Designer Spotlight with Paige Evans: Tori Bissell

Tori Bissell is a gal after my own heart – she LOVES to use patterned paper and lots of it! So I’m excited to introduce you to her today and share lots of her beautiful pages including a brand new one made just for her spotlight!

Name: Tori Bissell
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Blog: toribissell.com
Instagram: @tori_bissell
YouTube: Tori Bissell
Pinterest: @tori_bissell
Facebook: scrapyourscraps

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started crafting: Hi, my name is Tori. I love when my hands are covered in ink and my hair has sparkles in it. I love when my pockets are filled with buttons and my desk is sprinkled with sequins. I collect movie stubs, hotel keys, brochures, flyers, and recipes. I see colour everywhere and a world of inspiration. My fingers are itching to create and my camera is always at the ready. I am a maker, a creator, a designer, a dreamer, and an artist. I started scrapbooking almost 3 years ago. I had just returned from a year and a half of touring with the African Children’s Choir around North America and the UK and I had thousands of photos and piles of memorabilia I wanted to do something with. I started searching Pinterest for ideas when I stumbled upon Project Life and I was instantly hooked. Project Life seemed like the perfect way collect and document all my memories. As I dove deeper and deeper into Project Life, I began seeing scrapbook layouts which amazed me and I decided to give that a go. I fell head over heals in love with all things scrapbooking and paper crafting and even started a YouTube channel so I could share my projects. When I was finished scrapbooking my time with the African Children’s Choir I didn’t want to stop, so I just kept going. I discovered a passion I never knew I had and I guess as they say, the rest is history.

Favorite thing to create: I love creating 12×12 scrapbook layouts – especially if I can use scrap paper and my punches. Mixing patterned paper and adding adorable embellishments – does it get any better than that?

What do you love about this hobby? I love that scrapbooking gives me this creative outlet where I can put my heart on the page. I love that I can capture my memories and document them with pretty papers and pretty embellishments. And I LOVE the incredible scrapbooking community I’ve found online. As an extreme introvert, I don’t have a ton of friends but through scrapbooking I’ve met so many Incredible friends. I’m blown away by how supportive and encouraging complete strangers are and what incredible inspiration you can find online.

5 fun facts about yourself:
1. I almost exclusively use my hot glue gun as my adhesive.
2. I collect vintage cameras.
3. I’ve been to 21 different countries.
4. I’m allergic to kiwi. Who knew a fuzzy green fruit could be a death trap.
5. My favourite colours are pink, pink, and pink.

LOVE YOU by Tori Bissell

My grandma Pat has alzheimer’s; she doesn’t know who I am, she doesn’t know where she is, and she lives in a state of confusion – but she is the most happy, joyful, content person you will ever meet. She inspires me everyday! I thought it would be fun to create a page all about how she inspires me so I used my square punch to create 2″ squares and folded them to super cool exploding boxes – I love how much texture it adds to the page.

EVERYTHING by Tori Bissell

When my grandpa passed away this year there were just so many emotions swelling up within me I wanted to find a way to document how much he meant to me. I found this incredible stamp by Wild Whisper which said “Everything I am you helped me to be” and it was exactly what I wanted to say. While I miss him terribly, creating this layout gave me the perfect way to put all those thoughts and emotions down.

HAPPY HEART by Tori Bissell

I absolutely love playing with my scrap paper and my punches – one day I got this great idea to punch out hundreds of tiny hearts and make a layout. I love the way the tiny hearts layered to create my own custom patterned paper background and of course hearts were the perfect way to document my aunt’s wedding.

JOSHY by Tori Bissell

One of my favourite people in the whole world is my older brother Josh (aka Joshy). When I found this older photo of him as a little boy, I knew I wanted to scrapbook about how he will always be my Joshy. I was absolutely inspired by the fall colours in the photo to make this giant pile of leaves using my scraps.

DECEMBER DAILY 2015 COVER by Tori Bissell

As you can probably tell, embellishments are one of my favourite things in the whole world! For my 2015 December Daily Album I decided to create this really fun project by making a deer head out of all my favourite embellishments. I love how bright, textured, and detailed he turned out.

I hope you are inspired to try using up some scraps like Tori has done on so many of her amazing projects!