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

Congratulations to Laura, who wins the pretty geometric heart pendant from Love Cat Creations.

Laura, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your address.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment.

Have a great week!

xlovesx

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This time last year, I declared it wedding week on my blog and you know what? I’m thinking this should be an annual event. So welcome to Wedding Week 2011! How’s that for spontaneous theming? By now I’ve probably shared way more wedding things from my own wedding than can be exciting to anyone who isn’t me, but rest assured I have actually attended weddings of other people. It’s an amazing concept. So if I add their wedding fun into the mix, I’m pretty sure there’s a whole week of stuff to share. (Plus, there’s a new 4×6 Photo Love class tomorrow, so if you have scrapping time today and haven’t entered the seven photo challenge, hop to it while you still have two chances to win!)

To kick off Wedding Week, here are three scrapbook pages I made for the wedding themed garden at Two Peas this summer. This first page is a real rarity for me – no writing! I really thought about that for a while because pages without any writing really sadden me. When you see just one page at a time in a scrapper’s gallery, it’s easy to assume that one page without any writing is representative of albums filled with pages without writing and I can’t cope with that idea. If we never write on our pages, there is very little to differentiate a beautiful scrapbook page from one of those shoeboxes of old photos in an antique store, with all the pictures of unidentified people doing unidentified things. I really want more than that from my albums.

But I think by now you know that. And sometimes it’s nice to just have a page here or there with just a photo, like a chapter break in a novel. Breathing room. So I added this to my album with no writing. But I assure you, it’s surrounded by pages with plenty of words indeed.

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At our reception, we used books instead of numbers to mark the tables. So that needed a little explanation in our wedding album. It was quite funny to see the people on each table try to make a connection to the book chosen to represent them. Sometimes there was a definite link to the guests… other times it was just a book that had some sort of meaning to both of us.

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and details.}

And this page makes a break in the album between the fancier professional photos and the haphazard images that came from the vintage cameras on each table. I wanted to start that section with a bit of explanation as to why the old cameras were there, as several people had mentioned in advance that surely we wouldn’t get any decent photos from these cameras at all. And truly, the vast majority are blurry, under-, over- or double-exposed and of course very grainy as they were all shot indoors without flash. But there were plenty of pictures that made them completely worthwhile – unexpected photos that captured great expressions and different combinations of guests. I love those pictures and am so very glad we had film as well as digital on our wedding day.

So… let’s see what other wedding fun I can find to share this week! And maybe you’ll join me in making a wedding-themed project or two!

xlovesx

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Everybody loves a sale for a long weekend, right? I have just a few albums that need a home. I’ve used all of these designs in workshops but have a few left over and now you can grab them at a great price – while supplies last.

6×8 Box Album £15
(includes first class shipping cost of £4.90)
Inside page size of 6×8 inside a sturdy, wrap-around box album. Great for special projects! Includes 6 page protectors – 3 full page and 3 divided for 4×6 photos. Ring binder mechanism means you can add more pages or protectors. Available in red or navy blue canvas or black bonded leather with white stitching.

Red Canvas Cover
SOLD OUT

Blue Canvas Cover

Black Bonded Leather Cover

8×8 Ring Binders by American Crafts – Pack of 2 Albums – £22
(includes first class shipping cost of £4.90)
Red fabric cover, perfect for a Christmas album. Keep both for yourself or gift one to a friend.
Each album includes 10 8×8 page protectors inside.
SOLD OUT

12×12 Ring Binders by American Crafts – Pack of 2 Albums – £48
(includes first class shipping cost of £8.95)
Black and white damask print. Keep both for yourself or gift one to a friend.
Each album includes 10 12×12 page protectors
SOLD OUT

8×8 Ring Binders – Artisan Albums by Pink Paislee – £8
(includes first class shipping cost of £2.48)
Cream canvas cover with orange print.
Includes 6 chipboard pages.
SOLD OUT

All albums are available with UK shipping only and are in very limited stock. Grab a bargain while it lasts!

This weekend, one commenter will win a Wooden heart pendant from Love Cat Creations. You get to choose which design you would most like to win, the floral or the geometric design.

Stephanie from Love Cat Creations has been creating beautiful and unique wooden jewellery for the past year. She explains, “I have always had a creative side. I am inspired by everything! From nature, vintage imagery, bold bright colours, pattern, texture and interesting forms. I’m always looking to create new and exciting pieces of jewellery.” You can see more of Stephanie’s work in her shop or you can like her facebook page to stay updated with her gorgeous work.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post with your favourite of the two designs, the geometric or the floral heart.

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

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If I’ve ever emailed you more than a couple sentences, chances are I signed it with love and glitter, shimelle. And I mean ‘ever’ because I’ve been signing my emails like that since I was fifteen or sixteen years old. A few times I’ve veered away, and each time, someone would reply and ask if something was wrong because I hadn’t signed off in my usual sparkly way. So the glitter is apparently here to stay.

The first year I had an email account, I tried to sign off with love and something unique each time. Love and peace, love and sunscreen, love and obscure literary references… but love and glitter somehow stuck. I used glittertastic as a screen name for a long time and when someone had already taken Shimelle as a username on Twitter, I opted for glittershim. So let it be clear: I am very much pro-glitter.

If you want to hear more of my ramblings about glitter and how it pertains to scrapbooking, have a listen to this week’s edition of the Paperclipping Roundtable – episode 80. Ana Cabrera of Craftification and I talk about all sorts of crazy glitter fun with the regular PRT crew of Noell, Nancy and Izzy. (I even made sure I was wearing glittery nail polish while we recorded the episode, but sadly you can’t really see that from podcast. Imagine it, anyway. Sparkles aplenty.)

