Hey Paper Crafters! On October 4, 2013, I was fortunate enough to attend Creating Keepsakes’ Scrapbooking Convention in Chicago! I took four classes, and I learned so much about mixed media, stamping, scrapbooking, and card making!

Mixed Medium Mash-Up with Creating Keepsakes

This class was easily one of my favorites. Our instructor explained that mixed media art is any paper craft using materials other than paper and stickers. I absolutely loved working with a variety of media in order to create an incredibly dynamic scrapbook layout. The materials we used included Faber-Castelle Gelatos, water color pencils, spray mist (which terrifies many paper crafters but it’s actually quite fun to use!), molding paste, stencils, water, dress patterns, canvas, marker, paper tags, string, and more! My favorite embellishment to add was the molding paste. We spread a layer over an intricate stencil, and this gave the scrapbook layout a great texture and unique embellishment!

Stamp It 3 Ways with Paper Crafts Magazine

This class was a great introduction to stamping. We received a great little collection of fall cling stamps to play with, and with this set we learned three different stamping techniques. For example, have you ever used the BACK of a cling stamp instead of the front? We took different leaves and used the back of the stamp to fill in the color. Then we used brown ink on the correct side of the stamp to give it the leafy outline. I love how mine turned out.

Amazing 12×12 Album Class with S.E.I.

In this class, all of the students were given a full album kit and embellishment pack to create an entire scrapbook album. We learned many innovative ways to arrange our layouts to maximize space. A technique we practiced on many of the pages was scrapbooking outside of the liner. We would adhere photo pockets, envelopes, mini books, and more to the outside of our scrapbook pages to create dynamic layouts that were aesthetically pleasing. There really are endless possibilities when it comes to scrapbooking and scrapbook layouts!

Dynamic Dimensional Cards with Stamplistic

This class was easily one of the most popular. It was hosted by Stamplistic, and their booth at the vendor fair was by far the most crowded! Stamplistic specializes in 3D embellishments, and their techniques are unique and eye-catching! They take a regular stamped image and transform it into a 3D embellishment perfect for any card or scrapbook page. We turned a flat image of a pink flower into a dimensional, colorful, and sparkling DIY card.

Which of these paper crafting classes would you like best?