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

Plenty of patterns and product types covered in the NSD challenges so far: I think it’s time for a colour combination challenge! Red and blue is a combination I love working with though I could count on one hand how many times I’ve used it for something even vaguely patriotic. Instead, red and blue feels bold and versatile to me!

I love how a rainbow of accents feels full of potential and energy.

And I love how softening the blue to a lighter shade makes it feel a little warmer, a little more down to earth, and maybe even a little more cuddly! (Okay. That might just be the photo. But I’m not sure it’s entirely responsible.)

Your challenge is to create a page using red and blue but also whatever other colours you feel drawn to use! For another look, please welcome guest artist Charity Feit.

This page highlights my 40th birthday gift from my family, tickets to see A Prarie Home Companion Live at Wolf Trap Performing Arts National Park. I used several pages (including the cut apart sheet) from the Shimelle Starshine Collection as well as lots of the embellishments available to match.

I used a very simple formula of using three 4×6 photos straight down one side of the page, then making three clusters of embellishments in a triangle around my photos.

This sketch from the archives might prove useful if you’re working with three images like this.

I love journalling in my own handwriting on my pages, I’m not at all fussed about perfection… they are my memories and having them in a visual way makes me happy.

Your turn! We’d love to see what you pair with red and blue to create your own unique and bold colour story.

Today’s Guest Artist: Charity Feit loves using paper and embellishments to record her family memories, knitting, and getting inspiration from crafting videos. You can find more from Charity on Instagram, Twitter, and her blog.

Comment [4]

Our next challenge is one I often throw in because it’s my favourite and I love any excuse to use these papers: scrapbook with woodgrain patterns! Please welcome guest artist Ida Rosberg to share her beautiful take on mixing woodgrain with other elements in your collection.

I really like children’s books. And I absolutely love that my daughter is starting to like books too! It’s so fun to watch her explore the pretty pictures in the books. To watch her point at things she recognize and hear her wonder “What is this?” I snapped some pictures when she read a very pretty book with her teddy bear. The light from the window was perfect and their clothes were matching!

Woodgrain papers are one of my favorite types of pattern papers. They are often very easy to use as a background on a layout. I hoard woodgrain patterned papers and have two or three of the same ones in my stash. For this layout I wanted to use more than one type of woodgrain. I found two types of grey wood (from Pink Paislee and Dear Lizzy) and one very light brown (from WRMK). I matched the woodgrain with papers and decorations from Shimelle – Starshine and flowers from Maggie Holmes. The wood veneer is from Shimelle’s first collection! I almost never write titles on my pages… but I often use a combination of words I find on decorations or stickers.

And now your turn: create a page with a woodgrain pattern! It mixes so well with all sorts of patterns, colours, and collections. Don’t forget to come back and share what you make!

Today’s Guest Artist: Ida Rosberg loves gin & tonic, pretty papers, and ephemera packs. You can find more from Ida on Instagram and her blog.

Comment [5]

For the next NSD challenge, it’s time to have a rummage in the stationery drawer. Guest artist Sam Ball is here to challenge you to scrapbook with shaped paperclips!

Teenagers of today seem to spend much of their time on social media, with Instagram and Snapchat seeming to be a firm favourites with my three step-daughters! I love the cryptic text lines that they add to their photos, many of which not only make me smile, but they prove to be the perfect title for a scrapbooking layout!

Having settled on a candid holiday photo, the recently launched Simple Stories You are Here collection seemed ideal. The quirky elements and ephemera are right down my street and perfect when teamed with an assortment of random colourful paperclips to create a fun and vibrant layout. The colours so remind me of warmer climates, mixing teal with coral pinks and canary yellow.

So if you haven’t already planned your next holiday, roll on the summer. Here’s hoping you’ll see the odd flamingo or palm tree this year! But for now: go make a page with a paperclip! Don’t forget to come back and share with us. You can post a link or upload your image directly.

Today’s Guest Artist: Sam Ball loves sunshine, strong design, and scrapbooking. You can find more from Sam on Instagram, Facebook, and her blog.

Comment [4]

Just one day for National Scrapbook Day is clearly not enough! We celebrate all weekend here, so there are more challenges today. And in case you didn’t catch the closing dates, you have all of this weekend, this coming week, and next weekend to share your projects for this weekend’s scrapbooking challenges!

To start us this Sunday morning, grab something scenic! Recently flipping through some albums, I realised I needed a chapter divider for a quick trip to Dublin a few years ago. I love having a dividing page that acts like a title page but just to introduce a few pages on one theme rather than a whole album. I printed this image as a giant A4 landscape image and knew I could just add that title and some embellishment to set the tone for the pages that followed.

