How Do I... Trimmer Tricks Part Two

Last week we focused on the basics of how different paper trimmers work, choosing the best trimmer for our needs, and in the end we even had a little measuring practice.  So, if measuring does not come to you naturally you may want to do a quick review of that post as today we’re going to measure our socks off.  If we’re wearing socks.  This is Florida, after all.

In any case, we’re going to put into practice some of the things we learned last week to make this Gorjuss Girls card:

Gorjuss Little Things Card Sample

Lovely, yes?  I designed this card specifically for lots of measuring practice.  Bwah ha ha ha haaa…. No, you’re going to love this.  Really!  As you look at the card, one thing you may or may not notice, depending on what kind of things draw your attention, is all the lovely layers.  There are six layers on this card.  Each layer is distinguished by a brown mat, and one thing you’ll notice is that the brown mats are all about the same size – one this card, it happens to be 1/8th of an inch.  This is my go to matting size but it’s not so much important the exact size of the layer as it is the evenness of the matting – each mat is the same size.  As a general rule, this makes our eyes happy.  Whether we realize it or not, our eyes are usually trying to categorize things and make sense out of them, so when layers are even, our eyes thank us.  Now, some people are the uneven, type B messy type of designer.  At least, they claim to be.  Personally, I think they just don’t know how to use their paper trimmers.  Ha – type A humor there… no, some people really do seem to prefer a messy, unplanned kind of look.  In that case, this may not be the card for you – however, it will still give you plenty of good practice using your trimmer, so pay attention.

The first thing we do is decide on the size of card we want.  I wanted a square card.  By now most people know, but if not, I’m about to tell you – most scrapbooking paper is sold in 12″x12″ size.   There are still some 8.5″ x 11″ sheets, but the bulk of your choices start with 12″x12″.  Therefore, if we want to make a square card you cut the 12″x12″ paper in half

 

Begin by opening the measuring arm on your trimmer and placing the entire 12×12 sheet of cardstock on the trimmer. To cut it in half, measure out 6″ – this is what that looks like.

 

Make sure the paper is in the trimmer correctly and that it is pulled down flush against the edge – this will ensure a straight cut. Begin with the blade on the far side of the trimmer, away from you, and pull it towards you to make a cut. This pulling action makes it more difficult for the paper to move while you are cutting.

 

When you are done, you should have two pieces that are 6 inches x 12 inches.

That’s not so bad, right?  Now, you’re going to use one of those 6×12 pieces and the other you can set aside for later.  Take the 6×12 piece that is your base and fold it in half, into a 6×6 square.

Match the top and bottom edges together until they are straight, then use a bone folder to make a clean, sharp edge.

 

So now you should have a 6″ square base

This is the six inch square base for your card. Ignore the ugly green – for a while I was using that so you could clearly see what I was doing, but the shininess annoyed me…

I’m realizing as I type that when I caption my photos I’m not allowed to use any grammatical symbols, like apostrophes or quotation marks, so I’m typing things out – hope that’s not as annoying to you as it is to me!  In any case, for the top of this layer we need to cut a sheet of pattern paper.  Here’s where the math comes in.

If our base is 6×6, and our mat edges are 1/8″, how big should our patterned paper square be?  Well, to create a 1/8″ mat in every direction, we have to first recognize that both horizontally and vertically, we need two 1/8″ mats… horizontally we want to see mat on the left and a mat on the right.  Vertically, we want to see mat on the top and mat on the bottom.  So, 1/8 + 1/8 = 2/8, which we would simplify down to 1/4.  So, our square must be 1/4″ smaller both vertically and horizontally in order for use to see the mat evenly on all sides.  Capisce?    So, if our base is 6×6, then we cut our patterned paper to 5 3/4″ x 5 3/4″ – exactly 1/4″ smaller in each direction.  Here’s what that would look like as we cut it:

To measure five and three quarter inches, when your paper is pulled down you should see that you are a quarter inch away from the six inch mark – this is how you check that your measurements are correct…

Make the cut, turn the paper a quarter turn, and then cut it again.  When you place it on your card base, this is what you should see

Our patterned paper should have equal sized matting all the way around it – this picture makes it look like the top is a little skinny, but that is a distortion in the picture caused by having the fold of the base there… you can see it is even once the layer is glued down…  In fact, you can go ahead and glue this layer down.

