Time to crack open this February edition of goodies and get to some scrapbooking – and also a big thumbs down to flu bugs right now, yes? Anyway, moving on.
This starting point is one of my favourite ways to use a subtly patterned background that I still want to be easily visible. Plus I love baby blue (or turquoise) with red. Such a lovely combination – just a twist on classic red, white, and blue. (In fact, I love it so much I’ve written about it already as a scrapbooking colour story.) For this starting point, you just need that background pattern in the full page size, plus three more pieces: one 4×11 inch rectangle (I added some plain white cardstock from my scraps here), one 5×5 square (the red chevron pattern), and one 1×11.5 inch strip (the black and white arrow print).
This design leaves plenty of pattern on show and has a variety of places to start adding your page elements, so it could feature one square picture on the red box, for example, or a landscape photo to the right, or a row of small prints across the top of the page. I chose three photos for my page.
These were originally 4×6 landscape images, but I cropped them to 3.5 square to focus a bit more on what changes in each picture, so they read as the process. In theory, anyway! I like how there is a bit of extra title work here – that the Thickers, the accent card, and the red stickers down the side all contribute to the general idea of the page, but then that ‘remember this’ sticker at the top left leads into the angle for the writing. I wanted to focus on how this is our routine every morning and has been for a few years, but write it in a way that if years from now this ritual has fallen by the wayside for something quicker or simpler, that at least there is evidence of how much this was a part of our day for many years. (I suppose that is a bit of breaking the fourth wall in scrapbooking – when your journaling admits it is in a scrapbook!)
If you fancy a rather ridiculous look at how this page came together, I snapped it with Vine throughout, which you can see here. Vine is a bit like a video version of Instagram, in that it’s a social media app that lets you use your phone to share images, except rather than still pictures, it’s six seconds of video that plays in a loop. You can’t edit it in another app or anything – it’s just six seconds to fill and then you get what you get. Suffice to say, six seconds makes a layout really fast!
How would you finish a page with this starting point? Give it a try and share your results! You’re welcome to use any supplies – you don’t have to use the Best of Both Worlds kit to join in the fun, but of course you can if you would like!
All told, my January kit (with the help of one extra sheet of cardstock, one of patterned paper, a few paper scraps and some enamel dots) made six single-page scrapbook pages and one card. And just in time, I am ready to roll onto February with new product picks for the month. (And I have a little video to show you both things – all those finished pages from January plus a look at the February kit!)
February and March present something rather interesting: in late January and early February, prices on current scrapbooking products are slashed to make room for all the brand new products that start to hit the shelves over the next few weeks. So this month, we can get quite a bit for our money! Next month will have fewer items but they will be brand new releases. I like that balance – hope you find it useful too!
Click here to shop the February edition of Best of Both Worlds!
(Also, the original cut-apart sheet has now sold out, so I added the second design to the list while it is still in stock. You can see all remaining designs from that line here in case something is to your liking!)
If you’re new to the Best of Both Worlds idea (and don’t worry – this is only the second month I’ve done this!), the basic premise is that you can pick up the whole kit just like I’m using by going here and adding one of each to your order. But Best of Both Worlds gives you the freedom to customise so you get exactly what works for you. If you don’t stamp, remove the stamps and save that price. If you already have some of the items in your stash, don’t buy them again and wind up with duplicates. Or if there is something you really love, add more. I don’t use much cardstock on my layouts, so I don’t include it in the list, but if you want cardstock you can either add it (find it here) or you can replace some of the patterned papers with solid cardstock so you’re not adding to the overall price. There’s no subscription and no obligation. But if you would like something simple to assemble a nice box of goodies for you and you like the sort of things I tend to use, then there you go. All nice and easy.
A few questions that came up last time around… International shipping
I totally understand that the shipping may not work out to make these the best prices for you in the world. But it might not be as bad as you think. Two Peas is working on improvements in their international shipping system, which often over quotes the price. If you open a service ticket on their site (there’s a link at the bottom of the screen), they will credit the difference if you report it within thirty days. (The thirty days is important!) I know that’s not perfect (and they know too, and are working to improve it), but if you didn’t ever think about the difference in the quote and what was on the box, that is important information so I’m sharing it with you. I do it on my orders too. If you have a local source that makes the shopping better for you, then fair enough! You can replicate the items as best as possible with your own source if that’s a much better option for you. (Several people asked why I didn’t set this up with insert name here shop. I like craft shops everywhere, I absolutely promise. Two Peas goes out of their way to work with me, and they support my crazy ideas. So for me, it’s a good match.)
What if things sell out?
