NEW DESIGN TEAM ANNOUNCEMENT!!

WOW! It's an exciting day for us at Artfull Crafts. We get to announce the new Artfull Crafts Design Team. We want to THANK all the applicants. You made the job very difficult this year because there is so much talent out there! We have selected a team with a great mix of styles and interests to satisfy the range of crafty followers we have. We are sure you'll love the new team.

There are $150 worth of prizes to be won this week, so keep reading right to the end! Over the next 2 weeks, you'll find out more about these ladies - so keep stopping by.

Whose faces are hanging on our wall this year?!

Congratulations to these ladies:

Michelle McArthur

Michelle McArthur lives in Mosgiel, NZ with her husband and two children. Between working as an Accountant for a nationwide gift store, helping with school activities and assisting in coaching the children’s sports teams – life is anything but boring!
 
She enjoys creating layouts, recording her family’s day to day life in Project Life style albums, and creating beyond the page projects with her scrap supplies.

Michelle’s other interests include iphonography, sewing, travel and researching her family history.

Check out her blog at: www.kiwimich.blogspot.co.nz

Check out Michelle's Gallery here

Shirley Towan

Shirl is a married mum of 2 and lives in Geelong Australia (The home of Kaisercraft). She has been a scrapper for many years and is lucky enough to work at the Kaisercraft retail outlet, where she teaches classes every week.
Her scrapping style is essentially vintage but she can adapt to any style! This is Shirl's second stint as a Design Team member for Artfull Crafts after being on the team during 2011. She is looking forward to all the challenges (and fun) that being a DT member will bring.

 Check out Shirley's Gallery here

 

Lydia Wiley

Lydia Wiley lived in Dunedin, NZ for almost three years before moving back to her home country - The United States. She resides in Longmont, Colorado with her husband of 19 years and three boys. Lydia keeps busy with her boys and their school and sport activities.

She has been paper crafting for over 17 years yet has loved paper, pens, and crayons since she was a little girl. Scrapbooking is her main paper love but she also plays with paints, canvas, mini albums, and art journaling. Lydia is also an avid photographer, junk/vintage collector, and enjoys being outdoors either walking or in the garden.

Check out her blog at www.kiwimumscraps.blogspot.com

Check out Lydia's Gallery here

 Sharon Newport

Hailing from Southland, Sharon is dairy farming with her husband near Gore. They have four fantastic kids, whose exploits fill the family scrapbook pages.

Sharon discovered scrapbooking back in the 90s , and has been collecting scrap supplies, and other craft supplies destined for projects ever since. Sharon has worked in the craft industry for the last ten years, regularly teaching scrapbooking classes when they were farming in Hamilton, and for the last six years in Southland. Sharon is a current DT member for the challenge blog www.southerngirlschallenge.blogspot.co.nz.

Sharon has a love for mixed media products, flowers and layering. She loves nothing better than altering papers and products to use on her pages and BTP projects. She loves to add tiny details to the pages she creates to create depth and dimension.

You can also find her here at www.mooloosdownsouth.blogspot.co.nz

Check out Sharon's Gallery here

 Melissa Vining

 

Melissa lives in Queenstown New Zealand with her husband and two young children. She is self employed as a Town Planning Consultant, and along with her husband leads the children's ministry at her church.

Melissa has been scrapbooking seriously since discovering the online crafting world in Summer of 2012. Her style is contemporary, clean, influenced by trends and always includes journaling.

Check out Melissa's blog www.yesterday2day4ever.blogspot.co.nz

Check out Melissa's Gallery here

Robbi Bell

Robbi comes from Dunedin, she married her High School sweetheart and they have 3 amazing kids (all over 21) and a beagle Pippa. You will see a lot of these guys over the next year as they are her main focus for scrapping. She has been scrapping for about the last 9 years and loves every minute of it.

Robbi has been on other DT's and has worked in a local scrapbook shop. She's kept in close contact with a lot of the ladies she's met over the years and currently teaches classes in Dunedin, Balclutha and sometimes in Oamaru.