 

OK, next layer.  We want to make the green striped accent strip.  Start by cutting a piece of the green striped paper

To keep things simple, I cut my accent strip to 1″ wide. The paper is a little high in the picture so you can see the 1″ cutting mark – make sure it is pulled back flush when you cut so your cut is straight… remember?

Now, you should have a strip 1″ wide (I just realize – I’m assuming everyone knows that the little quotation mark after the number means “inch”… you use an apostrophe for feet and quote marks for inches… if you didn’t know that, now you do).  You just need to make sure it’s the right length… our patterned paper is 5 3/4″ tall, and we want it to be even, so turn the green accent strip a quarter turn and then cut it 5 3/4” long.

Cutting our accent strip to 5 3/4″ long

To mat the accent strip, if you refer back to our card picture, you’ll see that we have matting on the sides but not the top and bottom.  On the top and bottom edge, the card base acts as a mat.  So, we need to cut a brown strip 1/4″ wider than our pattern paper, but the same length.  That means our brown strip must be 1 1/4″ wide by 5 3/4″ long.

I used my left over 6×12 piece and cut 1 1/4″ strip off the bottom of it

Next, turn the strip one quarter turn and cut it to the proper length, 5 3/4″

Here is what that looks like – don’t forget I am pulling that down flush with the edge before I cut…

So this is what our accent strip should look like:

Before I attach it to the card, however, I wanted to add a little extra embellishing.  I want to add a doily, and I can use my paper trimmer to cut it.  Yay!  Start by placing the doily on your trimmer so that it will be cut in half… you don’t have to be precise with measuring here since we’re just using a part and no one will really know if it’s exactly in half or not.

The edges of our doily are very delicate – if we just try to run the trimmer blade through they will scrunch and tear.  The solution?  Start with your blade in the center of the doily, where it’s solid.  Cut up, bring your trimmer back to center, and then cut down.

Start with your blade in the center

 

First, move the blade from the center and cut up… then move the blade back to center and cut down.

When you’re done you should have two doily halves…

Doily halved

I used a small ink pad to lightly ink the edges of my doily to give it a distressed look and to help it stand out against the light patterned paper background.  To do this, hold the ink pad at an angle against the edge of the doily and swipe in a downward stroke until you get the desired amount of ink on the edge, moving along the edge as you go:

Inking edges often gives a more finished look to your project and covers the white inside some papers.

Next, I put a little glued in the center, solid part of the doily and glue it to my card base.  Then I covered the cut edge of the doily with the green strip:

First layers down!

The next layer is the pink offset square.  Now, here’s where knowing what you want to use helps you out a little… I knew I wanted to use a fancy square die cut to mat my image, so I decided I wanted the pink layer to be the same size, but just offset.  So, I went ahead and die cut the fancy square for the top layer first.  Then I used my handy dandy trimmer to measure the cut size of the square and what do you know – it was four inches.

I placed my die cut square on the trimmer as if I had cut it using the trimmer so I could measure it…

So, I knew I needed to cut a four inch brown mat for my pink layer.  That part’s pretty self explanatory at this point… so let’s get straight to the math part.  I have a 4″ mat, and I needed to cut the pink pattern paper….

 

Yes!  1/4″ smaller on two sides so I would be left with a 1/8″ brown mat all the way around.  That’s exactly what your guess was, right?  I thought so!  So, my pink patterned paper needed to be cut at 3 3/4″.

This is what 3 3/4 inch should look like as you measure it out… just remember to pull the paper down flush with the trimmer edge to ensure a straight cut!  Cut it one way, then turn a quarter turn and cut the other side.

 

Now you can attach the pink patterned paper to the brown mat.  I knew I wanted my image to be straight, so I put the fancy die cut down as a place holder and skewed the pink patterned layer so it would show properly beneath my stamped image.

Then I removed my brown fancy mat and adhered the pink patterned layer as I had placed it.

We’re almost there now… I have one more layer before I get to the stamped image.  This paper collection came with a pattern that had these really pretty, feminine edges on it, so I decided to cut one out:

The center of the groove on my trimmer is where my blade cuts, so I placed the design on the groove exactly where I wanted to cut it and cut a pretty piece of trim. Once I had the piece cut, I trimmed the length to 5 3/4″, which, if you will recall, is the exact length of my bottom layer of patterned paper.

So here’s my piece:

Here you can see this piece measures 5/8″ wide, so I needed to cut a brown mat 1/4″ wider than that. That would be 7/8″, but if you can’t do the math don’t worry… you can just look at the 5/8″ mark on the trimmer and move down two 1/8″ markings to figure out where to cut without converting fractions if that’s intimidating for you.

