In the last few years, it often seems all the shop announcements in the scrapbooking world have a sad tale, so I am very happy to change that up and introduce a new kid on the block! Mind the Scrap is a new scrapbooking kit club based here in the UK. Their debut kit was last month and in their second kit, the letter option is none other than the foam Fitzgerald Thickers from my True Stories collection, which I was very happy to learn. So much so that I put together a little extra for the first forty-five September kits sold, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
This video includes two parts – the first five minutes is an unboxing of the September Mind the Scrap kit, and starting at 5:10, there is an As it Happens process video of this travel scrapbook page coming together.
I took that airport photo with just my phone and I smiled a lot when it came up on the screen like that silhouette with the passport visible. Porto airport is so light and lovely, even if the pilots’ strike made our travel plans a little… interesting. I didn’t have my own passport until I was nineteen, and I still randomly get Wonder Boy’s passport out of the drawer just to marvel in its cuteness for a moment. Even baby passport photos are funny!
If you’re here in the UK (or possibly nearby!), then it’s easy for you to find this entire kit all ready for you at Mind the Scrap. For those shopping in the US or elsewhere, you can find some elements of the kit in other shops, though some of the kit is exclusive. Look for Crate Paper Poolside (sb.com // blue moon), Pink Paislee Atlas (sb.com // blue moon), and Imaginisce Happy Traveler (sb.com) collections, plus the Fitzgerald Thickers (sb.com // blue moon) from True Stories!
Thank you so much to Mind the Scrap for including my Thickers in their kit and for sending me a kit to try!
Today I’m delighted to welcome May Flaum to share how she’s been inspired to get scrapbooking with the True Stories collection. May is hilarious and has an above-average appreciation of Zoolander, and this along with her fabulous crafting and teaching skills, make her one of my favourite people. I wish she lived much closer than the zillion miles away of reality. But at least today we can be found here in the same place, in some way or another. I hope you enjoy her video!
I was inspired by this layout and really was struck by the simple design for two landscape oriented 4×6 photos – something I rarely do! I was also struck with the challenge of using a lot of patterned paper. I tend to be a mostly cardstock girl so I was excited to get in touch with my patterned side and play.
The vellum paper (BlueMoon // SB.com) was perfect for this layout, and I had an absolute blast mixing and matching new favorites with a few classic supplies. I was able to be inspired by Shimelle’s layout and get that lovely paper used while staying true to my own style. To me, being able to try new things and incorporate fresh ideas while staying true to what feels like you is crafty nirvana.
Other supplies for this page include wood veneer borders, vellum tags, wooden buttons, and sticker book from the True Stories collection (BlueMoon // SB.com), black glitter Thickers, plus wood veneer hearts, buttons, sequins, and kraft cardstock. (Shopping through these affiliate links adds no cost to your order but supports this site and makes guests like May possible. Thanks!)
How long has it been since you made a page with two 4×6 photos? May and I want to see! Share a link to something new or an old favourite with this photo arrangement in the comments or tag us on Twitter or Instagram. Happy scrapping!
May Flaum is a lifelong crafter that makes her home with her two daughters and husband in California. She doesn’t believe her scrapbooks can have too much stitching, sequins, or kraft cardstock and is never found without a great pair of scissors. From scrapbook layouts to mixed media creations, when not traveling she can be found spending time in her studio blogging, creating, and teaching on-line classes. For more information about her classes and read her blog visit her website or follow her on Instagram
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
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.
We have taken really goofy pictures for many years now. Having a child now makes this socially acceptable. WHYDID NO ONETELL 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.
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.
With a mix of sunshine and showers but warmer temperatures, it definitely feels like spring in my neighbourhood, and suddenly I’m in the mood to scrapbook with flowers and sunshines and… kites. I mean, I own a kite. It’s here somewhere. I can tell you it’s red even though I can’t tell you the last time I attempted to fly it or exactly where it’s stashed away. But I loved these kite stamps designed by Lindsay Letters for Studio Calico, so I needed to figure out how to put them to use on something quicker than I could locate a kite in the cupboard!
For the kites at the top of this page, I wanted to try using one colour of ink but in two shades, so the text and the outline are stamped with a freshly inked stamp, but the solid block of colour is first stamped on scrap paper so a second stamping gives the paler colour. I love this with stamp sets that have the separate pieces for the outline and the block!
Other supplies for this layout include an older sheet of Cosmo Cricket paper for the background and a mix of Crate Paper designs for the other paper elements. The gold chipboard hearts were in the Studio Calico Essentials line and the enamel dots were from a Prima collection many moons ago.
The ‘Be Brave’ sentiment stamp in this set encouraged me to transfer a journal entry to a few 4×6 cards in Wonder Boy’s baby book. Forgive the sappy writing, but basically I wanted to share a very specific memory I have of when I remember that I needed to stop being scared of everything in the world, and how it made a big difference to my life. (Don’t get me wrong: I am still scared of a great many things, but I just remember a very philosophical moment when I was twelve when I let some of the sillier fears go!) Anyway, the stamping: If I use water and Distress Inks for a painted effect, I usually do all the black stamping first then fill in with the colour. I wondered if changing the order would make any difference to the look, and it does. I stamped the solid shape in Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink and then softened it with a paintbrush and plain water. Once that was dry, I stamped the outline and sentiment in black dye ink over the top. It’s a softer look where the watercolour paper had already soaked up all the colour. Not a huge difference, but sometimes little differences are lovely.
