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

Happy Saturday! With Starshine arriving in stores, now seems the perfect time to round up a few examples to get your design wheels turning. Starshine started appearing on the American Crafts blog too, so we have the AC Design Team on the starry case!

Nancy Damiano (above) is taking Starshine to infinity and beyond. Her pages are always brilliant but she has a special passion for Disney. See the full page on the American Crafts blog.

Gina Lideros put Starshine to use with a beautiful full page design cut on the Silhouette. When I see one of those gorgeous full page designs I start to think I should upgrade to the larger size cutter… even though I don’t use my smaller one as much as I should! Anyway: Gina makes me want the bigger Silhouette every time. See the full page over at AC.

Evelyn Yusuf makes that big moon cityscape way easier to use than you might first think. Don’t be scared by it. Just embrace it with one photo you love and it will even work beautifully with a smaller size print. See the finished page here.

I’d love to see what you’re making with the Starshine collection, of course! And I’d love to share it too. If you post your pictures on Instagram, use the hashtag #ACstarshine, and you can always hashtag anything from my product lines or inspired by this blog or the classes with simply #shimelle. I hope to share more beautiful projects with you soon!

Have a beautiful weekend, and if you need a creative nudge, don’t forget about the current weekly challenge.

Comment [6]

You may have noticed my sparkly friend seems to be on a bit of quest to use older supplies she loves rather than letting them collect dust. I’ve decided I need to follow her lead with something I am often guilty of ignoring: tools! This week I have used my manual die cutter every single day! There has got to be a merit badge for that. We need more merit badges in scrapbooking, I tell you. Anyway, with the die cutter, I could ease back into fancy tools without needing to dust off every single item I have neglected for a while, so I started with simple shapes and embossing folders. That woodgrain embossing folder! I had so many plans for this folder and then my mind filled up like a fog (a happy fog!) and I’ve probably only used it half a dozen times. For shame! The good news is asked for help and contributing designer Meghann Andrew came to my rescue. Her page inspired mine, and I hope between the two of us, we might encourage you to dust off an embossing folder or two in your own collection.

I don’t know about you, but I own dozens of 4×6 embossing folders, and I rarely pull them out to create something other than the background on a handmade card. Using Shimelle’s woodgrain embossing folder, I’ve come up with an easy way to put those embossing folders to use on my pages, by creating a textured tone-on-tone background for this fun layout about a recent favorite breakfast.

To show you how easy it is to put your embossing folders to use and make this background, I’ve created a video, in which I also finish off the page with embellishments from the True Stories collection.

Thanks for watching! Now I challenged Shimelle to take an idea from my page and put it to work on her own. She had three rules: she had to use the woodgrain embossing folder, she had to include a photo of herself, and she had to do something that she could link to the design of my page!
-Meghann

Challenge set. I could do this, right? Found some photos that included me that I needed to scrap (from a weekend in Edinburgh, our last travel as just two before Wonder Boy’s arrival) and dusted off my embossing folder. But I wasn’t ready to go tone-on-tone. I love colour and right now, colour is making me want to scrapbook every day. So whatever I was going to do, it needed to be colourful!

Then I decided to emboss white cardstock. Because that’s colourful. Sure.

But there was method to my madness! I want to take the inspiration from Meghann’s page in the shape – circles!

I embossed the white cardstock then die cut it into circles to include in some embellishment clusters. There’s a heap of colour happening here – that floral paper is from Jen Hadfield’s new Pebbles collection, and there are cut-aparts from Dear Lizzy and Amy Tangerine too, plus some Starshine tags. Cute puffy stickers by Lora Bailora. So much colour, so much love. But when I stared at all that on my desk, I didn’t want more colour – I wanted more texture. Perfect! The woodgrain embossed circles are a really small detail but it made it one of those pages that people touch when they turn the page in my album. I love that! Plus it’s a gateway drug technique: now that I’ve used a little embossed texture, I want to use more! (In fact I have done a few cards that are due to be delivered to recipients this weekend, so I’ll share those next week I think!) Mission accomplished; challenge met. Thanks Megan!