If you follow along on Instagram and like a bit of back story, it’s this layout that made me start brushing exaggerated downstrokes in my sketchbook, like these. I wasn’t completely happy with the weight of this title and wanted to see how I could change that up. I’ll try writing ‘Dublin’ again today and see how the two compare.

And for more scenic style, take some inspiration from guest artist Anandi Raman Creath!

I’m a fairly new scrapper, having only started making layouts in 2013. (I did Project Life in 2012 and that was my gateway drug to scrapping). Over the past few years, I’ve realized a few things – I adore the 8.5×11 size and my favorite pages are the ones with a cleaner look but still use bright colors. I was super excited to find out that my theme for this project was Ireland – my family spent three weeks there in 2012 which was definitely a “bucket list” item for me. These two photos were taken by my husband at a place I didn’t see, but I wanted to capture the story of why I couldn’t go and the idiosyncrasies of traveling with a toddler.

I started with the B-side of a paper from Shimelle’s True Stories collection – a sweet tiny aqua dot on white. I absolutely love using a patterned paper background when possible, but it’s challenging to choose one that isn’t too busy or distracting. Since this is about Ireland, I needed some green, so I used the diagonal stripe paper from True Stories to mat the photos. The photos and journal card covered up the boldness a bit (I learned that trick from Shimelle’s videos!) The bright blue Amy Tangerine pattern reminded me of waves in the ocean, and I thought a golden yellow would also be a good addition, so I used the “Hannah” transparent-ish letters from Amy Tangerine in yellow, and also added a cute branding strip from one of her other papers to add a little more color.

I typed up the journaling directly onto the paper with my trusty IBM Selectric typewriter, after trying to create a journaling block on vellum and disliking how it looked when I attached it to the layout with staples. I ended up having to feed the layout into my typewriter with the photos already adhered, so the journaling got a little wonkier than expected, but I think that’s part of the charm of using a old typewriter. I write out my journaling first on paper, editing as I go, and then I do a second editing pass as I type.

To keep the layout from looking too flat, I used 3 of the awesome wood buttons from True Stories – I just love those little things! I always incorporate three things on my layouts: something sparkly or shiny, a roller date stamp, and a tiny handwritten “Love, Mama” somewhere on the page. See if you can spot those!

Your turn to scrap some scenery! Any style, any place – just landscape photos as the requirement here.

Today’s Guest Artist: Anandi Raman Creath loves rocking out on her new drum set, finishing crafty projects, and bacon. You can find more from Anandi on Instagram, and her blog.

Comment [3]

For our next challenge, please welcome contributing designer Sheena Rowlands her very inky fingers!

I would generally say I was a clean scrapper and even when I try to be messy and use ink or mists on my pages, they still have a clean feel somehow.

So for National Scrapbooking Day I challenge you to create a “messy” background for a layout using ink, mist, paint or any other medium you have.

For my background I sprinkled watercolour paint powder on to wet paper allowing it to run, mix, and blend. I left it to dry for the rest of the day and flattened it under some heavy books overnight before adding the Just Nick cut file over the top.

I then added the photo with lots of layers behind plus embellishments from both the Starshine and True Stories collections. I love the finished result of my background and look forward to seeing what you create too.

Your challenge is to create a messy background for your next scrapbook page, but that might be watercolour, ink, mist, acrylic paint or something else that comes to your mind! You’re free to take this challenge in any direction you like.

Comment [19]

Ready for another NSD challenge? Raise your hand if you buy 3×4 cards even though pocket scrapping is not really your bread and butter. My hands are both up, I think! But I love those cards on a 12×12 page, especially with two 3×4 cards balancing one 4×6 card. Such a simple but striking way to put a page together.

That background paper is from PinkFresh Studio and I love all those little hearts. They are a similar shape to the hearts I add to my journaling on many pages so just a perfect match for me. The 3×4 cards are from a Studio Calico baby-themed set, but the set includes two of each design so I still have those cards to use elsewhere in Wonder Boy’s baby album but this photo was taken after his first birthday, so it will live in our 2015 family album rather than the baby book. Just in case you’re keeping track!

For more 3×4 card enthusiasm, please welcome guest artist Wendy Antenucci!

I love Project Life cards! I cut all of my scraps down to 4×6 and 3×4 pieces because they are an integral part of my creating. I use them for titles, sentiments, journaling, layering, detail cutting embellishments, items in grids… oh, how I could go on!

