I get questions all the time about where I got this product or that product that I used on a project. Since you, the Paperclipping audience, are from all over the world, I never know how to answer that. I either get things from my local scrapbook store or I order them online. Scrapbook.com impresses me with their huge inventory. So far they seem to always have what I’m looking for. I’m lucky that they’re located right in my own home town so I decided to give them a visit, tour their warehouse and location, and interview the owner, Jill Davis.

I think you’ll enjoy this interview, especially since I got to ask Jill the questions many of you asked me after the CHA tour videos.

This is a free episode. You don’t have to be a Member to watch. Just click on the player above or click here to watch the Quick Time version.

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We’re taking you behind the scenes for today’s free episode on building your own embellishments. I think you’ll enjoy this one because it’s…well, you’ll just have to watch and see for yourself. Just click on the player above or to download the higher-quality episode, click here.

Like the video? Want access to all of our tutorials? Please visit the Membership Information Page.

Otherwise known as Aussie Q.

Challenge Topic: Use Your Scraps

Here is what the judges had to say about Sandy’s layout:

Judge #1: The bubble wrap is a great way to reinforce the theme of water and the circle of pattern papers gives lovely subtle colour. Everything is well anchored. I like that there is no matte to the central photo.

Judge #2: Lots of bubbly elements here, and the circular piece of bubble wrap is original. I love that she didn’t spread all the colors out in the circle, but allowed them to graduate, like a rainbow. It’s unique. Plus, there is a lot of size and texture variation.

She also set up the photos to give direction–in the main photo, her eyes look toward the top of the vertical photo stream, so you naturally go there. Then, because the stream is vertical, you look down.

Highlighting Sandy Quail

How long have you been scrapbooking?
I became interested in scrapbooking just after I got married, 7 years ago, but really didn’t know where to start. All I knew is that I wanted to do an album for our wedding. It was very overwhelming. I collected A LOT of patterned paper along the way, that I never used, and was intimidated by it. I generally stuck to cardstock or very plain patterned paper.

It wasn’t until maybe 2 years later, when I discovered that some of my friends who had moved closer to me were scrapbookers! I found cropping with them helpful to bounce ideas off them learn together etc. Magazines also helped. I have probably moved forward in my scrapbooking the most in the last 2 years. I had begun to step out of my comfort zone (a little), but couldn’t figure out the reason why my LO’s didn’t finish up looking the way they originally did in my head. I credit most of my new found style to Noell! It was the design principles I was lacking.

How would you describe your style?
I’m still evolving into a ’style’ as such, but think I might sit somewhere between the ‘Classic and Clean look’ and ‘Shabby Chic’.

What are your favorite colors to scrap with?
I am currently finishing my daughters baby album, so I do have a definite preference towards scrapping with pink. Although, looking through her album, there is a lot of colour in there which surprises me as I was worried her album was going to be a huge sea of pink.

What are your favorite types of products?
My favourite product (if you’re making me choose LOL) would probably be flowers. I use them on most of my LO’s. Next would be ribbon, then chipboard…..oh I could be here all day! I am a new convert to stamps, and I can see me using them alot on my future layouts.

Where can we see more of your layouts?
I have just posted my most recent layouts in my flickr gallery.

And one last thought from our September winner…
One other thing Noell helped inspire me to do is handwrite on my layouts. I have ALWAYS been a computer/printer journaler. Its still a little foreign looking to see my handwriting on there, but I cant remember who it was, but someone said that in years to come whoever looks back at your scrapbooks won’t care about the neatness of the writing, but care that you actually have your handwriting on there. Its a part of who you were. That converted me. Plus I find layouts are completed much quicker.

October’s Challenge

Lesley and I had a great time looking through and discussing (through email) all the entries last week. We can’t wait to see what you submit for October. Lesley has already posted the challenge topics, which she pulled from the past 30’s worth of Paperclipping video tutorials and articles. You can see the new challenge by clicking here. Lesley also posted a fantastic example of a layout that would work for the challenge topic to Focus On You. You can see her gorgeous layout here.

Have you been waiting to hear about Ali Edwards newest book, due to release any day now?

Listen to this week’s podcast (audio only) as I interview Ali and she shares all the secrets…

Interview With Ali Edwards on Sharing Your Story

Dina Wakley is an organic, artistic scrapbooker and she recently designed a project for a very unique challenge blog called, Inspired By Amelie. I adore Dina’s project and knew I had to highlight it and Dina as the featured artist and project this week. It is one of the more unique scrapbooking projects I’ve seen in a while.

What I love about Dina’s “Memory Box:”

1. The balance between strong design (the lined up boxes) and free-flowing art (the imperfect stamping and stitching, the dash of red in the backround, the fact that she stitched right over some of the memorabilia as they stick out from their perfect spaces).

2. The gathering of REAL everyday items.

3. The bold, passionate colors.

4. The childhood song, which instantly sent me back to the 1970’s and my childhood.

5. The fact that some of the items overlap, especially how part of the ephemera is hiding behind the page protector.

I had some questions for Dina regarding her project and I figured you would, too. Continue reading to learn more about it.

