’ve had times when that didn’t go completely to plan. Now I keep the page kits each in a page protector and pop that in an album, so each completely page can go right back into the album, and it’s protected for the journey home. I’ve used both a 12×12 box with a lid and an LP carrying case for pages in the past, thinking an album would be too bulky, but I’ve actually found the album to be the best solution, and it makes it easy to keep everything in a confined space during the crop too.
8. Non-flat embellishments. Namely washi tape and mist. There are some things I use on many pages that just don’t fit easily into a page protector because they aren’t flat – like bottles of mist and rolls of washi tape. So those things I pack separately – and I bag the mists in case of any inadvertent squished bottle disaster. I don’t take my full collection of either. Instead, I look at the page kits I’ve packed and I grab a few colours of each that will go with multiple pages. I try to limit myself to three mists and six rolls of tape, as that is what fits well in my bag.
9. Stuff agreed on as a group. In scrapping with a group of people, there is no reason for everyone to bring everything and end up duplicating the same stuff. Unless you are all making the same project together, how many of you will be using a butterfly punch at the same exact instant? So we communicate in advance and divide up the responsibility. We do this for both tools and snacks! So one time I might be bringing five punches… another time I might be bringing cupcakes. But all the stuff that will be shared works best when we communicate in advance. Of course there are always a few things we duplicate without realising, just out of having similar ideas of what works as a staple item. The last time I went out for a full day of cropping, three of us may have brought hummus, carrots and croissants. At least we knew we all liked those things!
10. A collection of recent favourites. When I have everything else packed, I look at the space left in my case and I fill a zip-bag with recent favourites that haven’t made it into page kits – mostly papers, letters and stickers. I may add a few more photos here too. I have to admit though: I almost never get enough done to dive into that bag or extras! But part of me looks at the empty space in the case and thinks I will be totally stuck if I finish all the kitted pages! So I take some extra stuff… but not once have I even come close to finishing all my page kits. Turns out, I spend a lot more time on each page when you factor in snacks and conversation!
So those are my ten things for packing for a crop! What are your ten things this month?
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