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

_{Exclusive Best of Both Worlds flair for this month! Click to see the full kit and go shopping!}

Have to admit I am exhausted trying to finish up all my work and then go officially on maternity leave! Any day now we could have an actual extra person under our roof and that’s all a little much for my foggy brain to contemplate!

But things are, one by one, wrapping up to a point where I can hit the pause button for a little while and have nothing else on my plate so I can just focus on the important stuff. And take a million photographs and write a lot in my journal, of course. That counts as important stuff in this process.

However, it is the first of April and no fools from me – I wanted to share my product picks for this month, by way of the April 2014 Best of Both Worlds Kit. I will be really honest: although I am using up my January to March kits currently (file that under things I am trying to wrap up – we’re preparing things like that to keep some scrappiness going here even while I’m on a break), I don’t know if I will get to use the April kit. I want to! But I may need to skip one. I will have a special guest joining me to share what she does with the kit, just like the other months of 2014. And if I get the chance to use the April kit, I will certainly share what I make! I just wanted to be quite honest about that. I’m going to take it as it comes.

For the April kit, there are some brand new things and some sale favourites. There is a set of Project Life cards that I have no intention of using for the theme in the name (they are ‘mom’ themed and I am most definitely someone who says ‘mum’ in all instances) but after last week’s Glitter Girl Adventure, I wanted to try a set like this that would be perfect for cutting to pieces and making embellishments. Since they are on sale and have good shapes to cut apart, that seemed like the perfect combination. I hope it’s less scary to try at the bargain price!

In other things I’ve wrapped up today, I’ve recorded my last episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable until I’m ready to go back to work. It will be live later today at Paperclipping. I hope you enjoy!

Certainly, certainly hoping to finish more of all these big things so I can talk to you like a normal person who isn’t trying to just cling to any notion of sanity. Let’s see when that will be!

Comment [37]

Today I’m delighted to welcome our March guest artist who has been busily crafting away with the Best of Both Worlds scrapbooking kit: Paige Evans. She has five gorgeous layouts to share with you! And if you fancy a little shopping, much of the March 2014 kit is still in stock, but at a bargain price, as there is a huge storewide sale at Two Peas just through this weekend – 20% off all physical supplies (digital and workshops are not included) plus further discounts like 25% off all stamps and albums and extra discounts on items that were already on sale (so the stamps and tape in the kit are currently 50% off). No codes are needed for the storewide sale, and the shipping discount code is currently TQTBEX if you really feel like treating yourself! Anyway, enough blathering about that: behold! Paige has made pretty things! Enjoy.

The Girls
When I first looked through the March Best of Both Worlds kit I immediately fell in love with the soft colors, gold accents, and the pack of Styleboard by Maggie Holmes/Crate Paper die cuts! I wanted to create a ring of die cuts around a central photo to draw attention to it so I placed the pieces in a circle on the woodgrain paper background and stitched them in place. I topped the ring with a few of the wonderful embellishments like gold chipboard hearts, a couple badges, and gold typewriter sentiments. I love when pages come together quickly!

Mom & Me
I fell in love with the My Mind’s Eye stamp set and the frame stamp jumped out at me just begging to be used with all of the lovely patterned papers in the kit! I stamped a frame on the front and back of each paper, fussy cut them out, then stitched them on a robin’s egg blue cardstock layout. I filled each frame with a photo, embellishment, journaling, stamped image, letter stickers, etc. To finish it up I placed washi tape along the top and bottom edges.

Mr Fox
I started by die cutting a star background from white cardstock using my Silhouette. I wanted more bold colors of patterned paper for this boyish layout, so I made my own! Using the chevron stamp in the My Mind’s Eye set I used a tone-on-tone effect to create chevron patterned paper on a rainbow of colored cardstock. I backed the stars with my custom patterned paper as well as the papers included in the kit and a single photo. I adhered the star background on light grey cardstock then filled in a few of the stars with more elements like a title, “3” die cut (because that’s how old Fox is in the photo), a badge, three gold chipboard hearts that I turned over to the plain chipboard side to match the grey stars paper, journaling, sentiments cut out from Elle’s Studio die cuts, and more. I tied the layout together with some drops of dark grey spray mist.