For something a little more visual, I have a page (complete with embarrassing junior high photo!) over on the JBS blog too!

(And a happy little card with a bit of sparkle to try to will the weather to give us a few more sunny days!)

xlovesx

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Time for something a little different for this week’s sketch, I do believe. Not too different, but just enough. When I draw the sketches, I’m very aware that essentially my style involves lots of blocks of paper and to be honest, if I couldn’t use blocks of paper I wouldn’t really be sure what to do to make a page. But to change it up, this week I figured we could pile all the blocks in one stack rather tan arranging them in different areas of the page surface. Sound like a plan?

There’s something very flowing about making a layout like this – it seemed to be a case of almost dropping things onto the cardstock and seeing how they fell – papers, ink, leaves. A different process to change things up and keep it interesting!

This week’s sketch includes two square photos and I printed them at three inches. There’s also a fair amount of room for your writing and a big stack of layers. I mixed fabric with paper and ruffled the edges to create some messy depth, but you could adapt this to be need and clean with nested squares, perhaps.

This is the post I mention as the source of the writing on this page.

As always, the weekly sketch is no-stress and just for fun! If you use it, I’d love to see, so please leave a link if you post your page online.

And we have two older sketches to catch up on! These favourites are from this sketch and SJ is going to pick her favourites since she sponsored the giveaway for last week’s sketch. Click the corresponding link to see any of these layouts in more detail and get to know the scrappers behind the pages.
Top Row, L to R: one, two, three.
Middle Row, L to R: four, five, six.
Bottom row, L to R: seven, eight and nine.

Now… are you up for some sketchy scrapping this week? I’m quite excited to see this sketch adapted to different styles. Give it a go and share it with us!

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So you may have noticed not long ago there was a little bit of a crazy weekend of scrapbooking here on the blog and lots of challenges and prizes and all sorts of cool stuff like that. I hope you noticed, anyway. It looks like you did. Because there were some entries for those challenges. In fact, there were 1,476 entries to those challenges! I am rather excited that there are 1,476 more scrapbook pages in the world as a result of a weekend of creativity.

Each of the challenges had a prize to be won, and the entries have all been pulled from the hat and here they are! A little drumroll, please…

The prize for the Sketch of the Week challenge goes to Abbey for this layout. She wins a class pass for herself and a friend.

The prize for the Printable Challenge goes to Sanna for this layout. She wins a prize pack of scrapbooking supplies and printable elements for hybrid crafting

The prize for the Stickery Challenge goes to Steffi for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of American Crafts.

The prize for the Starting Point Challenge goes to Chipper for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of BasicGrey.

The prize for the Chop your Paper Challenge goes to Julia for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of Pink Paislee.

The prize for the Add to the Story Challenge goes to Jennifer Grace for this layout. She wins a prize pack of assorted scrapbook goodies.

The prize for the Grid it Up Challenge goes to Jane for this layout. She wins a prize pack of assorted scrapbook goodies.

The prize for the Colour Story Challenge goes to Janelle for this layout. She wins a prize pack of assorted scrapbook goodies.

The prize for the From the Heart Challenge goes to Cynthia for this layout. She wins a prize pack of assorted scrapbook goodies.

The prize for the Go Retro Challenge goes to Funkipickle for this layout. She wins a prize pack of assorted scrapbook goodies.

The prize for the 3 is a Magic Number Challenge goes to So.Creative for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of Studio Calico.

The prize for the Half Page Challenge goes to Amanda for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of Pebbles.

The prize for the Signature Accent Challenge goes to Fay for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of Lily Bee Design.

The prize for the Butterflies & Bingo Cards challenge goes to CinniBinni for this layout. She wins a prize pack of Jenni Bowlin Studio goodies.

The prize for the Hot Pink Hoopla challenge goes to Sarah for this layout. She wins a prize pack courtesy of Cosmo Cricket.

If you are a winner, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your mailing address so I can either send your prize or have it sent to you by the challenge sponsor. I’ll be hopping around to leave you a comment today in case you haven’t checked this post.

Thank you so much to the sponsors of this event – I am so glad I could offer great prizes like these! And thank you ever so much for being part of it, whether you just shared a link or created a dozen scrapbook pages. If you are proud to scrapbook and love this crafty thing we do, you are pretty awesome in my book. I really hope you’ll stick around and join me for another weekend of fun in the future!

And just in case you’re still feeling crafty, you can find two challenges here every week – sketches on Wednesdays and starting points on Saturdays! Or you could join in a class and Learn Something New, you know.

New sketch later today!

xlovesx

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Turns out Learn Something New isn’t the only bit of back-to-school scrapbooking on my desk at the moment. At Two Peas, the Garden Girls are going back to school with a twist – it’s all about the elements of making stand-out pages, cards and albums. It’s called Design School. It’s a free event with a range of example projects plus PDFs to review design principles and inspire your projects.

My part in all that design talk is the idea of continuity, and specifically how I try to keep some continuity throughout an album. In particular, there were two pages in my album that were bothering me as neither stayed true to the continuity elements throughout the rest of the book and wouldn’t you know they ended up on facing pages in my album. So I set out to find a way to remedy this and make those two pages less awkward. You can watch that process all in a tidy little video!

Be sure to check out all the other projects in the first week of Design School and beyond – it’s a great resource with lots of scrapbooking styles represented so you’re sure to find something that catches your eye.

xlovesx

PS: Winners of the crop weekend challenges will be posted later today Wednesday morning!

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