As of the turn of midnight on the first of February, there is good stock on all the chosen items. But that doesn’t mean they will all sit around forever, of course. You can take a look at what is and isn’t in stock from the January kit here to get an idea. Some of those items went out of stock earlier in the month and were reordered because many people clicked the ‘request and notify me’ button so they are now back in stock. If you come to this post later in the month and some of the items you want are no longer available, never underestimate the power of that ‘request and notify’ button.
How do I get free shipping at Two Peas?
You need to subscribe to their free email newsletter (you’ll find that in your account settings). Every month they have a code you can add to your order. If you spend more than $50 on physical, non-close-out items, you qualify for free US shipping OR $5 off your shipping to anywhere else in the world. The kit alone would not qualify you for that, but if you had other things to add to your order, then you’re not ridiculously far from the $50 either, and it might work out better for you to spend a little more on product rather than spend the same amount on shipping. Remember you can always see your shipping cost by going part way through the checkout process – you can see the shipping cost before you pay, so you can back up and make changes if needed.
What’s the deal with the Two Peas customer loyalty programme?
It changed over the past month. They had the same loyalty programme since it started, more than a dozen years ago. This industry has changed so much and I can tell you flat out the profit margins a dozen years ago were far, far higher than they are now. Plus inflation meant the amounts for the levels of discounts were not a fair comparison. I mean… think about what you spent for a cup of coffee twelve years ago versus what you pay today and you’ll know prices are not the same. Patterned paper is the same thing: when I started buying 12×12 scrapbooking paper by the sheet, the retail price was lower than the wholesale price in 2013. That’s extreme. To offer such a high discount at such a low threshold in a market with such little profit margin left must have been dangerous to the bottom line. (Please understand that statement is complete speculation from my knowledge of the industry and a bit of simple maths – I do not have any information about the financial side of Two Peas specifically.) They have revamped their loyalty programme and yes, it means that many people (myself included) had their percentage discount diminished. That is sad all around, but I would be sadder if Two Peas didn’t exist! The difference per order from my old percentage discount to my new discount is less than five bucks. And having just been to California, I paid more than that for a cup of coffee. So I’m trying to use that information to put it into perspective for myself. Short answer, yes, you will likely find your loyalty discount is not as great as it once was. However, there are also opportunities now to get loyalty points by chatting on the scrapping boards and uploading projects the gallery, which didn’t exist before. And there will be special opportunities to earn bonus points throughout the year in all sorts of different ways. I love that the end result will be value added to the scrapbooking community at Two Peas. But yes, there have been changes, no, I don’t have any say in them, and above all I really hope it means Two Peas can continue to offer such a great variety of scrapbooking products all in one place. Also: since late November, Two Peas has offered better sales than they ever have before. Loving that.
*What’s the shipping turnaround right now?
I ordered yesterday. It shipped today. I would say things are pretty in the zone in their warehouse right now!
How long does it take an order to arrive from the US to the UK
Once it has shipped, my orders tend to be at my door in 10 to 14 days. If you order a lot, it may need to go through customs, which adds charges and time, yes.
Can I post the kit contents earlier?
No, it will always be the first of the month, and then I’ll use that kit throughout the month. The videos and blog posts don’t expire, I promise, and you can use them at any time. Because you are not subscribing, I need to have one day when I check all the inventory and make sure everything I will be using is in good stock, so it wouldn’t matter what day of the month that was, the same conundrum would exist. The first of the month to share the product picks and then that month to share the projects keeps my brain from imploding.
I think that’s all! I look forward to sharing projects from this kit with you throughout February!
Pretty much every winter for several years, I’ve headed to Anaheim, California, for a week. Except I’ve occupied pretty much every moment of the day with work, and barely had time to breathe and sleep. Every year I would try to find some time to steal away to meet with two localish friends, and we would catch a quick cupcake or lunch, and they would ask if I wanted to go to Disney. You know – that reason why most people visit Anaheim, California! And I would say maybe next year and then forget about it all over again.
Except this year, I remembered. I could only do a little more than five hours, but to Disneyland we went, where we ate pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse and spun the teacups and sang It’s a Small World and drove through London on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride and even played some sort of alien laser tag with characters from Toy Story. Don’t ask me which characters: I have never seen Toy Story. None of the Toy Stories. I know, it’s weird. I just… like my animation hand-drawn. (No, I haven’t seen Shrek either. I’ve seen Finding Nemo and I was sorely disappointed. But oddly, I quite like Monsters, Inc. Anyway, I digress.)