First Top Knot
I wanted to use all-things pink on this layout! First I die cut an intricate rose background from vellum, painted a white circle on a pink cardstock layout, then adhered the rose background on top. I placed a bunch of pink die cuts over the painted circle then added my photos on top. On the bottom right corner I stamped the chevrons from the My Mind’s Eye set using pink ink then placed letter stickers and a gold typewriter sentiment on top. I stitched a couple gold hearts to accent and stitched over the title to make sure it stays in place permanently. I dropped pink spray mist across the layout to finish.

Two Best Friends
For my last layout I still had tons of supplies leftover! I love the torn paper look so I ripped a piece from the front and back side of each patterned paper in the kit and layered them down the top of a cream cardstock layout. I tucked two photos under the papers and added die cuts under the photos for a fun mat. I placed Thickers and mini alphabet stickers next to the photos for a title, stitched over them, then stamped a “#” before it. I journaled along the last paper following the curves. Between the photos I added a label die cut topped with a badge. I stapled a camera die cut on the top right corner then dropped India ink around the layout as a finishing touch.

As you can see this kit is very versatile! I was able to create both girl and boy-themed layouts based on colors and embellishments. And I still have lots of product leftover so you can create a whole bunch of layouts from this kit.

Paige Evans has been scrapbooking since she was 16 years old and worked at her first job at a local scrapbook store. The first time she put pictures and papers together it was a match made in heaven! She currently works from home for Northridge Publishing – the makers of Scrapbook Trends, CARDS, the Create series, Cricut Magazine, Cricut Idea Book, and Signature Series magazines. She is also the design team manager/blog hostess for American Crafts and is a Garden Girl at twopeasinabucket.com. While not scrapbooking she makes pacifier clips for her etsy shop. Paige is the mother of two adorable children – Fox age 3 and Jane age 1.5. She and her husband Chris have been married for 7.5 years and currently live in Grafenwoehr Germany where Chris is a dentist for the Army. You can check out more of her and her work on her blog, Instagram, Etsy shop, Pinterest, Twitter and 2Peas Gallery

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While the vast majority of my scrapbook pages feature photos printed at 4×6 or perhaps 4×4, there is a special place in my heart for big photos. I’d love to print a photo as wall paper for our home, but I can never decide which photo. Instead, I order big prints and frame them all over the flat. But I also love the look of a big photo on a scrapbook page. Today I’d love to share a few page design tips for scrapbooking with larger pictures, both from my albums and some guest pages made just for today.

And a little side note: for those of you who follow the Best of Both Worlds kits, this first example is made with the January 2014 kit.

Tuck things behind the photo
When I looked at all my pages with larger photos, I noticed I have more portrait photos framed, but there are more landscape images in my albums! Go figure. But I think that may be down to one of my favourite page designs: creating a page with a landscape image placed in the lower two-thirds of the page, then tucking elements behind the top of the photo. It’s a great place to add journaling cards, your title, or just something pretty if that’s a better match for the tone of your page.

(I know it’s shocking, but sometimes – just rarely – I scrapbook right side up. Don’t let it throw you too much.)

Tucking the journaling card behind the photo makes it easier to customise the size of the writing space, and this is the perfect spot for something like that circle at the top right, which was never actually a full circle! It was printed on the edge of the card, and when cut out and placed on a page rather than in a pocket, it looks best if that straight edge can be either hidden like this or aligned with the side of the layout.

Guest artist Diane Payne has a similar treatment at the top of the photo, but also uses the space below her picture to add more coordinating embellishments.

Diane says: I love using oversized photos on my page for a big impact. It is perfect for documenting unique experiences or exceptional photos. An oversized photo was perfect for highlighting the unique experience of working with my peers to pull a plane faster than our counterparts and hanging out on the tarmac eating grilled burgers. It is definitely not your everyday experience and a fun, memorable afternoon. It was especially fun doing this with my good friend whom I don’t see that often anymore.

Adjusting the size of her print gave Diane room to tuck embellishments in at the top of the photo while still having ample space for her title, writing, some additional small photos, and those finishing embellishments in the bottom third of the page. This is a design to bookmark for those photos that have lots of sky or ground space when the day isn’t amazingly vibrant and the grass not completely beautiful: zoom in on that more central subject to emphasise what’s there and give yourself more space on the page to tell the story.