(One note about visiting Edinburgh when very pregnant: the hills are tall, the hills are steep. We walk a lot here and live at the top of a hill, but this is a whole other class of hill. Walking up to the castle, I was literally passed by an octogenarian with a cane. I was slow-slow-slow. But it was awesome. Of course it was awesome: there are pandas. And if you’re ever there are Christmas, the high tea at the Caledonian is basically twice as cool and a third the price of any London Christmas high tea. But don’t tell London that I just said Edinburgh was better or anything. Even if there are pandas involved. Just wear comfortable shoes, for all that is good in this world. That’s all.)

Comment [13]

It’s just a few hours now until I pack my last few things into my bag and head to the airport, bound for CHA – the annual Craft and Hobby Association trade show in California. CHA is a convention floor filled with the newest releases across a variety of crafts, ready for store owners to order for the year ahead. I’m very excited to be there to debut my fourth scrapbooking collection with American Crafts, Starshine.

Inspired by starry nights and big dreams, Starshine brings together many shades of blue with pink, green, yellow, and red – something for any fanciful adventure you might encounter. My hope is that you’ll find things here for scrapping boys and girls, recent and retro, and that there might also be one or two things that suit your aspirations for the year ahead while we’re in this mindset of new beginnings – because Starshine will be on its way to stores straight away.

For Starshine, we’ve filled globes with a variety of different images, and with the clear stamp set, you can fill a globe with just what you fancy. Plenty of word stamps that you can use on journaling cards, on your calendar, or to add a little detail to embellishment clusters, plus a big sentiment and the empty globe to fill with stars, cameras, flowers, or hot air balloons.

These flair badges are tiny in size, and balance beautifully with a label or two.

In the last two collections, we topped wooden buttons with epoxy designs. This time we’ve moved over to paperclips, and they are flat enough to use in the embellishment of a layout but also strong enough to actually hold some paper and keep your desk beautiful.

There are two sets of Thickers: a multicoloured Marquee style, and my favourite Fitzgerald font now in turquoise glitter.

The small sticker sheet includes phrases, a teensy tiny alphabet, and a few strips of stars for your pages’ finishing touch.

The large sticker sheet has larger sentiments, icons, and border strips.

And the chipboard sticker set has so many stickers in this not-too-thick chipboard that makes it a perfect balance for adding some dimension without creating some towering stack that will never fit in a page protector. Includes a floral boot for all your adventures, of course.

The ephemera set is a mix of designs on white cardstock and printed on clear acetate, for lovely layering options.

Oh this. This might be my favourite. It’s washi tape, but it’s die cut into shapes more like a border sticker. These two designs come in one box so you don’t have to pick.

These are something new for us too – acrylic shapes with lofty motifs for all your dream documenting.

You can never have too many roller stamps, right? This one has a variety of phrases and comes with a notepad for journaling or notes.

These little gadgets are rub-on pens. I used so many of these when we travelled to Japan years ago, and I’m happy to see them hit the scrapbooking world. Just roll on the design like an adhesive roller, but it’s a picture instead of glue.

And of course, there is paper! This is just a sample of the full paper range, and the papers are available by the double-sided sheet or single sided in 12×12 and 6×6 paper pads.

I’ll be sharing more projects and videos with Starshine soon, including coverage from the show floor at CHA. The best place to catch what I’m seeing at CHA is on Instagram, but I’ll post the most important bits here too whenever I have time.

American Crafts are blogging about Starshine today as well, and they have a Starshine prize pack to send to one of you! Leave a comment on this post to enter, and let us know which piece of Starshine you’d most like on your desk! Entries close this Sunday, the 10th of January, at 11:59pm GMT (UK time). One entry per person and you can live absolutely anywhere. (Now if only someone on the ISS would enter!)

