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

These days I film about one in every five layouts I create, so in theory I share so very much in terms of how I create a scrapbook page from start to finish. But of course, editing is also part of that process and I guarantee the vast majority of my pages do not go from that very first spark of an idea to completed page in under twenty minutes. With each video I edit, I have to choose which things are worth including and which steps I should just gloss over. It’s a funny little game, because with each video there is someone out there who is brand new to my work and could benefit from something I have explained before – like why I ink edges or what little gizmo I use for doing so. But then again some of you have already seen every video I’ve made and I don’t want to bore you with the same information time and time again. Who knew it turning on the camera would make me think so hard?

So this week I was intrigued as to how changing the medium would change the explanation of how I create a scrapbook page from start to finish. Instead of showing that process via a step-by-step video, I joined three other scrappers (and one producer) to discuss how a specific page came to fruition. No visuals other than the four layouts themselves: just a conversation. On this episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable…

(Dina Wakley and I were the guests and hosts Noell Hyman and Nancy Nally also joined in to share their scrapbooking process. You can see the specific discussion of this particular episode here.)

So now I turn that same question over to you: how do you make a scrapbook page from start to finish? If your process is simple enough that you want to explain it in a comment, fabulous! If it’s something you want to think more about and illustrate with an image or two, you might want to blog it and leave a link. Either is fine. You could even put together your own video or podcast to show us or tell us about how you make a page! But I would love to hear how a page comes together for you… feel free to talk generally or pick a specific layout like we did for our discussion. (Bonus points if your process includes supplies speaking to you!)

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Oh stamps: you cost more than a sheet of paper, but we can use you time and again. It makes perfectly rational sense… yet why are there plenty of stamps sitting in our collections that we don’t put to good use more often?

On a recent episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable, the idea of how to consider your spending on stamps (and other tools that can be used multiple times) even entered the discussion. If you buy a stamp for five pounds and use it fifty times, then you could say it only cost ten pence per use, and that’s a pretty economical craft supply! (Of course that doesn’t include the cost of ink or embossing powder or anything else you like… oh my, that gets a bit overwhelming very quickly!) I think we can all agree that a stamp used fifty times is a good investment. It’s the stamps we buy and just use once or twice that can be more humbling. Say I buy a set of alphabet stamps for ten pounds, thinking I will start using them on all my titles thereby saving me lots in letter stickers and such. (Of course, I have already paid for enough letter stickers to spell quite a bit, but that’s beside the point for now.) If I really did that, and fifty of my next hundred pages include that stamp set, then those titles were just twenty pence per page and I have the added benefit of my pages starting to have a unifying style from the repetition of those stamps.

…but what about the scenario that I come home and use those stamps promptly on those three layouts, then put them away while I’m cleaning up and the next time I scrap I go onto auto-pilot and go back to my letter stickers and eventually forget about my master plan to get my money’s worth from those stamps? Using those stamps on just three layouts means each of those titles was £3.33… which is more expensive than quite a few kinds of letter stickers!

This is partly why I slimmed down my stamp collection by about half over the past two months. (The other part being I just didn’t have room for so much and I needed to figure out what could go!) I still have plenty of stamps for all sorts of things, both letters and motifs, but the designs I had completely forgotten to use and wasn’t falling in love with again? Those went to new homes where they could be loved rather than ignored! And now with an amount of stamps that doesn’t overwhelm me or make me feel guilty, I can focus on using them on my pages in ways that work for my scrapping style. That’s a win all around!

So that leads me to the next challenge: take one stamp (or one set of stamps, like an alphabet) and use it as a prominent feature on a project. If you would prefer to do something other than a scrapbook page for this challenge, that’s fine! In this five ideas post, I decided to get more from a stamp by using it on more than just a 12×12 page and I’ve repeated many of those ideas with other stamps since then. Whatever the project, I feel a bit better about my stamp investment when I really feature the design on a page rather than hiding it away under lots of other elements, so I encourage you to highlight one design you love so your favourites show through your scrapbooking.

Have you been collecting stamps but not putting them to use as much as you would like? Check out the brand new Scrapbook Stamper’s Workshop and last year’s Scrapbook Stamping class for plenty of tips specifically designed to help you get the most from your stamps on scrapbook pages, and they are taught by two ladies who get way more creative with scrapbook stamping than I do!

To enter this challenge, create a new project featuring a stamped design and upload it to your blog or a page gallery. Share a link below. Entries close at the end of next weekend!