Add words to the empty space

Sometimes a photo looks beautiful big, but this creates some empty space in the picture: the sort of thing that isn’t the actual subject of the photo and doesn’t add a huge amount of meaning. It’s the background stuff of life. While most photo subjects benefit from enough breathing room around the important elements, in a scrapbook sense you can layer elements right on top of the photo in that empty space. When it comes to words, this can even help connect your story to the image, like this example by Susan Weinroth.

Susan says: I love that the focus of my page is the photo and journaling – something that’s easily accomplished by using a 12×12 photo as my page base instead of paper. I want to remember these cute little details about my kids at each age, and love being able to record it all on one “update” style page like this.

See that gorgeous ray of sunlight coming into the frame at the top right? While that’s not the primary subject of the photo, of course, it’s a beautiful detail. Instead of running the title above the journaling and covering that bit of loveliness, the title works well on the vertical. Simple enough to do but something it’s easy to forget is an option, so make a mental note so you’ll remember the next time you’re worried that there isn’t enough space for your title.

Of course you don’t have to print at a full 12×12 size to find you have empty space in a photo. I love 12×12 prints, but I have to order them from a lab since I don’t have a wide format printer at home. I can print an image up to A4 on a whim, however, which is what I did with this photo.

In this case, there is plenty of room at the bottom of the page for journaling, but the blurred foreground at the bottom of the photo was pretty substantial. Bringing the title and the journaling onto the photo itself frames the subject of the photo rather than feeling as distant at it would in that bottom border of the page. If you want to make sure the atmosphere of the photo is still apparent, choose title options that let you see between the letters, like stickers or writing on vellum.

Embellish in the empty space

Of course, if you can journal or title your page in the empty space of the photo, you can also opt to use that space for embellishment, like this delicately beautiful page from Stephanie Bryan.

Stephanie says: I love adding enlarged photos to any projects, but especially layouts. The large photos tell the story and become the main focus of a layout. For this project, I chose a recent photo of my daughter. I knew I wanted to add a few embellishments, stamps and journaling down one side of my photo, so I cropped my image to the far right. This left me plenty of space to add some fun pops of color, stamps and ink splatters on my page.

I love how Stephanie proves a page doesn’t need a bold title – or perhaps a title at all – to capture your attention. It’s also colour that makes this layout work so well – rather than heaps of contrast, there is a similarity of all the shades here, with just a tiny pop of that saturated pink. That mix of colours makes everything far more delicate than if the background paper here was a hot pink, for example.

Sometimes I do scrapbook the portrait photos, I promise! And sometimes there is room for both title and embellishment right on top of the photo.

Here a centrally-aligned page design keeps all the page elements (except the background paper) right on top of the photo itself. The trick with a central page design is often to keep the wider element at the bottom of the page and something smaller and more narrow at the top, a bit like imagining things in a stack or on a shelf, even though there there is quite a lot of space between the top and bottom elements. (The smaller, narrower embellishments at the bottom can be viewed as pretty little things hanging below the shelf, if that helps your thinking process!) If you feel the pages in an album are starting to get a little too busy, a page design like this can do wonders for giving the eye somewhere to rest as you turn from page to page.

Put border embellishments to work

Hands up if you have plenty of border stickers, paper strips, and scalloped chipboard pieces waiting for you in your stash. How about a border punch? Don’t worry: my hands are up too, I promise. Pairing border embellishments with these larger photos is a great way to add flourish without needing to put things on top of your actual photograph. That may help some of you breathe a little easier! I promise you could do this page design without needing the label on top of the photo – just move the journaling to right side of the page perhaps.

If your border stash is somewhat shorter – literally – put those pieces together to create a frame for your photo. The photo print itself is certainly the most expensive thing on the page, since everything else is pieced together from tiny scraps of paper and offcuts of ribbon, and even a letter sticker from a sheet that had no vowels left to spell anything useful!

Frame with your favourites

Speaking of frames, you may find that big photos give you plenty of room to embrace your favourite larger embellishments. I love stacks like this but this size of stack could overwhelm a 4×6 print. With a big picture, I can use multiple stacks in that large size!

I do find it works well to frame the photo with those elements, so there’s a camera print on the left and also on the right, for example. It also helps that all the colours appear on both sides of the photo, to help guide your eye across the page.

If your photo is really quite busy, you can use the same technique but with smaller, simpler embellishments. It’s a great place for tiny details like stitching or stamping.

