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

So the bad news is that I fell behind and then I broke the internets. Turns out it takes a lot of effort to break the internets, hence the falling behind. But there is good news: if you can see this (which apparently you can), then I have fixed the internets and this is a happy, happy thing. For the longer the internets remain broken, the further behind one can fall, in this case.

If you followed all my logic right there and only had to read it once to understand, I think I should probably give you a golden ticket and welcome you to my world. Enjoy your adventures here, won’t you?

So back to this scrapbooking stuff! This starting point became the layout above, with papers from the Amy Tangerine collection and embellishments from Nightfall and a photo from last Halloween. (Even if you’re not a Halloween person, you may like Nightfall as an autumn collection. The papers are designs that could go either direction, then they’ve done separate embellishments so you can add on the Halloween-themed things or the autumn-themed things. Just in case you like leaves but not jack-o-lanterns.)

_{Clockwise from top left: one, two, three and four, all from this starting point.}

Here are four of my favourites from all the layouts posted for the last starting point! I may have giggled reading various comments on your posts about how many scraps were layered on that page before a single photo was stuck down! But I promise that giggling was not what broke the internets.

Assuming I can go through the next twenty-four hours without breaking those internets again, there will be a new Camera School post and a sketch video tomorrow!

Now I shall leave you while I calmly repeat to myself, ‘Do not upset the technology. Do not upset the technology.’

xlovesx

PS: Don’t forget, you can find the current starting point here. Post your link by Saturday!

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Congratulations to Jackie, who wins admission to True Scrap II.

Jackie, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) and we’ll get you all set for True Scrap this October!

So sorry I could only have one winner of this great prize! You can still join in for the event here or choose individual workshops from the spring event here. Just a heads up: if you are thinking about signing up, it’s worth doing this before the 30th of September, as Lain (the event hostess) is offering some extra things to those who sign up by that date. Of course you can sign up whenever you would like – True Scrap II starts on the 20th of October.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment, and this giveaway from the lovely folks at the V&A is open until Friday, so don’t miss that.

Have a great week!

xlovesx

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Doing any scrapping this weekend? Here’s a new Scrapbooking Starting Point for you. It’s an easy start with four boxes of paper (patterned or solid) cut to 5.5” square plus one narrow strip across the middle (I used a barcode strip from a sheet of patterned paper).

Now it’s your turn: take this starting point and recreate it (or something similar) with your own stash of papers. You can work in any theme or colour scheme. Finish the page from there and share it with us!

Stop by this evening to see the finished layout and some of my favourites from the last starting point too. (If you’re reading this on Sunday morning, you have a few hours to post your link for last week’s challenge!)

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On the tenth of the month, we write lists of ten things. Ten of any types of things you would like to share! This month, in celebration of Camera School, I wanted to share ten things I love to photograph. Simple!

Concerts.

Cupcakes.

Leaves.

Laughter.

Families.

Friends in fancy footwear.

Seasides.

Snow days.

Blue skies.

And blue seas.

Now it’s your turn – blog ten things or scrapbook ten things and upload your page to an online gallery, and share a link here:

May the tenth of September treat you very well indeed!

xlovesx

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It’s a big giveaway this weekend. Just sayin’.

This weekend, one commenter will win admission to True Scrap II, coming up on the 20th – 22nd October. True Scrap is a scrapbooking convention in your own living room, and includes seventeen workshops (and some other fabulousness) you can watch online while chatting with other participants. Plus everyone gets permanent access to the recordings of each workshop so you can watch them at any time that suits your schedule. Take a look here to see all the different workshops scheduled throughout the three days of super scrappiness.

Want a taste of True Scrap? You can purchase individual workshops from the first event right here. For the first event, my class was all about getting plenty of pages from your stash so you can stretch your scrappy spending and eliminate the waste factor. Or you can pick up a stamping workshop with Jennifer McGuire, texture tips with Nic Howard, photography with Tracey Clark or anything else that was part of the spring event.

I’m teaching a brand new workshop at True Scrap II this October, and it’s all about my album system. I’ve touched on my album-keeping philosophy a bit here, here and here, but that’s just an introduction. In this workshop I’ll be covering all new content and taking you through my whole process for how much I plan in advance, how I make it all work without stress while I’m making pages and how I use extra photos, writing and ephemera to add another level to albums that takes them from just a collection of pages to something that tells the story to anyone who opens that book, even if they don’t ‘understand’ the scrapbooking thing. These are ideas that have made me so excited to scrapbook and I’ve never, ever been happier with my albums. So I’m very excited to share this with all the True Scrap participants next month!

But this weekend, you can WIN True Scrap II and get the whole shebang – it would usually cost $127.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post saying which of the workshops sounds most exciting to you! Share this post on Twitter or Facebook for up to two additional entries in the drawing!

Entries close at midnight Sunday UK time and the winner will be posted Monday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!

Good luck!

xlovesx

PS: Don’t forget – if you sign up for True Scrap II after clicking through from my blog, you can also have a shimelle.com class of your choice – any existing class or save it for the next class next month! Just forward your receipt to shimelle at gmail dot com to claim your bonus class pass.

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The Victoria & Albert Museum is one of my favourite spots in all of London, so I have to admit I was a little giddy when they invited me to take a sneak peek at their newest exhibition: Power of Making. It has just opened to the public and it’s free to view, so you can stop by to see this curated collection in celebration of all kinds of making. When I say ‘all kinds’ of making, I do mean a wide variety. Like…

…a lifelike baby sculpted from cake and marzipan. Truly. Michelle Wibowo’s work is certainly a whole other level to making a dozen cupcakes.