This stamp set also has a lovely ‘string’ for the kites that can be used on its own. It’s a good size for a 4×6 card and adds a nice little flourish to the divide between journaling and pattern on a card for a Project Life album. There are cute words too! (The flair badge is from Hey Little Magpie, the washi tape is from a Studio Calico kit.)
I recently added a few grey Copic markers to my collection, mostly purchased for shading and adding shadows, but I wondered how they would look on their own for something very simple. A quick bookmark with the kite coloured in with those pens plus a generous spray of shimmer let me see how they were blending, but I guess I really shouldn’t use a shimmer-topped bookmark in a library book, now that I think about it.
Another scrapbook page! I’m working on a series of pages like this with Wonder Boy’s monthly portraits printed at 8×12, with a description of him at that particular age. I love how the string from the kite and the sentiments worked on a layout like this, where it feels like the areas of embellishment deserve to be extra dressy since the photo takes up the majority of the page. In that detail shot, you can see how my scrapping process makes this a little imperfect, where there is that gap in the stamped image because I’m stamping over the various layers. If this sort of thing really bothers you, just stamp twice – once on the flattest layer (so the photo in this case) and once on your layered embellishment, not yet attached to the photo. Then put the two together so they fit and the image will be seamless. One day I will learn to think ahead rather than just adding things as I go, but that day was not this day and those layers were already stuck in place. Also handy to know: if you’re using a photographic print and stamping with staz-on ink, you can use the staz-on cleaner to remove just the ink from your photo and stamp again. Obviously that will not work with paper, and will not necessarily work with images printed rather than being exposed on photo paper, but you could always test on off-cut or under a layer if you’re not sure. (The difference in those printing methods is something we talked about on the Story-Centered Albums course and I found myself stuck for the names of the different processes. Turns out there is a decent explanation of the two ways to print photos on Wikipedia. I prefer the second option, though I do print some photos at home as well.)
The large stamp set I used here is the alphabet that comes with the Make it Big online class Paige Evans is teaching at Studio Calico. I contributed another page in this series of big photo pages to her class.
And two quick cards to finish, using Distress Inks as watercolours. Taking some of the other elements away, these stamps take on a bit of an argyle feel that made me want to use just a few diamonds together for simple designs. For the blue card, I stamped the black kite outline on watercolour paper, filled in the shape with water, then added colour from the Mermaid Lagoon Distress ink pad by stamping the ink onto my acrylic block and applying it with a paint brush. Very simple! For the second card, I put the colour in the background by again stamping the ink right onto my acrylic block, but then applying that to wet watercolour paper and just continuing to add ink and water until the three shades blended together. (I used Mermaid Lagoon, Abandoned Coral, and Cracked Pistachio.) Once it was definitely completely dry, I stamped the kites and sentiments on top in black ink. The middle kite with the text in negative needed some cleaning up with a pen because the watercolour paper is quite textured, but it didn’t take much to clean up those lines in the centre. The enamel hearts are from this True Stories pack.
Phew. In the time it took to read all that, I could probably find the kite in the cupboard. Hope you have a high-flying weekend!
I find it physically impossible to leave a shop filled with cute Japanese stationery without buying at least a tiny notepad or sheet of stickers, so I’m a little confused with myself when it comes to my scrapbooking style and embracing supplies on the saccharin end of the cuteness spectrum. Even with baby pages I’m not finding myself gravitating toward all things smiley face and kawaii. The more I looked at what I had left from that combination of the Walden and Underground kits I’ve been working through, the more I realised how I kept pushing the cutesy stuff aside until my desk was basically left with just that. Time to take all the cute-yet-random and try to put it together for another page.
I’m sharing these a teensy bit out of order so this was the fourth layout I made with this combination of kits and the page I shared yesterday was actually the fifth. I find this background paper an interesting conundrum: do you feel sky papers should be… sky coloured? I love working with blue sky prints and it took me a little while to come round to the idea of the orange paper with its happy little clouds, but once I embraced the idea of all the cute, then I somehow found it a bit easier to just detach from reality and accept all the colours, patterns, and motifs together on one 12×12 canvas. I will say it’s a little different from the vast majority of my pages, but I hope it is just enough in line with my style that it will work as I turn the pages of the album.
I ended up with a grammar issue again. And had a moment about the definition of cider in two different countries. Those two things combined with the cutesy angle somehow make me feel like this is some sort of time warp and I’ve narrated this video at age twenty, completely in awe of the entirety of the world. Sigh. This ‘as it happens’ concept may be the end of my illusion that I do not obsess about small things with no big purpose in the world, one scrapbook page at a time.
Definitely feeling ready to move on to new supplies for new pages and videos now. What to pick, what to pick!
Comment [7]
