After last week’s Paperclipping Roundtable, I’ve been having all sorts of discussions about scrapbooking in random locations. The knitters get organised with this sort of thing and celebrate with worldwide Knit in Public day, but we seem to be less ready for such an event… but I promise it really isn’t all that difficult in the slightest.
With my crazy over-zealous page kitting recently, I know just reach for my most basic of tools when I head out for some away-from-home scrapping. If I want to scrap in the park, I will a) celebrate that it has finally stopped raining and b) pop my scissors, pens and adhesive roller in my handbag. If I can manage it, I’ll also take either my brown or black ink pad and applicator, since I tend to use that on pretty much everything, but it does require the added step of putting it in some sort of protective bag otherwise everything in my handbag shall be covered in ink. I’m all for organic art, but that’s a step too far.
But there are other times when I don’t have page kits ready and that’s when I take my lunch box. It’s filled with basic tools plus an assortment of things that can be useful, so I can pretty much make something with only a little bit more. Add just the journal itself for journal entries, or some card blanks and a 6×6 paper pad for making cards, or larger papers for scrapbook pages. When I used this on a regular basis, I also kept a small tote bag (really small – not something heavy, just something small and easy!) with scrap papers, and that would be plenty to work on whatever projects I had in mind. That was probably the start of my good use of scrap papers, actually. Before that I spent a lot of energy keeping them separated by colour and pattern and although I spent a great deal of time putting things away, I very rarely took the scraps back out again!
I emptied the lunchbox just as it is – untouched for several months really – and this is what was inside, starting from the top left. A journal. Mister Huey spray ink in white. Empty mini spray bottle for mixing up different colours, walnut ink, etc. Pack of mini brads. Square of sandpaper. Mini stapler. White eraser. (Moving to the second row, from the left.) Jenni Bowlin paint dabber in chewing gum pink. Selection of pen-sized tools, including nail file, craft knife, stylus, paint brush, mechanical pencil, brown and black writing pens, foam paint brush. Set of letter stamps. (Back to the left for the next row.) Post-it notes and mini to-do list notepad. Super duper silver Pritt stick (still my favourite for paper to chipboard). Two rolls of decorative tape. Mini adhesive roller (this kills me: it’s Kokuyo in star shaped dots instead of the normal little circles. I picked it up on holiday.) Glossy Accents liquid adhesive/gloss finish. Double-sided tape (on the large roll). Turquoise glitter. Black and brown embroidery floss and a sewing needle. Scissors (smaller than my usual pair). Distress Ink in vintage photo brown. Random little accent of several tiny file folders. (New row.) Bag of 7gypsies scrabble-style letter tiles. Pack of Making Memories metal frames with brads. Staz-On ink pad in black. Adhesive ribbon-finish tape from Martha Stewart. Black rick-rack. Cotton wool. Assortment of small die-cut circles and tags. A few coloured paper clips and some buttons.
That all fits into the lunchbox without any trouble! I’ve packed more in there by piling stuff into the space at the top, like a watercolour set, a roll of coloured pencils, a pack of odd playing cards… but really there is plenty here to make quite a bit!
So I promise you really can have a lot of creative freedom even while you’re on the go… but what would you pack in your lunchbox? And I think the answer of ‘lunch’ is considered cheating.
Good morning! Kicking off the new week with a new scrapbook starting point, and something a little different this time – one area of the page already more embellished than the rest. This is my final layout to finish from this JBS Mercantile kit, mixed with the minibook kit. But of course you can select any supplies you fancy!
I started by trimming a half inch from two sides of the chevron patterned paper and attaching that to the middle of a sheet of kraft cardstock. Then a patterned border across the whole page, about three inches from the bottom, topped with an 8×10 portrait piece of patterned paper. Then to start this area of embellishment! Working from the bottom layer to the top, it is: a strip of patterned paper, washi tape, a vintage hotel registration card, some dark kraft cardstock, part of a border sticker with a notebook paper edge, a sticker, a journaling card, a few layers of vellum, some baker’s twine and a big sticker right on the top!