Quite a bit of this page relies on framing, actually – the patterned paper cut away to give a corner frame, the three repeat embellishments form a sort of frame around the outside of the picture, and the trios of gems around each area of embellishment.

Pair your larger photo with some small images

Even though it’s a giant photo, it doesn’t have to be a single photo page! Sometimes having one or two smaller photos can be a perfect balance to tell more of the story while still showcasing one image centre stage.

This particular page is made with a sketch and one of last year’s Best of Both Worlds kits.

This layout works with quite a boxed out, linear page design, while Diane’s earlier example adds a bit more angle and overlapping for a freer design. Either can work! And you can always add curved embellishments like hearts or twine or even just circles to a linear design to give it a bit more energy, if you’re nearly done and it feels too static to your eye. Just remember that with angles, a little goes a long way, so start small and work up to what feels best for your particular page.

Now… what photo are you going to supersize on a page?

Today’s contributors
Diane Payne lives in Texas with her husband, two teenage kids and two dogs. She balances her career training flight attendants for a major airline with extra-curricular activities with her teens and spending time in her craft room. She loves to work with vintage photos and plenty of colour. Diane designs for A Flair for Buttons, Come On Get Crafty, Lily Bee and write. click. scrapbook, and blogs at Color Me Happy.

Stephanie Bryan lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. She started out with memory keeping through Project Life in 2011 and has not looked back yet. Stephanie currently serves on design teams for Two Peas in a Bucket, Crate Paper, Glitz Design, Gossamer Blue, Jot Magazine, My Mind’s Eye and write.click.scrapbook. She shares her adventures in scrapbooking on her blog at Stephanie makes and on Instagram.

Susan Weinroth lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL with her husband of 12+ years and their two little boys. She works as a photographer in addition to her crafty endeavours, including a newfound love of Project Life. You can follow Susan on her blog and Instagram.

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For March, I wanted to embrace the rainbow, I suppose! I was looking at all the different scrapbooking products hitting the store while sitting through day after day of grey rain, and then one sunny day reminded me that all that rain can come with its fair share of rainbows, and that’s how this month’s Best of Both Worlds scrapbooking kit came together: a little grey, a little gold, and a lot of the rainbow!

Click here to shop for the March 2014 Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

This kit mixes some brand new releases with a few great bargains in the sale. The stamps, tape set, and a couple papers are 25% off, making it possible to also include some fancy new things like kraft card stock with gold finish, a big pack of ephemera, and both flat letter stickers and Thickers. If you’re digging the rainbow feel and want to carry that through in the lettering too, you might try the Bon Ami letter sticker sheet for something brand new or this rainbow alphabet for something that’s on sale.

And let’s talk gold embellishments for a moment. I will warn you: the gold label stickers have been really popular in the shop this week so there are not all that many left. If you’re coming to this list by the time they are sold out, please don’t panic! There are actually lots of really lovely gold embellishments in the store, and you can choose one that is just your style, assuming you like gold! Have a look here if you want to replace it with something else. (There is also the option to swap the chipboard hearts for chipboard stars that show up near the top of that list, in case hearts are just not your thing!)

Flair… well, today is the first of March and as of the time I’m writing this, the March flair hasn’t appeared in the store just yet. As it’s the weekend, I’m guessing these will appear in the store on Monday, but I didn’t want to leave this any longer to post since I do try to make sure it’s always here for you on the first! If you’re a big fan of flair, then you may want to wait until Monday if you’d like some badges to coordinate, but you can always wait and add them to your next order too if that’s better for your needs.

If you’re new to the Best of Both Worlds concept, every month I post a list of products I really love together on the first. There is no subscription and there’s no requirement to buy everything on the shopping list. If you want to use it as a starting point for your shopping, then make changes, you can! You’re not locked in to paying for something you already have or wouldn’t use. Likewise, if there’s one item you know you would use multiple times, you can add more than one. You decide your budget and you can add more to the kit or bring it down a bit to fit how much you want to spend, how much scrapping you plan to do, and how much ‘stuff’ suits your personal scrapping style.

Each month in 2014, a guest artist gets the kit for the month and shares five projects she makes with it. You can see the January guest post and the February guest post currently, and this kit is on its way to the March guest artist right now! I also have new videos coming your way Sunday and Monday sharing projects I have made with recent kits. (Some, though not all, items from the January and February kits are still available.)