I’ve been saving that piece of BasicGrey paper with the lovely watercoloured-fabric texture. Saving it to use as a lush background for something with lots of layers. Except I didn’t have a lot left to layer, so to finish this last page from the January Best of Both Worlds kit, I headed to my scrap basket and ended up including some paper in the one-to-two-years-old category along with some positively-ancient-KI-Memories paper in a colour that makes me swoon.
I don’t tend to use a sketch with the very last remains of a kit – I tend to just move the scraps around until an idea emerges! If you’re looking for more ideas for what to do with those last scraps at the end of a kit, the end of this video might be useful too. I’ll see if I’m able to share a last look for most of the kits – though sometimes it may just happen that the pieces fit perfectly into the sketches and starting points… we’ll see!
If you watched the last Sketch to Scrapbook Page video, you might remember the two hot pink 4×6 cards I considered throwing into the mix before deciding the colour was just too much. In the end, I put both of them together with a black cardstock card blank and made a simple card with the stamp set and two heart punches. There’s quite a bit going on on the front of this card and I’m not completely convinced that I love the chaos of it, but I do really like all the different word and arrow stamps together in the text bubble. I think I’ll try that on a page soon too, because it could make quite a clever embellishment on the right sort of page. Show of hands: should this be my Valentine card to The Boy or should I try again? Ha! I am definitely a scrapbooker first, but still like to make a card now and then.
So here is what remains of my January kit, six pages and one card later: the stamps and tape that I’ll continue to use for quite some time, three alphabet sets that can each do a bit more (some more than others – the navy is particularly spent of some key letters), and some too-small-to-save paper scraps that have now gone in the recycling bin.
Just a few years ago, square photos were only for special occasions in scrapbooking terms – it was so rare to see them on a page or a sketch. Since the dimensions of phone screens changed our design norms and brought apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram to the world of the scrapbooker, square is definitely on the map. So this week, how about a scrapbooking sketch that can work with square or 4×6 photos?
I printed my photos at home this time around, and my computer will default to printing a 3×3 inch image on its own sheet of 4×6 photo paper, but if I change the size to 2.8 inches square, it will print two up without any extra fuss. So I used three 2.8 inch square pictures, but I promise there was no real design reason behind such a specific measurement. If you want to print square images from your phone through an online printer, you can certainly do that too. I normally use this process, which I originally posted with my Hipstamatic notes, but Instagram and anything else with a photo cropped to a square works just the same. (If you don’t tend to scrapbook square images, don’t dismiss this sketch: today’s guest artist didn’t go for squares and it still worked!)
This is yet another project from the January kit, and it’s starting to get a bit depleted now but I think there are two or three projects to come before it’s totally done and dusted.
I took quite a few photos of the wildflowers at the Olympic park this past summer, as did pretty much everyone else there it seemed. There were always people posing in the flowers or brave souls zooming in on the visiting bees. In addition to these small photos, I think I will order my most favourite shot as a 12×12 print and place it on the facing page for my album. Not completely committed to that idea, but it’s something I keep considering. I definitely want a large photo of the flowers in there somewhere, so either the full page option or something more like the sketch from earlier this month with the large photo across two-thirds of the page.
Today’s sketch guest is Megan Klauer, who always amazes me with her eye for detail. I really wondered what she would do with a sketch that was quite minimal – and she did not disappoint!
Sketches are often the perfect boost my creative juices need to start flowing. Although I typically use them pretty loosely, they are always the base of my design. When I see a sketch, oddly enough I usually make another sketch from it, putting the sketch into my own words, so to speak. From there, I gather the photos, papers, and embellishments. With this particular sketch I used two vertical photos as opposed to three square images. The vertical tabbed portion became the center stage of my design where I later layered & embellished to my hearts content. I stayed true to the sketch in terms of the title work, but added my journaling above instead of beneath it.
Megan Klauer is a momma of three and wife to her high school sweetheart. She currently designs for Crate Paper, Bella Blvd, Elle’s Studio, Jenni Bowlin, & A Flair for Buttons Etsy shop. In her spare time she does on location photography & works full time as an office secretary.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
This morning I had every intention of being on the train into the city nice and early so I could do one of those very rare things in my world and work with people actually in person instead of through email inboxes. Except it has snowed and snowed and snowed some more this past weekend, and the trains in our corner of London are not running. So instead, I am scrapbooking. I think I can cope with that idea, provided we can reschedule our day of working in person for sometime soon.
As a result of that, here’s a starting point! It started with a full sheet of patterned paper for the background, two narrow strips (they were the two off-cuts from that large square on the last sketch layout), and two 4×6 cut-apart cards, plus an off-cut of what was left of the camera print in the middle. Everything here is still from my January kit of supplies – this is the fourth page to come from that stack of goodies so far.