I finished this scrapbook page with two 4×6 photos – one portrait, one landscape – and a smaller area of layered embellishment with the writing at the top left. Most of the pieces included there are repetition from the starting layers – the large camera repeated with a few smaller cameras in the same style, the rest of a border sticker first used at the bottom right, and so on. So although there are plenty of layers, it’s actually pretty kind on the supplies as most things can work as a little here, a little there. And I liked that there was still enough room for a title in some smallish letter stickers.
So many lovely pages were shared from the last starting point. Here are a few favourites. Click the corresponding link to take a closer look and get to know the scrappers behind these pages: one, two, three and four.
If you use this week’s starting point to create a scrapbook page of your own, I’d love for you to share it here! (By the way, I’m always looking for a nice detail shot for the round-up!)
One of the conversations that caught my eye on the message board this week was all about packing for a crop – a day (or more) of scrapbooking away from home, surrounded by other crafters doing exactly the same. I love seeing what various crafters plan to take for such an event, as we all have our different tolerance for how much we like to plan in advance or how much we care to pack up, transport, unpack and then repeat to come home again. Over the years, I’ve found myself taking less and less and being happier with what I make away from home, so minimal is what works for me (and I don’t think it’s the most minimal way possible, by a long shot).
But it was one specific answer that had a real wow factor. This one. It’s definitely a comprehensive list. You would be never be short of anything you could need. But it’s so comprehensive that I don’t even own about half of what is listed! The idea of bringing shelving or light bulbs or so many things that require electricity that I also need a power strip and an extension cord? That is totally foreign to me. But keep in mind: I don’t have a car. Wherever I’m going, I’m going there by train or bus or maybe even a plane, so it’s hardly easy to move my entire craft stash to a new location for the weekend.
As such, I’ve taken some 10 Things on the Tenth inspiration to create my personal list of what to pack for a scrapbooking crop or retreat!
1. Scissors. And usually just scissors – no paper trimmer. Sometimes I will pack a small paper trimmer, but I don’t take my normal paper trimmer, though it does have a handle and it’s not heavy. It’s just bulky! And I don’t scrapbook anywhere with giant table space. I tend to scrapbook in far cozier conditions, where we all sit around one table – or a few tables pushed together – so we are close enough to have one conversation at a time. So I just use my scissors as much as possible, and if I need to cut a straight line, I look for the patterns that give a guideline as part of the design, like grid and ledger papers and evenly spaced polka dots.
By the way, I do think it’s worth finding a pair of scissors you really love then always using them for your scrapping. They will become less awkward and more an extension of your hand that way! I get quite a few laughs for using my big Fiskars pair, but they work for me!
2. Adhesive. Forgetting this one can totally ruin a scrapbooking day, especially if there is nowhere you can go to buy some! So don’t forget to pack your favourite adhesive and refills. But I don’t think you have to take every single kind of adhesive possible. At a crop, I only use my regular adhesive roller and pop dots. Everything else stays home and I can’t say I’ve ever been stuck wishing I had liquid adhesive or double-sided tacky tape or my spray adhesive. But of course, your style might be different enough that you use one of those on pretty much every page… in which case that would definitely be important to pack.
3. Pens. I actually have my journalling pens with me all the time – I keep some in my purse and my backpack as well as with my scrapping stuff. I use the AC Precision Pens in black and brown ink, but pens are another thing where it’s important to try a variety and see what feels best to your hand. If I’ve packed a lot of dark paper colours, I’ll also pack a white gel pen, but otherwise I leave it at home. You can always add more writing to a page when you return, and that can be a useful strategy if your crop is too loud or busy to focus on your words, but I find I will forget to finish many things I bring home partly completed and I don’t tend to have the writing as my very last step, so I usually add the writing while I’m there.
4. Black and brown ink. Paper just doesn’t look right to me any more without inked edges, and at home I have a huge drawer filled with inks of different colours so I have the potential to find a good match for anything, but I generally just use black and brown… so those are the two I take with me. I take the ink pads and the applicator tools to make things easy. (Be sure to pop them in a separate bag of some sort to avoid accidentally inking the rest of your supplies while in transit!)
5. Acrylic block. I pretty much always use the same size of acrylic block for all my stamps, so I have one ready to go in my crop kit all the time, and then I include the different stamps in the next step. I don’t tend to take wood-mount stamps with me to a crop since they are bulkier, unless there is a specific design I know I am planning to use.
