The English Geek

Giveaway: Everyday Storyteller 2

Can you believe it's the last day of April? Yesterday I went running and it seemed like everything possible was blooming all at once...it was the most deliciously fragrant five miles I've ever done! I'd like these perfect spring days to last a little bit longer; I wish there were about two more weeks of April weather left. Kaleb and I have celebrated spring by practicing handstands in the front yard. It's a story I want to scrapbook soon, because even when it's been cold and rainy outside, he's asked if we could go out and practice anyway.

He's getting pretty good at handstands!

What spring stories do you have to tell? Though it's not focused only on spring, but on storytelling in general, Everyday Storyteller 2 will help you get your stories down on layouts. And today you can win it before you can buy it!

Everyday Storyteller 2 is a brand new idea book offering more than 100 tips, tricks and techniques for scrapbooking. Go behind the scenes with 33 of your favorite memory keepers to see how they capture moments, tell stories and document their best memories. Sign up for the VIP list to be the first to know when the book is released and receive an exclusive discount.

For my part of the book, I wrote about a storytelling possibility that's easy to overlook. If you've read my blog or taken one of my classes, you know that stories and writing and sharing with words is the most important part of scrapbooking to me. And this little extra story spot I use makes me happy because it's a way to add just a tiny bit more narrative. There are 30+ other contributors who will share other amazing ways to get your stories onto your layouts.

If you want a chance to win the book, each book contributor participating in the blog hop is giving away an eBook copy of Everyday Storyteller 2. Use this entry link  to enter. You must enter by 11:59pm PDT on April 30, 2013 to be eligible. You may enter from each stop. Winners will be contacted directly as well as posted at everydaystoryteller.com on May 1, 2013

Here are all the other contributors; visit their blogs for more chances to enter!

Tangie Baxter Kerri Bradford Joscelyne Cutchens Catherine Davis Patty Debowski Lisa Dickinson Karla Dudley Leah Farquharson Karen Grunberg Jenni Hufford Donna Jannuzzi Amanda Jones Mandy Koeppen Riikka Kovasin Kami Leonard Amy Mallory Amy Martin Ann-Marie Morris Celine Navarro Lynnette Penacho Kelly Purkey Krista Sahlin Linda Sattgast Cindy Schneider Wendy Smedley Elisha Snow Neisha Sykes Jill Sprott Laura Vegas Allison Waken Crystal Wilkerson Jennifer Wilson

Happy scrapping!

Everyday Storyteller

A few months ago I was asked to contribute an article and some layouts to the newest edition of Everyday Storyteller, which is an e-book that focuses on real life scrapbooking—on doing it because you want to get your stories and photos put down together somewhere permanent, with something pretty to go along with them. I was thrilled, of course, as that is exactly my own scrapbooking philosophy.

While I was in the thick of preparing for my Textuality class, Kendell was grumbling about an entry for the scrapbooking store in the checkbook. "You're doing all this stuff just for the class and it kind of seems like a waste of money," he said.

I didn't launch into my schpiel because his eyes would've glazed over. (Honestly, what husband would want to listen to a scrapbooking schpiel?) But I thought it.

I've been doing some sort of work in the scrapbooking world since 2002, when I started writing for the (sadly, now-defunct-because-of-the-stupid-economy) magazine Simple Scrapbooks. And one goal I have always set for myself is this one: do what I do.

This means that whether I'm writing an article, working on a class, or putting together a submission for an e-book, I make the same kind of layouts that I would make if I weren't doing them for an assignment. Sometimes—quite often, in fact, and honestly it's one of the things I love about having a scrapbooking assignment—the topic will stretch me. Assignments have pushed me to create layouts about experiences or stories I probably never would have arrived at on my own. But I make the topic fit within the reality of my life; I still tell a true story.

But the design approach, the use of products, the aesthetics: I do what I do. I use supplies I love even if they're not the trendiest or the newest. I arrange things so that the layout "feels" like one of mine—even though sometimes I feel like my "look" doesn't quite fit with what everyone else is doing. I refuse to replace story with product—I write a lot of journaling on almost every layout because that is what I do.

So to answer Kendell's complaint: I don't ever do any layout just for an assignment. I do them to teach and to illustrate something, but also because I'd be making them anyway. For an assignment or just for myself, I make layouts that are little pieces of my personality and aesthetics, no matter what.

