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

We have taken really goofy pictures for many years now. Having a child now makes this socially acceptable. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS? I have no better or more flowery way to express this sentiment. Just know, we continue to embrace goofy photos. I think you need a warning about that before you scroll down and see the full scrapbook page and all its goofy photo glory.

It’s also been a while since I created a page that takes a little longer, with lots of embellishments that come together in a collage, bit by bit. I don’t plan out what supplies I’m going to use and just let each step guide me to the next basket of stickers or bowl of die cuts. That process is definitely in my ‘makes me feel alive’ level of crafting techniques. I get such enjoyment from discovering that a punched shape fits in a chipboard frame matches the colour of an enamel dot and so on. I feel like that’s admitting something secret and shameful, but you like paper. You understand. I hope. And now, moving on to a really long video with that goofy photo!

This time around, my train-of-thought bother comes from descending letters and hybrid handwriting that is neither print nor cursive. Riveting, I tell you.

Supplies in this page are a true mix of new and old, and I tried to mention the brand of everything in the video as I went. The background paper, word stickers, polaroid-style frame paper and sticker, dotty paper, phrase stamp, and ticket and heart die cuts are all from my True Stories collection, the ‘2’ at the top right is from the 6×6 paper pad in the first Shimelle collection. Other supplies include tags from Cosmo Cricket, chipboard and letter stickers from October Afternoon, enamel dots from Doodlebug, vellum shapes from Studio Calico, journaling card, fabric and puffy stickers from Amy Tangerine, stickers from Dear Lizzy, label from My Mind’s Eye, sticker from MAMBI, stitched die-cut from Crate Paper. Adorably cheesy matching t-shirts are by Little Bird at Mothercare!

If you create a page with one side all filled with embellishments (or if you have already created one that is online somewhere), I’d love for you to share a link in the comments. What embellishments – new or old – are making you happy recently?

Have a beautiful weekend and may it have some time to craft. Bonus if it has time to craft with red love hearts, of course.

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Following on from those stages of grief, one thing that has helped me grapple with the acceptance stage has been the freedom to use absolutely anything on a page without thinking about whether it would be in stock or on sale or anything like that. Admittedly, one of the reasons I liked designing for Two Peas was that we didn’t have strict rules on what we needed to use. I think I would really struggle to hold a long-term commitment to design with the same kit or anything like that really. I’ve not done it, so maybe I am wrong. But while we had the freedom to use whatever we liked, it’s hard to earn a commission on an item that isn’t available, of course. So there were times when companies closed or collections phased out and I would put them aside and not pass them to my sparkly alter-ego.

But now? Anything goes. Which means vintage Sassafras is basically my new black. It’s been liberating, really! Bring on the colour.

Of course, the collections I’ve done with American Crafts are not shy when it comes to colour either. The Sassa fits right in with both the original Shimelle collection and True Stories. And there are ways those two collections fit together so you don’t have to phase anything out! Those glittery gold rub-ons from the first collection? We made the balloon die-cut piece just the right size so that glittery heart and circle layer right over the top. The teal in True Stories is also a more saturated version of the aqua in the first collection, so the papers work together easily too. (The numbers, dots, and stripes to the left are True Stories; the aqua to the right is the older paper.)

I haven’t added this to the journaling here but I should probably document it somewhere, so here is as good a place as any: I grew up so enamoured with the idea of England that most of the spellings and phrases that are different here didn’t come as a surprise. (There may have been one very awkward moment when I realised I missed a key bit of knowledge and had no idea why 10 Downing Street was such an important address, but that was quickly resolved with minimal fallout.) Colour and favourite and the importance of not reverting to the American ‘pants’ when you mean the British ‘trousers’ was all fine. Jelly on the other hand, totally threw me. Obviously I’ve had a few years to adjust to the idea, but if this is all new to you, gelatine – the wobbly, fruit-flavoured, and brightly coloured dessert – is basically known by the brand name Jell-O in the states, but in the UK, that brand only exists as a fancy-schmancy import (at a truly ridiculous price, I tell you) and is instead called jelly and sold under a few brand names. Which is mostly just confusing because jelly in America is more like jam, and jam is a word used in both countries for the same thing, so we finally get to something that makes sense to everyone. (I grew up thinking the difference between jelly and jam was that jam had actual pieces of fruit in it while jelly was smooth. It was only as an adult that I learned that jam was made with the whole fruit while jelly was made with just the juice.) To add more confusion to the jelly mystique, the packet size is roughly the same in both countries, but if you open a box of Jell-O, it’s a powder. All the jelly I’ve purchased in the UK is already gel – like a super concentrated version of the final dessert that you dissolve and then reset. I have absolutely no idea why on this entire earth I find this entire situation so compelling. I know it’s not, and yet my mind continues to wander through the mysterious etymology of jelly.

