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

This month, I’m dedicating my ten things post to a list of ten things I loved in Portland, Oregon, where I spent a week working, wandering and generally trying to keep my eyes open to everything I passed.

1. Seriously amazing breakfast made straight from the garden by Jean, a bnb hostess who is better known as the Measure-Free Hippie Cook. She is seriously cool, her food is seriously fab and her guest room is a fabulous place to stay. (You can find her here on Airbnb.)

2. Vintage everything, pretty much everywhere. I’m not sure there is anywhere else in the world that has embraced the reuse of older items on such a grand scale. There’s an Ikea in this town but I’m kinda wondering how it stays in business, as it seems like much less of this community is about all things new.

3. On a related note, the estate sales here are pretty fabulous and I may have picked up some treasures for pennies and then struggled to carry them around all day with all my work gear (camera, laptop, notebooks) while wearing flip-flops (fail).

4. All things rhubarb and coffee. Rhubarb muffins. Rhubarb pie. And the very best idea ever: rhubarb danishes. And lovely coffee via Stumptown and other Portland roasteries. (I have a real love of trying small local roasters when I go somewhere new, but so far my personal world champion medal goes to Sensory Lab in Melbourne, which I really wish was my local. Aside from the fact I would spend approximately 97.2 percent of my annual earnings on their coffee. So maybe it’s a safe distance.)

5. Gourmet food carts. Street food at an entirely different level. I know this is also taking off in New York and a few other cities where the rent makes it ridiculous to open a restaurant, and I would love to see it here in London. I ate at six different carts and every single meal was fabulous, and all six focused on making dishes from fresh and mostly local ingredients. The kitchens are open so you can see exactly what’s going on (which is something I love about street food in general and I always prefer street kitchens to carts that just sell something that was made elsewhere… though I do bend the rules for baked goods, as it’s pretty tough to bake a cake on a bicycle).

6. Bicycles in general. Lots of people on bicycles in Portland. Little bicycles, big bicycles and adorably customised bicycles. Except I am the wobbliest bicycle rider perhaps anywhere so I just walked. But I still like towns where bicycles are part of the scenery. Just don’t make me turn a corner on one.

7. Real photo booths that produce photo strips that smell like a darkroom.

8. Meeting some of the loveliest people who volunteered to show me around their happy city. I am trying to do this more and more in my own town because it breaks my heart when people say they don’t like London. I love this place and there truly is something for everyone if you know where to look. Meeting locals who are excited to show you their favourite places? It says a lot about a place. And Portlanders seem to be Portland’s biggest fans. That is pretty cool.

9. The crazily awesome book store, specifically the children’s section where I could happily live for at least a week. I found myself half in awe of their fabulous collection of books and half wanting to write lesson plans to go along with titles I wish more people would read.

10. Beautiful weather with sunshine but not ridiculous heat. Which was rather polite of a city known for rain. Perfect for sitting on the pavement and making plans for taking over the world in best possible ways. (Though actually most of my favourite cities in the entire world? Known for rain. I’m cool with that.)

There are other people blogging Ten Things today too, and you’re welcome to join us if you like! Blog your ten things on the tenth and add your link – easy! Then click through to visit other participating blogs to meet some new friends and revisit old favourites. We’ll be doing this every month, always on the tenth! See last month’s posts here.

xlovesx

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This weekend, one commenter will win a gorgeous flower cabochon ring (in a colour from the available choice) from Josephines jewellery.
I asked Josephine to tell us a little about her shop and she said: “I have been making jewellery for many years now and have sold lots of my pieces to friends and boutique shops. I love making jewellery with a passion, you could say I have a love affair with vintage jewellery! I love strings of pearls, cameos, vintage buttons, rhinestone encrusted pieces, vintage lace, Victorian jewellery, wire, brass, copper, charms, crystals and gems! I love mixing old and new and everything from my shop comes wrapped up in decadent lace ribbons and couture tags for that extra luxurious touch!”

Other items we love from Josephine’s store are her gorgeous birdcage necklace and this rather beautiful swooping bird necklace

To enter, just leave a comment on this post. If you could chose any time period in which to live, which would it be?