This is true for the layouts I made for Everyday Storyteller. They are actually some of my favorites I've made in awhile. If you are of the scrapbook sort, the book is released on May 3, and there will be tons of give aways on the launch day.

Happy scrapping!

Use Your Stuff #8: New Stuff

One of the things I do to keep me motivated to use my stuff is my New Stuff box. When I get something new, instead of putting it away in its appropriate color drawer, I put it in the New Stuff box (which currently is pretty stuffed with new stuff, as all the new CHA stuff has recently hit the stores here), and when I'm ready to make a layout, I start picking out supplies from the New Stuff box first.

The main reason I do this is because a lot of my scrapping energy seems to be caught up in the new stuff. I wouldn't have bought the new stuff if I didn't have an idea for how to use it, so if I follow through and try that idea on a layout, I use the stuff and I don't forget the idea.

It also helps to remove that "this new stuff is SOOOOO GOOD that I need the perfect photos to use it with" feeling. If you use it instead of waiting for something perfect, you lose that sense of "I need this to be perfect" which is, I think, a major downward spiral on creativity. Instead it becomes just one more useful supply (instead of the most perfect scrapbooking thing you've ever come across). Cut into that piece of patterned paper, tear off some washi from the roll, peel off a few alpha stickers and there you go: you're using the new stuff instead of idolizing it for its newness.

Once I've used some part of something new, then I file it into a color drawer. Often I cut things apart, so for example, a sheet of alpha stickers with red, yellow, and blue alphas would be cut apart and put into the red, yellow, and blue drawers. This used to stress me out, as it felt like I wouldn't be able to coordinate the individual things with other stuff. But that hasn't been the case; for me, it makes my stash much more usable because I have an assortment of, say, yellow shades to pick from when I want something yellow.

Here's this week's challenge:

Find the last three new things you bought. (NOTE! "New" doesn't always necessarily mean "brand new, hot off the press, never before seen by anyone else." Lots of my "new" stuff is older supplies I've bought on clearance. It's still new to me.)

Use all or just a portion of those three things.

Mix in something old as well.

Here's what I made:

(Lately one of my favorite techniques is using random strips of patterned paper to build up layers of color and texture.) (Also, I've been using some older photos. That coat that Jake is wearing in the photo? I just took it to D.I. last month because it was too small for Kaleb, to which he said "good riddance" as he hated the puffy coat.) (He didn't really say "good riddance" but if he knew what those words meant he would've!)

I used a lot of new stuff on this layout. I'm in love with the new Teresa Collins Stationery Noted line (The red stripes, the quote, and the ticket with the date on it). In fact, I broke my rule for this line: after I used some of it, I put it back in the New Stuff box because I want to use more of it ASAP! I've used it on several recent layouts. The red polka dot is new, and the red and grey alphas. The light blue alphas were from one (or maybe two) of the new Fancy Pants lines. The red ampersand came from my red embellishment drawer (I think it is from Basic Grey) and the "Life is So Good" strip came from my Words drawer. The multicolor polka dot was in my "make cards" scrap box.

How do you incorporate new supplies into your scrapping process?

Use Your Stuff #7: Really, Just Use It!

My friend Amy is hosting a use-your-stash week at WCS, so I've been thinking about the topic even more than usual, so bear with me for a ranty little post.

Yesterday I needed to fit something in my drawer of brown embellishments. I dug around a bit, found what I needed, and then started paying attention. Because, you know: holy cow. There's a lot of brown stuff in that drawer. And there's a lot of stuff in my pink drawer, too. And the yellow one. Even the red (my least-favorite color) drawer has, yes, lots of stuff.

I found myself staring at my color drawers and imagining what it would be like if I used up all my stuff. How many layouts could I make? I daresay that, barring adhesive purchases, I could scrap well into the next decade of my life without buying anything.

When we were growing up, my mom had her sewing room. It was a basement bedroom that had a whole wall lined with built-in cabinets that held bottles of food. (She was a domestic goddess who could preserve nearly every food item you can imagine.) Food, and also fabric. Yards and yards and yards of fabric.

Some of it, I believe, is still down in the sewing room. Most of it, I'd dare say.