Meanwhile, Wonder Boy just really likes it when birthday parties have jelly and spoons, and the more jelly he eats, the less accurate his spoon aim. The first time he ate jelly was at a friend’s birthday, where he didn’t have a spoon. He tried it with his hands and decided it was too sticky for his liking, but he still wanted to eat more. When all the other party-goers were distracted by cake and blueberries and other such things, he crawled over to the plate and purposely planted his face in the jelly in a stealthy move that even ninjas have not mastered. He really does not care what it is called. Win some, lose some.

Oh. Yes. Scrapbooking, that thing I’m meant to be discussing. Ahem.

I always reach for 12×12 papers and I’m trying to remind myself that I have a bit of a 6×6 stash now too. The cut-aparts scaled down to that smaller size really have my heart, and they layer well with stickers. In this little grouping, from the back there is a True Stories sticker with the navy blue strip cut away, a rainbow starburst Sassa die-cut, a journaling cut-apart from the 6×6 size, a yellow Sassa flower, a vellum and gold foil label from Crate Paper, a True Stories word sticker, an asterisk from the gold Fitzgerald Thickers, three navy enamel dots, and the red heart and yellow number from the True Stories sticker book. Plus some gold Color Shine mist! Bringing those Sassa layers back to my table has made me smile so much. Sometimes you just love a product and you could use it for years… or at least I seem to be doing that at any rate!

Blue Moon Scrapbooking has quite a bit of both collections, including big discounts on some of the items. Sassafras, on the other hand, may require some searching. Unless you are like me and have it all saved in a special drawer that may or may not sing a little song when you open it.

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It seems absolutely ages since I pulled out the kraft cardstock to scrapbook some travel photos, since I feel pretty spoilt for choice with baby photos these days. With a week away (part work, part play) last month, it seemed time to bring the two together, and kraft cardstock feels like an old friend I haven’t seen in years, yet the conversations start just where they left off. I’m tempted to say the rest of the scrapbooking world can keep all that white cardstock for their backgrounds and I’ll just stick to patterns and kraft. It’s a happy combination.

I was also really excited to use a new product we added in the True Stories collection – letterpress plates. WeR Memory Keepers has had these for a while and they have a special tool system that makes it all work beautifully, but… I do not have that tool system. I have a Big Shot that I use for my die-cutting and if I could make the plates work with what I already had, then that would make me very happy. It was actually far simpler than I imagined, and I love the look. Admittedly it is a look that is very difficult to show the detail in a photo, but I love it in person and it is definitely worth the extra step to just stamping, especially when it turned out to be so simple. Scroll down for those steps – the video covers the layout and then the letterpress plates are below with step by step photos.

It’s an ‘As It Happens’ video, so who knows what random tangent will turn up this time! Pretty sure I made it through without any grammar debates today.

All these pieces of patterned paper came from my scrap basket, which always feels like an accomplishment! It’s a mix of paper from True Stories plus October Afternoon (Travel Girl and 5 & Dime) and an old Studio Calico woodgrain. The embellishments include True Stories ephemera and stickers, Heidi Swapp gold foil stickers and epoxy word, Studio Calico sequins and map star stickers, stamps from October Afternoon Travel Girl, and gold rub-ons by My Mind’s Eye.

I didn’t use any special supplies aside from the letterpress plates themselves. They come in a set with a background and several smaller pieces (images and sentiments). I also used watercolour paper, dye ink, and my Sizzix Big Shot with the tabbed base and two cutting plates.

I set up the tabs and plates exactly the same as I would for thin metal dies: tab one on the base, one cutting plate, and the paper.

Then ink the plates. The trick is to make sure there is no ink on that bordering edge, because it will hit the paper. I found dye ink easier for this because my pigment ink pads were all a bit spongy so made a real mess of the edges, but you could use pigment ink applied with a brayer or brush to keep the edges clean.

Place the plates onto the watercolour paper. Make sure nothing moves so you get a clean impression.

Top with the second cutting plate and run it through.

You’ll end up with a beautifully inked and debossed accent for your project!

The plates can also be used without ink for a textured embellishment, like this heart.

