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

In between our crafting challenges, I have a few questions for you. These are the sort of questions that come up in the comments here and elsewhere, and sometimes I’m quite hesitant to answer not because I don’t want to help – but because I really believe there is no single right way to do these things. What works for me may not work for you and vice versa… and in fact, I have tried my share of things along the way that work for others but have failed miserably in my world.

So I want to answer… but I hope you’ll chip in with your answers too.

First up: how do you store your Thickers and other letter stickers?

My answer: First I divide them into a few categories. Thickers, other letter stickers that come on 6×12 sheets, letter stickers that come on 12×12 sheets and mini alphabets that come on sheets smaller than 6×12.

Thickers are what I use most, and they live in the second drawer of my desk (top drawer has pens and adhesive), and they are arranged in colour order. Some stay in packages and some don’t. Mostly depending on how well they stick to the sheet, as I would happily get rid of the plastic straight away but some of them would fall to bits in my desk drawer if I did that!

At the back of that drawer you may be able to see other sheets – that is where all the small letter sheets live. That includes the small Sassafras letters and mini alphabets from both Cosmo Cricket and My Little Shoebox.

6×12 sticker sheets live in a cardboard magazine file on my shelf, with 12×12 next to them – just in an upright stack, not in a box.

And that’s that!

So… how do you store your Thickers or letter stickers? Share with us in the comments!

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Welcome, welcome! Throughout the next three days, you’ll find a whole slew of posts here, including challenges, tutorials, page ideas, photography thoughts, organisation concepts, a few special guests and plenty of prizes along the way. I’m even going to announce my new class before the weekend is out. All of the challenges (and all of the prizes with the exception of a quick draw giveaway or two) will remain open until the end of next weekend, so there is plenty of time to participate and you can pick and choose whatever challenges inspire you most!

But why don’t I stop blathering and just jump right in with the first challenge so you can get started?

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How about some scraplifting for our first challenge? Taking inspiration from another layout is a great way to warm up your creative process! So for challenge one, take a look at this beautiful page by Jaime Warren and take some inspiration. You can scraplift it as closely as you like or you can take away just one or two little ideas and run with them on your own, so there’s plenty of room for your interpretation.

See more of Jaime’s work on her blog or in her page gallery.

I took plenty of inspiration from Jaime in creating this title page for a new album currently in the works. I started with the colours, though I chose different papers, and followed that through with similar placement on the page and the use of one small photo – though mine is a 4×4 square rather than a small landscape image. I loved how Jaime scattered small, round embellishments around the page, and I tried that with buttons and pearls instead of flowers, then echoed the round shape by using the view-master reels from an Echo Park paper as embellishments at either side of the page.

Now it’s your turn! Take whatever inspiration you would like from Jaime’s page and create something new. Upload it to a page gallery (like Two Peas or UKScrappers) or your own blog and link to it here to enter to win this challenge. Entries should be new projects created in response to this specific challenge and entries close at the end of next weekend!

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Consider yourself formally invited to a scrapbooking weekend… and you don’t even have to pack or make yourself presentable! Everything’s online and it’s all completely free, and it’s coming very soon: the 13th to the 15th of April.

What’s an online scrapbooking weekend? Well, over the course of three days, you’ll find tutorials, challenges and special guests posting here on the blog. You can join in and give the ideas a try, and if you share your work, you have a chance to win prizes from some fabulous sponsors too. Simple as that!

Of course the idea is to join in during the weekend if you can, as that way you can chat with others who are participating at the same time and all sorts of good stuff, but I also believe there should be no such thing as stress in scrapbooking, so there isn’t a strict weekend-only policy. Nearly all the prize-winning opportunities will be open until the 23rd of April, so you’ll have more than a week to complete as many challenges as you like. And should that window of time not work for you in the slightest, then all the challenges and tutorials will of course remain here for your reference at any time – it’s just the prizes that need a deadline to make things work.

You don’t need to prepare anything in advance and every challenge is created so you can use the supplies you like and adapt things to suit your style. If you don’t print your photos at home, be sure you have a stack of pictures you’re eager to scrap. (Like everything here, you’ll find a lot of 4×6 photos in the mix during the weekend, so you don’t need to print special sizes really.)

You don’t need to sign up for anything – just show up and join in anything that takes your fancy! But you can help spread the word. Tell your scrappy friends in whatever way works for you. The more, the merrier for our weekend of crafty fun! (Feel free to grab that chalkboard image if you want to blog about it – how tremendously fabulous.)

Now… I want to keep most things up my sleeve till opening day, but I really hope you can join in at least some of the fun. Paper and photos and glue and pens. And all of you. Perfection!

