Customer Spotlight - 2010 Crafting Review Katie Shanahan Jones

Our final crafter to share their 2010 creations with us in January is Katie Shanahan Jones. She has shared a selection of her 2010 projects with us below and this is what she told us about herself...

I'm Katie and I live in Oxfordshire. I have three lovely kids, husband Karl and two mad beagles!
I've crafted since I was a kid but discovered scrapbooking back in 2002 and haven't looked back since!

I love anything vintage, inky and retro, 7 gypsies, Graphic 45 and anything Tim Holtz are firm favourites.

I enjoy using lots of different materials in my card making and scrapping.
I'm a 'more is more' type of girl- and pack LOTS onto a card or a layout, I can't leave an empty space!

If I can I'll try and squeeze a bit of glitter in there somewhere, Stickles are another favourite of mine.

Thanks to Katie for sharing her lovely work with us. All the ladies who took part in Januarys 2010 crafting review will go into a hat to win an ATDML shopping voucher!

Placing Orders...

Things have been very busy this past week here at ATDML as we place orders for the CHA show. This is the second year in a row which we haven't travelled for the show but it has just not been practical to organise juggling other jobs, children and time.

We are fortunate that in these more challenging economic times the manufacturers are keen to get all the business they can so what were once exclusive show discounts are often offered to all retailers placing orders before and during the show in person or via email so we are lucky that we are not missing out on most of the offers.

What we do miss very much is the chance to see the products in the flesh. There are some lines which you just can't appreciate via a computer screen (and this has a knock on effect for sales from our site) a case in point would be the My Minds Eye Lost & Found which looks "OK" online, but sold like hot cakes at our retreat because in the flesh it is one of the most beautiful scrapbooking lines I have ever come across.

Anyway, I thought I would keep you up to date with what to look out for in the store as the new product starts to ship and arrive...

Maya Road
My Little Shoebox
October Afternoon
Websters Pages
Bo Bunny
Graphic 45
7 Gypsies
American Crafts
MME
Fancy Pants

and lots more!!!

Customer Spotlight - 2010 Crafting Review: Karen Williams

This weekwe are featuring the work of Karen Williams. She has written a bit about herself to introduce her and also a bit about each layout.

I am a 36 year old mother of three who has been scrapbooking since the birth of my daughter nearly four years ago. Originally from the UK, I am currently living in the Netherlands, hence my new found SAHM status, ( In the UK I was a teacher).

I like simple scrapping, half an hour is my average time on a LO, and with three children in the house you can understand why. I set myself the challenge of making 365 LOs last year, I stopped count in November ago when I got to 370! I plan the same for this year too.

I love chocolate, pizza boxes from the postman, day trips to Amsterdam, shoes, crime novels, knitting, CSI on TV ,baking, taking photographs, Strictly Come Dancing/ dancing with the Stars, scrapbooking of course, and the spring,

I hate talking about myself, bananas, dentists, taking my children for jabs, making phone-calls, having my hair cut, bananas, that I still bite my nails, and my oven. ( the oven is a long story) (yes bananas is in there twice- I really hate bananas - another long story)

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1) 1940's GLAMOUR - This was my Nan back in the 1940s looking gorgeous- i tried a shabby chic style with this LO

2) IN THE GARDEN - This one is A LO with my Mum and me in my Nan's front garden with our odd dog George- I lost my Mum near Christmas six years ago so any photos I have of her are precious

3) SUMMER LOVIN' - A Lo of my son playing cricket last summer -one of his favourite sports to play- I love the stripes of different papers on this

4) THE BOY WITH THE BEAUTIFUL EYES - I love this quirky picture of my son while we were on holiday last Easter- and I love the grouping of elements on the page



5) THROWING STONES - My boys love throwing stones into water any time or place- this was in Lake Como and uses some October Afternoon paper- one of my favourite companies

First New Class of 2011

We have another lovely class online at ATDML. "Cute" is a layout by Dawn Evans and includes a fab easy technique for making dimensional flowers.