Just remember, there are usually multiple ways to figure something out.  If one way doesn’t work for you, there’s probably another way to do it.

The strip is cut to 5 3/4″ length, as is the brown mat.

After all that work, guess what happened?  I placed the pretty strip I so painstakingly cut out (yes, I’m aware I’m mildly dramatic) and the strip just disappeared.  Well, it didn’t actually disappear – it was just really hard to see against the other papers I’d chosen.  This happens sometimes; you start out with the best design intent and before you know it you start putting things together and something doesn’t work out quite the way you planned.  That’s the beauty of patterned paper – I flipped my strip and discovered a dark pink dot that made a beautiful accent to the patterns I’d already chosen, so now we have a perfectly measured polka dot strip!

I realized when I turned the strip over that since I had cut it polka dot side down, there was a slight upward curvature to my paper edges when I put the polka dot side up. This is caused by pressing a blade through the trimmer groove – you get a slightly embossed effect. To counteract it, if it bothers you, use your bone folder to burnish the edges down and it will look just like you always planned it this way!

That’s very picky of me, I know, but I’m sort of a picky girl.  So, once we adhere our new pretty pink polka dot strip to it’s mat and then horizontally across the card front, this is what we’ve got:

Actually, here is what you get once you adhere your pink accent strip, your pretty die cut mat, and then obsessively check your measurements. Who does that? Oh yeah… this girl.

I wanted to make sure my stamped image would fit inside my die cut piece.  Now, when I measured for the mat size, I was measuring the outer most edges on the curved parts.  However, to make sure my stamped image will fit nicely inside, I have to measure from inside the pierced dots (part of this particular die cut design) and then allow a little less to make sure I got those nice 1/8″ margins.

Since the edges of my die cut were not straight and flared in and out, even with measuring I wasn’t completely sure what I thought the measurement should be, so I started large and cut my first square at 3 3/4″.

I put that on the fancy cut brown mat and didn’t like it, so I ended up shaving a little more off one horizontal and one vertical edge.  The beauty of this step is that it’s unlikely you’re going to have the same exact die cut as me (mine’s an old Spellbinders set called Marvelous Squares.  So, if you want to use a square die cut and don’t have this set, you’ll have to practice making your own measurements here!  Of course, you could completely chicken out and cut a 4″ brown square mat and a 3 3/4″ white square for the stamped image…

So, once you cut your square the beautiful thing about this Gorjuss girl set is that it’s cling and works on clear acrylic stamp blocks, so it’s very easy to see where you’re stamping.

Gorjuss Girl Sweet Tea stamp

Also, note that the stamps come with colored cling – this is SO helpful when you go to color your image, as the shading is already demonstrated for you!  I knew I was going to use my Copic markers to color this image, so I used Copic paper to make my white square and Momento Black Ink to stamp… you will need to pick your ink and paper based on how you will be coloring your image.

Stamped image, ready for coloring

We’re coming to a close… once you color your image and adhere it to your card front, you have this:

Note that I cut an extra bow from the stamp set; I attached it to the bow on my girls hair for a little extra depth.

Then, I finished my card by adhering one of the stickers from the Elements sticker sheet to a piece of the pink polka dot paper and used a 1 3/8″ circle punch to create the pink polka dot circle, then a 1 1/2″ punch to create a brown mat, and then layered all three for the round sentiment element on the left side of the card.  I added a few decorative bling pieces in the corner and the card was done!

That’s it for trimmer use for now… hopefully you’ve been inspired to break your trimmer out and try some cutting!  There are all kinds of cute card designs that are SO much easier when you understand your trimmer a little better.  Remember, practice, practice, practice!  Just like any other skill, you’ll get better with measuring and cutting if you do it frequently.

The products I used for this card are here:

Authentiques Infused 6×6 Paper Pad, Authentiques Infused Elements stickers, and the Sweet Tea Gorjuss Girls set.

Lastly, for those who like to know what Copics were used, here’s my list:

Face: E000, E00, E11, E21, R12.  Hair: Y00, Y21, Y15, Y17, Y38.  Dress: RV00, RV11, RV32, RV34.  Cup Outside: BG000, BG11, BG13, E40, E41, E42.  Cup Inside: E000, E41, E53.  Bunny and Tag: E50, E42, E43, E44, Y21.  I used a pink Copic Spica glitter pen to trace the lettering on the tag.