Interview

You are on the design team for the Inspired By Amelie blog and that’s what inspired this project. Will you tell us about that blog and what it is?
My friend Fauve started the Amelie blog out of a love for the film Amelie. She saw lots of potential for scrapping inspiration in the movie, and she invited a bunch of us to contribute to a challenge blog about it. The idea is to be inspired by the film…its spirit, its colors, its themes.

We have a challenge every month, and every month Fauve lines up a great sponsor for the prize.

What was the challenge that led to your “Memories” project?
In the film, Amelie finds a memory box behind the wall in her bathroom. The box belonged to a boy who had lived in her apartment in the 1950s. Amelie sets out to return the box to its rightful owner.

The scrapping challenge for the blog was to create a memory box of some sort.

How did you decide on the items you put in the page protector?
First I sent my kids on a hunt throughout the house…they brought me a few things (the Legos!). So those things represent my kids. The pieces of film are mine and represent my love for photography and pictures. There are a few coins there from our trip to England last year, and there’s a bit of a map from our China trip two years ago. The mini photographs are from the England trip, too.

The other elements all come from my stash of collage treasures–things that I like and that I tend to hoard, like old stamps and keys and clock faces. The verse that I stamped is from an old playground song that we used to sing as kids.

What were the general steps for putting it together?
Well, at first this challenge to create a memory box stumped me, because I’m really not good at altering 3-D things. Then I got the idea to collect elements together in a scrapbook page format instead of a box format.

I started with the sheet protector–it’s a sheet protector that holds slides, so it’s already divided up into little compartments. I found elements to go in the compartments and then I sewed around them so they wouldn’t fall out. Then I inked & stamped the cardstock, and combined it all together.

How did you attach the plastic page protector to the cardstock?
You can’t see it in the picture, but I stapled it.

What is the technique for getting that red paint look?
I laid down some metal mesh, and I sprayed over it with Terracotta Color Wash Spray Ink by Tim Holtz.

The page protector looks like it was already divided into square compartments and then you stitched more squares through it. Is that right? What size is it and who makes it?
Yep, it’s a protector to hold slides. I got it from Light Impressions.

Will you be putting this into another page protector and then into an album, or did you make it to display on its own?
Good question…I’m really not sure! I will likely find a way to incorporate it into an album.

Inspiration

I can think of so many ways to apply this. Just off the top of my head, you could use it to gather and showcase items from:
1. Vacation
2. Childhood
3. Wedding
4. Birth (yours or your children’s)
5. An ancestor or relative who has died
6. A day’s worth of errands
7. Your current hobby or passion

What could you use this idea for?

To see more of Dina’s scrapbooking and art journaling, visit her blog, Ponderings.
Thank you, Dina, for sharing your unique project with us!

What a doll she is.

To hear the interview, click here.

Also, look for a book review that I will post either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

To hold you over until then, you can read my most recent interview on a great new scrapbooking blog called, Illustrating Stories.com. There are a lot of fun things to explore on this website and both Jackie and Liz are fabulous people and inspiring scrapbookers. Check it out!

Last year, Israel and I went on a romantic vacation to Sedona, Arizona. Most of the pictures we took were stand-alone types; photos that wouldn’t get the attention they deserve if I put them in a group on a layout. Because there were so many of them, I didn’t want to take up multiple of pages of a regular sized scrapbook, but there weren’t enough of them to warrant their own album.

I also had postcards and clippings from pamphlets. So, I needed a lot of space for the ephemera and the journaling.

There were a lot of thoughts about how our activities reflected the personality of our relationship: our differences and our similarities. My answer for this vacation was to make a mini-book with the theme of “You. Me. The Two Of Us.”

I have found that putting together a mini-book isn’t much different or harder than doing a layout. I use the same process: 1)Decide on a title, tone, and sometimes a theme. 2) Pull out papers that will work with the photos and theme. 3) Gather embellishments that compliment the colors.

When I am ready to assemble, I begin by adhering the background papers, photos, and journaling through the whole book.

Then I go back page by page and add embellishments around the photos or anchoring lines. When I’m done, I flip through the book to look for pages that don’t satisfy me (usually because I didn’t have a lot of ideas at the time I was working on it). By then I always have something to add or change, and I work this way until I feel satisfied.

Giving this vacation its own little book makes it feel extra special (which it was) and gave me the space I needed.

The benefit of having mini-books is that they are so much more accessible to visitors than big heavy scrapbooks. I rarely have people look through my big albums. But it is inevitable that when people come over and see the mini-books on my shelf, they take them down and look through them. Because they’re smaller they are more inviting and require less of a commitment to look through them.

Consider a mini-book the next time you have an event with too many photos to fill one double-page layout.