Thanks so much for taking a look at Starshine!

Comment [209]

I started scrapbooking by accident, making a gift that was a group present in stolen moments hidden away so the recipient wouldn’t see. By the end of that first album, I was already in love with the idea of this craft. The idea that you could put photos and notes and memorabilia and just cute stuff together with some paste and ink and have a truly unique handmade time capsule of memories filled my heart with excitement and my head with ideas. That was a very long time ago, in 1998. Very much has changed since then. But not that excitement and not those ideas.

The funny thing for me is I could start about ten sentences with ‘The most amazing thing about scrapbooking is…’. At least ten. Which is terrible, because clearly I should know how to use a superlative and if it truly is ‘the most’ then it can only be one. I just don’t know how I would choose. I’m amazed that I have all these albums that track all those changes in life since 1998. I’m amazed that this format of memory keeping makes it easy for me to go back and document things that happened before I was a scrapbooker (not so easy with Facebook or Instagram or whatever other online capture of everyday life). I’m amazed that teaching in this craft became my actual job. I’m amazed that I’ve met such wonderful people with amazing stories. I’m amazed that some of them became my closest friends in life. I’m often amazed that my husband doesn’t stress about me taking up an entire room of our home with albums and craft supplies! And over this last year and a half, I’ve been more and more amazed at how much it fills me with happiness to see people creating their own projects with products I’ve helped to make. I can have the most rotten of days when everything just seems to be going wrong and I’ll take a peek at a project on Instagram and the entire bad day is gone. I really didn’t predict when I had that first discussion with American Crafts that I would ever be that emotional about product! But I truly am.

It’s that emotion that has made me put something off for a bit. I love seeing everything that is shared and I hope those who don’t post their projects online are enjoying the products as well. But one other thing that hasn’t changed is that I’m just a one scrapbooker show over here. After a year and a half of products with American Crafts, it’s time I branched out a little bit and put together a team of crafters to help me share the ways these products can be used in styles that are not my own. I need someone who is confident with cards, someone who has a passion for pocket pages, maybe even someone who plans with panache or dazzling with decor. I’d also appreciate some help from a few fellow 12×12 fans too, since there is such a wide range of styles in the scrapping world.

From this, yes, it’s time for a design team call. Rather than just say there are x number of spots and each person will have to make x number of projects per month or similar, there are a range of opportunities available. Some will be perfect for someone who works well in a tight time frame, like making projects for display at the CHA trade show. Some will be perfect for someone who has wanted to try out the idea of being on a design team but didn’t love the idea of the commitment, with just a one or two project remit. My hope is this will be a great way to share the love: of paper craft in all forms, of sharing ideas, of meeting new faces in this industry, and yes, of my products too.

To apply, please send an email to shimelle+dt@gmail.com and include the following in your message:

…Your name and location

…Links to pages where you share your work with others. This might include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, your own blog, the blog of a brand you currently design with, the gallery of an online store or community. Please don’t feel you have to include any platform you use just to share non-crafty things. I totally respect that many people use Facebook to connect with real life friends rather than scrapbookers, and so forth.

…A summary of what kind of crafting you do, how you got started with it, and why you love it.

…Images of three to five projects you have made and love. I hope you’re applying because you love the products in the American Crafts Shimelle collections, so it would be awesome to see at least one of those projects including Shimelle products. However, if that just isn’t possible, then that’s fine. You do not need to purchase anything new or make anything from scratch just for this call.

…For at least one of those projects, please include a short write-up to go with the project. Think along the lines of if you were posting this on your blog, Instagram, or elsewhere, what would you want to communicate to your readers?

…Answers to these questions:
1. What are your favourite colours for crafting?
2. How long do you like to take on your projects from start to finish?
3. If I asked you to make something new next week, no rules at all, what’s your first impulse for what you would make?
4. I’m ordering for us at my favourite coffee shop. What would you like?
5. What are your favourite tools for crafting? (Think die-cutter, stamps, punches, etc, rather than individual elements like paper and stickers for this question please.)

