The Story of Rising to the Challenge

I think there's something hard-wired in me that responds best to a challenge. I find that when I sit down to scrap I need to have some specific purpose in mind - whether that be DT work, a challenge blog, a certain story that I need to get out of my system, or an upcoming event. I love the feeling of conquering the task I guess.

The task can come from anywhere, or from anyone. I don't really mind. For these two cards I'm sharing today the challenge was actually set by my Mum. She asked if I could make her a card for a wedding, and a card for a new baby boy.

Well... that I can do!

For the wedding card I turned back to my favourite Studio Calico kit for the year "Sugar Rush" because I knew it was filled with lovey dovey Valentine's themed papers - which would work perfectly well for this too.

Whilst the baby boy card became an exercise in using up as much scraps and old stash as I could find!

I really haven't got a very organised system when it comes to storing my embellishments. If truth be told, I have a 12x12" box on my desk and any packet of journal cards, stickers, flowers, rubons, whatever... it all goes in there. I keep my kits together, but that's a different story.

There's packets of embellishments in that box that date back to when I began to scrap seriously in 2010. I give a lot of stuff away (on my Instagram, and Facebook and here too) so it doesn't get too overwhelming, but I'm certainly not one to just throw stuff away.

I love the chance to occasionally go through it and find as much coordinating product as I can to pile onto one project like this! Mix in just a little touch of new stuff so it doesn't feel dated and no one would ever know right? Spot anything you recognise?

The Studio Calico Classroom

May and June are going to be super busy months in the Studio Calico Classroom. I'm not sure if it's the first time ever, but I feel like it might be, Studio Calico are going to be running about 5 or so classes all at the same time. Pretty exciting if you love online classes taught by SC experts hey?! Let me tell you about a few of them.

Firstly, there's the Digital Basics Class, and one of the best things about this class is that it's FREE!!! Catherine Davis is going to teach everything you've ever wanted to know about how to use the digital products Studio Calico release each month such as the Printables, Digital Stamps, Templates and Cutting Files. As well as take you through some basics like how to organise your digital collection, how to trace files in Silhouette and a thousand other things. If you've never opened Photoshop and wouldn't know where to start.... this is your answer!! Like all these classes, you'll be given plenty of digital freebies along the way to test out your new skills too. 

But if you're a little more proficient in digital scrapping then you'll likely be really excited to hear that (finally!) Shanna Noel is going to be leading a class called Digital: Beyond the Basics. There'll be 10 videos and 10 PDF's to lead you through a whole range of exciting digital techniques. I'm super SUPER excited about this one.... 'cos if there's anyone whom I want to learn digital skills from, it's Shanna!

But if you're more of a touchy feely textural scrapper keen to learn a new trendy technique then you might want to check out Letterpress 2.0 being taught by Geralyn Sy. This is a mini-class (my words!) which is great for those a little short on time, and will take you through some fun techniques on how to use Letterpress.

Of course, if you were deducing that it's called Letterpress 2.0 because there was once a Letterpress 1.0 then you would be correct! Last year Tina Aszmus taught a more extensive class which will also cover all the basics of Letterpress, and you have the opportunity to enroll in both classes at the same time in the Letterpress Bundle option.

And lastly there's the Mini Book classes! Maggie Holmes is currently taking us through the creation of her layered and colourful eclectic album which uses the Excalibur Add On Kit from this months Camelot kits. But you can feel free to use whatever supplies you've got on hand. This class has already started, but is still taking enrollments until the end of the month, so you've still got plenty of time to sign up and get caught up!

You also have the option with the Mini Book classes to purchase the bundle of all four of them at once (for a discount), which is available here in the Mini Book Library.

Phew! Well that should be enough to keep you busy for the next couple of months shouldn't it?! But before I go, I just want to also draw your attention to a special subscription offer that's happening at the moment too. Until the end of the month, Studio Calico will let you sign up for a new subscription at no risk. Meaning, try it out for one month and if you want to cancel then you won't be hit with any extra fees! Great idea if you're sitting on the fence about signing up! I'm pretty tempted to do this myself and add a Project Life subscription to my cart. Subscription details are here.