6. Page kits. This is what has replaced packing separate batches of paper, stickers, embellishments and so forth. Page kits are just a way to put together a bit of this and a bit of that and know it will work together, which also makes it possible to work more quickly at a crop because you’ve already made those decisions of what to scrap and with what supplies. Leanne is one of the most efficient crop scrappers I know and she has been a queen of page kits for years! I loved how it worked for her and I started to find a page kitting system that would work for me… once I got there, I loved this process! Glitter Girl has a remarkably similar process to how I pack my own page kits… and the concept of having either a larger or smaller kit can both work for scrapping away from home, just depending on what you want to work on and how much variety you need to keep it interesting! When packing a page kit for a crop, I would include the photos, papers, stickers, embellishments, stamp sets and everything else flat right there together. I err on the side of a few extras rather than not enough, but not to the point of packing an entire collection pack when I only want one or two sheets. (Though a collection pack works great for a big series of pages!) If you want to read even more about my specifics for packing page kits, you can find that in this post, where there is also some great stuff in the comments.
7. Album. Or this could be a 12×12 box perhaps, but I find an album easiest. The thing that worries me most about scrapping away from home is getting those new pages home safely, and I’ve had times when that didn’t go completely to plan. Now I keep the page kits each in a page protector and pop that in an album, so each completely page can go right back into the album, and it’s protected for the journey home. I’ve used both a 12×12 box with a lid and an LP carrying case for pages in the past, thinking an album would be too bulky, but I’ve actually found the album to be the best solution, and it makes it easy to keep everything in a confined space during the crop too.
8. Non-flat embellishments. Namely washi tape and mist. There are some things I use on many pages that just don’t fit easily into a page protector because they aren’t flat – like bottles of mist and rolls of washi tape. So those things I pack separately – and I bag the mists in case of any inadvertent squished bottle disaster. I don’t take my full collection of either. Instead, I look at the page kits I’ve packed and I grab a few colours of each that will go with multiple pages. I try to limit myself to three mists and six rolls of tape, as that is what fits well in my bag.
9. Stuff agreed on as a group. In scrapping with a group of people, there is no reason for everyone to bring everything and end up duplicating the same stuff. Unless you are all making the same project together, how many of you will be using a butterfly punch at the same exact instant? So we communicate in advance and divide up the responsibility. We do this for both tools and snacks! So one time I might be bringing five punches… another time I might be bringing cupcakes. But all the stuff that will be shared works best when we communicate in advance. Of course there are always a few things we duplicate without realising, just out of having similar ideas of what works as a staple item. The last time I went out for a full day of cropping, three of us may have brought hummus, carrots and croissants. At least we knew we all liked those things!
10. A collection of recent favourites. When I have everything else packed, I look at the space left in my case and I fill a zip-bag with recent favourites that haven’t made it into page kits – mostly papers, letters and stickers. I may add a few more photos here too. I have to admit though: I almost never get enough done to dive into that bag or extras! But part of me looks at the empty space in the case and thinks I will be totally stuck if I finish all the kitted pages! So I take some extra stuff… but not once have I even come close to finishing all my page kits. Turns out, I spend a lot more time on each page when you factor in snacks and conversation!
So those are my ten things for packing for a crop! What are your ten things this month?
Last month I had so much fun shopping for supplies to design the minibook crafting kit for Jenni Bowlin at JBS Mercantile. And apparently the Mercantile subscribers thought it was pretty fun too, as it sold out before I even had a chance to blog about it! (Thank you!) But today seems like pretty good timing to share my finished mini, considering most of this was created outdoors or at the very least on the road… and that’s exactly what we’re discussing on the latest episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable!
You can listen here by pressing play or you can listen via streaming or download on iTunes (it’s free to subscribe on iTunes and get each new episode as soon as it’s available). Check this post for post-show discussion in the comments.
This week Amy Tan and I were the guests of the regular crew of Noell, Izzy and Nancy to chat about scrapbooking and crafting outdoors, and there is some humour in how all of them live in much warmer climes but I will take any chance to scrapbook outside that I can! But I think that is part of living somewhere that isn’t always sunny – we all head straight out the door as soon as it’s a lovely day, just in case there isn’t another for weeks! I definitely see that attitude in our local park… it’s just that most people take a picnic or a football out for their sunny day, while I tend to bring a scrapbook page! (For the record, this still works even if The Boy and I head out together – he takes something to read and I cut and paste It works.)