That’s everything. And it’s due by the 21st of October, 2015.

Like I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a case of everyone on the team having the same exact remit. Instead, I’ll be contacting applicants by email with the specifics, and I won’t be announcing anything in a public format until all those conversations have been had and all the details are agreed. But like all the guest posts on this blog and the guest contributors to my online classes, all the work will be compensated with pay. Paypal usually works easiest, but if that doesn’t work for you, there are other options we can discuss.

I’d love to hear from you. In fact, I would find it amazing.
Thanks for considering it!

Comment [28]

After what feels like an eternity of staying quiet about it, I’m delighted to shout from the rooftops about something I’ve been working on this year: a brand new paper craft collection for Christmas 2015! It’s called Christmas Magic and ships to retailers this month. This is my third collection with American Crafts, and I’m so excited to be using this along with some other favourite products for my 2015 Christmas journal and Journal your Christmas class videos (more about that at the end of this post) but for right now, I just want to share it with you and offer you a chance to win some of it for free while we’re at it!

There are three sets of Thickers: Fitzgerald in red glitter, Eclair in black foam, and a new design called Starlight that features the numbers 1 to 31 (plus some star accents) with gold foil detail on cream chipboard.

I’m so excited to put this to use all over the place this December: it’s a set of four dies that create paper chains to decorate your tree, your fireplace, your classroom, your office computer, your presents, your dog… whatever will sit still long enough is fair game, I think!

I wouldn’t blame you for sticking a tinsel bow on everything either. I probably need a whole extra pack just to stick on members of my family at various moments throughout the season. Of course.

Some tried and true embellishments: rub-ons that include quite a few small phrases perfect for small format albums, pocket pages, and Christmas cards as well as the finishing details for larger projects like 12×12 pages, wooden buttons with epoxy designs in the centre, and enamel ‘dots’ with holly leaves.

And no shortage of stickers, for sure. Choose from a 6×12 sheet of cork stickers with white, red, and green designs or the 4×8 sticker sheet with words and phrases on one side and an alphabet on the other, or…

…chipboard stickers in two styles – either with lots of dimension and layers of chipboard or just a teensy bit of dimension in a single layer of chipboard, both with foil details to finish.

And of course, there is paper. Pattern paper as we know it and some special papers too, including things like gold foil on vellum. Prefer to see the collection on video? Well I can help with that. I even broke out the gold glitter and navy blue French manicure! (I think I’m saving the red and gold for nearer to December. I don’t want to peak too early, after all.)

As mentioned in the video, this collection will of course play a part in something I do every December: Journal your Christmas. I’ll be using a mix of this collection and other elements in my own journal and in the Christmas in a Box kit, which you can reserve from tomorrow should you wish. We’ll talk all about that tomorrow, when I’ll also be sharing my first Christmas Magic process video! I hope you’ll stop by to take a look.

For now, if you leave a comment on both this post and this one on the American Crafts blog, you’ll be entered to win a Christmas Magic prize pack! Which piece do you hope to find by the time your Christmas tree is up this year?

Comment [324]

In this latest round of asking some of my favourite scrapbookers to share their work with you, I tried to put something that was in my mind into their thought process: almost the entire time that I’ve been scrapping less, I’ve been feeling inspired more. Perhaps we just replace one creative thought with another in the same space in our mind, so where I used to make at least a layout a day in one form or another and then found myself trying desperately to make one a week, all those other days there was some small part of my mind that was thinking about making stuff. I would catch a glimpse of a layout I’d made years ago or pass a previous guest project when reading through new comments and I’d find I had a new idea in my mind despite not finding the time to bring it to fruition. As I’ve found myself starting to improve on this and do a little something creative every day (albeit some days more and some days less), I’m delving into all those thoughts and really enjoying the creative process. I think I need to just write about where I am with my personal creative process lately, but I digress. What I really hoped was that some of my favourite scrappers would also find inspiration in the archives here and find something that brought renewed energy to their creative process, so when I got in touch I offered a few different ideas for posts they might contribute, and something inspired by the archives was just one of those options. It turned out to be the most popular option amongst the guests and now I have one slight problem: I am inspired by all their inspired by posts! I’ll work on turning that from frustration into some gloriously fun cutting and pasting, I think. I hope you find them inspiring too, and I’m pretty sure today’s guest will inspire much of the fun: she’s one of the only people I know who could tell me her middle name was actually ‘Superfun’ and I would believe her. Please welcome… Amy Tan!

