I just wanted to congratulate the people who won the contest in the back of Paper, Scissors, Death:
Stacy C. from Minnesota won the Grand Prize of a weekend stay in St. Louis, plus dinner with me and a stash of scrapbook supplies!
Debbie F. from Tennesee won the Second Prize of a Premium Photo Album from Snapfish!
Molly F. from Minnesota won the Third Prize of a Mrs. Grossman's Stickers Gift Pack!
Hurrah for all of you!
I'd also like to "give it up" to the winners of the 2008 Best of British Scrapbooking Contest:
Kim Tomlinson, Overall Winner
Jane Knight, Best New Talent
Sarah Bond, Best New Talent
Jo-Anne Cavanagh, Best of British
Juli Kirk, Best of British
Michell Jackson-Mogford, Best of British
These winners were announced in the December issue of ScrapBook inspirations Magazine.
Showing posts with label The Best of British Scrapbooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Best of British Scrapbooking. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Hot Trends from Across the Pond
Whew. I finished judging “The Best of British Scrapbooking” a few minutes ago and sent my results to Rosie Waddicor, one of the editors.
It was hard. Really hard. There were so many great entries, and I wanted to give out a lot more prizes than allowed.
But enough of that. How about if I share trends I saw? Recently, someone forwarded an email to me from Debbie Macomber. Not only is Debbie a great read, she’s also a keen judge of the marketplace and emerging styles. Debbie noted, and I have reason to concur, that trends here in the US often start in the UK and work their way over. That’s particularly true of scrapbooking. So allow me to share some trends, and tell me if you think you’ve seen them, too.
1. 3 – D embellishments. Used to be, all scrapbook pages were flat. In this group of entries, I saw ribbons looped and stapled down to stick up like roller coasters. One memorable page had “google” eyes on a character. Those are those bubbly eyes where the pupils roll around. Yep, texture is definitely jumping off the pages.
2. Going green. Contestants used a lot of corrugated cardboard, ripping off the top skin of paper to expose the ridges beneath. Also used were bubble wrap, plastic wrap, and slivers of a Coke can cut into the shape of petals. No doubt about it, scrapbookers are recycling on their pages.
3. Doodling. Doodling hasn’t quite caught on here like it has in the UK. Folks here are too restrained. There, scrapbookers take a pen to about anything and add colors with abandon. The result? There’s a sense of playfulness to the layouts.
4. Cartoon art. Anime stickers, cartoon characters, simple line art, every aspect of cartoons showed up. I particularly enjoyed where one contestant cut out a photo of her head and put it atop a cartoon body and paperdollish arms. We’ve gone from one extreme to the other. Once upon a time, scrapbookers used templates to cut photos into stars and what-not. Then no one cropped anything, and now we’re cropping body parts and combining them with paperdoll limbs. It’s really fun.
5. Paint on pages. Paint was used to alter a paper’s original color, to create a background so journaling would stand out, to customize patterns by adding color or design, and to simply add seemingly random funky circles to a plain pattern to jazz it up.
6. Collage and simplicity. I saw both ends of the spectrum. Collage pages included fabric, plastic, charms, photos, fiber, ribbons, epoxy stickers, distressed paper, memorabilia, rubber stamped swirls, embroidery, stitching, ephemera, buttons, brads, and so on. But, a goodly number of layouts were spare, with simple combinations of paper, photo and journaling a refreshing change to the busy nature of collage.
7. Birds. Oh, golly. There were bluebirds, robins, owls, of every sort of paper, color, and pattern. Closely followed by dragonflies and butterflies.
8. Acrylic overlays. One was even cut into a body silhouette, secured at the top with a brad, and used to cover hidden journaling. This is such fun, and folks are getting more adventuresome with their usage.
9. Negative space. Okay, if you punch out a form, the empty space that's left behind is negative space. More and more of it is showing up on pages, and the background that peeps through makes this a fun and interesting addition. Not to mention, it can be a thrifty use of your apres-punch leftovers.
10. Flowers. In leather, silk, paper, and plastic. In fact, one trend I could rather do without was too many flowers on pages where flowers did NOT match the theme of the page at all.
You see, trends are great fun, BUT…just like in fashion, you have to be careful that you don’t sacrifice what “works” for what is trendy. Just because flowers are hot doesn’t mean you should use them to decorate a page about the Grand Canyon or road racing.
What’s hot in your corner of the globe? You can bet my heroine Kiki Lowenstein will be incorporating this cool ideas in her next adventure!
It was hard. Really hard. There were so many great entries, and I wanted to give out a lot more prizes than allowed.