But there was one item on the list that made all the difference to me. One of the smallest items in the entire exhibition, just nondescript in a little glass case. Teeny-tiny in real life…

This is ‘Alphabet’ by Dalton Ghetti. Tiny and perfectly formed letters carved from the graphite of well-worn pencils. This is every bit as amazing in real life as I had hoped. I have so much respect for both the idea and the skill in crafting this collection. It took nearly three years to complete – such patience and focus.

From a distance, this piece looks like a brightly-coloured quilt, but up close you can see the twist in Sabrina Gschwandtner’s work. The quilt is made from film footage from early feminist documentaries and stitched into traditional quilt block patterns, illuminated by a light-box.

This one is under so many layers of glass that it looks far more lovely in real life than on a photography, but I assume if you read my blog you have at least some sort of appreciate of things made from paper. So how about such a detailed sculpture entirely made from paper? It’s so delicate! See more of Alan and Patty Eckman’s paper work here.

There are many bicycles in the collection – wooden, handcarved, nylon, pedal bikes and superduper motorcycles. But this one! It’s entirely sparkly!

I suppose that doesn’t sound like appropriate commentary like an actual art critic but come on: SPARKLY BICYCLE! What’s not to love?

This piece has such a fab story, stitched by Major A. T. Casdagli while being held as a prisoner of war by the Nazis. He sat and stitched for weeks while in captivity, including various emblems that would then lead his captors to display the completed sampler on the wall. Except they didn’t bother to read the morse code border in the frame, which spelled out a rather defiant message to Hitler himself. Rebel stitchery!

Does this fellow look familiar? He’s one of the handmade puppets from Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, created by Ian MacKinnon and Peter Saunders. He’s so lush in real life and really seems to have a personality. It’s almost difficult to realise he’s not going to move or say anything!

Power of Making is one of those exhibitions that is best appreciated if you read all the cards as you go through the room. There’s so much insight into not just how people make but also why they make things by hand and how they teach and share the love of making things by hand. There’s a mix of older making techniques like building stone walls to the most modern of making technology like iPad apps and 3D printers. Throughout the exhibit’s run, there are assorted events that bring things even more to life, from a handbag-making workshop to free demonstrations on Fridays and Saturdays. Ben Wilson who made the sparkly bicycle will teach young people how to bling up their own wheels; during half-term there’s a special showing of Fantastic Mr Fox. The overall programme has a great mix of events for kids, hobbyist adults and professional creatives. Power of Making is open at the V&A until the 2nd of January 2012.

And now, a giveaway! I have a bonus copy of the Power of Making book that accompanies the exhibit, filled with essays on different concepts of making and photos of works on this theme. To enter, just leave a comment on this post. If you’re a Twitter user, you can put your name in the hat another time by tweeting this: check out #powerofmaking – the new exhibit @V_and_A (and enter to win a copy of the powerofmaking book!) http://ow.ly/6pFLW

Entries close next Friday (16th September 2011) at midnight UK time.

Good luck!

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September first was a pretty big day this year – back to school with Learn Something New but also my first official day designing for American Crafts. My first project for their Studio blog is online now and you can see the full layout here. So excited to be working with American Crafts over the next year! Click here to shop from oodles and oodles of American Crafts supplies, including nearly two hundred currently on sale!

xlovesx

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When I flip through my photos, there are two types of pictures that make me happy to be a scrapbooker: photos that are beautiful and photos that tell a good story. Unfortunately these are not always the same images. We all have those photos, right? The kind that capture an amazing memory but they are blurry or washed out or yellowed or whatever else makes them imperfect.

Sometimes, that amazing moment is enough to make the photo perfectly imperfect and I leave those images alone entirely. But sometimes, it’s worth a shot to improve an image. Take these two pictures for example:

Both taken on the same night, when we went to play Q-Golf, which is a bit of a mix of miniature golf and billiards, in which you work your way through a course with both a pool cue and a golf club. It was outdoors at night and the flood lighting was uneven. Which made photos a bit more of a challenge than usual. The photo on the left has good colour and made the best of the lighting, but there’s not much to the story here and the composition isn’t particularly fabulous. The image on the right is loaded with way more meaning – it proves I was actually able to sink that darn golf ball eventually (trust me, I need proof!) and captures my ‘I am really concentrating’ posture. But the lighting is all off so the colour is completely washed. I’d much rather scrapbook the photo on the right, but since it is in focus it’s worth a try to improve it a bit. I usually go with one of three options: cropping, colour-correcting or adding a vintage wash.

Find a creative crop
Sometimes a crop can help… other times it doesn’t do much at all. Converting an image to black and white can get rid of the colour problem. Here the crop doesn’t really help tell the story and there’s not sharp enough focus for it to be a great improvement, but it’s worth a shot as sometimes it’s the magic fix.

Restore the colours
Oh technology, you can be fabulous. There are plenty of easy ways to try correcting the colours. In this case, the colours were easy to improve with just a few clicks. The image on the left is the result of just the Auto Colour command in Photoshop, but you don’t need Photoshop or any expensive software to edit an image. The version on the right was colour corrected with the auto-fix button on Picnik, a free online photo editor. I would say these are good enough to work now, though more fine edits could improve the colour even more, which might be worth the time for extra-special images.

Give it a vintage wash
Or it can be fun to go in the other direction entirely and go with something that is very obviously edited. This is a case of personal preference – love or hate obvious processing! The processed version on the right comes from Rad Lab by Totally Rad Actions, and again you could use Picnik for vintage effects.

Ready for assignment three? Find a photo in your existing library that has a story you like but the quality of the image lets you down. Try any or all of these fixes and see what happens!

Good luck and happy editing!

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