When I saw this layout – I immediately knew I wanted to scraplift it. Not only do I love the idea of clustering embellishments, but the appeal of using both old and new products for me is strong right now. I seem to hold onto things I love instead of using them up. Since we’re both designers collaborating with American Crafts, I thought it would be fun to use both our products and show how easy it is to mix the old with the new. For even more of a fresh take, I decided to work right into my notebook instead of doing separate scrapbook pages for this event. Check out the whole process in this video:

You can find Amy’s newest collection, Finders Keepers, at Blue Moon Scrapbooking and Scrapbook.com. (Shopping through these affiliate links adds no cost to your order but supports this site and makes guests like Amy possible. Thanks!)

And thanks so much to Amy! We’d love to see any projects you have made that combine products from our collections, so please share by leaving a link or tagging us on Instagram. Or if it’s just in that inspiration bank in your mind, tell us which collections you’d love to work with together or what other designs you’d bring to your crafting table. May you find some quality cutting and sticking time soon!

Amy Tangerine has always had a fresh outlook on life. Growing up in Chicago, she wallpapered her room with fashion magazines and dreamed of a life of visual creativity. By the time she was 23, she had founded the popular and award-winning handcrafted t-shirt line Amy Tangerine, featured in hundreds of retail outlets around the world, including Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York. But it wasn’t until 2007 that Amy discovered her true passion: scrapbooking. What started as a slice-of-life hobby blossomed into a full-time, fulfilling business venture that includes signature collections with American Crafts, her own book, celebrity events, consulting services, and teaching workshops all over the world. Most of all, she loves helping others tap into their creative sides. When she’s not at home in Los Angeles with two mischievous Jack Russell Terriers, her long-time partner, JC, and their adorable son, Jack, she is traveling, finding great places to eat, and doing her best to enjoy every moment. See more of her work on her blog, Instagram and YouTube

Comment [10]

Today I’m uploading videos to YouTube that will be live shortly and while I do that, the lovely Paige is here to share a beautiful project with the True Stories collection! Paige’s work is always so artful and unique, and I hope you enjoy her tutorial as much as I do. We’d both love to see what you make with the cut file she’s sharing with you too. -Shimelle

Backing die cut shapes with patterned papers is one of my favourite techniques and I was excited to try it out using the True Stories collection! Bonus: I’ve provided the flower cut file I designed (as a studio file, PNG, and PDF) so you can create this layout too!

1) Die cut the flower from white cardstock using a Silhouette Cameo and carefully peel it off the mat.

2) Place a tiny foam dot between each petal intersection on the back side of the die cut. This will create dimension and shadows and make the papers really pop!

3) Using the inner petal pieces on the mat as a template, trace a petal with a pencil on the backside of your chosen patterned papers then cut out the petals about 1/8” wider.

4) Place the petals on the back side of the die cut flower.

5) To make sure all the petals stay in place permanently, place tape across the back of the flower.

6) Write journaling with a pen around a few of the petals.

7) Embellish with epoxy stickers, wood veneer, a cork sticker title, buttons, die cuts, paper stickers, and more!

You can find True Stories and other American Crafts products at Blue Moon Scrapbooking, scrapbook.com, and Amazon US or UK. (Shopping through those affiliate links costs you the same amount but helps support this site and makes guest artists like Paige possible. Thanks.)

