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

I have to admit filming the products in a new collection without getting stuck in immediately with scissors, glue, and photos is tough! It’s a hard life, I know, but with that out of the way now I can have fun actually making stuff! For my first project, I wanted to make a scrapbook page with plenty of colourful layers and other than that, I didn’t have much of a plan! But you can watch the whole process if you like.

Everything on this page is from the Glitter Girl collection. I also used a small heart punch and some grey ink, but that’s it!

The journaling for this page was something I’d already written and posted with the photo here on Instagram, though I changed the voice from ‘him’ to ‘you’ to be more consistent with my family albums. I knew I wanted to use lots of colour with this picture and its big amount of white and black, because the story is actually quite cute and whimsical. If the same photo had a more sombre story, I think it would work beautifully with a largely soft white, grey, and black colour scheme, but that just doesn’t suit the energy in this memory for me. Colour it is!

The Glitter Girl collection ships to stores in mid August, and I can’t wait to see what you make with all these colours and patterns.

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Sometimes we need to shake things up a little bit. Not a lot. Just a little shift in the routine makes things feel new, right? I’ve needed that when scrapbooking and making videos lately, but I think I’ve found a simple little premise to set me up for some happy creating for at least a few weeks: making one big choice.

Starting with this video, I’ll be sharing some simple pages that come from one big decision, like how this layout all came from the decision between two different raindrop-printed patterned papers. This way I can show you both options, you can decide if you would make the same decision on your own desk, and if we want, we can try to figure out why. (If we don’t want, we can just make layouts we like without worrying about all the why and that’s always a good thing too.)

Supplies include papers and die-cuts from my Starshine collection and Amy’s On a Whim collection, plus stickers from True Stories, red Fitzgerald Thickers, and a Studio Calico stamp set.

If this type of design process video helps you but you’d like to break things down further, take a look at Design Decisions, a class now available in a self-paced format that is entirely based on the choices we make on each new page.

I’d love to hear if you think you’d choose the same patterned paper or a different option for a page like this – or if you’ve used either of the raindrop papers on pages of your own, please share what you’ve made!

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I have a photo from a wedding where there are literally 100 faces in a single 4×6 landscape print. I keep looking at embellishments, but I’m not sure what to use that won’t overwhelm the photo. Glitter Girl, can you help?

Of course she can! Try using mostly paper for your embellishment and an overlay of vellum to preserve a roll call for your crowded group photo.

Supplies for this page include plenty of patterned papers from the Tealightful collection from Pebbles and Chasing Dreams by Maggie Holmes. Both letter sticker sets are older (grey Sassafras letters and white puffy Thickers from Dear Lizzy), and the only other embellishments are enamel dots, pearl dots, and pearl brads. You’ll need a sheet of vellum to make the overlay, of course.

As always, Glitter Girl would love to see what you’re making and hear your questions! Please stop by our Facebook group Scrapbook like a Superhero and say hello.

Have you scrapbooked a group photo that made you think twice about your usual embellishment process? We’d love to see your solution! Please join the link up below to share what you’ve made – you can link to your blog, social media account, or scrapbooking gallery OR just upload the photo from your computer. Happy scrapping!

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I try to use my stamps when I scrapbook, but I find I’m just using something faded into the background and then maybe a small design scattered here and there. I would love to make my favourite stamps more of a feature on my pages, but I’m not sure how to compose the rest of the page. Glitter Girl, can you help?

Of course she can. Try a simple composition of two photos and one stamp that you can put right in the centre!

Unfortunately the Hero Arts coffee cup stamp I used is quite old and I haven’t found it online with a quick search. There are many coffee stamps currently available though, from Hero and other manufacturers, like this selection. The papers are all old too, I’m afraid! Cosmo Cricket, October Afternoon, and Sassafras, though the grey coffee cup paper is still available in the True Stories 6×6 pad. You might find you have these older items in your stash, but if not, don’t fret: it’s easy to substitute the types of patterns that are there: find a dot, a small and a large floral, and some single colour patterns like a check or swirl design, and they will go together in exactly the same way.

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I should have planned this post for World Book Day last week if I’d thought ahead, but of course I didn’t. There’s never a bad day for Harry Potter scrapbooking, is there? I have an entire album of layouts from one day at the studio tour, so I better make a start on the photos from our trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

I will admit upfront that we visited Universal Studios entirely for the Harry Potter element. Universal doesn’t cater for the super young in the same way that Disney does. Their target audience is older and even the Dr Seuss and Minion rides have height requirements. We managed the Dr Seuss carousel, but the rides here are more fabulous if you love the twists and turns of serious roller coasters, and well… that is not my jam. But I wanted to see all the details of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, brought to life in a way you could just be fully immersed. And it is pretty amazing.

But the youngest member of the party was most excited by the train. Of course.

Some of the supplies on this page are far, far too old to be in stores (like that 2009 paper!) but you can find the newer stuff, I promise. Red camera paper and white foam Thickers by Amy Tangerine, train stamp from Go Now Go, stickers and patterned paper from Little by Little, star vellum from Christmas Magic, die cuts by Pink Paislee, enamel dots by Doodlebug, and Typecast journaling paper by WeR Memory Keepers. And seriously, someone needs to make those star-shaped rhinestones like Jenni Bowlin did back in the day. They are so lovely! The woodgrain Thickers were a Studio Calico exclusive about five years ago. I may have rationed them.

If anyone sees steam train washi tape, please let me know. For today I went with this grey Amy Tangerine tape from her first collection for its colour and cuteness. But I have a lot of steam train photos and I don’t see this obsession ending any time soon. So steam train washi: it needs to happen.