Robbi loves flowers and has a beautiful eye for detail. Her work is exquisite and we're looking forward to another year of creativity with Robbi. Robbi has been on the Artfull Crafts Design Team since 2012.

Check out Robbi's blog at: www.scrapsfrommyeverydaylife.blogspot.com

Check out Robbi's Gallery here

Valou Allard

Valou (Valerie) lives in Belgium with her 5 children who are her main inspiration. She caught the virus of scrapbooking in April, 2006 by looking for ideas on the Internet to create an album of holidays. 

She adores creating pages and especially home decorations. Valou also creates mini-albums and cards for any occasion. Her style of scrapbooking is "Shabby Chic" and we find numerous flowers, laces, pearls, cuts on all her projects.

Hot embossing is one of her favorite techniques as well as the use of the glitter. Her advice is to always to scrap with pleasure and to follow its ideas! The sharing of ideas is the best way of learning and of progressing in the scrapbooking world. Besides, it is a real pleasure!

You can see more of Valou's work at: www.lafeerieduscrap.blogspot.com

Check out Valou's Gallery here

LOCAL TEAM 

Artfull Crafts is fortunate to have a local team of crafters who are willing to help spread the word of papercrafting in our corner of the world! These team members will blog as well as be involved in events and classes at the shop.

Christine Bonifacio (DT Assistant)

Christine comes from a dairy farm in Temuka, NZ and has a grown up family. She's been a keen crafter for many years and enjoy both making cards and scrapbooking. Christine loves using dies, embossing folders and stamps and she pays careful attention to the details on her creations. She loves to check out the blogs and is always interested in the new items that come to the market. 

Luckily Christine lives locally - and so we enjoy working closely with her. She has taken on the role of Design Team assistant this year. Christine has been on the Artfull Crafts Design Team since 2011.

Check out Christine's blog at www.christinebcreates.blogspot.co.nz

Check out Christine's Gallery here 

Betsy Clark

Betsy Clark lives in Geraldine, NZ with her husband. She has grown-up children and enjoys being a grandmother. She's a respected member of the South Canterbury community - involved in her local church and in teaching craft classes. We call her the Team's Grandma!

Betsy's cards are exquisite and much-admired. She is published monthly in the Kaisercraft Workshop magazine (under the name Miss Betsy!)  and she generously puts her cards on display in the Artfull Crafts Store. She loves using Martha Stewart Punches, Spellbinders, Magnolia stamps and enjoys searching the Internet for the newest products. Betsy has been on the Artfull Crafts Design Team since 2011.

Check out her blog at www.bestofbetsys.blogspot.com

Check out Betsy's Gallery here

Lisa Ryder

Lisa was born in Timaru and still lives here with her husband, Ivan, and daughter, Lauren. She has been crafting for well over 15 years, and loves creating with paper, paint and photos - with a recently-developed obsession when it comes to washi tape. Her style is best described as eclectic, with a love of mini-albums, hand-crafted home decor items, and BTP projects.

She's also a photography buff, especially when it comes to the Instagram style of picture-taking. Other loves include: reading, music, vintage and thrifted treasures, birds, buddhas, typography, wooden letterpress type and a really great cup of coffee.

Find out more a bout Lisa on her blog: www.sleepingspines.blogspot.co.nz 

Check out Lisa's Gallery here

Beck Caithness

Becks is a local gal, living here in Timaru with her hubby of 17 years Darryl, and their 9 year old son Jacob. She started scrapbooking in earnest 13 years ago, after a trip to Aussie left her with a mountain of photos, brochures and ticket stubs, and an incredible urge to re-tell the stories they held..... And so the obsession began!

Her crafting style changes with her mood, and varies from fiddly/fussy cutting with lots of layers and details, to white space with clean lines. And of course there are always lots of 'boy' pages. She also dabbles in the odd bit of cardmaking, copic colouring, and a few beyond the page projects every now and again.

When she's not scrapping in the super-cool scrap room her hubby created, she can be found spending time with family and friends, baking, listening to music, or curled up with a good book on her iPad.

