The Best of British Scrapbooking & Cardmaking

Michelle is a fulltime worker and mother of a toddler. She's a New Zealander, who married an Englishman, and moved over to the UK to be closer to his family. Her evenings and weekends are generally spent doing family (and domestic) stuff so she has very few hours a week allowable for her scrapbooking hobby. Fortunately, she has a supportive husband who gives her a weekend afternoon to simply create in. She works as an IT Software Test Manager (don't ask - no one understands what it is), and it is a high pressure job. Scrapbooking for her is the only pure spiritual chance to relax. When Michelle scrapbooks she can disappear into herself for hours on end, not thinking about anything. She says simply: "It is bliss."

Michelle scrapbooks everything -- her pets (her life has always been full of animals, and the Thompsons currently have two cats, two budgies and many fish, but are waiting for their daughter to get a bit older for a doggie), her daughter, her husband, his family, and their holidays. She says, "Scrapbooking has brought to me a greater appreciation of photography, and we have three cameras on the go at once for any events. I've taught scrapbook classes, and spoken about my craft to several local women's groups, which has started to achieve some converts to this wonderful art form, and requests for classes in the local area."

Michelle has been scrapbooking for six years now with the first album she created being a gift album for her new inlaws of their wedding, which was set in Hawaii, central to my New Zealand guests and the English guests who flew out. Scrapbooking in Australasia at the time was already a well-based hobby with magazines available at her local craft shops. So, Michelle started off, like many, as a rubber stamper, but soon moved over to scrapbooking once she picked up her first magazine. She explains, "I've always enjoyed all crafts, but since scrapbooking I've found I only concentrate on this, as it allows me to incorporate just about any other hand-craft (maybe not pottery?) into it."

Scrapbooking in New Zealand at the time was a relatively lonely business. Michelle even had to mail order in her supplies from Australian retailers. Once she made the move over to the UK, and unpacked her houselot of furniture and crafting goods, she did a web-search for retailers in the UK, and came up with her still favourite - Scraptastic. It was an email from Mark of Scraptastic, that introduced Michelle to the UKScrapper's Forums at almost the same time as she started back scrapbooking. She says, "I've met a lot of good friends through this forum, and through going to Bonanza, an annual scrapping event here. I also include myself now in local crops, other scrapping events and classes when possible."

Michelle sees herself as some kind of avant-garde/eclectic scrapper without a favourite technique. She considers, "Although I use embellishments often, I think it would be easier to suggest that my favourite technique might well be simply using cardstock."

Two of Michelle's favourite layouts appear in this book. Generations holds a soft spot in her memory. November (Michelle's daughter) has a great grandmother who has 22 great grandchildren. Michelle tells about us about the meeting of great grandmother and great grandchild: "Visiting her on the day was a great journey to make for an eight month old, and November impressed all of us with a huge projectile vomit all over her great gran's carpet. The clothes she is wearing in the photos are a quick change, and it wasn't intended to take those photographs. However, they came out fine, and I loved finding the beaded fabric in a local market stall to make the background."

Miles is also a favourite layout. Michelle explains, "This is the first (and so far, only) layout for our wedding album.Why is it that doing your own wedding album is so difficult? I'm so particular in doing everything right and not ruining all the precious photographs of the day that I've held off doing them for nearly six years now. I like the collage techniques used here, which are very different from the expected formal look for most other wedding layouts I've seen in magazines before."

Michelle's husband often kids her because she doesn't have a favourite anything. She can't even name her favourite song or colour. "This," she explains, "gives me copious problems when I'm involved in circle journals, as these often ask me what my favourite is, and I normally have to make up an answer. I scrap into one (or two, depending on quantity) family annual albums only. The pages are scrapped in rough chronological order, and I put everything in there, as I consider all of the pages to be of equal importance to our family life together."

The UKScrappers' forums are a main sanity point for Michelle since her local county does not have many scrapbookers in it--yet. Luckily she can access these from her current workplace, so she can read the threads at work. Through Bonanza, local crops (which are just starting) and other events she has also met and clicked with some other scrappers.

Michelle uses all stockists, on a regular basis - there are very few scrapbooking supplies in the Cambridgeshire county - she mail orders and orders over websites constantly. She says, "I spend a lot on scrapbooking supplies which often surprises the retailers when I shop face to face with them. This is because I work fulltime, and therefore have quite an impressive free income for my hobby and because locally we have very little available supplies, so when I shop, I shop for many moons of scrapping. I tend to remain very loyal to local retailers, and have only ordered from overseas on a couple of occasions when they have had sales, because I appreciate that running a retail supplies business in the UK is difficult due to customs problems etc., when the majority of our supplies are produced by US companies. I would love to see more UK supplies being produced in this country, and I'm sure that as the craft picks up in this country we will see more of this."

Historically, Scraptastic is her favourite as this was the first retailer she located on moving to the UK. She also has a thing for Wiggly Woods and all their charms etc. - which you'll find used all over her Miles layout. ArtBase is only an hour and a half drive away for her, so occasionally she'll actually make the trip to a real store. CarolinesCraftz also provides her with great service. She concludes, "Of the UK retailers, all of them have fantastic service, and great people behind them, and because it is a small community if you go to big annual events you tend to meet those people on a face to face basis."

As for advice, Michelle says, "When talking about scrapbooking in front of local women's groups I often notice that they get kind of het up about the fact that scrapbooks are about heritage - many older women start talking about the old scrapbooks they've inherited from their great grandparents, and all the older photographs. What some women forget to do is document their lives RIGHT NOW for future generations. Scrapbooking isn't just about the past - it's forming the future in front of our eyes, and documenting this. Use your own handwriting in journaling - your grandkids might want to see what it looked like. Take pictures of all those things you take for granted - how many more years are those Flymo lawnmowers going to last for?"

We asked Michelle to tell us a little more about the technique she calls hedonistic collage which she used when creating Miles. She said, "Hedonistic collage is just a term I coined, as I basically just threw everything onto the page with little thought. However, collage shouldn't intimidate anyone out there, as there are not that many rules to it -- a collage creation is your layered interpretation of the theme you've chosen. Start off with the big layers -- the papers and backgrounds, and work up to the smaller layers, tucking some in under different levels so that the viewer only sees some part elements. Things like brads, charms and smaller elements should go ontop, to emphasise the theme."

She goes on to explain, "Obviously my Miles layout has a wedding theme - and you will see the odd element which links to this such as the yin and yang transparency design and charms which say love. But the wedding was also set in Hawaii, so there is an even bigger theme running through the design to do with that - -Hawaiian background papers were chosen, and the colouring for this matches the added dried flowers from my wedding bouquet. Copper and gold was also brought out as a match against the green colourings of background papers."

"Collage works best," she says, "if you choose your theme(s) first, and then build up layers of larger to smaller elements towards that theme. If you choose your theme wisely, and then select all the papers and elements to support that theme, then the layout manages to provide a design even when it looks like some things have just been thrown on the page."