* * *

The Two Of Us
Mini-Album

Supplies: Products Used: Adhesive (Creative Memories, Dots, PVA) Bling (Heidi Swapp for Advantus) * Book (7 gypsies) * Brads (7 Gypsies) * Chipboard Embellishments (Deja Views) * Chipboard letters (Heidi Swapp for Advantus) * Epoxy stickers ( s.e.i.) * Gaffer tape (7 Gyspsies) * Letter stickers (Creative Memories) * Metal frame (Pressed Petals) * Patterned paper (My Mind’s Eye, Crate Paper, Dream Street, K.I. Memories, Kelly Panacci for Sandylion, Basic Grey, Rhonna Farrer) * Rub-on’s (Art Warehouse) * Stickers (Creative Imaginations, Creative Memories, E.K. Success) * Title card (My Mind’s Eye) * Transperancies (Hambly, My Mind’s Eye) * Word strips (7 Gypsies) * Pen: American Crafts * Other: ephemera, ribbon from own stash.

If you can’t get enough Paperclipping here, you’ll want to head over to a brand new blog that highlights and interviews a scrapbooker/blogger everyday. You’ll especially want to go straight to this post because that is where my interview is!

I was lucky enough to be today’s scrapbooker/blogger and the post is called, This Girl Rocks Her Blog! So if you agree, would you please skip over there and leave a comment?

And maybe you’ll get to know some other scrapbookers from Explore, Experience, And Expand Your Mind.

If you’ve devoured all the books by Ali Edwards (like I have), then you may have noticed her most recent book, Life Artist, is different from her first two. In this interview you’ll get to hear Ali’s thoughts on why she made this one different.

You’ll also be the first to hear about Ali’s next book. Yes, you read that correctly. She is already writing her fourth book, and the Paperclipping audience is the first to hear her talk about it.

Listen here.

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The Kits & Pieces kit club interviewed me for their newsletter. Some of it is about myself and my thoughts on scrapbooking but a lot is about Paperclipping and our plans for its future. I think you might be interested in reading it, so here is the link to the Kits and Pieces interview.

It’s a good chance you’re going to get a complete picture of a person when, looking through their scrapbooking gallery, you see a layout titled, “Love Never Fades” next to a layout called, “Cats Are Butts.” Those pages represents two very different frames of mind.

Can scrapbooks become an alternative form of the memoir or autobiography?

I think so, and my visit to Rebecca (“Becca”) Lundin’s gallery confirmed my opinion. Having known of Becca on 2 Peas In A Bucket for a year and a half, and having read many of her comments and posts on the message board, I realized I had no idea who this spunky twenty-three year old girl was until I looked through her scrapbooking pages.

It was her layout about hating laundry and cleaning dishes that first pulled me in. How many scrapbookers do you know that title their pages with the candor of, “Man, Dishes Bite,” and then decorate them with glitter and flowers? It is this type of un-self-conscious humor that felt to me like an invitation to come inside.

I wasn’t surprised when Becca told me, “My scrapbook is more of a journal than anything else.”

She’s not even trying to be funny. It’s just what comes out of her. When I asked Becca if she was conscious of putting humor into many of her pages, she said, “I don’t think I am aware of the humor in my layouts. They’re just my thoughts, and I am a sarcastic fun loving girl. I don’t like to scrap the usual and I find much more satisfaction in scrapping the more ‘weird’ subject matter.”

Like the rest of us, though, Becca is a three-dimensional, complicated person with a serious side and her own pocketful of struggles. She exposes those struggles in layouts like this:

“My style tends to always be straight lined and I enjoy the brighter colors. I have leaned more to the graphic side of scrapbooking within the last month or so but I will never stay with one style. I will pop back over to cluttered eye-candy sooner then I know it.”

Becca may do a lot of style exploration, but one thing is present in most of her layouts: the straight lines. You can see how she often divides up her space into varied-sized-compartments and puts embellishments around and within them. But there is nothing mechanical or “pre-determined about Becca’s process. Her method is as spontaneous as her personality seems to be.

“Inspiration for my layouts is my life around me. It is what ever I am thinking or feeling. What ever I find funny or annoying. As far as how the layout turns out I just sit down and start working. There is no predetermined finished product in mind, nor will I try to emulate a layout I have seen. It just comes.”

I had to ask Becca if there is any subject she won’t touch. Her answer to me was, “I can’t think of any. I have scrapbooked my most embarrassing moments, my saddest moments, and all those in between. I feel that if you are there to scrapbook memories you should scrapbook all of them and not just the select ones. Not just the happy one or the cute ones, but ALL of them. This is your life. It is the road that has made you who you are, and you should remember it.”

* * *

Note: All four layouts in this posting belong to Rebecca Lundin.

After a major switch in direction, an uproar from readers, and then a unique move to meet customer desires, Memory Makers Magazine had my attention. I wanted to know what was in the minds behind the magazine and what inspires some of the characteristics that make it unique.

Listen with me as I interview Beth Williams, the magazine’s Executive Editor. You’ll love how open and candid she is. Even better, you’ll know how the magazine evolved and where it is going.