If you opt to spend a bit more shopping while you’re there, the March shipping discount code is TQTBEX, which is good for $10 off US shipping and $5 off international shipping on orders that include at least $50 of physical, non-clearance product.

I think that’s everything! After a several very exhausted days in a row, I’m enjoying getting new videos and articles lined up, so I hope you’ll stop by for a good week ahead. You know… the kind of week where we embrace rainbows and naps and you can celebrate fancy things in your life like sleeping more than an hour without waking up for the loo. Maybe. I promise not to get jealous. Well, not very much, anyway.

Thanks so much for your continued support, and don’t forget you can always come back to this post later and add a link to the comments to share what you have made with the March 2014 Best of Both Worlds scrapbooking kit!

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Hello! May Flaum here – excited to be working with this month’s best of both worlds scrapbooking kit! When I pulled this kit out I saw so many lovely things and possibilities.

To start off with – I made this page with just the kit. I’m not usually a heavy patterned paper user – so it was a fun challenge to use nothing but patterned paper. I wanted to give it a bits & pieces kind of a look, so I used small strips, stitching, and stickers to bring it all together.

With the kit officially cut into (and isn’t that the hardest part?!) and feeling warmed up I decided to scrapbook a story happening right now. It is Girl Scout cookie season, and I’m so in love with how hard my girls are working so I knew this kit with all the hearts and lovely details would be perfect to do a layout about our cookie selling booth.

After re-organizing all of my layouts (thirteen years worth!) what I have found is that I really like the pages about very specific ‘right now’ type events. Whether small like today we sold cookies at our house, or big like the details of a major holiday – I cherish the pages that feature facts and details that might be forgotten.

With this in mind, I happened to find some photos of a breakfast that was pretty darn epic – and our first time at what is sure to be many visits back to a little restaurant in a small town not too far from home. I added in some buttons for color and texture, as well as some Maggie Holmes die cuts that go so beautifully with this kit. The heart stamp in the kit is a favorite – I have already used it many times!

Looking around my stash of “scrap me now” photos and stories, I did not find another that I wanted to tell that worked really well with these kit papers at the moment. So, rather than do more layouts that would be ‘because I’m Shimelle’s guest’ or try to make it happen, I used some scraps to make a few cards instead!

Inspired by the ‘darling’ stamp, I made myself a messy background and then inked (and cut out) the word darling. I also stamped and glittered (hooray for glittery things!) the round element in the center of my rosette. I love how messy and fun this card was to create.

I love the typewriter graphic on one of the sheets of patterned paper – but I knew this would be a piece that would not make it onto a scrapbook layout. When I run into products or papers I know that I won’t likely scrapbook with – I make cards! This makes me feel good about using up my stash, as well as making cards that I can have ready to mail at any time.

With five projects made, I still have quite a few pieces of this kit still to play with. My plan is to bag it up (in a clear bag) and keep it on my desk so that as I sit to scrapbook should a story pop up needing to be told that will go well with this kit – I’ll be ready to go. I hope that you’ve enjoyed my projects – and that you get some creative time for yourself in the near future as well. If you’d like to check out my site, blog, or perhaps take an on-line class from me please feel free to come check out my website at Craft with May.

Happy Crafting!

When it comes to crafting May Flaum has one rule: it’s gotta make her happy. She’s not afraid to get super grungy or work with bright colors, dabble in lace and doilies then make something more splattered and wild. If she’s not in her studio (aka ‘the bat cave’) then she’s probably out running around having fun with her family or cooking up a storm. May has been working in the Scrapbooking industry for a decade and currently blogs her crafty adventures, teaches online classes, and works with amazing companies sharing her projects and ideas. If she has one piece of advice to share, it’s always to be true to your creative heart.

Comment [3]

Welcome to February! Today I have a new batch of scrapbooking product picks to make up the Best of Both Worlds kit for the month. It includes nine papers, all brand new releases, including some that hit the store just yesterday! It’s also a bit of a pink, turquoise, and grey party. I make no apologies: I will never have too much of this colour combination. There are some heart prints here that could go all Valentine if you wished, but I’ve selected these papers so that’s just an option, not a requirement. For example, that all-over heart print? The back is just wide textured stripes in shades of of pink. I used the aqua version of that paper for this layout and loved it so much I had to put the pink on this month’s list.