See you there – oh so soon!

xlovesx

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A crafting weekend here wouldn’t be right without a sketch, would it? So a sketch this week with two examples – one travel page and one Christmas page, complete with silly childhood photo!

This sketch will work with any paper you like, but it’s particularly useful with patterned papers with a framed edge. I find those papers such a challenge with the frame around the edge, but easier when the frame can be turned inside-out as it were! I used two portrait 4×6 prints on this example and one 4×5 Polaroid on the example below, but this sketch will work with a variety of photo options, so adapt it to the pictures on your desk.

Of course, this is Christmas crafting weekend so it just wouldn’t be right to not include a Christmas take on the sketch!

Your challenge: use this sketch to create a holiday-themed layout OR to prepare a page in your Christmas journal, ready for photos and journaling later. Take a picture and upload your page to your blog or an online gallery. One randomly selected entry will win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas in a Bucket to go shopping for scrapbooking supplies! Entries close next Sunday, the 20th of November.

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You may have noticed by now I’m rather fond of writing in scrapbooks. I love how written tales of little memories make a scrapbook so much more than just a photo album of anonymous people. It’s why I teach classes like Journal your Christmas and True Stories with their emphasis on committing those memories to paper before they fade into the busy nature of our day-to-day lives. I’m not the only person who shares this pro-writing ethos, and I’m happy to welcome Lain Ehmann today with her thoughts on her favourite scrapbook pages. Don’t miss your challenge at the end of this post!

When Shimelle asked me if I wanted to create a little post for her blog, my response was, “Heck, yeah! With glitter on top!”

Because if there’s anything I love almost as much scrapbooking itself, it’s writing about scrapbooking.

I’ve been scrapbooking a long time (fifteen years in the current incarnation, thirty-plus years if you count my Rick Springfield photo albums circa 1985). And I’ve learned an important lesson in that time.

This may shock you, but the pages I love best in my scrapbook albums are not the ones with the flashy flowers, fancy page elements, and awesome photography. Yes, I love to look at those (and, to be honest, pat myself on the back a bit!), but the ones I really am glad I created are those that capture a little hidden part of our life, something no one would ever know unless I wrote it down.

Like how I sometimes sneak into my kids’ rooms at night to listen to them breathe.
Or how my eleven-year-old steals every pen in the house (just like I used to do…!).
Or how my four-year-old (at the time) told Daddy he had “big hooters.”

These little butterflies of memory are the reason I scrapbook. Not to document one more Christmas or one more soccer game or one more Open House. But to tell the stories behind the pictures — and to tell the stories of my heart, the things that make me laugh and the things that make me cry. Sometimes they’re one and the same.

Let me illustrate. From my albums, I would choose this and label it an example of a Good scrapbook page:

But then there’s the Bombdiggety scrapbook page:

I love both these layouts, but the second one speaks to me more. Anyone could guess that my son celebrated his 13th birthday in some fashion. But would they know that I loved books so much, even at an early age, that I went around the house putting my name In every one I could find?

Your challenge: This is exactly the sort of thing we can all apply to our Christmas scrapbooking to get so much more value in our books than just the annual photos of the family in front of the tree. So today I challenge you to find a creative way to document a holiday memory that’s currently missing from your scrapbooks. Feelings, thoughts, memories hidden behind the pictures. It doesn’t have to be deep and angst-ridden. It can be light and breezy. But angst-ridden works, too, if that’s where you’re at! It’s all good.

And so are you.

About Lain…
Lain inspires women to make their scrapbooking fun and meaningful through her blog, classes, and live online papercrafting events. Her next class, Your Story Matters: A Guided Expedition of Self-Discovery helps scrapbookers gather their memories and stories in her signature effervescent style. The week-long class includes daily prompts, an online virtual crop, and more. You can find out more about Your Story Matters here.

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Next up I’m excited to welcome Mindy Miller, who shares her secret for making Christmas gifts look amazing. Enjoy her Christmas tag tutorial and don’t miss your challenge at the end of this post!

Have you started your holiday shopping? Believe it or not, the shopping days are dwindling and it will soon be time to start wrapping.

Here’s an easy idea for handmade gift tags that will see you through the holidays and even into winter.

Start with a tag and add three lines of machine stitching. Use a color of thread that will contrast and stand out when stitched on the tag. Pull the threads through to the back side of the tag, knot the ends and cut off the tails.

Punch three holiday or winter shapes from cardstock. Again, use a color or patterned paper that will stand out when placed on the tag. Place the punched shapes at the end of each stitched line. This will create the illusion that the shape is hanging from a string.