Thanks for taking a look! And not rolling your eyes too much at the sheer number of Harry Potter scrapbook pages I have made over the years.

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I can’t be alone in loving to collect 6×6 paper pads. But they are piling up quicker than I can figure out how to use them on my scrapbook pages! I’d love some simple page formulas to work with this size. Glitter Girl, can you help?

Of course she can. This week Glitter Girl shares a page composition formula for four sheets of 6×6 paper plus a circle punch. With her embellishments, she’s taking inspiration from the March 30 Day Colouring Challenge at from Kathy at The Daily Marker.

Come along for the adventure!

The papers featured this week come from the Oh My Heart collection by Paige Evans for Pink Paislee. I love the beautifully bright and happy colours in this collection! The floral stamp is by Amy Tangerine, embossed with white embossing powder and Versamark ink, then coloured with Sharpies. The tile letter stickers are from Heidi Swapp but are several years old now I’m afraid. The silver Thickers are Fitzgerald from my True Stories collection.

This page turned out to be quite the example of embracing things as they go. The colouring was certainly an experiment and I didn’t expect to not be able to colour the centres of the flowers, but mixing the colours of the petals instead worked just fine. And I managed to get green ink on the layout not once but twice! Sigh. One spot is still there and I’m just going to leave it. The larger smudge bothered me more and I just chose to move the embellishment there to cover it rather than bring it down to the bottom edge like I first imagined. Actually, with a few days passed and going back to look, I like it there better, so yay for happy accidents!

A few posts from the archives might be useful if you’re looking for more to do with your 6×6 paper pads on 12×12 pages:
Glitter Girl’s take on minimal supplies
A rainbow-filled colour story

If you’re busy scrapping with your 6×6 paper stash, please share what you’re making! This link up will remain open until the end of the month, and you can choose to upload a picture or link to your blog, Facebook post, Instagram picture, or scrapbooking gallery.

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With just a week until the doors open upon Creativation, the CHA trade show for 2017, it feels like a perfect time to think about using (or at least earmarking) all the supplies we’ve gathered over the years. Every day for the next week, I’ll share ideas for scrapbooking with my previous collections with American Crafts. Today we head all the way back to that original collection, which was just called ‘Shimelle’. Trivia: I had hoped it would be called Pretty Paper, but for marketing reasons, it was name only. In my head, this is still my Pretty Paper collection! First up, here’s a beautiful project from contributing designer Meghann Andrew, mixing that original collection with paper from Starshine.

When creating a layout, I typically try to match the style of the layout with the mood in my photo. When I came across a photo of my daughter asleep on the floor after playing with her toys, I wanted to create a playful layout, almost as though toys were scattered around my photo.

As soon as I saw the Phoenix paper from the Starshine collection, I knew that it would create the perfect background for this fun, colorful page. It also helped me to dictate the design of my layout, using a circular photo to match the colorful, circular lines on the paper, and arranging my embellishments in a circular frame around the photo.

I typically use several different patterned papers on my layouts, but I didn’t want to compete with the lovely background paper. So, I decided to die-cut part of my title from Starshine patterns. This added more color and different patterns to the page. Since I also kept the title on the radial axis, it became a starting point for my embellishment cloud around the photo.

Mixing and matching several of the Shimelle collections from American Crafts was easy, and gave me so many different options to add embellishment. I’d love for you to take a look at how this layout came together, and how I mixed and matched several collections. It certainly was a fun layout to create!

Hands up if you have any of this original collection sitting in your stash to this day! If you have pages in your gallery or on your own blog that you’ve created with this collection, please share in the comments – the more the merrier!

Each of these is clickable for additional layouts and videos from the archive here, with those projects I made in the early days of this collection with American Crafts. And what came after this collection that was called Pretty Paper but was not called Pretty Paper? That would be something we’ll review tomorrow!

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Today I’m joined by a certain lady named Orange who has me thinking I really need to get my head thinking more creatively about die-cutting! I use my Silhouette most often when I need to make dozens of the same item, like party invitations, and there is a wealth of beauty in creating unique pieces with the Silhouette rather than my assembly line approach. I hope Orange inspires you as much as she has me, and I also hope you enjoy something to get you started or to help build your cut file library.

I’ve been looking for the perfect way to document this photograph of my daughter watching the fireworks nearly two years ago. I struggle when it comes to being a “themey” scrapper — I’m just not good at it — I mostly focus on those everyday moments, but I really wanted to scrap this photo!

The fireworks that we were watching were set to music and so one day, it just popped into my head to use the title “Tick Tick Tick Boom!” from the song by The Hives (which also happens to be one of the songs from that night).

Shimelle’s Starshine collection fit perfectly because there was the navy blue and red, traditional “Fourth of July” colors, but balanced by the less “themey” yellow and bright green! I created three different cut files for this layout — two for the title and one that looks like fireworks to use as a mask.

Now I realise I’m definitely one guilty of letting my Silhouette gather dust, then having a flash of cutting inspiration and firing it up to cut as much paper as I can find. (Well, maybe not all the paper I can find. I can find a great deal of paper.) Recently that included cutting the days of the week in giant size for some big photo scrapping. Those penned words were a kit from the Two Peas digital store years ago, but now I’m delighted to share them with you here, in case you might find them useful to cut the days of the week or months of the year. They can also be added digitally to a photo if that’s more your style!

Click here to download the Penned Dates digital kit.

If you need help cutting PNG files on your Silhouette, this video tutorial will probably help! It’s quite a simple process once you know which buttons you need to click.

Happy scrapping!

Today’s Guest Artist: Orange Gearle loves music, wine, and spending time with family. You can find more from Orange on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and her blog.

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