Thanks for checking out the post today – happy scrapping!

 

How Do I... Trimmer Tricks Part Two

How Do I... Use a Scoreboard

This week we’re going to look at another tool you can use to make your life easier and add a little oomph to your projects – scoring boards.  Scoring boards are essentially plastic platforms with grooves in them that allow you to score your paper at pretty much any interval you want in order to fold paper a little easier.  The two most popular are by Martha Stewart Crafts and Scor-Pal:

Martha Stewart Crafts Scoring Board

 

Scor-Pal Score Board

Michelle carries both at the store; I’ve worked with both and personally prefer the Scor-Pal because the markings are easier for me to see quickly while I’m working.  Others prefer the Martha Stewart Crafts board because virtually any measurement is available; they both preform equally well, so it’s really a matter of personal preference.

The first thing you might be wondering is why you even want to score.  Scoring paper before attempting to fold it stretches and breaks down some of the paper fibers.  This makes folding easier and more accurate, for one thing.  Secondly, there are some papers with coatings or inner cores that are different colors than the surface color.  Stretching those fibers before you attempt a hard fold gives you a better chance of folding the paper without revealing the inner core.  So scoring is definitely the way to go on those types of papers.

There are also a lot of templates out there in the world that allow you to create beautiful projects with scoring boards, so they’re much more useful than just allowing you to fold a card in half.

However, since this is a “basics” column, today I’m going to illustrate a very simple technique you can use on your cards to add some oomph.  Today’s card uses the following products:

Tim Holtz Core’dinations Card Stock, Tim Holtz Mariner Cling Stamps, and Fancy Pants Making Waves 6×6 Paper Pad

I chose the Tim Holtz Distress Collection cardstock on purpose; if you notice, the bottom tear strip is a slightly lighter blue than what you see.  This kind of cardstock has a paper coating that covers a core of a different color – perfect for today’s tutorial.  You can also see that I was interested in several of the Making Waves patterned papers; ultimately I only used one of them, but you can see they have some really cute papers in that stack!

First, I knew I wanted a card that opened from the bottom, so I cut my 12×12  cardstock to 4 1/4 x 11.  To make a card, you would fold the 11″ length in half at 5 1/2 inches.  This is how you would set it up on your scoring board:

Paper 4 1/4 x 11

Now I hold the paper, insert the scoring tool into the groove at 5 1/2″, and push the tool down through the paper.  You can go gently the first time and then push harder the second time; just make sure you’re holding onto your paper so that it doesn’t move.  If you’re comfortable looking at the numbers upside down, it’s probably better to hold the board that way and pull your tool towards you rather than pushing away; that way there’s less chance the paper will move.

Scoring the paper

Once you score the first side, turn the paper over and score in the same spot on the other side.  This breaks down even more of those pesky fibers and allows you to create a clean, crisp fold:

Use the tool to crisp up the fold

 

Look at that edge!

This particular card has the mariner theme; I thought it would fun to add a little dock planking to my background.  For this step, it’s important to place the card with the INSIDE facing up… we want our scored lines to raise up on the front of the card.  Place your paper on your board with the inside facing up like this:

Place the card INSIDE-UP on the scoring board

Now add random vertical lines on the card.  I chose to only score the front, so I only scored half.  You could do the back if you wanted to as well; it would make the over all card a little less stable, but not enough to be concerned about.

Add randomly space vertical lines

Now, when you turn your card over you’re going to have some beautiful raised lines:

Raised lines on the card front

They look pretty cool as they are – but if you want to step it up a notch, sand them!  Use a sanding tool or light grit sand paper to lightly take the top coating off of your raised lines, revealing the inner core of the paper:

Sanding the top coat of the paper off reveals the lighter inner core…

When you’re done you’ll have a beautifully distressed card front:

Distressed plank lines on the card front

 

For the card, I stamped one of the Mariner stamps onto watercolor paper using Archival Ink.  I chose watercolor paper because I wanted to use the Tim Holtz Distress Markers to color and watercolor paper offers superior blending; I used Archival ink because it’s a nice dark black ink that doesn’t react to water, so I knew it wouldn’t smear.