In the episode, we talk about what we scrapbook outdoors, and I’ll certainly work on 12×12 pages without any trouble, but in this case it was a travel journal, filled in as we went, sitting outside in parks, at cafes, on the train and so forth. I started with this kit but if you wanted to assemble something similar, you can find almost all of those items here so you could pick and choose if you already have some elements in your stash. (By the way – I also made a few 12×12 pages from the kit in addition to the minibook.)
The base for the book is one of Amy’s Daybooks – my pick of the week on the Roundtable. (There are several styles available here.) It comes prebound with a variety of pages inside – different shapes and patterns and colours, plus an envelope and sticker sheets. The bicycle cover is my favourite because the sticker sheet is a tiny alphabet, perfect for adding titles and captions as you go.
I used my DSLR to take photos throughout this trip, and printed them on the road with a Pivi printer – a tiny little gadget that attaches by cable to a digital camera, then prints the digital image as an instant photo, like a mini Instax. (I love the Pivi but it is a real treat – they are only widely available in Japan. I bought mine from an international seller on Ebay and stock up on the film packs the same way. The film packs are different from what you would put in an Instax camera, so importing is the way to go. But it is fantastically fun!)
I love that the Daybooks are small enough to pop in my handbag or the pocket of my backpack but they can work with that same philosophy of a Smash book – just sticking in bits and pieces from daily adventures then surrounding them with writing. The wrapper at the top left was from the chocolate in our hotel room.
A sheet or pack of small journaling cards goes perfectly for writing along the way… and if you’re really crammed for space you can just keep some journaling cards with you all the time and add them to a book when you get home.
I like keeping some of the more designed pages as accents – like just adding a woodgrain sticker to the vellum page.
Page design concepts from traditional 12×12 scrapping can still come in useful on tiny little pages… like repeating a motif from one side to the other. The large camera here comes from the sticker sheet while the smaller cameras are part of a border strip. It makes it more obvious that the writing on the left corresponds to the photo on the right.
Washi tape is a great component to any travel journal kit because you can just stick anything in the book but still have the freedom to move it around later… plus it’s cute enough to use as an accent layer too. So you’ll see a lot of that turquoise striped tape showing up throughout this book, but I love how it’s both practical and a design element with continuity.
Cutting up border strips with printed phrases can create something new. For the map at the left, I cut out the words from the phrase ‘you make my world go round’ and rearranged to say ‘go round the world’. Because believe it or not, ridiculously super sweet Surinamese/Dutch soda does not make my world go round. (But it does make for a funny story I wanted to include in the book!)
The balance of page sizes and types in this book is just right, so there are pages that look great with just a photo or a phrase, but there are others that include plenty of room to write about the adventure.
And that’s that!
By the way, you can still grab one of the other kits from Mercantile for May – the main kit is here and there are a few left. I’ll be back soon with a video to show you what I’ve been making with that!
Have a fabulous weekend!
xlovesx
PS: for those of you who have listened to the episode – would you like to see what I keep in my lunchbox for outdoor crafting? I don’t always use this because I tend to just take my basics if I take page kits, but it’s what I carried for years before I committed to packing ultra light!
This weekend, one commenter will win a destash collection of cute and colourful beads from Cute Cornwall.
Natalie from Cute Cornwall describes her store as “Filled with fun brightly coloured Kawaii themed resin beads and charms which I love! I am a Potter in ‘real life’ where I make quite simple functional pots, so my CuteCornwall shop is my guilty pleasure where I can go a bit crazy with colours and materials! I am a little obsessed with collecting anything colourful, Kawaii, cute, Japanese, pink, round, stripey or glittery!
To enter, just leave a comment on this post describing what your favourite pattern is.
Entries close at midnight Thursday UK time and the winner will be posted Friday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!
Good luck!
Congratulations to Lindsay, who wins PRIZE from Retro Modern Art
Lindsay, 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.
This week, Glitter Girl tackles a bit of tricky title typography… or what to do when you’re running out of letter stickers! In this discussion on the message board, the question specifically came up to how to make mixed-font titles without it going all wrong, so Glitter Girl has a few hints to share with you!