The Story of the Awesome Supporter

Oh it's been such a long long time since I had the time to participate in an online bloggy challenge. I love these for prompting my creativity and forcing me to try new techniques and designs that I never would have tried otherwise. And these days I'm really finding the colour combination challenges to be my favourite.

Enter the Jot Magazine Mood Board challenge for May!

So at first glance I'm thinking to myself "oh no... green and orange? Nup. Totally not my colours at all!" I'm more of a pink and aqua scrapper. You may have noticed?! But then a further thought occurs to me that the whole idea behind a challenge is to challenge yourself ;-)

A couple of the Jot girls had used their vintage Sassafras blooms on their inspiration pages, and if nothing else I'm still a sucker for pulling out some of my old Sass stash! I simply had to follow suit and chose a packet of these bright greens ones. What a perfect match for the colour and theme of the Mood Board! So happy to have these seeing the light of day and making it onto a page at last.

Combined with a bunch of my faithful new favourite Printables labels and journal tags from Studio Calico, as well as mixing and matching items from lots of my past kits I was actually able to throw this layout together quickly and easily. Love it when that happens. Love when I don't have to struggle and agonise over every decision!

The story of the page is about my Moodles. She's such an active supporter of her sister - in all things really, but especially on the athletics field. Even just the other day she was telling me how proud she is of her sister. She actually used those words! "Bebesh won a trophy.... I'm so proud of her" she said. Awww. Heart warming moment to see how much they love and respect one another :-)



Supplies:

Color Theory Paper Pack Camelot Main Kit Camelot Printables by In a Creative Bubble Camelot Printables by Tina Azsmus Camelot Printable Labels Bluegrass Farm Hello Forever Printables Essentials Gold Stars Color Theory Ink: Orange County Color Theory Ink: Deja Blue

InLinkz.com

NSD at Studio Calico

I've always loved the National Scrapbooking Day Crops at Studio Calico - long before I was ever on the Creative Team. So there was no way I was going to miss out on taking part in the festivities this year!

Basically the Creative Team was offered the bunch of challenges and asked if we wanted to take part, and which one we wanted to do. Given that they were all fun and exciting I said I would take any one of them, and was thrilled to be asked to take part in the washi tape challenge issued by Celine.

I'm sure there's many of you who'll admit to having quite the stash of washi. When I counted up my washi rolls during the last Studio Calico crop I found out for the first time that I owned over 50 of them! Eeekkk! Although that ended up being nothing in comparison to the 'winner' who admitted to over 300!! I'm wondering how many you have? Do you even know?

But for the challenge we're only asking you to use 3. In fact, it doesn't even necessarily say you need to use 3 different washi tapes. The challenge is just to use washi in 3 different ways. I guess you can interpret that however you like. For my sample layout here I ended up doing both. Meaning I used 3 different washi tapes in 3 different ways.

I used the pink ampersand washi just as you would expect - underneath the photo and in my embellishment clusters. It becomes just like any other layer. But it was the other two where I went a bit more 'technique-y'. The gold washi was snipped into squares, the edges folded down, and ran along my page like a flag border. And it might not be obvious at first but the navy title is actually made of washi tape too. I simply laid strips of it down onto plain paper and then ran it through my Silhouette to cut the words. Easy as that!

The 6 different Studio Calico challenges run until Friday, so there's still plenty of time to enter. Perhaps I'll see you over there? Although if you're anything like me, you might not have had time to actually do any scrapping.. and that's ok. What I have done is make sure I got my hands on the limited edition Studio Calico special release NSD Kit. The scrapping can come later ;-)

NSD at Big Picture Classes

I cannot begin to describe how excited, nervous, flustered and flattered I was when I received an invitation to take part in the National Scrapbooking Day celebrations at Big Picture Classes! To be called one of the '10 experts' and pictured there alongside people like Ali Edwards, Becky Higgins, Stacey Julian, Heidi Swapp..... well basically the whole darn lot of them... is like something out of a dream. I'm still can't believe it's real!

