Answers from Mandy

Hi there Ajay

Sorry to hear that your old club closed down, but great to hear that there is another club nearby for you to join.

You should ask your organiser to give you a copy of the technique notes if you are unsure of how to do a technique, all the club organisers can access technique notes going back for a couple of years in their section of the site.

Check out the tutorials section of the website here as well - there are often full instructions for a couple of pages which also cover the technique of the month. I will ask the girls to ensure that the Rub - Onz ones are put there for you.

Hi there

First of all get hold hold of your sewing machine and a few pieces of scrap cardstock and practice on those until you are confident enough to work on the real thing.

Second and this is VERY important - make sure that you set quite a long stitch length, a tiny stitch will just leave you with torn cardstock.

Finally use an old needle - paper and card will blunt a new one, and don't forget to swap it for a new one when you want to stitch fabric again.

You can get a lovely effect on your pages just letting the unthreaded needle punch a neat line of holes, and of course you get different textures doing this depending on whether you stitch the page face up or face down, if you stitch on the back of your page  you will get raised holes on the front.

There are some wonderful machine embroidery threads available which will give you some fabulous effects.

Have a go at adding stitching to your pages and don't forget to upload them to the gallery to show us whow you got on!

Hi there carol

You should get in touch with Sarah on Scrapaholix@mac.com for all the details. Unfortunately we can't contact you without an email address 

Well without a computer you will need to look for lettering in other places.

I have found cheap die cut letters in places like the craft section of the Early Learning Centre, and in the "pound shops", keep your eyes skinned for bargains in the way of stickers and chipboard letters there.

You can also buy a pack or two of chipboard letters in various sizes and fonts and use them as templates again and again.

If you go to a club or a crop, you can quite often find machines like the Big Shot with alphabet dies and Cricut there for you to use - sometimes with a small fee to allow for replacing consumables - so think ahead and cut titles for your past  and future projects while you are there. If you don't have that, sometimes a fellow scrapper will cut you some letters in return for a small thank you.

However, Some of the titles you see on layouts in the gallery are hand cut. To do this, you need a friend with a computer to print you out your title on ordinary paper using a programme like WordArt (and you can get loads of titles on a sheet of A4). Roughly cut out the printed title and stick it to the card or paper you are using with a repostionable adhesive. and trim the card down to size. Get a piece of glass (a glass chopping board, table mat or a simple piece of glass from an old picture frame - it doesn't have to be big)  Use a sharp craft knife - the cheapie snap off ones from the likes of B&Q are great for this - and cut out the centres of the letters first and then around the outlines. Cut using pulling strokes and moving the card around to get into small areas. Remove the letters as you cut them and try and cut neatly as the backing card will give you a great template for placing and spacing your title.

For journalling, there are several options available to you and you don't need to buy special paper to journal on - use the scraps of leftover card and the reverse of scraps of patterned paper. Cut narrow strips from leftover cardstock, write your journalling on them trim them down, ink the edges and attach to the page. You can just cut a block of card, round corners and ink edges and write journalling onto that, or there a lots of journalling stamps available to suit all pockets - Prima ones start at £1.99 each. There are also ready printed journalling spots like those produced by Heidi Swapp (buy a pack and share them with a friend) and Making Memories do a book of various shaped journallling cards as well (buy them and use them as templates.

Most of the die manufacturers design their dies to fit their own machines, so being able to use other dies in them can be a bit hit and miss sometimes.

It sounds as though the Sizzix dies you tried to use are a bit thinner than the cuttlebug ones so you will need to add another layer or "Shim" to the cutting sandwich. If the machine comes with cutting pads ensure you are using the right number, or that anyou have got any necessary converter plates and try again. If need be try adding a couple of layers of cardstock to the sandwich to increase the pressure.

I don't have a bug myself but I know from using Quickutz dies in the Sidekick that you not only need the two cutting pads and the die - you also need a little black converter plate to make the thin Quickuts die cut properly

We have done a few classes featuring beach and seaside scenes at retreats and roadshows.