As ever the instructions are available as a free PDF download - Click Here for the instructions.

Slight Technical Hitch...

Tonight we were due to share another customers 2010 Crafting review but I have had a slight technical hitch as I can't open or save the photos she sent from the email so I apologise but I will get that feature posted later in the week once I sort out why the computer and email won't play nice!

Introducing Two New DT Members...

We are very pleased to let you know about two new additions to our Design Team. As you know Karen AKA Scrapdolly took an extended break from the team last year due to her large number of work and scrapping committments and she has since decided to make that decision a permanent one. We wish Karen all the best (Keep an eye out later in the week for a "best of Scrapdolly farewell post, there have been lots of wonderful contributions from Karen Leahy and she will be missed) but as it coincided with the new year we decided it was a good time to rejig the Design Team...

So we still have Dawn, Suzanne, Ann, Debbie, Jane and myself but we are also adding 2 new designers. Not everyone will feature in each months gallery however throughout the year there will be gallery work and online classes from all of the DT.

Our new additions are Karen Cole & Karen Moss, they have written a little about themselves below by way of an introduction but I am sure many f you have come across them in various mags, forums and DT's that they have previously been a part of.

KAREN COLE:

I have been married to Rob for over 2 years, no children....yet! I work full time in London and love to relax by making pretty stuff when I get home.

Throughout my childhood I was blessed to have had access to cameras and a supportive family who nutured my obsession. This progressed through school and college where I learnt all about theory, printing and developing.

As an adult, I was very exicted to find through the internet all about scrapbooking. A new hobby where I could incorporate photographs and memory recording with pretty paper and indulge my love of shopping.

Since then my hobby and passion for it has grown. As have the friends I have met and opportunites I have had to teach and join like minded crafters from all over the world in person and on electronic forums. I have been fortunate to have been published in UK magazines and USA Ezines as well as being part of some great Design Teams along the way.

At present, I enjoy all types of crafts; especially those made from paper and glue and pixels (crapbooking in all it's formats) creating mini books and projects and card making. I dabble in printing, knitting, sewing and co host a regular monthly crop called Eclectic Keepsakes in Colchester.

My future goals are to make more time for my hobbies and to continue to learn new things and meet nice people.

KAREN MOSS:

I live with my husband of 25 years, our almost 18 year old daughter (can someone tell me where those 18 years went) and our 4 year old Golden Retriever.

My day job is as a Teaching Assistant in a primary school and the majority of my time is spent working with special needs children

For as long as I can remember I have made things. One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother teaching me to knit when I was about 4 and after that I never loocked back as we spent many happy hours together knitting and sewing clothes for my Sindy doll.

My degree is an art based one and most days I spend time creating something, even if it is only for 10 minutes before the the rest of my family get up.

I was introduced to scrapbooking by my best friend and from then on all other crafts fell by the wayside. In 2009 I was lucky enough to be a runner up in the Scrapbooker of the Year competition.

Double Take

Do you scrap the same photo more than once?

Many years ago I remember there were several "high profile" scrappers who seemed so scrap prolifically and share their work on UKS \ Two Peas etc... and who seemed to scrap the same photo many times. At the time I thought I would never find the inspiration to re-scrap a photo and also wondered why!

I was uploading a layout of mine to UKS and I realised I had already scrapped the photo before. Now the photo was of my two girls and so one layout will go in one of the girls' albums and the other will go into the other sisters album but I thought it would be fun to take a look at the layouts together along with other duplicates and layouts with very similar photos on...

The layout above was scrapped when I was away on a crafting weekend. A short time later I was asked to do a cyber crop class for UKS and the papers we wanted to use worked really well with the photo so I re-scrapped it to use for the class which is shown below (it was a technique class using machine stitching on your layouts - the mats are stitched and the stems of the vines are also stitched.)

The next three layouts all have similar photos but not exactly the same. All taken within seconds of each other at Livvys blessing. (As a side note these were also the phots that the very next day got me starting to lose weight and Darren followed suit a few months later so although I love the photos because it was a special day I also cringe at them too!)