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Earlier this week I recorded a new episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable, a weekly scrapbooking podcast hosted by Noell Hyman and Nancy Nally, and produced by Noell’s mister, Izzy. I snapped a picture just as we were finishing up this week so you can see what it looks like behind the scenes for me. I’ve been on the show five times and each time has been in a different location – which has been a total coincidence – but my set-up is pretty similar each time. We’re told the topic of the show a day or so in advance, and I start brainstorming bits and pieces and I stick them on the wall. The wall is always how I do my best planning – each of my classes and special albums and books and magazine issues I’ve worked on? All of them lived on a wall of notes at some point in time. In this case, the blinds ended up the best place. Some of those notes were discussed on the show and others didn’t really fit in naturally – but better too many possibilities than going blank while we’re recording, right? Back in the days when I had to host some radio hours as part of an exam, I always had quite a bit of criticism for not having a good radio voice, but I never lost marks for dead air!

The rest of the set-up includes more post-it notes and a pen to write as we go – sometimes someone says something I want to come back to and I don’t want to forget it as the conversation continues. We record the show online, and this time I tweeted right before we started recording then I left Twitter automatically refreshing in the background so I could see the replies. Then there are the necessities: water and a microphone! (And yes, water tastes better in glasses from the release of The Great Muppet Caper. I am sad there are no commemorative glasses for the new Muppet movie, actually!)

The Paperclipping Roundtable Episode 103 – Too Precious to Scrapbook by Paperclipping Roundtable

I was super excited to be joined by Wilna Furstenberg for this episode, and the topic of discussion came from that feeling we get when we build up important photos to be so very important that they are almost too precious to scrapbook – that idea that photos from key moments in life need to be scrapbooked perfectly and until then, not at all. You can listen online or via iTunes to hear the discussion around the table.

In general, my advice in this situation is always something is greater than nothing. If you’re scared to scrapbook a really important day, would you prefer your scrapbooks be left without that event entirely? Or would it be better to give it a shot and see what you can do, and if that means you go back later and work on that subject more, then so be it. But if you never start, it will never be there. Simple as that. So something is always great than nothing.

Other things that might help:
Try a warm-up session. If time allows, try scrapping something less intimidating first, then use that confidence to move onto the more precious photos. Just like warming up your muscles in a work out – except it’s your creativity in this case. (If I go a week without scrapbooking, I honestly feel something I describe as ‘forgetting how to scrapbook’. It just means things aren’t running as smoothly under my fingers as usual. That first page or two after a break helps me warm up and then I’m off and running again.)

Remember you can go back. You can always go back. You can add, subtract, rework. Your scrapbooks are your memoirs and you are the editor. If you decide a page doesn’t have enough detail or writing or perspective, you can go back and add whatever it needs whenever you fancy. I go back through my older pages often and add in more writing and sometimes more photos… and I take things out or change things around. I don’t consider the pages themselves to be so precious once they are finished that they can’t be changed.

Be thankful for digital images. These days, you either took the photos with a digital camera or you can create a digital back up by scanning or photographing your one-of-a-kind photos or scanning your negative collection. With that in mind, why would we ever be scared? If we decide we don’t like how the page is going, we can print a new copy and start again – as many times as we like. No longer do we have to worry about ruining a photo. Everything will be okay!

I hope you enjoy the episode! You can find more discussion about this episode here on the Paperclipping blog.

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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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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_{Supplies: Mini papers and journaling die cuts by Jenni Bowlin, glitter die cuts by My Mind’s Eye, letter stickers by BasicGrey and butterfly punch by Martha Stewart Crafts.}

One tiny little shopping trip yesterday afternoon and I picked up enough to finish this page. Still pretty minimal for me but that’s okay now and then! (And I did manage to get a set of four patterned papers in there, so you know I’m happy really.) The journaling on this particular page is all about the vocabulary rather than the event. You can’t really see what’s written on the signs in the photo at this size, but it includes a bit of current vocabulary: for the win. I’m sure I won’t be saying that in five years… possibly not in one, so I just wanted to take that little bit of time to explain how this phrase became so prevalent in my vocabulary in 2010.

Do you have any phrases that might need explaining? My mind is storming a bit with ideas of other vocabulary elements that might be scrappable, and how it can work for teens and adults in addition to the more traditional ‘cute things you say’ pages for younger children.

And lest you think I had wasted the opportunity to scrapbook about the sheer wonderment that was the photobooth at Laura’s wedding, I promise I still have plenty more strips to go! This is just a sampling. Hurrah for unlimited photo opportunities, fake moustaches and good friends!