Click here to shop for the February Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

The embellishments this month are a desk full of happiness. I find turquoise to be one of the most versatile colours for letter stickers, so I went to town with those and there are turquoise Thickers, a pack from October Afternoon that includes both a larger script font and a small block font, and there are tiny turquoise letter stickers on the Amy Tangerine sticker sheet too. I can’t wait to work with those four all together. (But if that is seriously an overdose in one colour for you, I would suggest the option of swapping to these white Thickers which will also look lovely with the kit. They were my second choice.) In addition to all that sticker goodness, there are shaped paperclips, wood veneer hearts, and enamel shapes. Those wood veneer hearts are the same set Glitter Girl has used a couple times this January, here and here.

There is also a special wood veneer card you can only get at Two Peas with the artwork that appears in the new Amy Tangerine Plus One collection, with script writing by artist Kal Barteski. And the stamp set! This is a large stamp set so it is a higher price than some of the stamps I’ve picked over the past months (though not ridiculously expensive – it’s $9.99). Although my kit hasn’t arrived here just yet since quite a bit of this didn’t arrive at Two Peas until 48 hours ago, I had a chance to try these stamps at CHA and this is a really versatile set with a great look on paper. It takes on a completely different look whether stamped simply in black dye ink or dressed up with colours and embossing powders. Really striking! But if stamping is not your thing or if the kit comes up a bit out of your budget this month, taking the stamps out would be your biggest savings.

Speaking of which: if you’re new to the Best of Both Worlds kit, that’s basically the deal. There is no subscription and no requirement to buy everything on the list. If you want the kit just as suggested, add one of each to your bucket and place your order! But if there is something you already have or don’t love, you can leave it out. Likewise, you can add more of what you really adore (like extra papers for double page layouts, for example) or you can make substitutions (like trading turquoise letter stickers for another colour). The kit is posted here on the first of every month, and it’s first come, first served, so some items may sell out. They are usually restocked, but of course that doesn’t happen instantly. (The January kit is a mix of in stock and out of stock, for example.)

The February shipping discount code is 2AMEXK. You can use this with an order of $50 in physical, non-close-out goods. That’s a bit more than the kit, but there is plenty of brand new stuff in the shop, so it’s a good time to spend up a little if you like! If you’re in the UK and wondering about shipping prices, I ordered about $30 of extra stuff with my kit and the shipping was $25.36 before the discount code, and the discount code takes off $5 for international orders. Two Peas ships anywhere in the world and you can see the shipping price before you check out, so you can have a look and see if it works out for you or not.

I think that is pretty much it! There will be a guest artist again this month, and I will be posting pages when I am able. And something we’re trying this month is incorporating one of the printable designs. All of the Two Peas printables this month would go really well with the kit, but I’m thinking this one or this one are the best options. See if either suits your scrapping style!

Click here to shop for the February Best of Both Worlds Scrapbooking Kit.

Comment [4]

Hey guys!
Laura Craigie here today, and I’m excited to share five scrapbook pages that I made with the January edition of The Best of Both Worlds kit! I can honestly say that this kit was love at first sight. It has such a diverse colour palette, and the perfect amount of embellishments and alphas. I was able to make five pages, and I have SO much product left to work with, and the adorable stamps I know I’ll use again and again.

The first page I made kind of fell together. I opened the package of 3×4 Simple Stories cards and started pulling out ones I was drawn to, and the four of them just worked so well together I decided to base my whole page off them. Because the four cards fill up so much space on an 8.5×11” page all I had to do was add a few quick embellishments, some journaling and the page was complete!

The second page I made was simply a lot of fun to do! I love the Pink Paislee paper with the cutouts, but couldn’t really get it to work as a base for a page so I used some circle dies and cut out a number of the circle elements and raised them with adhesive foam so you could really see the star cut outs better. I also fussy cut the “love” script word from a Simple Stories card and adhered it over my photograph. When it came time to create my title, I knew I wanted to alter the products and I started by using a black marker to colour over the green alpha stickers to match my page better. I also decided to heat emboss the “boy” with a colour that would make the title really pop on the page.