Embellish your punched shapes with jewels, buttons or other small accent. I used the bright and colorful twelve days of Christmas jewels and pearls from My Mind’s Eye.

Add a label sticker in the lower right quadrant of the tag. Cut off the excess sticker to the right side.

Then add two layers of either scalloped ribbon or a punched edge of cardstock to the bottom of the tag. When attaching the ribbon, cut the length longer than the tag and affix before trimming the edges. Once affixed, trim the edges on each side of the tag for a finished look.

Tie the tag to a package using fun and colorful satin ribbon. Write the recipient’s name on the label and you’re ready for the holiday!

Your challenge: Create a holiday gift tag design that’s easy to replicate! Make one or a bundle. Take a picture and upload it to your blog or an online gallery and leave a link using the button below. Deadline is the end of Sunday the 20th of November and one randomly selected entry will win a $10 gift certificate to go shopping for craft supplies!

About Mindy…
Hi! I’m Mindy Miller, a Kansas girl who loves crafts. You can find me scrapbooking, card making or sewing in my free time. My work has been published in Scrapbook Trends, CARDS and Simply Handmade magazines, plus several on-line publications. In addition, I am honored to have the opportunity to work on the Jenni Bowlin, Fiskars and Scrap-Mart design teams. Stop by my blog and say hello!

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With the holidays just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about handmade cards. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t send handmade cards to everyone on our list – it’s just too much and too stressful! But I do like to include them with special greetings to family members that we’re not able to see for the holidays. The time and effort are appreciated by them, so it makes every moment of the process that much more special.

One of my favorite things to do when working with scrapbooking supplies is make something unexpected from a simple supply. Things don’t have to be complicated to be beautiful! For this particular card that I assembled, I chose to look at the hugely popular banner piece a bit more closely. By simply turning it the other direction, I was able to make a set of simple, but pretty trees to be the centerpiece of this card!

A set of chipboard letter l’s became trunks…

and I was all ready to create!

Start by cutting a sheet of patterned paper down to 8.5×11, then fold in half width-wise.

Cut a coordinating paper to 8.25“x5.25”, round the corners if you’d like, stitch around the edge and ink the edges as well. Adhere to your base.

Cut a circle 3.75” wide, ink the edges and stitch.

Next I accordion folded a filter embellishment to go around the edge, but you could use anything from a doily to another sheet of coordinating patterned paper.

It took two for me to go all the way around the outside edge of my circle.

Apply rub-ons to the base of your card, and layer the circle with edging in the center. Adhere the christmas trees in the center.

Stamp a sentiment on a strip of paper. Clip to fit outside the edges of your circle, and fold to make a banner. Ink the edges. Mount on foam squares on your card.

Your challenge: Take inspiration from Leah’s card! Specifically in one of two ways: create a project with a circle design in the centre (of a card, a scrapbook page or another crafting project) OR create a project using your supplies in a different-than-expected way (like how Leah turned the banner upside down and added a letter to create Christmas trees). Take a picture of whatever you create and upload it to your blog or an online gallery. To enter, share a link to your project with the button below. Entries close at the end of Sunday the 20th of November. One randomly selected entry will win a $10 gift certificate to go shopping for scrapbooking supplies!

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About Leah…
I reside in the South Florida metro area with my husband and two sons. I’m a busy mama who loves to keep life creative through sewing, crafting, scrapbooking, etc. Check out my blog and etsy shop to see more!

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Yesterday’s early bird challenge asked you to share a link to a favourite Christmas project of your own… today, let’s widen the circle a bit. What idea have you seen that made you really want to make a certain project for Christmas? Today, share a link to somewhere out there in the big world of the internet! It can be something made by a friend or something you just stumbled upon while surfing!

To enter leave a comment (no widget box for this challenge) with a link to a Christmas project you have seen and loved! Easy. From all the links posted, one will be randomly chosen to win a $10 gift certificate to Two Peas to choose some new scrapping stash!

Be quick – this challenge ends tonight, not next weekend like the other challenges.

By the way, two things about leaving a comment here that might be helpful:
1. You need to press the preview button first, then submit. That solves 99% of troubles.
2. To make your link clickable, you can write it like this: "Text here":http://webaddresshere – and just leave one link so it doesn’t get flagged as spam. (But if you just want to paste the link in, that’s fine for this challenge – it just won’t be clickable. I’m fine with either!)

I hope you’re ready for a fun-filled crafty Sunday! I’ll be right back with our first tutorial post of the day!

Now… what link will you share?

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