Mariner stamp on Watercolor Paper with Archival Ink

 

When you tear, pull the tear towards you rather than away; this allows the different layers of pressed paper to show

Always tear towards you so you get the ragged edge showing…

I tore a bit of the bottom off to add a little distressing to the paper; next, I colored with the Distress markers:

Color lightly with the Distress markers, then add water with a brush to blend the colors

If you think a color will be too dark, you can color your craft sheet with the marker, then pick the color up with a brush and add it to your image:

Color on your Craft Sheet for darker colors, then just pick the color up with a wet brush

Once the edges were colored, I put a little Stormy Sky Distress Ink (the ink pad) down on my craft sheet, then used a blending tool to pull the color from my craft pad onto the edges of the watercolor paper:

Use an ink blending tool to shade around the image

I used the Fancy Pants papers to mat my stamped image, added my sentiment and voila!  Almost completed card:

Almost completed card… on plain cardstock

But wait!  Where are those lines we painstakingly added to the front?  I wanted to give you an idea of the difference adding the lines makes… now HERE’s the completed card complete with our dock plank scored lines:

 

Completed card

Pretty, yes?  Sometimes it really can be a small thing that makes a big difference in your completed project, so don’t forget some of those basic techniques!

 

 

 

How Do I... Use a Scoreboard

How Do I... The Three 3's of Scrapbooking

The Basics of Scrapbooking

While I try to stay away from the concept of scrapbooking “rules”, there are some basic tips you can use when designing pages that will help add designer oomph without keeping your scrapbook layouts in the box, so to speak.  I mean, we want to feel creative, we want the process to be relaxing.  But sometimes looking at an empty sheet of paper can be a little intimidating, am I right?  So if you remember these designing tips it can help get you started and remain pleasing to the eye.

Rule of Three #1 – Three colors

I love color as much as anyone else, but sometimes we can get a little carried away with color, or we don’t know how to use it to the best advantage.  So, when designing pages you want to remember that colors are generally most pleasing in threes; the main color, a good secondary color, and an accent color.  Of course, this doesn’t mean if a pattern paper comes with a bunch of little flowers in fourteen different colors that you can’t use it.  The pattern paper will generally have an overall color that sticks out (usually the background color), so you would use that as one color.  A brightly colored patterned paper may have a few main colors that you can pull from to pick the secondary and accent colors for the layout.  Also, neutrals generally don’t count in the rule of threes.  Neutrals tend to blend in rather than standing out as an additional color, so don’t count neutrals in your three main colors unless you want to (for instance, your layout might be black, white and red – in that case, even though black and white are neutral colors, in that instance they are acting as your main color and secondary color, with red as the accent).  In the layout example below, my main color is blue, the secondary color is red, and the accents are yellow.  The layout includes white and black, but they don’t compete with my color scheme.

Rule of Three # 2 – Page thirds

After you have picked your layout colors, you may still be staring at your paper wondering, “Now, where do I put everything?”   Sometimes you have a beautiful photo and you want to put it right in the middle, which isn’t a bad strategy.  However, the viewer’s eye is going to land right in the middle of the page on that photo and it’s going to sit there, so whatever is happening on the rest of the page is going to be out of focus and extraneous, in a sense.  Designers overcome this with the rule of thirds; essentially, you want to imagine two vertical lines dividing your background into thirds, and two horizontal lines dividing the page into thirds, leaving you with four intersections.   Like this:

 

Imagine this grid on your background…

It is pleasing to the eye if you place your main page element on one of those four intersections.  (This is the same trick photographers use sometimes to add visual interest to a photo… this is why you often see photo subjects slightly off center).   You can then build the remaining elements of the layout around it; placing the remaining elements on the remaining intersections creates a “z” formation that keeps the eye moving and adds visual interest to the layout.

Rule of Three #3 –   Three Embellishments

OK, so don’t get too literal with this rule.  I do NOT mean you can only use three embellishments on a page, or that you must use three.  Essentially, this rule again is about eye movement.  What you want to do is create three points of interest on your layout to keep the viewers eye moving; this if often done in a triangle, but doesn’t necessarily have to be.  Also, in this case embellishment “clusters” that are popular now a days count as “1”.  Typically designers will use this rule with color.   Let’s go back to the idea of a black, white, and red layout we discussed above.  Let’s say you have a beautiful picture of a girl in a black and white dress with a red flower in her hair.  You find scrapbook papers in black and white, but you want to pop that red.  So, you might add red lettering in your title, and then some red embellishment flowers somewhere else on the flower.  As the viewer looks at the page, their eyes will naturally be drawn to the title, the red flower in the girl’s hair, and the red flower you embellished with, thus creating “movement”.