Because just like when you clean out your fridge and find a whole bunch of good intentions moldering away in the produce bin, crafty supplies are all about what we intend to do. We have every intention of using the ___________ we just bought (adorable flannel, perfect wool yarn that was 50% off, or, in my case, probably a sheet of alphas). We know just what we'll do. But life, alas, doesn't allow for unlimited crafting time. And good intentions, no matter how certain, just don't always get fulfilled, and then you forget why you bought that ___________, or you fall out of love with it or think it is embarrasingly dated, and your stash either builds and builds monumentally or drains your creative energy.

I don't want to leave this world with a teetering tower of unused scrapbook supplies.

I do want to leave this world with a good representation of my family's memories put down on paper combined with photographs.

So I reminded myself: the whole point of scrapping supplies is, you know, scrapbooking. Using the stuff! And then I used some of the things I found in my brown drawer. One of them (the alphas that spell "thanks") are from 2005. Like...way back when I was pregnant with Kaleb! I remember buying them for a layout I made with photos of Haley riding a horse at my friend Sophia's house, but when I made the layout I did something completely different.

 

(I have no idea why the K looks faded. It isn't in real life.)

Maybe here is a good place to point out that one way to use your older supplies is to combine them with something newer. (Eight-year-old alphas + those new-ish little Studio Calico hexagons, for example.) But really, the main point is that while I was sticking those old Scrapworks letters down I was asking myself Is it embarrassing to use a product that is eight years old?  And then I also answered: Gah, who cares? I keep thinking of something Stacy Julian said in a Paperclipping podcast a few weeks ago: something about how it doesn't matter at all, really, when you've made layouts and layouts and layouts for years, what the layout looks like. It doesn't matter. And she is exactly right: it doesn't. Because while the cute stuff is fun to use and to look at, all that matters is the basics: the photo, the story. Why do I make it so complicated?

So here's my challenge to you this week: use your stuff. Use some of it. It might not be the perfect stuff for that layout. Who cares? What matters is that you got it out of your drawer. What matters is that you use the stuff to tell the story.

(Also it matters that you don't go out as the crazy lady who hoarded paper and stickers, but probably that is a different post altogether.)

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Use Your Stuff Challenge #6: Product as Inspiration

write.

Welcome to "use your stash" week

Use Your Stuff Challenge #6: Product as Inspiration

I decided awhile ago that I don’t really like using chipboard embellishments on my layouts. I can’t really explain exactly why, except for it seems like 90% of them don’t stick like they’re supposed to, or they curl in that wide, strange way that requires a stack of books to flatten out. I don’t love how the thickness makes dents on the page next to the chipboarded one, and, well...I just don’t love it in my books. (Which is to say: not that there’s anything wrong with chipboard.)

I have decided that my not-liking of chipboard is OK. Yes, it's an entire genre of scrapbooking supplies I am rejecting. (Mostly.) But as I am certain there is no law that says I must buy supplies I don't love, I'm being bold and decisive; I'm taking action. Well, if "not buying chipboard anymore because I know it mostly sits in my drawer feeling unloved" is taking action, then yes! I am taking action!

The last time I did a big purge, I got rid of quite a bit of my chipboard. (I sent it to a friend who loves it!) But I still have a few packages I loved despite the chipboard format, and this TCP Studios alpha was one of my exceptions:

 

Mostly I kept it because I loved the color combination—the different shades of blues mixed with spring green and a titch of red—and didn’t want to forget about it. Because sometimes you can find inspiration in the oddest places, but really: how does one organize ideas?

By keeping them in your stash!

I didn’t just keep those chipboard alphas. I also used them on a layout, which really almost feels like getting a BOGO: inspiration and actual product stuck down on a scrapbooking page. Which makes me feel better as, I confess: the recent new releases have sent me on a little bit of a scrappy buying frenzy. New paper! Some new alphas! (Although...is it just me, or does it seem like there are fewer new alphas? I think it’s Silhouette-inspired, as once you own one you can make a bajillion alphas all on your own if you want. So maybe alpha stickers aren’t selling as well?) A few rolls of washi! Some solid twine, too, which I just got this afternoon and have already used on a layout with you can see HERE.

The product I haven’t bought? Chipboard!

The challenge:

1. Stir through your drawers/boxes/storage compartments to find some sort of embellishment that’s still in its packaging.