Admittedly, it’s not quite how the system was designed to be used, but it works for me and I love the added detail on my page. I need to try that background plate next!

You can find the True Stories collection – including the letterpress plates – at Blue Moon Scrapbooking, Scrapbook.com, or your favourite crafting retailer.

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While trying to find the right balance in living life first and scrapbooking it second (and possibly remembering to do the laundry third), I’ve found myself very grateful for a few strategies that have always helped me get the most from my scrapbooking supplies and my scrapbooking time. I’ve long wanted to avoid those creative moments of just staring at a piece of paper and willing it to tell me exactly what to do, but now I am so aware of any time I spend standing still at my scrapping desk. I need to move, I need to cut paper, I need to stick things together with glue and write things down with my pen and all those basic things that we know are at the heart of this craft but can often put to the side while we scroll through another hundred ideas on Pinterest, looking for the very best technique to try on our next page.

Ready Set Scrapbook is an online video workshop designed to help you stop staring at the paper and start your scrapping engine. In three videos, it covers three quick composition strategies that help me work quickly while making use of the supplies I love (rather than saving them for a rainy day) and still making sure my photos and writing are at the heart of my designs, even though I love my embellishment. I hope you will find it useful in creating pages that are filled with love and made with whatever time you have to scrapbook right now.

The full course is 82 minutes of video divided into three episodes, and also includes a PDF with six page examples – the three pages shown from start to finish as well as three additional designs following the same steps. All six examples feature the True Stories scrapbooking collection, but the tips are not specific to these papers and are designed to allow you to work with any supplies you select. There is also a forum to discuss and share your work (or you can share your pages on social media via a class hashtag), and you’re also welcome to email me with any questions as you work through the course at your own pace.

This class is just £5 or $8, and if you have watched many of my videos, there will certainly be some familiarity here as I’m sharing the process that is tried and true for me! But the pages are all new and I have not presented these design steps as one complete process before, right through from a new supply purchase through to three completed layouts. You do not need special tools to follow along – I do use a heart punch on one page, but nothing is cut with a Silhouette or other fancy gizmo. The pages are all 12×12 and feature either one or two photos each, using 4×4 or 4×6 prints, but the number and size of the photos could be varied for your needs.

Students who came to my classes at Chocolate Quente in Portugal, don’t sign up! You will have access to this as part of the class you attended and do not need to pay. Thank you so much for coming to class.

You’re welcome to pay in dollars or pounds by clicking the corresponding image above. This will take you to Paypal, where you can either log in and pay from your Paypal account OR complete your purchase with a debit or credit card without logging into any account. All class registrations are processed by hand, so this is not an instant access item. You will receive your receipt email instantly then a class welcome email, which I always aim to process within twenty-four hours. If you don’t receive that welcome, do check your spam folder and then don’t hesitate to email me to make sure everything is all clear for you!

Thanks so much for your continued support, and whether you join the class or not, I hope you find yourself scrapping more than staring when it comes to all that pretty paper in your collection!

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This week, it has made me giddy to see what the talented design team at American Crafts created with the True Stories collection. You can find a whole week of scrapbook pages, cards, and home decor ideas with all that saturated colour and pattern on the AC Studio blog.

There’s also a little bit of the surreal for me in that week of posts, as we filmed quite a few videos with the new collection in January just after CHA, and it’s time to share them now! I usually share videos with you a few days after they are filmed, so it feels a little different, but it was lovely to film with the whole crew in the AC studio. There was even someone to remind me not to make stupid faces while cutting and sticking. I know, that probably would have been your favourite part. Let’s just say sometimes the concentration face is right to be hidden away with just my hands on show! My hands never stick out their tongue to concentrate.

True Stories products are just starting to ship – there are a few that have made an early appearance at Hey Little Magpie here in the UK. I’ve been keeping an eye on the US retailers but haven’t seen it show up just yet. Very soon – and I will shout when it does! And I’ll have plenty more ideas and videos to share with you as it hits stores and kit clubs.

And because I truly believe in the power of hot beverages and baked goods, please feel free to save this printable! Click here to download as a full size PDF.

Wishing you a fabulous weekend with any problems cured by tea or the remainder of the Easter chocolate. Happy scrapping!

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Somehow I am writing from London again, after the CHA adventure in California and time at the American Crafts office in Utah. No one in this house is on the right time zone and while the laundry is now more clean than not, what needs to be folded and put away is suddenly reaching modern art proportions. Seems as good a time as any to ignore that and show you my little corner of CHA 2015 – the annual trade show for the craft and hobby industry.