But enough of that. How about if I share trends I saw? Recently, someone forwarded an email to me from Debbie Macomber. Not only is Debbie a great read, she’s also a keen judge of the marketplace and emerging styles. Debbie noted, and I have reason to concur, that trends here in the US often start in the UK and work their way over. That’s particularly true of scrapbooking. So allow me to share some trends, and tell me if you think you’ve seen them, too.
1. 3 – D embellishments. Used to be, all scrapbook pages were flat. In this group of entries, I saw ribbons looped and stapled down to stick up like roller coasters. One memorable page had “google” eyes on a character. Those are those bubbly eyes where the pupils roll around. Yep, texture is definitely jumping off the pages.
2. Going green. Contestants used a lot of corrugated cardboard, ripping off the top skin of paper to expose the ridges beneath. Also used were bubble wrap, plastic wrap, and slivers of a Coke can cut into the shape of petals. No doubt about it, scrapbookers are recycling on their pages.
3. Doodling. Doodling hasn’t quite caught on here like it has in the UK. Folks here are too restrained. There, scrapbookers take a pen to about anything and add colors with abandon. The result? There’s a sense of playfulness to the layouts.
4. Cartoon art. Anime stickers, cartoon characters, simple line art, every aspect of cartoons showed up. I particularly enjoyed where one contestant cut out a photo of her head and put it atop a cartoon body and paperdollish arms. We’ve gone from one extreme to the other. Once upon a time, scrapbookers used templates to cut photos into stars and what-not. Then no one cropped anything, and now we’re cropping body parts and combining them with paperdoll limbs. It’s really fun.
5. Paint on pages. Paint was used to alter a paper’s original color, to create a background so journaling would stand out, to customize patterns by adding color or design, and to simply add seemingly random funky circles to a plain pattern to jazz it up.
6. Collage and simplicity. I saw both ends of the spectrum. Collage pages included fabric, plastic, charms, photos, fiber, ribbons, epoxy stickers, distressed paper, memorabilia, rubber stamped swirls, embroidery, stitching, ephemera, buttons, brads, and so on. But, a goodly number of layouts were spare, with simple combinations of paper, photo and journaling a refreshing change to the busy nature of collage.
7. Birds. Oh, golly. There were bluebirds, robins, owls, of every sort of paper, color, and pattern. Closely followed by dragonflies and butterflies.
8. Acrylic overlays. One was even cut into a body silhouette, secured at the top with a brad, and used to cover hidden journaling. This is such fun, and folks are getting more adventuresome with their usage.
9. Negative space. Okay, if you punch out a form, the empty space that's left behind is negative space. More and more of it is showing up on pages, and the background that peeps through makes this a fun and interesting addition. Not to mention, it can be a thrifty use of your apres-punch leftovers.
10. Flowers. In leather, silk, paper, and plastic. In fact, one trend I could rather do without was too many flowers on pages where flowers did NOT match the theme of the page at all.
You see, trends are great fun, BUT…just like in fashion, you have to be careful that you don’t sacrifice what “works” for what is trendy. Just because flowers are hot doesn’t mean you should use them to decorate a page about the Grand Canyon or road racing.
What’s hot in your corner of the globe? You can bet my heroine Kiki Lowenstein will be incorporating this cool ideas in her next adventure!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Behind the Scenes at the Best of British Scrapbooking
By Rosie Waddicor of ScrapBook inspirations MagazineYou may not know it, but across the pond the Best of British Scrapbooking awards are just getting underway. The contest is the biggest of its kind in the UK and it’s hosted by the magazine I work for, ScrapBook inspirations. Every year the contest gets bigger, and the quality of entries gets higher, so you can imagine the excitement that’s already building!
When Joanna invited me to share some of my thoughts about Best of British Scrapbooking with you I jumped at the chance – it’s the UK’s chance to shine! Joanna began the contest back in 2003. In 2005, the winning work first appeared in a book called The Best of British Scrapbooking and Cardmaking. Shortly afterwards, our magazine approached Joanna about working with her on the contest. Over the last three years the contest has evolved but I’m pleased to say that Joanna is still with us. From encouraging readers to enter to looking at each and every submission (no mean feat!) and declaring the winners, Joanna is very much at the heart of Best of British.
If you want to see how the contest works you can visit our blog http://blog.fph.co.uk/page/scrapbook?entry=best_of_british_scrapbooking_2008 So rather than repeating myself, I thought I’d let you know a bit about what went on behind the scenes last year.
In 2007 we had our biggest number of entries ever, so many in fact, it crashed our email for a little while. Much hair-pulling ensued and eventually I had to get one of our tech guys to come in save the day! Fortunately the entries were all rescued and quickly burned to disc. We zipped them off to Joanna and anxiously waited for her decision. I have to say, I do not envy her the task of judging the contest. The quality of entries is tremendous and it’s the little details and heart-felt stories that make Joanna want to declare everyone a winner! I’m pretty strict though and make her whittle the entries down to just six and from this shortlist an overall winner was chosen.