2. Use it as an inspiration piece for a layout.

3. Use at least one other "old" supply.

3. Bonus points if you also use some of the embellishments on your layout!

Here’s mine:

Those alphas are old. So is the patterned paper. In fact, I know all of these supplies are sort-of old because I remember buying them at Roberts—the craft store here that went out of business last January. Still sad about that. But happy at using some older stuff. And...I love these photos of Jake. I loved that entire afternoon, in fact, and have scrapped about it more than once twice ok maybe five or six different layouts. It was a good afternoon. Notice the date—almost exactly five years ago. I hope we have a beautifully-chilly/warm February 18 this year, too. I'm ready for some fresh air.

Anyway! Hook me up if you play along! And, if no playing along is in your future, at least tell me: Is there a scrapbooking supply you don't really love?

(PS, if you were wondering "does this layout make Amy wish she could write in a straight line?" the answer is yes. I wish I could write in a straight line. Maybe when I'm a grown-up I'll manage it...)

 

Use Your Stuff Challenge #5: Fussy Cuts

I think much has been written about a commonly disliked word, moist. People seem to have visceral responses to it, perhaps because it is so ickily onomatopoeic. I can see the dislike, but the word that makes me feel naseous is  lorazapam. I can't explain why, other than it should end with an N instead of an M, and when I hear (or read) that word, it sounds in my head like it's said by a dehydrated person (usually my mother, oddly enough) who has those white crusties on her lips.

Hey. I never claimed I was normal.

Another term I don't really like is "fussy cut." It sounds so...nasal. Precise and uptight and old fashioned. But, alas, despite my disaffection for the term itself, it is a useful one. It originated in quilting and refers to the process of cutting fabrics (usually with large or remarkable patterns or images) in a specific way so as to show off as much of the image/pattern as possible, rather than just randomly cutting it as it falls under your ruler. Sometimes this means you try to fit an entire motif within a square, or that you make sure that, say, one specific leaf always falls in the same corner.

You can do the same thing in scrapbooking.

But instead of where the pattern/image/motif falls in a square or a triangle as with quilting, in scrapbooking, to "fussy cut" means to cut around the shape/image/motif. It is an awesome (albeit a little time-consuming) way to use papers with large patterns or shapes, because you get the feel of the patterned paper (the texture, colors, and design) added with flexibility (you can toss the cut-out shapes where ever you want instead of being constrained by how they are printed on the paper).

The most important thing to remember about fussy cutting: use a sharp and small pair of scissors. I have a tiny pair of Gingher spring scissors which are supposed to be used for snipping threads but which I use for fussy cutting. (I know: those of you who sew or who had moms who sewed are right now thinking "don't you ever, ever cut paper using my good sewing scissors," quite possibly in your mother's voice, but it's OK because the cool thing about good sewing scissors is that you can have them sharpened!)

And, another secret for smooth cuts: keep the tension consistent. That means that the hand holding your patterned paper should pull on the paper a little bit, away from the scissors.

Also! If you want to use the back of the paper you're fussy cutting (for, say, printing your journaling, or some other kind of embellishment, or for a card, or for, well, whatever), try cutting the images on the outer edges of the paper.

(Funny story: I used to love cutting into my mom's fabric stash when I was a kid. I'd cut a chunk out of something pretty and use it as a blanket for my baby doll or maybe a skirt for a Barbie if I was playing with Becky, or I'd just cut it because it was pretty and I wanted to look at it. I imagine I frustrated her quite often when she retrieved her fabric to start working on the intended project and found an ameba-shaped hole in the middle. Finally she taught me that if I wanted to cut off some fabric I could only do it from the edge, which was hardly as much fun.)

Oh, and one more: if you are going to be putting your fussy-cut pieces underneath other things, you can use the shapes on the edges of the paper by tucking the missing part under. (You don't, in other words, always have to have an entire image; you can just use part of it.) Or, you can cut one larger piece in half with a similar outcome.

So! Today's challenge is a simple one:

Create a layout using some patterned paper you can fussy cut.

Here's what I mean:

I confess: this wasn't the speediest layout to make. It took awhile to cut out all those flowers. But I love the way it turned out!

Tell me: are you a fan of fussy cutting, whether in quilting or in scrapbooking?