We show new lines at the show, so most things on the floor won’t be available in stores for a month or so. True Stories ships in April. In the mean time, we try to set the tone so shop owners can imagine how the product will connect with their customer base. Much of the inspiration for this collection came from libraries and coffee shops, so we gave away a True Stories blend of whole bean coffee as well as silver True Stories pencils.

But I know you probably would rather see the products.

We did gold in the first collection, and although that trend is still going strong, I was ready for silver. We added a silver glitter album, and like the gold version, the glitter doesn’t fall off or crack or feel gritty. Smooth and sparkly! On the right you’ll see the stamps – two single stamps that retail for a dollar: a camera and a starburst. The starburst is just the right size to add a background to a small embellishment, like a flair badge, a button, or some layered punched pieces. There are also tiny enamel dots, in a mix of circles, hearts, and stars.

Four new Thickers! The Fitzgerald font (formerly in gold) returns in silver glitter and black foam, and we added a new style called Hipster, available in plain black chipboard or a multicolour pattern. There is a 12×12 paper with large monograms to match the coloured version, which you can cut apart or grab a coordinating cut file to cut out the whole sheet with the Silhouette Cameo.

Starting on the left, the embellishments begin with the 4×4 card pack (more about that in the earlier post), a tag set based on a vintage design that allows you to select the right vellum phrase and pop it onto the patterned background of your choice. The small wood veneer set includes rainclouds and several text pieces. The die-cut pack includes the pink plastic radio I carried on the school bus in the fourth grade. The photo overlays are a mix of 4×4 and 4×6, with some in white, some silver foil, and some in colour. Below that you can see the 6×6 and 12×12 paper pads. The paper weight is heavier in the 12×12 pad now, but it doesn’t include the specialty papers (more on that coming up). The roller stamp comes with a 3×4 tear-off notepad that says ‘I just want to…’ and the stamp has all different phrases of things you might want to do, so you can finish the statement and lead into your writing. And the small sticker sheet is the same format as before – new words and phrases on the front and an alpha on the back – it’s white on teal and navy tiles.

The sticker book looks like our standard format, but the stickers themselves are specially designed for layering. We’ve measured the pieces so they will balance beautifully in clusters, a bit like nesting dolls. There are stencils for mist or ink in a four pack: a tea cup, a large heart, background filled with small hearts, and a banner. The banner shows up again in the embossing folder. The die set has six shapes: the largest makes a tiny bag that can work for gifts, cards, or inside a page protector. Then there are two small folding banners (one says ‘lovely’, the other has no text), plus a photo corner, heart, and label for layering. At the bottom of this frame, you can see the wooden buttons shown earlier.

While we’re discussing tools, I have a couple that fall under the WeR brand to coordinate, and one is this set of letterpress plates. So excited to give these a try. (I know that says February, but the full release is April.) There is also a set of six card making embossing folders, but I don’t have a photo – they are small greetings and motifs, about two inches high.

Back to embellishments, there are two larger sets: those wood veneer borders and rulers we discussed earlier and a new set of cork stickers.

And of course there is paper! Lots of colour and a mix of patterns – cut-apart sheets, florals, lightbulbs, rockets, and coffee cups to have in or take away. There are six specialty papers. Three have silver glitter: raindrops on navy, film negatives on white, and a turquoise and navy diagonal stripe. Two are a colourful print on vellum: patterned rainclouds and small hearts. The last one is a perforated sheet with designs you can punch out and fold to make dimensional embellishments in moments.

That’s a quick look at everything! I know that’s a lot at a glance, but part of my time at the AC office right after the show was filming a full series of videos showing these products in action (like this), so by the time April is here and True Stories ships to stores, there will be plenty of examples of each product.

But for now, there are a few layouts I made at the show – those houses are one of the punch-out-and-fold pieces from the perforated paper.

And those small letter stickers are the teal from the back of the small sticker sheet.

And just for good measure, some love from Wonder Boy! (We didn’t go match-matchy on the very last day. The others… perhaps.)

It was definitely a bit different staying put rather than walking the floor, but so lovely to meet faces from shops that have stocked the first collection (and the second, I hope!) as well as see familiar faces from the designer side of the industry. For more comment on the show as a whole, you’re better off listening to the CHA edition of the Paperclipping Roundtable.