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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Switching it up for this week’s sketch with a bit of an older layout and no video this week while I’m working on the road (not to worry – the video will be back next Wednesday) because this layout has a few things I’ve been wanting to discuss on a sketch day. Things like using four small images as a photo strip in place of larger images. Or opting for black and white photos but pairing them with plenty of colour. Or the differences from a sketch to a finished page.

When I look at this design in sketch form, it already feels quite busy to me, but if you compare it to the layout, I actually added way more stuff than what’s here on the sketch. Recently someone mentioned they felt my layouts were coming out more “dynamic and alive” from the sketches and goodness, that was just such a lovely thing to say! But it also made me want to identify what it is that created that feeling she wanted to recreate on her own and I think the extra stuff is part of that. When I scrap from a sketch, I start with those basic shapes, but then I put the sketch aside and start adding more bits and pieces with extra layers. A lot of it comes in paper strips – either just plain rectangles or scalloped pieces from die-cuts or border punches. Then I realised I needed more room to journal and added two journaling die-cuts. Then layered those circles to become embellishment rather than just a shape. And eventually decided some butterflies could tie all those different shapes together. (Also I am very excited to tell you this time butterflies are actually relevant, since these photos are from Laura’s wedding and there were butterflies in her wedding decorations!) Perhaps it also helps that when I add extra stuff, I try to add the same stuff in multiple places – so the butterflies repeat, the ribbon repeats, the dotty label stickers and so on. I don’t often scrap from just one collection of supplies, but I do repeat the same elements in multiple places on a page to make it obvious that they belong.

You may want to add more stuff or you may want to stay more in line with the sketch – and either is fine, of course! I love hearing about our process in creating your page, so if you have a real system for how you build or interpret a sketch, feel free to share in the comments!

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 so we can see your work.

Last week left a few regulars really stumped with the mix of square and standard sized prints on one page, but I loved the variation in the layouts from those who were up to the challenge. Here are four of my favourites this week, and I love how all of them are clearly from the sketch but they have each chosen something in particular to change and make the design their own. Click the corresponding links to see any of these pages in more detail:
Top left
Top right
Bottom left
Bottom right
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s sketch! I hope you’ll join us again!

xlovesx

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So yes… a new class.

It celebrates your adventurous side. But skydiving, deep sea diving, marathon running, middle-of-the-woods camping, bungee jumping and trying to be first in line for the biggest sale of the year are all completely and totally optional. Instead, it’s perfectly fine for your adventures to be very much your everyday routine.

It’s a class you can follow along with by writing blog posts, jotting in a journal, making a minibook or creating a series of standard-sized scrapbook pages.

You can use no photos, old photos or new photos.

And every single project that results from the class will be completely unique, even though they all have the same starting point. (I think that is my very favourite part of this craft.)

Registration will open right here in the next 24 hours, so keep your eyes open… and say yes to a bit of an adventure, just for you.

Back soon!

xlovesx

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This weekend’s winner is Rhoda who wins the fabulous cupcake kit from Stitch Kits.
Please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your address!

If you didn’t win – but still love the idea of starting cross stitch, why not try one of Stitch kits cute Starter cupcake kits or if you are a dab hand already and have supplies, you could purchase a PDF pattern and get creative straight away!

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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Just in case you haven’t read enough about scrapbooking and travel with me, now you can listen too! Last week I recorded an episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable, a podcast (online radio show) all about scrapbooking. Our main theme for the episode is scrapbooking places, but we also cover some other things like album organisation, the debate of themed versus non-themed supplies and scrapbooking without children. I hope you’ll have a listen! You can play the podcast straight from the Paperclipping blog here or you can find it here on iTunes and download it to your iPod.

We cover quite a bit of stuff throughout the show, so I’ve put all the links on one board on Pinterest so you can find everything I mentioned in one place. Find the links here and you can click through any of those pictures to go straight to the specific blog posts or products. (You don’t need to be a member of Pinterest to access the board or click through to the links.)