Paige Evans has been scrapbooking since she was sixteen years old and worked at her first job at a local scrapbook store. The first time she put pictures and papers together it was a match made in heaven! She is the design team manager/blog hostess for American Crafts, a blog contributor for Elle’s Studio, a teacher at Big Picture Classes and Craftsy, a contributing team member for Studio Calico, and on the digital creative team for Ali Edwards. She loves traveling all over Europe with her family and teaching scrapbooking and bookbinding classes. You can check out more of her and her work on her blog, Instagram, Etsy shop, Pinterest, and Studio Calico Gallery

Comment [9]

Oh hello. It seems like forever, but I finally have something to share. Let’s focus on that positive and not on how I haven’t managed to clear the dining table in weeks, shall we?

For years, the reason I absolutely love scrapping out of order (though I keep my pages in chronological order in their albums) is the complete freedom. Zero pressure. I don’t do the whole concept of staying ‘caught up’ because I have no hope in ever doing so, and I enjoy the hobby more when I jump around from story to story with whatever is inspiring me on a given day.

That said, I am starting to understand why many scrapbookers feel there is a pressure to stay caught up. Not that I am changing my philosophy! But I look at that baby book I started for Wonder Boy and I understand the pressure. It has ten or so weeks fully finished. The others have the photos slipped into the pockets with reference notes here and there but nothing else. I’m pleased I stayed on top of that part, but I really love how those finished weeks look and I long for the rest to go alongside, so it becomes an album like the rest of my library that I am happy for anyone to pull off the shelf and see. I also find I’m reminding myself of why I chose the Project Life format for this album in the first place: because I could work in tiny little pieces, a few minutes at a time, and still make progress. Wonder Boy is old enough now that I have the few minutes while he is engrossed in something (not many minutes, just a few) and while I could probably use those minutes to clear the dining table, dare I say I might find working on this album a little more rewarding? As a result, I’ve set myself a challenge this August to work in this album a few minutes every day and film it to share as well. My plan is to share those short, individual videos as soon as I can on my YouTube channel, then whenever I finish a full two page spread, I’ll post it all here in a sort of omnibus style, so you can choose to watch day by day or all at once. In this first week, I managed to stay on top of the create-every-day part of the challenge, but fell down with editing the videos on some days, but overall it was an enjoyable experience, so I think I’m okay to keep going, assuming you’d still like to see!

That’s another week done and a challenge kept! I realise I’m not working so quickly as to make great strides in August, but something is better than nothing in this case, and I don’t want to sacrifice enjoying the process for getting more pages done, if that makes sense. I guess I feel the pressure to catch up just a little, not a lot! But I do want to get these memories down on paper before they become fuzzy, and I’m already working more than a year behind now, so a little progress sounds good to me.

Supplies for this project include the Project Life ‘Lovely’ mini kit, which is no longer available in print form but is available digitally within the Project Life app for the iPhone, if that’s any help, or in a digital kit for your computer. I also used items from the Shimelle collection (my first collection with American Crafts), including the 6×6 paper pad, stamp set, word stickers, sticker book, and gold Fitzgerald Thickers, and word stickers and enamel dots from the True Stories collection. Also some gold sequins, patterned vellum, and gold chipboard hearts from Studio Calico, letter stickers from October Afternoon, and two punches by EK Success. I think that’s just about everything! I’m still embracing old and new together, so there are some items that would no longer be in stock, but you might have something similar in your own collection if by chance it reminded you to pull out your own pack of small chipboard shapes or some vellum. You can find my American Crafts products at Blue Moon Scrapbooking, scrapbook.com, and Amazon US or UK. (Shopping through those affiliate links costs you the same amount but helps support this site. Thanks.)

Have a beautiful Saturday and thanks for sticking with me through my radio silence! Happy scrapping.

Comment [26]