I really like all the layouts even though the photos repeat. Obviously the kraft one also features Izzy so that is for her album and the BG Wisteria one is in Livvys album.

The final one is a sort of "Olivia greatest hits of the first year" layout and I close cropped the photo of just me and her - I am a soppy thing at heart and so the sentiment on that one is of significant meaning. When Olivia was tiny Isabelle went through a phase of watching Dumbo all the time and the line from the song Baby of Mine in that film "You are so precious to me, Cute as can be, baby of mine" reminds me of her as a little baby. That layout was a class on one of our retreats and the instructions are available HERE.

The two layouts below use a colour and a black and white version of the exact same photo. The blue one using Graphic 45 papers has journaling written to Izzy about the photo and when it was taken and is in her album. The second one is in Livvys.

So those are a few double takes from me... I would love to hear your thoughts on rescrapping photos, if and when you do it and why.

Also, while we are talking about Doubles don't forget our double page layout challenge for this month. Details are HERE.

Some Soup For You

This was my layout for the Chicken Soup challenge blog tonight, The inspiration was a very beautiful (and somewhat expensive) butterfly necklace.



The background for this layout was started a long time ago - at our spring 2010 retreat infact as it was part of Debbies class using masking fluid and watercolours.


I enjoyed spending some time in the classroom creating a background but I had no photos or idea what I wanted to do with it. When I was having my most recent clearing out session of part done layouts I found the background and matched it with a photo I took of Olivia at Butterfly World on the Isle of Wight last summer.


I added a few more doodles, some stickers by Crate paper and some butterfly and flower embellishments by KI memories which I had been hoarding away for ages and it all came together quite quickly.

A Couple of Layouts To Share...

Just sharing a couple of quick layouts i have done over the past couple of weeks. The Profiteroles one uses My Minds Eye Penny Lane paper and die cuts with some thickers. It was super quick to do but I really wanted to capture the messiness of Olivia eating her first profiteroles (with her fingers) taken over a year ago - Christmas 2009.


This uses Basic Grey Lime Rickey papers and stickers, I just LOVED the "Elmer" style paper that I used to make the frame of the photo. The coloured letter stickers are Sassafras and the large white letters are Doodlebug. Isabelle loves to play on the Wii fit although often she prefers to take on the "motivational coach" role and instructs me to play the games and try to get the crown for the highest score!

A couple more sneak peaks

Websters Pages are releasing a lot of new product and some of it is quite a departure from their usual lines. Trendsetter is one line which at first glance would not shout 'Websters Pages' at you, I haven't quite made up my mind about it yet..............what do you think?

Trendsetter

Country Estate is another of their new lines and instantly recognisable as a Websters Pages line.

Yacht Club and Ladies and Gents are the other two paper lines in this latest release.

Country Estate

Bo Bunny are releasing four new paper lines, Timepiece, Gabrielle, Blast Off and Vicki B. My favourites are Timepiece and Gabrielle

Timepiece

Gabrielle

Back later in the week with a few more!

Customer Spotlight - 2010 Crafting Review: Anna Parker

Hi...my name is Anna I am 22 and a Mummy to Jack aged 2. I live in Suffolk, UK with my partner Lee and Jack. I work part time in a Montessori nursery, which I enjoy doing but my main passion is of course scrapping! I hope you enjoy looking at some of my 2010 layouts..

You can visit my blog here - www.mycreations-anna.blogspot.com

Thanks to Anna for sharing her work with us. All of the layouts are beautiful but my personal favourites are "Today You Had Fun" and "Circus Day"... that might be because of my unending love of bunting or maybe the super cute photos!

Keep an eye out for another reader showcase coming soon!

A Little Blog Offer & More Sneak Peeks

As promised, here is a little offer for our blog readers. The code is BLOG-JAN16 and this will get you 10% off any order over £10.00. The only products excluded are gift vouchers but it should work for everything else.