This is an old layout I did which illustrates the three rules of three pretty well:

Rule #1 – Colors.  The main colors are blue, red, and yellow.  Again, you can see that white and black are in the layout, but they don’t distract from the other colors.

Rule #2 – Layout thirds.  See how my main photo rests right over the imaginary grid point in the upper left quadrant of the layout?  The title rests close to the grid point in the upper right, and had I actually written out my journaling (grins sheepishly) it would have been in that yellow block that rests just over the grid point in the lower left corner.  I could have just put my big picture right in the middle, but this way they eye moves over the layout.

Rule #3 – Embellishments.  This particular layout uses this rule very literally, with the three stars that make a triangle.  The stars have a little glitter on them, so they are another element that draw attention and keep your eye moving around the layout.

Take a look at some of your layouts and see how many of the three rules of three you’ve already been using… then try designing a new layout and see what you think!

How Do I... The Three 3's of Scrapbooking

How Do I... Improving Handwritten Journaling

This post is for the perfectionist club out there… you know who you are.  Did you know there are a whole slew of people out in the world who refuse to write their journaling because they don’t like their handwriting??  What’s that?  You’re one of them?  How did I know that you ask?

Because it’s a very, very large group.

There are a lot of different theories about journaling in scrapbooking.  It’s not as cut and dry as it used to be.  First, you have to decide if you want the layout to have journaling?  Is anything necessary beyond a title and date?  For some layouts, maybe not.  However, for the sake of prosperity, we assume that some day down the road someone will be leafing through your scrapbooks and wondering who the heck those people are.  For that circumstance, you probably want to include at least some journaling.  However, if you steadfastly refuse to journal and include only the bare minimum of information on your layouts, this is not your post.

Now, there are a small group of people who are perfectly OK with a laissez-faire journaling style.  You scribble on your layouts with abandon, somewhere between and ink drop and cluster of artfully disarranged embellishments.  You use single words to portray entire concepts.  You might start with small letters that get big, or big letters that get small.  You might even… gasp… allow mistakes on your layout to stay exactly the way they are.  This is not your post.

There are another group of wistful individuals who love to write, but refuse to include their own handwriting on their layouts because they hate, hate, hate their handwriting and are sure that it will ruin the layout.  Often they will resort to computer journaling, or leave big blank journaling blocks on their pages to be completed “someday”.  This is your post.

Handwriting is like everything else worth doing… it takes practice.  Specific practice, in a specific way.  A few years ago (and by a few I mean eight) I was fortunate enough to attend a Creating Keepsakes University.  I don’t know if you’ll remember these, but they were essentially giant scrapbook conventions built around a series of classes that participants could sign up for.  Shopping and cropping were huge.  They don’t really do this style of convention in as big a way anymore, but I mention it because during this convention I signed up for a 12×12 album class that focused on journaling.  I learned a lot in the class, and I wanted to share it with you.  However, as time has had it’s way with me, I can no longer remember the name of the woman who taught the class; I feel like it’s Carrie something or other, but I honestly can’t be sure.  In any case, these ideas are based on what I learned in her class, so if she should come across this post and want credit, I will happily credit her for her ideas.

The concept of the album was pretty much your life, as it is in the current moment, defined by ABC’s.  So, the pages all had the same block design, which was essentially a few small pictures and color blocks around a giant journaling block.  Gulp.  Yes, the whole center of every layout (26 of them!) was a giant journaling block.  Here’s a sample:

Layout with journaling focus

OK, I bet you’re totally freaking out right now.  I mean, seriously, that’s a lot of writing, right?  My handwriting is far from perfect, although overall it doesn’t look to bad here.  That’s because of some of the tricks I learned in the class.  These are little things everyone can do that can improve the basic look of your journaling, and that’s what we want to focus on here.

To begin, she had us create a journaling template.  This was handmade – just lines on a piece of white cardstock.

Journaling template

To make one, use a ruler to create alternating lines 1/8″ and 1/4″. Your writing is going to fall in the 1/4″ spaces, and the 1/8″ spaces keep your lines evenly spaced.  The best part about this step is that you can keep this and use it again and again… and you can create smaller ones for little journaling blocks if you like.  Create your lines with black ink so they will be visible underneath your journaling cardstock.