Oh snow, you have taken away all the natural light. Perhaps I can rephotograph this soon.
Almost everything on the completed page is still from those supplies – including lots of the button card used to create the bunting. I added the thread to finish that detail plus gold and black mists and three pink enamel dots for that little row of embellishments in the middle. The stamped ‘Happy’ words at the right are just stamped with regular black ink, but faded to match the ombre pattern of the striped paper by simply adding more pressure or stamping off some of the ink.
Once this was finished, the combination of the tall narrow strips and the small photos reminded me of this sketch, though there are certainly a few differences. Worth a comparison if you have more narrow strips left than larger boxes.
If you want to give this starting point a try, choose any papers you want and arrange them in a similar fashion to the second image in this post. Then ignore my finished layout and complete your page to suit your style and photographs. When you’re done, share your project with us so we can see all the different ways that same starting point can continue to a completed design.
Have a great week – and if you get snowed in, at least you can always scrapbook!
In sketching out a whole collection of page outlines to get things planned for 2013, I realised just how much I like a very simplistic sketch to get scrapping. Yes, it can be lovely to have so many little extras built in, but it can also be so helpful to have just a few basic things in place and then have the freedom to add and subtract without feeling like it’s an abandonment of the original idea. So don’t be surprised at just how simple some of these sketches may be: that way they are yours to dress up or keep simple as the mood hits!
I imagined this sketch with two photos printed slightly larger than my usual, and in fact I printed mine at 5×6 inches. If two photos is too few for you, never fear, as today’s guest has made it work with four images instead. And if you fancy making this into a two page layout, look at the middle line of this sketch and pretend that is the centre of the two pages. Then just extend the design outward, possibly with two portrait 4×6 pictures side by side instead of the single 5×6 pictures. Does that help?
This marks my third full project with the January kit, which is now starting to look well-used but there are still some full sheets untouched that I want to use as backgrounds. Because this page will go in my Round the World album, I added a sheet of kraft cardstock so it matches all the other pages in those books, plus some glimmer mist to paint on that frame around the edge, but everything else is from that same set of supplies.
If you check out the Black Water Rafting website, you’ll see just how alike all the photos are, but if you ever find yourself touring New Zealand, it is certainly an interesting item for your itinerary. It’s called ‘black water’ rafting because you’re in a cave and entirely in the dark. Well, maybe not entirely, as there are glow worms on the ceiling that make it a bit like looking up at the stars, except once you find out what a glow worm really is, it’s not nearly as romantic as it sounds, but it is still pretty cool. It’s very cold (even in a wet suit) and very touristy, but New Zealand was our stop of ‘let’s do all the things they show in leaflets’, so indeed we went rafting, paragliding, and scuba diving to ship wrecks. (I say ‘we’. When it comes to the scuba diving, I mean ‘he’. But still.) And at the end of the rafting adventure, they give you hot chocolate and a DVD of pictures from your day, perfect for a scrapbooker.
Today I’m thrilled to welcome Ashli Oliver (also known as SoapHouseMama in the world of scrapbooking message boards) with her beautifully layered and detailed style. She had no trouble converting this sketch into one with additional photos, so I know you’ll find her ideas inspiring, no matter what your style may be.
When I saw this fun way to incorporate four photos onto one page, I knew I would be heading straight to my stack of Disney pictures. After all, I took loads of fun pictures and I need to maximize my page real-estate! As you can imagine, this album of our vacation is chocked full of fun and whimsy, so I just overlapped and tilted my photos a bit to maintain this consistency. Not to mention that I just couldn’t bring my self to cover up that fabulous polka dot print from Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic. The choice of the gold dot vellum also allows for the pattern to peek through a bit, while adding a nice touch of sparkle. In addition to the who, what, when, and where journaling, these photos have a bit of a longer story that I wanted to tell. So, I added a little pocket from Whiskers Graphics to include more journaling. A touch of gold in the title work helps pull in the gold sparkle from the vellum and some doodles finish it off. Plenty of room for pictures with still enough space left for embellishments… This is a sketch that I will be returning to again and again, I just know it!
It is such an honor have joined you this week. Thanks you for having me, Shimelle! I hope to see you all over at purplemailbox.com. You can also find me on Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. I look forward to “seeing” you soon!
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
I have my work cut out with me creating posts for all the remaining CHA booths and I’ll be on that straight away now that I’m back home in snowy London! (To be fair, Southern California wasn’t that much warmer, though there was a great deal more sunshine.) And to make up for a bit of lost time while I was off staring lovingly at all the new paper for 2013, this weekend I have two scrapbooking sketches for you – both with videos and guests, of course.