In other news, the special project I mentioned yesterday is available now — I was a guest on the Paperclipping Roundtable. It’s a podcast with scrapbookers discussing a different topic in each episode. We discussed using scrapbooking to help achieve a goal or work on a project, so that’s very much in line with how I scrapbook! If you discovered my blog via the podcast, welcome! This post is a great place to start as it points out some of the most important posts here. And you can find all the details (including the sign up button!) for the current online scrapbooking class right here. If there’s anything else I can help with, please just ask! It’s lovely to see you!

xlovesx

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Home again, home again: sweet London town! And oh my do I have a list of things to share with you today! Please excuse my slightly random nature this lovely Tuesday.

If you’ve popped over from Scrap Camp with the lovely May Flaum, then hello there! I have something special for you tomorrow — a free digital/printable download that fits with May’s project. It will be available for you right here on Wednesday so I hope you’ll pop by!

If you’ve been checking out the other scrappers featured in the Ella Publishing awards this week, you’ll want to grab the new e-book that features a layout from each of us plus lots of insight into our creative processes and how we find time to scrapbook. Grab the e-book here. It’s called Time to Scrapbook.

Yesterday I promised more tenuous links from influential scrapbookers to my funny little head, and there are two stops on the blog tour today: Noell and Jenni.

The next stop on the week-long blog tour of influential scrappers is multimedia maven Noell Hyman, creator of all things Paperclipping. That includes videos, tutorials, podcasts… it’s a scrapbooking media explosion. (My favourite is the Paperclipping Roundtable, where a group of scrapbookers have an impromptu discussion on some aspect of the topic. I subscribed through iTunes on my phone so it automatically downloads and I can listen to people talk about scrapping while I’m on the train! And it’s free!)

Aside from scrapbooking, what do I think of when I think of Noell? I think of vegan food. Specifically vegan cupcakes, baked goods and other lush treats. One day I tweeted about a particularly amazing cake from the lovely Ms Cupcake UK and Noell replied wishing there was someone selling vegan loveliness in her neck of the woods. I’m vegetarian rather than vegan, but I never stop being grateful for how much choice there is for quality vegetarian and vegan food here in London. Now when I stumble upon something both delish and vegan, I instantly wish Noell could come to try it out! I think I have planned at least a week of an itinerary for her to have a London food holiday if she ever decides to visit. (Clearly if I did not know her name, I would refer to her as Vegan Scrapbooker or something! Thankfully Noell is a much prettier name!) So in honour of Noell, I point you toward one delightfully yum vegan cupcake recipe. Though you may want to wait for it to chill a few degrees outside before you turn on your oven! Don’t forget to go enter to win prizes at Noell’s blog. (And Noell, if you’re ever up for that week of food, you let me know!)

Next up is supersweet superwoman Jenni Bowlin. Jenni is actually traveling back from a workshop today so her giveaway will go up a little later — keep checking so you can enter to win! But oh goodness, Jenni is such a talented lady. I love, love, love the products Jenni designs and her delicate, homespun scrapping style. I’m still so excited to be designing with her products.

Jenni’s vintage scrapping style always makes me think of old books, and although she has a far better knack at finding amazing vintage pieces than I do, I would still love to spend a day with her at my favourite place to search for unique old books — the booksellers on Charing Cross Road. Especially the stores that have basements where you can wander from room to room searching through thousands of books that were once part of the collections at public and private libraries, hospitals and schools. My favourite find is a 1926 book called Psychoanalysis for Normal People which is a sort of early version of what you would now find in the self-help section at Borders. The foreword explains how it is important for ‘normal’ people like teachers, nurses and scout leaders to understand psychoanalysis so they can be vigilant of the upcoming mental breakdowns of all those they encounter. It is somewhat hilarious and even more so when you consider this was groundbreaking, cutting edge stuff for the time! I don’t think I could ever cut that book up for artsy projects because it is just too interesting as a social artefact. But also it makes me giggle because I have always thought of Ms Jenni as a very esteemed and classic southern lady, so I could never in a million years imagine her using phrases like ‘normal people’, even in 1926! Somehow, if we went shopping in the same book store, I think she would find something elegant and classy and artistic instead of my silly old medical books! Be sure to pop over to Jenni’s blog for more chances to win in Ella’s week-long giveaway of 100 great prizes!

Two more scrappers up tomorrow… and that free download too, so don’t be a stranger!

xlovesx

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