Polly Picks: Scrap like Karen Challenge

Welcome to the first edition of the Polly Picks series for 2026! We’re back after taking a break for MOC! Each month we will chat with one of our Pollys about their scrapbooking style and fave things and give you the chance to win a $5 code for the store just by scrapping like them!

This month we are featuring Karen. Karen has been a familiar face at The Lilypad since 2008! She is super organised and artistic and active all over the Pad! Her calendars in the Announcement Pad keep us informed, she runs the TLP Book Club, her Blog Challenge Posts & Spotlights give an overview and highlight pages you might miss every month (& she keeps our Blog Team on track with her organisation skills behind the scenes!) In the gallery she is known for both her digi-style and hybrid! Her full gallery is here but I’ll link some specific pages below when we get to the challenge part. To me, her layouts are always colourful and chaotic in the best way and full of everyday stories and events – she’s a true memorykeeper that makes my maximalist design heart happy.

Let’s get find out more about Karen’s scrapping from her with an interview. Here’s my Scrap Like A Polly Q&A with Karen.

Your digiscrapping history and style:
1. How long have you been digiscrapping and has your style changed since then?

I started paper scrapping with Creative memories in 2000 and in 2006 I was looking at a book I bought about scrapbooking. There was a sample layout that had little water droplets on the page and I thought they were clear acrylic stickers and immediately wanted them. I was searching for where to buy them and there was a mention of some software program used to create them. That’s when I realized that had made their page on a computer and I went DEEP down the digi-scrapping rabbit hole and never looked back. I had just had my second son, so it was nearly impossible to find time to paper scrap and with digital scrapbooking I could just hit save and come back later without having to clean up my mess! Yes!

Oh my style! Wow has it changed! I used to make such absolutely boring pages. They had photos cropped in shapes like circles and squares/rectangles and then I matted them with plain colored paper. I’d add a few stickers and some journaling in colored text and call it good. Digital scrapbooking and especially templates helped me to find my absolute love of layers and adding varied depths of shadows. I also am definitely a use-all-the-space-on-the-page type of gal now! I love to pile on lots of photos and I really can’t call a page done until I have some journaling on there too!

Your page focus and process:
2.What do your layouts usually focus on and how do you usually start a page?

Every page for me starts with my photos. I download all my photos and sort them into folders. I have one for each year, then there’s one for each month inside the year folder. And inside the month there are subfolders for “events” or “memories” that I was to keep grouped together. Once I have my photos sorted, in comes my scrapbooking spreadsheet. 

 I keep a running list of things I want to scrapbook about. When I sit down to actually scrap, I pick an item from my spreadsheet and then cull the photos down as much as I can. Then I go hunting for a template and a kit I’d like to use. Once all those decisions are made, creating the page is my favorite part and usually goes pretty quickly. As I mentioned above, I pretty much fill the whole page with either photos (those go in first) and then papers and elements and then I HAVE to add journaling. I usually add a title and a date too

Your must-have products:
3. Is there a specific type or category of element you must have on a layout?

I don’t think I have to have any one category of element on my layouts, but I really love kits that have a lot of generic filler elements, like buttons, tags, flowers (Sorry to my sons… ha ha). I tend to think I want a themed kit for all my pages, but I usually end up loving more generic kits that have the colors I’m looking for instead. I really love scatters of either tiny beads, stars and/or sequins and use them almost every time I find them in a kit. I also love to add a little bit of paint in the background of most of my pages to soften up the hard edges of square/rectangle photos and paper layers.

4. Are you most drawn to patterned papers or solids for backgrounds?

Solid papers are usually what I’m drawn to for my backgrounds, but they can’t be TOO plain. I need them to have a little bit of texture so they don’t look flat. I really like to blend two paper together for a background sometimes too. So if I have a paper that is the right color, but too flat, I’ll add another paper with a pattern on it and covert it to B&W and them blend it into the plain paper. I’ll play with the opacity until it’s just enough to add interest. I really really admire people who can use a fun bold patterned background paper, it just doesn’t come easy to me to use them very often.

Examples of your gallery faves:
5. Can you share 3 fave pages with us and tell us a bit about why you love them?

I’ll chose three recent layouts since December, 2 from MOC because I absolutely love MOC and the excuse it gives me to spend a little more time on each page and try new things and 1 from December when I created my first ever DYD (Document Your December) journal.

Book Club Christmas Party – I love this one probably because it’s not my usual style (since you can actually see some of the background paper! Ha ha!)

Tax Amendment Saga – I love this page because it IS my usual style… use ALL the space! Lol. I also love it because it messy and perfect shows how messy our tax returns were last year with a needed amendment that wasn’t initially accepted. I love these kind of pages that capture really boring stuff of life, but that I know I wouldn’t remember all the details of this story if I didn’t capture them in my scrapbook.