Check out Carolyn's Bubblicious layout in the Roadshow section of the gallery. She has done exactly as you describe - torn the paper to create deckchair stripes, sand and sea as her background.

The thing to remember with tearing paper is that there are two ways of tearing it - towards you and away from you! One way will give you a soft edge with the pattern on, the other will give a white ragged edge which can be very effective when creating wave effects on beach scenes. The choice is up to you - make a small tear at the edge of your paper to see what will happen with yours.

Having created your background - what aboutmaking a block of your photos all overlapping each other (a great way of hiding unwanted people or objects ) before making a single mounted block? 

My advise is hold fire with them.  When we were at the CHA trade show Jan 09 we discovered a lovely company staying in our hotel whom we got chatting with had designed a MUCH better one.  It's called GlueArts and it is a fabulous glue dispenser, you just literally pull the empty cartridge out and slot a new one in.  That goes for the size of a ATG one too.  I have an ATG gun and hate having to change the glue in it, it's messy and complicated. 

I spoke to one distributor over here and they are thinking of bringing the product in and Scrapaholix will be backing this product all the way (I have a big and small one that I am using now so totally back it already)

So watch the site for more details soon

Like a lot of other things in life there are horses for courses with glues and you do need different ones for different jobs!

When you are a beginner, you could do a lot worse than buy yourself a couple of Pritt or similar glue sticks to start off with - they are cheap, readily available and acid free (as indeed is nearly every sort of GLUE). The only trouble with these is that they are a bit unforgiving and they really do stick your papers together quite fast so if you want to move them around you need to do it quickly.

But here is the list of what I have in my tote bag in the way of glues and other sticky things.....

Hermafix dispenser with Repositionable tape . This will cost you about £5 to buy with refills available from around the £2 mark. Try and avoid the Permanent tape as it only gunks up the dispenser and causes a lot of swearing when it jams up. A good general purpose glue for your pages though

Glue sticks in various sizes. I have 3 at the moment - large small and repositionable. These are easy to use, freely available and the best thing to use when covering chipboard.

Glue Pens. I have 2 .a thick one which is 2 way - use it wet as a permanent adhesive or allow it to dry and it will become a repositionable one. The glue often comes out as blue so you can see where you are putting it. I also have a very fine one. These are ideal for attaching small die cuts or letters to your work.

Glue Dots - I have 2 sorts in my bag - the flat ones for general sticking and the 3D variety which are fab for adding dimension to your work. They come in different sizes to suit different tasks.

Double sided tape. This is one adhesive where you do need to be careful with what you use. Cheap tapes are made with cellulose which is not lignin free and will seep into your papers over time leaving nasty brown marks on your pages. Best one to use is "red liner" tape which has a red backing tape  - costs a bit more but will not ruin your hard work and is super sticky. DST is great to use when attaching ribbons or other thin items to your work and it comes in lots of different sizes.

Foam Tape ,squares and dots. These are various different products which you can use to add dimension to your work. They all raise the top layer off the surface of your work and you use the size you need. again they come in different sizes and thicknesses so have a few in your bag.

Diamond Glaze/ Glossy Accents. These are super strong, fast drying WET glues. You can also use them as a glaze over die cuts or build them up to give a dimensional look to your work.

Stickles Glitter Glues. These are small bottles of Glossy accents with glitter in. It comes in loads of different colours and adds a sparkle to your work.

And sitting on the desk in the craft room.....

Good old PVA glue for big jobs which I don't need in a hurry because they take ages to dry.

MOD Podge for sticking and glazing work (I actually make my own using watered down PVA with a bit of glossy accents added)

ATG glue gun. This is like a giant Herma dispenser but the refill tapes are MUCH bigger and cheaper.

Just for you I have put a video from our Tim onto the tutorial section so go look and learn from the expert hun!

There are a couple of different things you can do. Firstly you can buy extenders for your album and every 10 pages or so you should put a cardboard spacer. I really wouldn't recommend more than 20 pages in an album to be honest as we do tend to like our embellishments don't we and with all these new fads and fashions coming out our albums just seem to be getting bigger!! Also store your albums upright as that will stop a lot of indentation.