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Use Your Stuff #4: Patterned Paper

Twelve Favorite Layouts of 2012

Last January I noticed plenty of other scrappy blogs with a "favorite layouts of 2011" post and I thought two things: 1. I want to do that! and 2. I have no idea which layouts I made this year. I made a little spreadsheet and kept track of all of my layouts for 2012, not just for this post but for submissions and online postings and to keep things even between kids. AND it made it easy to write this post! (I am following in the footsteps of people like Paula and Celeste and Vivian  and Valerie except I did 12 instead of ten just because I couldn't narrow it down any further. If you've done a favorites-of-2012 I want to see yours too!)

In no particular order:

1. This is my last layout of 2012, and as one's last layout must be one's favorite (until one makes a new layout) it must be on the list!

2. uses one of my favorite paper lines this year from Basic Grey. Plus I love the quote (I actually used it on 2 different layouts!)

3. This is my attempt at following the sunburst trend. It fit in nicely with my current obsession for using scraps.

4. I liked how my embellishments turned out, but mostly I love the fact that I got two memories (one of mine, one of Kaleb's) down on a single layout. Plus I like that you can see the drawing he made of his name hanging on the fridge behind him.

5. When I was gluing down the green part of the quote I did it in the wrong direction, so then I had to re-cut it out, only I didn't have any more of that specific green paper. So the greens don't match exactly...but this layout still makes me happy for its cluster of embellishments, which I'm not really great at doing. The background comes from the same Basic Grey line as #2. I might have bought 8 sheets of it I love it so much...

 

6. This photo is one I found in an old photo album that my uncle brought to us on the day my dad died. In the photo, my mom is pregnant with me. PREGNANT WITH ME. I can't say how happy I am to have this picture. Look at the expression on my dad's face...like he's still gobsmacked by the fact that this gorgeous woman married him!

7. Sometimes a bunch of supplies from different manufacturers manages to all work together, and that happened with this layout. I loved how all the oranges and greys (one of my current favorite color combinations) all work together, and plus: those foam stickers (spelling "Nathan") always make me happy when I use them. (I need to get some more in fact.)

8. This was in my negative-letters-cut-on-a-tag stint. I made several layouts with this sort of embellishment. (Words as embellishments always make me happy.) Plus, those orange alphas ("winning")? Perhaps my favorite alpha of all time.

9. The subway art with the Adele quote is perhaps my favorite thing I've done with my Silhouette.

10. It's not often I dream about scrapbooking. But I dreamed that strip of stamped and colored images. Is that weird? I woke up one morning with the image in my head and then I set out to reproduce it. I had to try a couple of different things before I got the look I wanted.

11. I had those brackets (around the 2012) sitting on my scrapbooking table for months waiting for the right layout. I might have planned the entire layout just to use them. (And, you have no idea the efforts I went to to get this photo of Jake...he is not a fan of smiling in pictures.)

12. In real life, the silhouette of Nathan isn't quite so dark, and the text is brighter. Despite the fact that the twine wave took me awhile, this layout came together so quickly since the photo and the journaling were processed at the same time. I just had to stick everything down!

Did you write a "2012 favorites" post? Link me up! (even if it's not of the scrapbooking variety. I confess I also have a "2012 favorite books" post planned too!)

12/12/2012

One of my scrapbooking failures is that I'm not good at organized stuff or finite projects. I can make some layouts and eventually put them into albums, but that's about it. Things like mini books or December Dailies? I rarely start them anymore because I am learning to be honest with myself, and let's face it: it's rare that I actually finish something finite. Same thing goes with things like Project Life or One Little Word or Photo-a-Day or anything else that requires a scheduled commitment. My scrapbooking time is just too random and unpredictable.

Last year, though, I thought I'd try jumping on the Twelve on 12 bandwagon. The goal is that on the twelfth of each month, you take 12 photos. Then you'd made a layout with those 12 photos, and by the end of the year, voila! Nifty little slice-of-life album. Surely I could manage just taking 12 photos one day a month, right?

I made it through January.

When February 12 came around I was in Salt Lake celebrating my anniversary, and you'd think I could find 12 things to take photos of, but I didn't. I took three pictures that day. And then, even though the there's also the idea that if you missed a 12th you could just take the photos on the 13th, it felt like I'd failed already, because there really SHOULD have been some photographic evidence of that February 12th.

Another scrapbooking fail!

But today, December 12, was a day I was determined to photograph, whether or not I made it to 12 photos. I mean...how often in a person's life is there a 12/12/12? Not very often unless one is very long-lived. (I'm pretty sure I won't live to be 140 and a half!)