A few more sneak peeks now. Graphic 45 are launching metal embellishments to add to their Staples line and have also teamed up with Hampton Art to produce some beautiful cling stamps - vintage style of course! They released the Once Upon A Springtime collection at the end of last year and have added two more Le Cirque and Curtain Call which both have a theatrical feel to them.

Spring Cleaning!

Today has been very busy here. Those of you that know me will know that I am not what you could call a naturally tidy person. In fact I turned it into a positive during the recent snowy weather claiming that if I got stuck somewhere in my car i would be fine as there is plenty of clothing, drinks and probably the odd snack in there to keep me going til help arrived!

Anyway, some sort of alien January bug has grabbed hold of me and today I set out (with the help of my Mum!) to sort through all the childrens clothes. It was a mammoth task and not quite complete but nearly.

Usually when I sort clothes they go in piles

• Pass on to friends children
• E-Bay (this is a hypothetical pile which really means put it in a box and never get around to actually selling it!)
• Charity shop
• Bin

Today I added another pile and was very proud of myself as I raided the piles destined for the bin (usually has a stain somewhere or a hole in it) for T-Shirts and other items with pretty embellishments. Tomorrows job when I have finished the great clothes sort is to sit in the evening, in front of Criminal Minds (because I love the show and particularly Matthew Gray Gubler!) and use my Tim Holtz scissors to cut the embellishments out...

Reduce Reuse and Recycle right? So I reduce the rubbish, reuse parts of the clothes and recylce the rest in the tectile recycling bank. Wow, I know a paper based hobby is not going to be exactly green (sorry rainforests) but I feel like I am doing a little bit!

I will try to upload a photo of the embellishments I got from the clothes tomorrow night!

7 Gypsies New Lines - Sneak Peek

Well, the new 7 Gypsies releases are fabulous and we have spent the early part of this evening watching their webinar - I didn't know what it was either until last summer when they did their first one. It is like an online meeting where they show you and talk through all the new products. There are two new paper lines, Lille, which is ready to ship and Camden which will arrive in March all being well. It being 7 Gypsies, there are loads of tags, stickers, labels, ephemera and some new metal bits and pieces which will go beautifully with the Printers Trays and also some little bottles to stand in them. They are also re-releasing Collage Tissue, which I believe they used to do years ago. Our order is placed and now we just have to wait for it to arrive.

Camden

Lille

As you all know, we love 7 Gypsies at ATDML and can't wait for those boxes to arrive

Sneak Peeks

Prima Dechire and Lovely Flowers

Prima Melody

The sneak peeks have started and we thought we would share a few of them with you on our blog. Winter CHA is just around the corner and it is time to start planning our purchases. Prima have just released their new catalogue and it is their biggest release yet.

Prima Picks

Customer Spotlight - 2010 Crafting Review: Wendy Hussey

First up in our series of Customer Spotlights as we review your crafting in 2010 is Wendy Hussey. Wendy has been a customer of ours for a while and as with all our regular customers we always wonder what happens to those products when the pizza box reaches it's destination. Wendy was kind enough to share with us some of her craft projects from 2010. Here is what she had to say:

"I am a retired mother of two and grandmother of two. I am guided in all things crafty by my talented daughter Sarah! After completing many a 12 x 12 scrapbook of family photos I am now finding my preference is for small books, family cards and lately completing a configurations box. I craft slowly and enjoy planning out each project."


This is an A4 sized birthday card made with Graphic 45 papers.

This is one of the Tim Holtz configurations boxes which was filled with lots of trinkets and bits & pieces.

Here are two books, the first made with a 7 Gypsies Naked Journal and decorated with 7 Gypsies paper and embellishments. The second holiday themed album is also made using largely 7 Gypsies products.

Many Thanks to Wendy for being first to share her crafting from 2010 with us here on the Created By ATDML blog. Look out next week for another blog readers crafty achievements in 2010.

If you would like to share your creations from 2010 drop me an email - Mel@atripdownmemorylane.co.uk with some info and jpeg images (no larger than 600 pixels on their longest length) of between 3 and 6 projects you worked on in 2010.