Once I had the winners’ names I settled down for the very best bit about my job – ringing them up to tell them the good news. Oh there was disbelief and shock, squealing and laughing from six very giddy scrappers (and me too!). And it was then that our work really began as we prepared to showcase the winners in the magazine. As well as featuring the winning layouts, our Best of British Scrapbookers (affectionately referred to in the office as the BoB ladies!) got paid commissions to do work for the magazine, a heap of prizes from our generous sponsors, and new for this year, we’ll also be displaying their layouts at the Stitch & Craft Show in London.
Since our Best of British Scrapbooking 2007 winners were announced I’ve had the privilege of watching them grow as scrapbookers, taking confidence from their win and feeling proud that their talents have been recognised. I can’t wait to see what this year’s contest will bring (I have a good feeling about it!) and I look forward to meeting the BoB ladies of 2008!
Monday, April 28, 2008
To Be or Not to Be a Diva
Boy, am I exhausted. Friday I flew to DC for Malice Domestic, the large gathering of lovers of the traditional mystery. This is my third Malice. I’m beginning to feel like some bizarre bridesmaid going to other people’s weddings. Instead of a bouquet, I carry other people’s bookmarks and excerpt booklets. I don’t have a book in hand to sell. So what do I do? I schmooze. I meet booksellers such as Jim Huang of The Mystery Company (Carmel IN) and the fantastic Antoinette Cross of Foul Play (Westerville OH). Antoinette stopped me in the hall to say she has my book The Best of British Scrapbooking and my Storytelling with Rubber Stamps.
I nearly swooned with joy. My husband says I need to learn to act like a diva. “Joanna, you’ve sold a lot of books! Why on earth do you act so surprised that someone had a couple of them? 60,000 is a ton of books.”
Actually, I have sold 85,000 of Scrapbook Storytelling. Fifteen thousand of The Best of British, One Minute Journaling and Quick & Easy Pages. Seven thousand five hundred of Storytelling with Rubber Stamps. And 10,000 of Using Stories and Humor: Grab Your Audience. I also sold more than 15,000 copies of I’m Too Blessed to Be Depressed.
As I type this, I realize, well, duh. Someone out there must own a copy or two of my books. (And forgive me. I KNOW a lot of you do. See how silly I am?)
Okay, anyone know HOW to act like a diva? Better question, do I want to act like a diva? The answer is NO.
Charlaine Harris and I were talking about this yesterday at breakfast. We’re Southern girls. I never heard my mother (and have never heard my mother) compliment me. I’m sure she has, but not in front of me. I was taught to be humble. I was taught—almost with superstitious zeal—not to brag.
I just don’t think I can be a diva. I can dress like one, sort of. (I bought really cool zebra striped shoes to wear to Malice.)
But act like one? Hello? What would that mean? What would I say, “Well, of course you’ve heard of me?” What do you think? Do I need to change? To be more, I dunno, prideful?
Okay, send me an answer. Comment, please. I’ll send one of you the great Malice bag honoring Charlaine. (You can put her and MY books in it. How’s that? I don’t think she’d mind.)
I nearly swooned with joy. My husband says I need to learn to act like a diva. “Joanna, you’ve sold a lot of books! Why on earth do you act so surprised that someone had a couple of them? 60,000 is a ton of books.”
Actually, I have sold 85,000 of Scrapbook Storytelling. Fifteen thousand of The Best of British, One Minute Journaling and Quick & Easy Pages. Seven thousand five hundred of Storytelling with Rubber Stamps. And 10,000 of Using Stories and Humor: Grab Your Audience. I also sold more than 15,000 copies of I’m Too Blessed to Be Depressed.
As I type this, I realize, well, duh. Someone out there must own a copy or two of my books. (And forgive me. I KNOW a lot of you do. See how silly I am?)
Okay, anyone know HOW to act like a diva? Better question, do I want to act like a diva? The answer is NO.
Charlaine Harris and I were talking about this yesterday at breakfast. We’re Southern girls. I never heard my mother (and have never heard my mother) compliment me. I’m sure she has, but not in front of me. I was taught to be humble. I was taught—almost with superstitious zeal—not to brag.
I just don’t think I can be a diva. I can dress like one, sort of. (I bought really cool zebra striped shoes to wear to Malice.)
But act like one? Hello? What would that mean? What would I say, “Well, of course you’ve heard of me?” What do you think? Do I need to change? To be more, I dunno, prideful?
Okay, send me an answer. Comment, please. I’ll send one of you the great Malice bag honoring Charlaine. (You can put her and MY books in it. How’s that? I don’t think she’d mind.)
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