And, you know, I didn't make it to twelve. But I decided it didn't matter, because some photographic evidence is better than none, right? So, just for fun, my 12/12/12, with a few photos thrown in:

Our day started at 6:30, when Kendell got up to milk the cow check his email (when I'm feeling anti-morning, which is every single day of my life, and he is up all cheery & early, I always joke—in, yes, I confess, a grumbly, WtH sort of voice—that he needs a cow to milk so as to justify his early-morning wake-up habit) and discovered that Krispy Kreme had a buy one dozen get a second dozen free coupon. So we bought donuts for the kids for breakfast. (I tried to be cheery.)

After we got the kids off to school, we went to Salt Lake to do some returns and spend some time together.

On 12:12 p.m. on 12/12/12, I was at City Creek with Kendell:

I bought two pair of boots, both of which I love desperately for completely different reasons, but I really don't need two pair so between now and when the credit card bill comes I need to choose one of them.

We really had a lovely time. We walked around and window shopped at talked and I even managed a photo with Kendell that isn't of his elbow:

We happened to walk past the fountain just as it was starting its splashing-water-synchronized-to-music routine, and the music just happened to be my favorite Christmas carol, the Carol of the Bells:

(Imagine you can hear the bells!)

Then Becky, who works near City Creek, texted me back (she'd been at lunch with Heidikins, the lucky girl!), so we walked back to the Trax stop to see her and say hello. (Becky's life often seems way more glamorous than mine. She does things like work downtown and ride Trax and walk through City Creek and have lunch with bloggy friends on a regular basis. It reminds me that I really am pretty small-town!) We ended up stopping for a beverage and a long talk.

(All photos courtesy of my cell phone. Are you proud of me?)

Then things got boring and every-day-ish: got some gas, picked up the carpool, ran to Target, took Haley to her night class carpool drop-off spot, cooked dinner (chicken curry), and bought some perfect ribbon for Christmas gifts (which I will be wrapping tomorrow!) at Joann.

How was your 12/12/12?

Use Your Stuff #4: Patterned Paper

Its background was the palest of pale blues—almost, but not quite, white. It had a random sprinkling of stars as its pattern, pastel stars that looked hand-drawn, precise yet sketched all at once. It seemed then (in the dark early days of scrapbooking when almost everything you bought was some variation upon hounds tooth, gingham, or polka dot) to be the most perfect thing ever printed for baby-boy layouts.

I loved that patterned paper.

But I only had one sheet. So I carved into it carefully. I used it to back a photo but I cut out the part covered by the picture. I punched it. I cut it into ever-smaller shapes, the narrow rectangle, the oval, the heart. I used almost every inch of it.

And then my friend Brooke, who was then still, like nearly all my friends, also a scrapbooker, called me from a scrapbook store in California. Where she'd found a stash of my favorite patterned paper, and did I want her to bring me home another piece?

I had her bring me home five.

I carefully filed it away to be used again someday. You know—on the perfect layout. And there it stayed until a future purge, when I desperately hoped that someone else would love it as I once had.

It's a classic scrapbook supply mistake I think, buying too much of something you love. I still do it, I confess, only in a different way: if I fall in love with, say, yellow and grey patterned paper, I never buy six sheets of the same pattern. But I might eventually buy ten different yellow and grey pieces. (And eventually purge five of them, on that sad day in the future when I am tired of yellow and grey.)

Sometimes the allure of a pretty (elegant, chic, cute, trendy) patterned paper is impossible to resist.

But I've learned the hard (and a-little-bit-expensive) way to follow my cardinal patterned paper rule: only (unless it is a neutral pattern, a topic I shall write about another day) buy one sheet of it. In rare and desperate cases of total and complete adoration, buy two.

Of course, then you have to take home and use your paper, and honestly: I use mine. I long ago lost my fear of cutting into a pristine piece. It is just paper and no matter how much I love it I will always also find something else I love.