This second sketch of the year uses my favourite photo combination: two 4×6 prints in the same direction (portrait, in this case). It stays pretty simple from there too: a title, writing space, and three areas of embellishment. Of course, what you choose for those embellishments is totally up to you!
This is my second page to come from my January kit, though you might have noticed Glitter Girl sneaking a title from my kit lettering options last week. I added some thread and a tiny bit of gold mist (it sells out fast but it is restocked often – click the ‘request & notify me’ button if you’re still searching for some and that way you have a good chance of catching it as soon as it arrives), but everything else is from the kit.
I did add one tiny bit of additional embellishment not on the sketch – two initials and the date at the top left corner. I like having just a few things that repeat on every page in a specially themed album, and in the Harry Potter album, it’s the initials ‘HP’ somewhere on each page. It just seemed a bit more balanced to place them in the top corner rather than add them into one of the existing areas of embellishment since those three were so similar and the initials would make one grouping so different.
The scrapper behind this gorgeous page is this week’s guest, Melissa Mann. I love how she repeated one motif in two unique ways through the die-cut background and the patchworked embellishments.
I loved that this sketch included two 4×6 photos. I usually stick to one photo scrapbook pages or multiple smaller photos. I stuck pretty close with the sketch but changed the place I put my title. It didn’t seem to flow as well with the title in the lower right hand side. That is the one thing I love about sketches! You can duplicate the sketch in its entirety or use it as a jumping off point. I really wanted to use the lime green card stock on this layout, but it was too bright in my opinion to use as the base. I layered it on top of some dark gray card stock and stitched it down with my sewing machine. I then layered a piece of white card stock that I ran through my Silhouette Cameo and cut a triangle design on and stitched it down on top of the lime green card stock. I matted my two 4×6 photos with a piece of patterned paper that had more geometrical designs on it. I created my own custom arrow embellishments by cutting the arrows out of cardstock. On two of the arrows I layered strips of paper across and trimmed off the excess. On the biggest arrow, I punched out squares of patterned paper and laid it down on top of the cardstock and again cut off the excess. All three arrows were stitched around the border with my sewing machine. A couple of stickers and brads were placed around the photo and the title was placed above the photo mat. The supplies I used are by American Crafts, Studio Calico, Basic Grey, Ki Memories, Tim and Beck, and October Afternoon. The cut files used were by Studio Calico and Silhouette.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
One of those things I’m excited to share with you every week this year is a new scrapbooking sketch! Having a guest each week is going to keep me on my toes and I’ve already seen the first several pages they’ve made and I love them. I hope you will enjoy this new take on the old sketch posts too!
I’m starting the year very simply, with a sketch that includes one large photo and two smaller images. I printed all three at home (rare for me!), printing the large image as a borderless print on an A4 sheet of photo paper and the two smaller images at 2.5 inches square. If you’re looking to order large prints, I suggest Photobox in the UK and York Photo or Persnickety Prints in the US – all three offer large prints, including 12×12 photos, and you upload your photo online then the prints are delivered to your door.
For this video, all of my supplies came from the January Best of Both Worlds kit that I’ll be using all month, with the exception of the baker’s twine, which I had in my stash (plus ink, stamping block, pens and adhesive, of course).
The sketch itself includes a bit more embellishment at the top left of the large photo, but adding something there would have covered the lovely faces in this case, so I just swapped sides and added that top embellishment at the right. But our special guest kept it in its original location!
I’m delighted Rhonna Farrer could join us as the first sketch guest of the year! I love her beautiful digital take on the large photo idea. And her creative process for the page makes it even more special:
The New Year is on my mind the past few weeks. I wanted to document my approach to this New Year in a scrapbook page. This is created digitally with my elements in my Rhonna Designs Insta Fonts and Brushes. I plan on printing this out & hanging it on my Inspiration Board so I am reminded everyday of my one little word & goal for 20.thirteen. I took the sketch & added photos that will inspire me: my family and a photo of my mountains. The sketch is perfect for drawing my eyes to the sky… looking up… focusing. Each element is placed there for a reason: to draw my eye first to TODAY at the top. Then, flowing through the entire layout to remind me to BE STRONG in one thing each day. That feels doable. I know I can do that. I used one of my favorite color schemes with colors from 2012 & a POP of the 2013 color of the year: emerald in my family photo!
You can find more of Rhonna’s gorgeous work on her blog and shop, plus you’ll find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
Comment [26]
Oh snow, you have taken away all the natural light. Perhaps I can rephotograph this soon.