For a project this big, it was necessary to write out my thoughts before ever attempting to put them on a journaling block.  I mean, I had to come up with three things for each letter of the alphabet that somehow described by life; not exactly an impromptu exercise.  Most of our journaling isn’t this involved, but if you are working on a special story you want to share, or something with strong emotional punch I would recommend writing your thoughts out first in a notebook so you have an idea how much space you’re going to need.  Here’s mine:

My pre-journaling thoughts

Next, you cover your template with your journaling cardstock and make sure you can see through the journaling block to the lines on the template.  If not, use a light board to shine through the two layers of cardstock and allow you to see what you’re doing.

The next step is to write out your journaling in pencil.  This allows you to make erasures and adjustments and get exactly what you want to say on your journaling block before anything permanent happens.  I don’t have pictures of this step, but I do have some close ups of journaling blocks that you can still see my original pencil marks on:

Journal block over the template, pencil marks visible

In case you’ve figured it out, I took this class eight years ago and still haven’t completed the project.  Oops.  In my own defense, there’s been a heck of a lot going on in my life over the past eight years!  Anyway, I have a new commitment to myself to complete this album this year   We’ll see what happens.

Obviously, the next thing you’re going to do is find an awesome white artist quality eraser (Don’t worry – Michelle has them… just ask her for a rubber!  Let’s see how much British she’s still got in there…)

Take a close look at that picture – you can definitely see that my handwriting is NOT perfect… some of my letters are crooked, bigger than they should be, and just generally off kilter.  The thing to remember is, when you look overall at the writing, because it is properly spaced between lines and because it doesn’t taper down to little bitty letters at the end as I try to cram my final thoughts into space that isn’t big enough for them, it actually looks OK.

Not to shabby…

See, the whole thing together looks pretty good.  And, I’ll say it again, the more you do it, the more practice you get, the better your results.  You may not ever have that beautiful John Hancock signature writing, but you can definitely hone your handwriting skills into something legible with a little work and patience.  In the end, I think it’s worth it.  I always imagine my kids and grandkids flipping through my albums someday.  How much more special is it that the albums contain my own handwriting?  Priceless.

How Do I... Improving Handwritten Journaling

If you have ever felt intimidated about journaling

then read this article on our website
http://everythingscrapbook.com/how-do-i-improving-handwritten-journaling/

A new article

Just trying to get all our updates in one place so if you are interested in seeing one of our latest articles

  click here for a Stamping Tutorial

or if you are interested in the many kinds of adhesive out there. click this link  Adhesive Article

Want to find out about all the album choices:  read our Album article

Planning in Style

If you are like me you like to make lists about everything you need to do and then plan out your week and month. 

To help you do that we have added some fun planner accessories to the store.

We just unpacked a box full of washi tapes, Post It Notes and Page Flags

Keep checking with us as we add more and  more fun page flags, clips, pens, planner stamps and accessories to help you plan your life with style. . . and all this items work well in your scrapbooks and smash books as well.  Bonus!!!

Still here

It has been a long time since we have updated this blog.  . . .  we have just ran out of time in the last few months.

So many deliveries, new classes and guest teachers had to be unpacked and organized and of course we are working on many surprises behind the scenes all at the same time.  (apparently I haven't needed as much sleep as I thought. . . although if you see me walking around kinda in a zombie state, it is not a zombie apocalypse coming it is just me after a long night of planning)

I just looked for an image to place here showing me in a zombie state and they were pretty scary so just use your imagination.

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We just had Julie Nutting here teaching three wonderful classes using her doll stamps.

Fun times and lots of creativity over the weekend.

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Here are some special classes and teachers coming in the next few weeks:

First up we have Jill Haglund better known as Tweety Jill.

Jill wears a lot of hats... artist, designer, author, manufacturer and business owner! But most of all she is an "Inspiration-ologist"~ as she loves sharing her enthusiasm about ART through teaching classes in person, online videos and through tutorials.  

She is teaching a Mixed Media Canvas Class  on Saturday April 11th
you can find out the details here:  Tweety Jill Class

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then on Sunday April 12th we have Raquel Mason teaching two fun Pop it Up Cards using Karen Burniston's dies.  Raquel is on the elizabeth Crafts and Karen Burniston's design teams and is a great person to learn from all about Pop it Up Cards

Look at the face on Grumy Dog, lol

More details about Raquel's class here:  April 12th Pop It Up Class

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Sharyn Sowell is coming to visit us on May 9th

Sharyn Sowell has two studios: One is a rose covered cottage in the garden, chock full of rainbow-hued stacks of paper, pots of ink, scissors by the dozen, clattering old printing presses and far too many tubes of paint. The other is a suitcase crammed full of art supplies, ready to go at a moment's notice.  She designs everything from rubber stamps, fabric, greeting cards and giftware. 