Lately one of my favorite ways of using a patterned paper is in small chunks. You can make entire sunbursts using only color-coordinated scraps; you can punch a surprisingly large amount of shapes from a leftover bit. (Currently, my curvy square punch gets the most use.) If you have a piece that's 8" wide, you can cut almost anything you want with your Silhouette. (Another topic I shall eventually write about.) One of my favorite recent layouts included these circle squares, which I don't really have a name for but which I love inordinately:

Using smaller pieces means you get to revisit something you love more than once, both when you’re making layouts and later, when you flip through an album and spot it here & there. But perhaps what I love best about all this cutting into patterned paper is that it gives me a sort of simultaneous happiness: I'm using stuff I love so I don't feel guilty about buying it, but I'm saving some of it for later so I don't worry about running out.

Pure scrappy happiness!

Here's another recent patterned-paper rich layout:

I used six scraps of patterned paper; the circles are punched and the bracket pieces are cut with the Silhouette.

If you, too, are itching to use some of your patterned paper, here's today's Use Your Stuff challenge. Make a layout that:

1. Uses an entire sheet of patterned paper for the base.

2. Mixes patterns based on the paper’s mood. "Mood" in patterned paper is sort of a nebulous and individual thing, but it also is a great way of combining things. Start by finding a paper that feels to you like it connects to the layout’s topic, and then look for other patterns that have the same feel. Often it is color that creates mood, but size, repetition, and shape of the pattern do too.

3. Uses some patterned paper cut into smaller shapes. You might even try cutting just one shape out of an entire, pristine 12x12 just so you know you can.

For some other ideas on using patterned paper, click HERE.

Happy scrapping!

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Use Your Stuff Challenge #3: Monochrome with a Pop, plus a Sneak!

(I know! You didn't think I'd manage it two weeks in a row, did you? It's OK. I didn't either. I often doubt my own reliability.)

I believe that a bit part of being able to use your stuff (instead of getting weighed down by it) is being able to organize it in a way that works for you. I have most of my scrapbooking stuff organized by color; it's all in those 12x12 Sterlite drawers, with one drawer for embellishments and one for paper for the entire rainbow as well as neutrals, black, and white. I do have a few theme drawers: Christmas, Halloween, Birthday, and Baby, but everything else is by color. It took me awhile to figure out that that's what works best for me.

An added plus to having your supplies organized by color is it makes it so easy (and really fun!) to make monochrome layouts.

I confess that I don't like the word "monochrome" because it sounds so...well, colorless. But a monochrome layout is really an explosion of color; it just happens to be only one. Using a few embellishments, some alphas, and some patterned paper (and, ok...maybe some ribbon? Or some washi? Or, if I ever get brave enough, some misting?) of the same hue gives you a chance to think of your supplies in a different relationship. How does this yellow thing work (or not work!) with this yellow thing? Is there some other yellow thing that would go better?

I made a monochrome layout because I've been thinking about pink a lot, lately:

Pink was my mother-in-law Beth's favorite color. I found this photo of Haley with both of her grandmas and the journaling just sort of fell into my head and then out my fingers (love when that happens!) and I knew I had to make the layout pink. And I didn't just use my own stash: the flower stamp, the pink Prima flowers, and some of the brads came from the scrapbooking supplies I inherited from Beth.

Want to play along? Here's this week's use-your-stuff challenge:

Make a monochrome layout using:

• Something new! One of the best things to get over that "this new thing is too special to use" feeling is to use it as soon as you can. On this layout, the flower patterned paper and banner sticker are both brand new, as are the alphabet letters I used to stamp the title.
• A unifying neutral. In my layout, the neutral is grey: I used a grey pen to write the date and to outline around the photo and the embellishment and grey ink on the edges of the journaling and the background. It gives the layout a consistent feel as well as a subtle breaking-up of the colors.
• A pop of a different color. This is something I learned from quilting: toss in a little bit of a contrasting color. In my layout it's the sky-blue flower. The extra little pop adds excitement!

And a suggestion on monochrome layouts: try to use the same tone of color. There are warm pinks (the rosy kind) and cool pinks (with a blue tone), for example, and they each carry a different mood. Stick with one hue then play with the tints (light) and the shades (dark) to add contrast.

And! as an added bonus, here is my sneak of my layout for the WCS December gallery:

It's not really monochrome, but it uses something new (an alpha stamp from Close to my Heart) which might be one of my favorite new things. And...I really gave away zero clues to the December topic! (Which is sort of a clue in itself.) If you want to see more sneaks, check the WCS Facebook page throughout today.

Make sure to link me up if you decide to take my challenge to use some of your stuff.

 

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