DYD Day 6.2 – Too Busy – This page just makes me happy because I had so much fun creating in this Christmas junk journal every day in December. Committing to making a DYD album/journal this year was a lot like MOC is usually is for me. Once I committed to doing it, I had the excuse every day to say to my hubby… “I have to go do my journal page for today”. Not that he ever cares if I disappear for a bit to do something creative, but the short 31 day project was fun and attainable because it was only for one month. Someday I’d really love to do a junk like this again, but keep going every day!

Thanks Karen. I can 100% say that I’m not surprised you have a scrapbooking spreadsheet or running lists, or wrote an essay for each question, they are all so very you (to me) but I’m sure your original pages were anything but boring! How funny that a few water droplets in a layout in a book lead you to where you are now!

Now it’s your turn to Scrap Like A Polly!

Just scrap a new page using the ingredients listed below that channel the featured Polly’s style and upload your page to the TLP gallery, (remember to use the PollyPicks tag in the tag field) and come back here and post the link to your page in the comments please.

These pages helped me come up with the ingredient list below and my own Karen style layout.

Karen is definitely a maximalist scrapper (but can do any style if she has to, which her fave MOC page shows us!) and is clearly driven by photos and the memories that go with them, resulting in some epic journalling! Colour also dominates her gallery. Her paper choices are often artsy or have some kind of noticeable texture, and she’s not just a ‘title, date & done’ scrapper, journalling in a handwritten font is often a significant portion of the page.

Following on from that, these are the ingredients you need to scrap like Karen:

  • Start with a textured solid or artsy background – pull out your stash of colourful papers, ignore the neutrals!
  • Add 2 or more photos (or screenshots), as many as you like really to start filling the page!
  • Add journalling in a handwritten style of font – include at least a paragraph of details beyond the standard date & title. If in doubt, use the ‘who, what, why & where’ method to expand on your ‘when’ date.
  • Add paint or stamping
  • Include a scatter and a mix of generic items (like buttons, flowers, flair, stickers & tags)
  • (Feel free to use a template to get you started!)

Let me show you some currently available goodies that suit scrapping in Karen’s style

This is the page I created in Karen’s style. I’ve used a Memorable Template by Lynn Grieveson to give me a multi-photo plus journalling area, artsy base with it’s blended area. I added blues and yellows with papers and paint from Little Butterfly Wings’ Disconnected: Gradients & Press Play: Painted Yellow and Rachel Jefferies Special Interests No.1, including generic elements like a button, star & flower, with a big track stamp from Rachel’s Riding the Rails & scatter, with LBW & Studio Basic’s alpha from Creative Chronicals: Totally Him . I used Heather Joyce’s The Bassist font for handwritten journalling

Now it’s your turn! You have from now until the next Polly Picks post in the 2nd week of March to scrap like Karen using the ingredient list above. Feel free to use products from any designer currently selling in the TLP store and add anything extra to the ingredients to make your layout. Don’t forget to link me to your page in the comments or in the Feb Scrap Like a Polly forum thread for your chance to go in the random draw to win.

The deadline again is 7 March (because February is short but if you can do a page a day for MOC, I’m sure you can fit an extra page in this month!). Can’t wait to see what you create.

I live just south of Sydney, Australia, with my husband, our two teenagers, and three birds. I’ve been digitally scrapbooking for nearly 20 years, and a regular at The Lilypad since 2010. Creativity has been a constant companion—but not always a tidy one.

My style? Anything and everything. I don’t really box myself in. Inspiration tends to show up everywhere—except maybe under the lounge when I’m vacuuming, or under the kitchen sink. But I can almost always count on finding it in my photo folders, my favorites list, the shop, or the Challenge Pad. Honestly, time is more of an issue than inspiration!

Photoshop has long been my go-to digital tool, though we have a bit of a love/hate relationship. After many years with CS6, I’ve started trialing other programs too. My ergonomic mouse is a game changer (trackpads and I don’t get along), and in terms of digi products, I’m all about templates, mixed media, patterned papers, and word art—though I never would have guessed I’d love mixed media this much five years ago!

If you’re new to scrapbooking (or any creative hobby), the best advice I can give is: jump in and have a go. Most of us learn by doing, and yes—that means some frustration, a few mistakes, and definitely a learning curve. But if you push through the messy parts, there’s so much joy waiting on the other side. And if it ever feels like the frustration is winning, vent in the forum—we’ve all been there, and someone will always show up to help, or at least sympathize and cheer you on.

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