Truthfully, I could spend an entire workshop discussing things to do with letter stickers, so this week Glitter Girl focused on just that specific question, but she also curated a collection of other examples for you! You can find that here, with an ongoing collection of ideas for mixed letter stickers.
All the supplies featured this week can be found here. Just scroll down and you can add anything you fancy! There are lots of Thickers and letter stickers to choose from, plus badges from Hello Forever and several items from the Amy Tangerine Sketchbook collection.
Three things to keep in mind for great letter sticker titles:
…keep the height relatively similar, unless you’re trying to make some sort of point with certain letters larger (like spelling a second word)
…arrange them on a common baseline, and keep the letters close together. Both of these help make it easier to read a mixed-up title and make it look less like a ransom note. Both awesome.
…choose the colours from things that already exist on your page, even if they only appear in a tiny little area.
And now, put those tips to use! This week Glitter Girl challenges you to mix your letter stickers to create a title and/or subtitle on your project, then share it in the Two Peas gallery. You can also leave a link in the comments here if you like.
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
This weekend, one commenter will win a hand printed owl lino print created by Stacy Rajab from Retro Modern Art.
Stacy Rajab is a hand cut lino artist inspired by modern meets midcentury. She explains: I love anything bold. I love mixing the eclectic and new with recycled everyday items. I am a very casual person who loves art work to reflect the casual, fun side of a person…one that fits any decor. I use mostly earth-friendly or recycled materials to create your special piece of art.
You can see more of Stacy’s beautiful work on her blog and by following her Pinterest board.
To enter, just leave a comment on this post letting us know what your favourite piece of home decor is at the moment.
Entries close at midnight Thursday UK time and the winner will be posted Friday evening, so be sure to check back to see if it’s your lucky day!
You know that big giveaway that closed yesterday? Scroll down to the end of this post for the winner!
This week one of the topics up for the discussion on the general scrapbooking message board was whether it was considered ‘cheating’ to use a sketch for your scrapbook page. Glitter Girl says not at all – sketches shared by blogs, magazines and indeed Two Peas itself – are there to be useful for you so that’s their entire purpose. And of course the resulting page can become true to your style when you take care to add to, subtract from or otherwise edit the sketch from its original form to what is most suitable for your scrapping.
You can find a full shopping list for everything featured in this video here. On that page you’ll also find links to three free resources for sketches at Two Peas – Kelly Purkey’s Super Sketches (12 lessons of a sketch plus different interpretations), Jen Gallacher’s Stretch your Sketch (12 lessons with videos showcasing different ways to adapt sketches to your needs) and the archive of sketch challenges (including the current challenge with a sketch by Amy Heller).
This page started with a sketch by Kelly Purkey (here), and this was a sketch in the style I tend to imagine in my mind – the sketch gives just a general idea, then you can add what you like as you go. I love sketches that have plenty of room for that reinterpretation – I prefer more open space on the sketch than everything to be determined exactly from the beginning.
This page started with a sketch by Jen Gallacher (here) and this one was not a sketch I would normally pick, as it fills the page more and includes a lot of photos, including a bunch of smaller prints. But sketches can be interpreted in your own style, of course! I swapped six small photos for one 4×6 photo of six people and replaced an additional two photos with a pocket for writing.
This week Glitter Girl challenges you to create a page inspired by either of the two sketches and share it in the Two Peas gallery. You can also leave a link in the comments here if you like.
Onward, covered in glitter, my dear scrapbookers!
The Adventures of Glitter Girl is a weekly series on Two Peas in a Bucket, and goes live every Wednesday. I’ll share each adventure here shortly after that. I hope you enjoy her quests for crafting happiness, and if you ever have a scrapbooking dilemma yourself, you can always call her to action on the message board.
Gardeners’ Digest Giveaway Winner!
Thanks so much for all your entries into the big giveaway – we had just over five hundred at the closing time, so that means our winner gets $10 to spend at Two Peas, the exclusive Oh Happy Day stamp set by Studio Calico and Hero Arts, five rolls of washi tape and the Pieces of Me Studio Calico kit! That’s a bunch of stuff! And here’s our lucky lady:
And her goodies are on their way!
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