Comment [35]

Oh, hi. Originally that die-cut said ‘hello’. I had to explain that I pretty much never say hello. I say ‘oh, hi’, and if extra excited, ‘oh haiiiiii’, but that wouldn’t translate to so well to a die-cut. And thus, dry embossed hearts on pink squares that say ‘oh, hi’ and make me very happy.

I also have finally been able to finish the editing on a new scrapbooking video, and that makes me happy too.

_{Reading somewhere that doesn’t show the video? Click through to watch!}

Although I’ve really enjoyed scrapping with just my own products, my true style for many years has been to mix and match brands and collections to get a look I love, so throwing this all together was a whole new kind of scrapping adventure.

Supplies for this page include text background paper, heart patterned paper, map patterned paper, die cut pack, colour rub-ons, gold rub-ons, elephant card, cloud card, hello card, sweetness card, true story card, gold sequins, journaling pen, and turquoise mist.

I hate to repeat what I said in the video, but I will anyway. Because I love this photo and I love it a little bit more for having totally missed it for quite some time. I don’t remember it being taken (apparently this was while I having vitals checked or something), though I do remember the midwife giving The Boy instructions for dressing Wonder Boy and then getting a bit short with him when he didn’t know the difference between a vest and a sleep suit, and then shorter still when he told her I didn’t bring sleeveless vests, but Wonder Boy did eventually end up clothed. He was wearing a panda outfit that was the very first gift he ever received, such an early gift that I was quite terrified by it and I buried it at the bottom of a drawer for many months because otherwise I would have spent those months looking at it and clutching it and being ridiculously emotional. Instead I get to be ridiculously emotional now, seeing it on him at the hospital, seeing it in the photo, and seeing it now in the box of teeny-tiny outgrown clothes. I need to write all that on another page, but on this one I wanted to document just a bit of my feeling that although the process of his arrival was many miles from what I imagined in my head, it didn’t matter for a moment. …and to think it was just tiny panda-printed clothes that made me ridiculously emotional.

Thanks for watching.

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It has rained a ridiculous amount in the last two days. It has rained so much that the pond on our street has overflowed its banks (do ponds have ‘banks’?) and there are geese sitting in the middle of the road squawking at cars because clearly the pond has annexed the road and the cars need to find another place to go. But I really cannot complain about the weather because this summer has been glorious and certainly the sunniest, most pleasant summer season of all my years in England.

I tell you all this to help make my summer Friday ritual make sense: a friend and I signed up for a mama and baby yoga class that is lovely but not exactly convenient for travel, and we just walked there every week. It was a good couple hours door to door, but that was the fabulousness of it all: walking with a friend and our two babies, born two days apart, in beautiful weather, with a break for yoga and another break for coffee and sometimes cake. But one Friday in July, I needed to continue with a bit more travel after class. Carrying a baby and rolling a suitcase, I started with that long walk, but then managed a bus, a tube, two trains, another bus, and a car ride to finally arrive at the seaside for a lovely weekend of girlfriends and children and walks along the water.

From this layout, you might figure out that Wonder Boy was not an instant fan of the British beach scene. I promise he wasn’t grumpy all weekend. That made these photos extra funny to me and I wanted to get that grumpy face in the album before he’s old enough to say no.

In other news, I was able to film this! And so I present the first video with my new collection from American Crafts!

_{Viewing on a blog reader? Click through to the full post to watch the video!}

For this page, I used patterned papers, Thickers, cork stickers, dies, embossing folder, word strip stickers, and pens from the Shimelle collection by American Crafts, plus a 3×4 card from the coordinating ‘Lovely’ edition of Project Life, as well as a patterned paper by Crate and sequins from Studio Calico.

This 12×12 page will go in my standard chronological albums (I have always called these ‘Our Lives’ – thank goodness for vague pronouns that mean I don’t need to rename them now!) but it’s quite likely the photos will also appear in Wonder Boy’s Project Life album, in a smaller format. That works out fine for me, as I’m finding the way I write my stories differs in the two styles, and my 12×12 pages have a more meandering tone that is quite true to my inner narrative when I flip from page to page.

I’m starting to see projects appear across the internet that use the collection in so many different styles. This is definitely an amazing feeling! Please feel free to let me know if you post such a project anywhere. You can tag me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, or use the #shimelle hashtag, or leave a comment with a link to your blog post or gallery. I’ve started pinning projects here, should you need a gallery of ideas for using your Shimelle collection stash! Thank you so much for sharing your crafty work.

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