I was asked to contribute a page and video sharing my tips on speedy scrapbooking. Now I'll be honest - speed is not something I'm usually known for when I scrapbook. Despite always running ridiculously low on time, I'm one of those scrapbookers who wants to try out every embellishment in 6 different places before I settle on where it looks best!

But I do have a few tricks up my sleeve - the things I settle on because I know they work best for me. And it's these things I'm sharing in my video in the BPC classroom.

But I'll let you in on the secret of Trick No.1 and that's to scrap with a kit or collection. Basically anything where the difficult choices of which products to use has already been made for you. Today for my layout I'm using the Blue Note Kit from Studio Calico - which was/is one of the kits available to purchase for just $10, so many of you might now have this kit in your hands?

But whatever you're using, and however you're preserving your memories I hope you're enjoying National Scrapbooking Day. It's not too late to sign up and register for the Big Picture Classes 10k event. Each of the 10 teachers are sharing their own video with tips about speedy scrapbooking, and after having watched them all myself I can tell you I've learned so much and gained a really fresh perspective on this hobby.

Don't forget when you're sharing your layouts on Instagram to use the tag #NSD10k and @BigPictureClasses to be in the running for some fabulous prizes as well as help us achieve our goal of swamping Instagram with 10 000 layouts. Check out all the details here.

I'll be back later with my Studio Calico NSD layout as well. But in the meantime, check out all the events on the blog.

Getting ready for National Scrapbooking Day

National Scrapbooking Day is fast approaching. It's on May 3rd..... are you ready?
I'm going to be hanging out in two places. Well 3 places really... but I'm ignoring the fact that I'm actually working a 14 hour shift that day, and concentrating on this instead:

Big Picture Classes is hosting an all day FREE event that will be filled with chat, challenges, tutorials from these 10 teachers (yes, one of them is ME!!) and a whole bunch of prizes too!
We're racing towards sharing 10,000 layouts on Instagram that day in our #NSD10k promotion which is all about showing the world the importance of this fabulous hobby of ours. Here's a little preview to get you excited :-)



You all know this already, but obviously our craft is not just about playing with paper, but more about recording our memories and documenting what's important to us. If we can flood Instagram with 10,000 layouts I think it will help people understand that scrapbooking has evolved way beyond the concept of cutting our photos into shapes and covering them with stickers!

Here's a little sneak of the page I'll be sharing, and my tutorial will be all about hints and tips to get you finishing pages in a hurry. Like all of you, I live in a busy world with many competing interests for my time so I don't always have hours to dedicate to each page. In fact, it's got to be the question I get asked the most.... "how do you have time to scrapbook?" I'll share some of my answers in my video tutorial released inside the Big Picture Classroom.

The other place I'll be hanging out is Studio Calico, and the two have teamed up together for this event. If you've signed up for the #NSD10k event already then you will have noticed one of the perks is access to 'secret' codes which allow you the chance to buy these past Studio Calico kits (above) at only $10 each. The page I'm sharing is made with the Blue Note Scrapbook Kit which surprisingly is still available!

But here's what you've all been waiting for... a little sneak peek into the exclusive National Scrapbooking Day kit Studio Calico will be releasing on the day!! You will just love love LOVE IT!! I'm after all those stars of course - those acrylic ones look just amazing right?
And here's one more sneak for good measure ;-)

There's also a few new products Studio Calico have added to their shop just in time, including this special National Scrapbooking Day Stamp Set which I think is totally cute!

Studio Calico will be holding their own version of fabulous events throughout the day in an online CROP. Check out the blog on the day for all the fun! Here's a sneak of a page I'm going to be sharing there as part of a challenge:

So what are you going to be doing on National Scrapbooking Day? Are you going to be as busy as me?! LOL! I'm so excited about this!!