In this page I used the 3×4 cards to layer texture and color around my photo block. I used one full 12×12 page to mat my white cardstock so that it would jump out and lots of little fun embellishments from Shimelle’s True Stories line to finish the page.

I also created another page to tell the story of my son’s birthday using a grid design with the 3×4 cards, which you can see here on my blog.

Your turn! Use 3×4 cards (purchased that way or created yourself!) on a 12×12 page! If you scrap in a different size (like 8.5×11), that’s okay too! It just made for a very number-filled wordy challenge title, so forgive us!

Today’s Guest Artist: Wendy Antenucci loves creating, York Peppermint Patties, and her family. You can find more from Wendy on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and her blog.

Comment [4]

On we go with another NSD challenge! This time it’s contributing designer Gina Lideros here to inspire you to repeat a shape on your page. Enjoy!

Working on my pages back around St Patrick’s day, I’m always a little stuck. It’s nice to be able to scrapbook about the occasion and document the event when there is so much inspiration around at the time. But what if you don’t have photos from that particular holiday? This is the case in my family. My side of the family is Irish, but only by a small percentage, and we never really celebrated the holiday growing up. Then, I married my husband whose family comes from the Phillipines and they do not celebrate the holiday at all. I decided we didn’t need to have a big green celebration for me to still have fun scrapping with all that Saint Patrick’s day crafting that was inspiring me, and I wouldn’t even need to be limited to green, green, and more green. It was easy to translate this theme onto a layout by documenting photos of people in our lives that we feel “lucky” to have. If you have any dates on your calendar that leave you feeling a similar way – inspired by all the pages and projects you see but with no real memories of that theme to scrapbook – see if you can twist it until it’s just right for you!

But don’t worry: you’re not tied to any theme for this challenge. You just need to pick a shape and repeat it many times on your finished layout!

I started off my layout by choosing a lucky four leaf clover design in Silhouette Studio and then I cut the design out of several different patterned papers from the Shimelle Starshine collection.

After trimming my four leafed clovers out of different pieces of patterned papers, I used a bone folder to create a crease down the center of each leaf in the design, and then used my fingers to puff each piece of the clover up, creating a 3D design.

I then placed my four leaf clovers onto a white background into a circular design and then I printed a small black and white photo and adhered it to my page. I used a sewing machine with white thread to adhere a couple of my die cut shapes.

I used Thickers from the collection to spell out “lucky” and I handcut the subtitle “remember this” out of patterned paper and adhered on the left hand side of my page. I sprinkled some navy blue spray mist across my page and then adhered chipboard, acrylic shapes, and flair stickers. I love them all so much that I couldn’t pick just one.

To finish off my page I used the star roller stamp and Shimelle phrase stamp. I have a “thing” for phrase and date stamps and try to use them whenever possible on projects. Even though this page, might not look like I started with Saint Patrick’s Day in mind, it works for me. It showcases the big bold bright colors that I love so much and my children which I feel “lucky” to call mine.

I hope this page has inspired you to create your own page with plenty of repeated shapes. Will you choose hearts, stars, clovers, circles, or something a bit funky like trees, florals, or unicorn silhouettes? Whatever you pick, we’d love to see what you make!

Comment [6]

Time for the next NSD challenge! It requires a stamp or two, but it’s simple as can be!

Select the photos for your scrapbook page and also an image or two to stamp. Stamp your designs onto paper scraps or plain cardstock, fancy them up in any way you like (colouring, embossing, glittering perhaps!), cut them out and embellish your page using these stamped images right on top of your photo!

I went for a little scattering of Lawn Fawn Easter eggs for some simple embellishment down the side of the photos. Guest artist Jossie Segura has a super cute twist for this one…

She stamped hats for the people in her photos!

I really loved this picture and knew it had to be used on a layout. This photo is of my daughter and niece. They were inseparable when they were little but are now growing into their own. This photo for me captures them being silly and young at heart. I went a little crazy stamping the bunny ears then cut around them to make it appear as the bunnies were hiding behind that beautiful Starshine washi. I also loved using the Starshine clear stickers. I did my journaling on the adorable notepad that comes with the Starshine rotary phrase stamp.

Your turn! Stamp your favourite image and find a way to pop it on top of a photo. Share your page with us here!

Jossie M. Segura loves cupcakes, bows, and pretty paper. Find more from Jossie on Instagram, Pinterest, and her blog.

Comment [6]