If there’s anything else you want to discuss as a result of the show, let me know in the comments here or at Paperclipping! And if you listen right through to the end, you’ll hear a little about a very important announcement that will be made here tomorrow. Ready for something new to appear in that class list? I am!

Thanks so much to Noell and everyone at Paperclipping for having me as a guest!

xlovesx

PS: If you like the show, I’ve been a guest once before (last September) and you can listen to that episode here.

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This weekend, one commenter will win this gorgeous Cupcake stand cross stitch kit from Ruth at StitchKits.
StitchKits is a very cute Etsy store selling cross stitch kits in original designs designed by Ruth herself.

Ruth started developing StitchKits to kick off 2011. “In January I was inspired by a TV show (Kirsty’s Homemade Home on Channel4) and I picked up cross stitching again for the first time in many years. I haven’t been able to stop since.” Ruth aims to create fresh, beautiful, contemporary kits to inspire the modern crafter to get sewing. She strives to create designs anyone would be proud to hang in their homes, drawing inspiration from the world around me, from magazines, from well designed interiors, art galleries and life.

Prior to StitchKits, Ruth studied Fine Art as a mature student at Wimbledon School of Art in London and has lived and worked in London as an artist ever since. “My experience as a painter has proved invaluable, helping me to carefully select the colour pallets that form the starting point for each design.”

To see more of Ruth’s fabulous kits, log onto her Etsy store. You will find loads of cute designs, including beginner cupcake kits.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post sharing with us if you are a seasoned stitcher or just discovering this cute craft.

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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_{All class content ©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and here to chat on the message board.}

I can’t believe we are already at the half-way point for 4×6 Photo Love, the online scrapbooking class I’m teaching throughout 2011 at Two Peas! (If you haven’t heard about it until now, it’s free and you can jump in at any time.) The lessons post on the 30th of each month, so that means I have the June edition to share with you, and it’s all about scrapping six photos this month.

This month’s design concept is a variation of what we created with three photos in March. Then we lined them up to go all the way across a 12×12 page. This time we’re placing them all the way across two pages to make a double page layout, but also offsetting the photos with boxes of patterned paper to create a bit of a zig-zag effect. I’ve used portrait photos for the examples, but if you only have landscapes, you could try turning the pages so you have two columns of three photos from the top to the bottom of the page rather than one long line from left to right. Have a look at this month’s video to get a better idea of how these pages were constructed.

Both my examples are travel related, purely because that tends to be when I take the most photos and there aren’t many other events where I would have six portraits that all worked together – but that’s just me! You are welcome to participate with any theme, colours and supplies you would like.

_{Page by Jamie Sorenson. Click here for supplies.}

This month I’m delighted to feature Jamie Sorenson as my guest. She’s our community manager (and the Garden Girl boss!) at Two Peas, so she’s a face many peas know from the message boards and newsletters, but she’s also a fab scrapbooker and I love her creative spirit. This layout is just what I mean – she took my boxed-out, linear sketch and infused it with youthful energy for these family photos. Try tilting the pictures and adding embellishments that don’t have to sit right inside each of the patterned paper boxes. You can add this page to your bookmarks here. Thank you for joining me, Jamie!

Every month, there are two ways to win a prize for participating in 4×6 Photo Love! The first is at Two Peas: create your page and upload it to the gallery. Be sure to tick the box for this challenge in step four of the upload process. One participant will win a gift certificate to Two Peas to go shopping for whatever you like. But there’s a second chance to win right here: on this post, leave a comment with a link to your page (in the gallery at Two Peas or on your blog, whatever you prefer) and one of those links will win Two Peas shopping money too! The deadline for both is the 29th of July.

Congratulations to Daphne for winning the draw for last month’s five photo class! (Daphne, you will receive your gift certificate by email.) Will you be next? Just choose six 4×6 photos to scrap and follow along with this month’s class prompt. I hope you enjoy a bit of double-page fun!

xlovesx

PS: Feel free to grab the button there on the left for your blog or to share this class with a friend – since it’s free, the more the merrier! And you’re welcome to use any supplies and any photos, so there’s no boundaries to your scrapping with this year-long project.

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