Sharyn's art is a blend of calligraphy, watercolor, letterpress printing, and cut paper, all done meticulously by hand and merged digitally.Sharyn designs for companies like Hallmark, Creative Converting, and York Wallcoverings. Her original art can be seen in the British National Portrait Gallery, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and the Orlando Waldorf Astoria. Her calligraphic Kindle covers have sold over 2.25 million units and she has won multiple Louie Awards, the Oscar of the greeting card industry. 

Sharyn has a line of dies coming out with Sizzix that are perfect for us Florida Beach peeps!

Sharyn is teaching two classes:

the first one is a banner that is amazing: . . . and just think of all the themes you can do, perfect for weddings, July 4th street parties, halloween, Christmas decorations and so much more. (I am so excited to get my hands on these dies)

 Here are the details for this Class:  Nautical Lights Banner

and then a Piano Hinge album in the afternoon:  By The Sea Mini Book

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and then we have our good friend Wendy Vecchi coming back to teach two all day fantastic workshops.  If you have ever taken a class with Wendy then you know how many fun techniques she puts into each class.

Wendy is a full time artist/designer and owner of studio 490. She is a signature designer for Ranger & Stampers Anonymous.  Her Ranger product line includes Archival inks & coordinating embossing powders. She design stamps, art parts, stencils & clearly for art for Stampers Anonymous and has a studio 490 signature line of embossing pastes in 6 flavors.

Wendy loves to travel around the country & teach technique/stamping/altered art classes and we LOVE when she is here with us at ESS

Wendy is here May 23rd and 24th

May 24th details here

May 23rd Workshop details here

will write more soon,

Have a creative week, Michelle

Lots of new items

It seems like such a long time since we have updated this blog, a lot has happened in the last few weeks. We are in planning mode for an amazing line up of guest teachers for the coming year and of course we have our retreat with Dina Wakley and Dyan Reaveley in 3 weeks.  Michelle went to CHA, the annual trade show in California and did a lot of purchasing for the next few months.  We will be getting new items in a few times a week and we will do our best to update the website as soon as we get deliveries.

This week we had deliveries from Authentique with two new paper lines.

New Calligraphy markers from Zig and Michelle has a cool new trick to using these to make tri colored letters and doodles easily. . . . and we got a new Wink of Stella Pen with the clear glitter that gets into all those small places.

New stamps from Character Constructions and Stampotique - Fun images

New books to inspire you including Pam Carriker's latest Book Mixed Media Portraits

We will do our best to update this blog more frequently, hope to see you soon.

2015 - A new ATC Swap

This image is from one of our ATC Towers.  

Cards made from our years of swapping.  

It is fun to look back at them and see the art.

ATC SWAP MEETING

We are excited to announce our new ATC swap for 2015.

This year we are going to have 12 different countries for our ATC theme:

Countries:

January:  Russia

February: China

March: Australia

April: Morroco

May: Brazil

June: Eygpt

July: Mexico

August: Peru

September:  India

October: Exotic Tropical Island of your choice

November:  Japan

December: South Africa

and as far as a product or technique you get to pick from the following list: (You can pick whatever you wish from this list but you only use that same one 4 times during the year.)

Product/Technique List:

Stencils

Diecut/Punches

Wax beeswax or encaustic

Tissue Paper

Pan Pastels

Watercolor

Gelatos

Fabric

Collage Sheets

Shaving Cream technique

Rusted

Image Transfer

Crackle

Beads

Texture Paste

Mica

Resin

Sumi Ink

 

Number of ATC's to make: 6 for each swap.

additionally this year for our Sketchbook Submission to the New York Library we picked the theme Wanderer so we thought it might be fun to carve a stamp that is between 1 and 2 inches tall of a Wanderer.  So if we pick your ATC for the month to be included in our sketchbook submission we can also use your handmade stamp on that page.  This is just an option so don't panic. It can be a really simple carving based on a stick figure.

The great thing about our ATC swap is you do not have to live near us to particiapte.  You can mail your ATC's to us ahead of time and we can do the swap for you.  Please remember to send a stamped self addressed envelope with your swap.. . . and your name, contact information, date and the theme should be on the back of the ATC.

If you come in to the store to do your trade, we will have a technique based demo as well.

We have a lot of fun with our ATC swap and hope you can join us.