I decided to keep things pretty simple for this page, and wanted to let the photographs shine. I did however want to create a fun title on the page and layered that over some negative space in the photographs. I have a ton of journaling to add for this page about life on my brother’s farm, but I ran out of printer ink and will simply create a secondary journaling page for the other side of the spread when I put it in my album.

I have been on a ‘hearts & scallops’ kick these days, and even though I’m a boy mom I don’t let that stop me! This kit had such great heart elements including stickers and a polka dot heart on the 3×4 card that I used here too. I used the scallop stamp from the stamp set with a navy ink and stamped that on the side of my photo. I think it would be adorable to stamp that around the entire photo too. There are also adorable chipboard scallops that I use on my next page too.

I saved my personal favourite page for last. The red/yellow/blue colour combo is so bold and definitely a favourite of mine right now. I loved the October Afternoon paper with the clocks and thought it would lend it self nicely to a page about time itself. In this case, how fleeting moments are. I swore I only blinked, and ten years has flown by. I tried to create a visual triangle with this page by using red and yellow elements in three spots around the photograph. I again coloured the green alpha stickers black to match my page, and used the gorgeous yellow chipboard frame to highlight part of my title.

I hope you are inspired to dig into your kit and I hope you share your projects, I would love to see them! This is truly such a lovely and versatile kit, which made it so very easy to create these pages, and many more I’m sure.

Laura Craigie lives with her husband and three busy boys on the west coast of Canada. She started scrapbooking in 2004 while pregnant with her first son, the rest as they say is history. Laura is proud to design for Pebbles, October Afternoon, and work as a Garden Girl at Two Peas in a Bucket. She loves nothing more than a quiet evening scrapbooking or making cards, once her kiddos are in bed. You can catch up with Laura on her blog PaperLulu or on Instagram as Justlulu.

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For as much as love single pages with single photos and more room to write, more room for pattern, more room to embellish without it feeling too crowded, I also have a big stack of photos I want to scrapbook. In fact, ‘big stack’ is laughable, because there is no way anyone could just put my 4×6 photos in one big stack. I keep them across four drawers and tend to deal with a little bit of overspill all the time. (Right now it’s those wedding photos from last May that have a special box all their own rather than fit into the drawer just yet.) Suffice to say, when I hear ‘but I have too many photos to just put one on a page’, I hear you.

I think the difference is just that one photo on a page doesn’t bother me, and then I include other pages that make up for it with plenty of photos. To go opposite that last page I shared, I made a pocket page with four 4×6 photos, while still having room for a 4×6 title card, a 3×4 journaling card, and a 3×4 wood veneer card just for fun. I also challenged myself to just turn on the camera and film while I scrapped rather than my normal process of scrapping upside down and explaining as I go, so today I have a short video to share with you to show how this pocket page came together.

This page uses supplies remaining in my August Best of Both Worlds kit, plus a divided page protector. (For those keeping tabs, I have one more 12×12 page from that kit to share with you, then I’m moving on to the next set of supplies.)

This finished page sits to the left in my album where the ‘midday milkshakes’ layout sits on the right. All the photos here are taken from where I would sit there on our little middle of the day break, with a view of the river, the menu, and the street. Since the story of all this is explained on the facing page, the pocketed page protector is there just as a very easy way to include more photographs that bring back the memory of this place, but it’s the one I put on its own that brought the story to mind, so I singled that one out and grouped all the rest here.

For now, the back of that page protector won’t have anything showing. As I work on photos in that section of the album (my albums go in chronological order, even within a special event album like this) I will decide to either fill the reverse with photos and journaling cards as well, or to cut a 12×12 patterned paper to the right sized boxes to fill the spaces. Because the wood veneer card looks best without anything behind it, I think I will opt for the first option, and I’ll figure out at some point what photos are best there. But it doesn’t bother me at all to see the backs of the photos and the papers right now when I flip through the album – won’t be the first or last time that happens, so I just embrace it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. For those who haven’t seen it yet, Two Peas announced their education and inspiration programme for 2014 earlier this week. Glitter Girl videos are still on Wednesday. They are changing just a little bit and I’ll share more about that once this week’s is live. You can see the whole schedule here, and it’s a schedule I’m very excited to have in front of me. We’ve been working on a lot of projects behind the scenes for Two Peas’ fifteenth year, and there is much inspiration coming your way. I hope you enjoy!

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