Find out more about Beck on her blog: www.beckcaithness.blogspot.co.nz

Check out her Gallery here

EXPERTS

Artfull Crafts has a lot of talented friends who have expertise to share. You won't necessarily find the experts regularly blogging, but they will be active and available on our Facebook Page for Q & A sessions and they will load up into the Gallery when inspiration strikes!

Lowri McNabb - Beyond the Page Expert

Lowri is a busy mother to three small children and lives on a vineyard in Blenheim, NZ. She enjoys many types of papercrafting and loves making BTP projects, mini albums and other gifts to give away. She's also recently started importing crafting products and selling them.

Lowri has a clean style of crafting and has previously served on the In-House Design Team for Echo Park Paper. She has also designed for October Afternoon, Pink Paislee, Cosmo Cricket, Kaisercraft, Making Memories, Teresa Collins, Little Yellow Bicycle and Ruby Rock-It.

Check out Lowri's blog at: www.papervinenz.com

Check ou the Experts Gallery here

Vivienne Laursen - Photography Expert

Viv lives in Timaru with her husband Marc and their precious daughter Genevieve. She's a professional photographer and graphic designer and enjoys scrabooking and cardmaking. Her style is a mix of clean lines with a touch of vintage thrown in.

She was 12 years old when her Grandparents gave her a camera for Christmas. That was the beginning of a whole other world for Viv, from drawing toadstool houses, to eventually studying both photography and graphic design resulting in over sixteen years of experience in Advertising, Photography and Design.

Viv loves gardens full of English roses, gorgeous fabrics, family heirlooms & antiques, mountain vistas, delicate newborns, children's smiles and most of all, Christ.

Follow her blog: www.viviennelaursen.co.nz/blog and Facebook page: www.facebook.com/VivienneLaursenPhotographyandDesign

Check out the Experts Gallery here 

Juanita Patrick

 Juanita comes from sunny California and moved to New Zealand 24 years ago. She now lives in Temuka with her prince charming Calvin, dog , cat and six chooks.

Juanita loves Scrapbooking, card making and she loves coloring with her Copics!!!! She works at Artfull Crafts and insist that her wages fund her hobby! Juanita is going to be sharing with us her tips on colouring images this year.

Check out the Experts Gallery here 

Diana Steven

Diana lives in Timaru and is a busy mum of 5 school aged children. She is an illustrative artist who loves using copic markers to add vibrant colour to her delightful images of people and animals.

Acting and singing are Diana’s other creative hobbies, and she is a proud member of Christchurch City Chorus Sweet Adelines. Recently Diana started studying for a diploma with plans to work as a freelance editor. Locally, Diana is known for her ‘Gingerbread Christmas House’ (at last count twelve themed trees) which she opens to the public every December.

Check out her blog: http://mybatchofgingerbreadbabies.blogspot.co.nz/ and her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DianaStevenArtist

Check out the Experts Gallery here 

 Vicki Morris

Vicki hails from Auckland New Zealand. She is married to Jase and has 3 children  - Natasja (13), Mikayla (10) and Jadeyn (7). She loves taking photos and scrapping them (in between her real jobs of being a mum and doing accounting work from home). Vicki was on the Kaisercraft Design Team for 2 years and has spent the last year on Artfull Craft's Team.

Vicki is going to be serving in an Expert role on the team this year. She won't be a blogging member - but she's going to be our Kit specialist. Vicki's is an extremely talented scrapbooker and her layout kits are super popular!

Check out Vicki's blog at www.bixies.blogspot.co.nz

Check out the Experts Gallery here

HOW TO WIN PRIZES!!

   All competitions below close on midnight Satuday 24th August.

• Head to our Gallery, scroll along the hallway, click on the portraits and welcome the girls. Comment on any projects that you LOVE! (Each comment puts you in a draw to win a $50 prize pack). 

• Follow the Artfull Crafts Blog and follow the girls on their personal blogs. Leave us a message (on Facebook or email) letting us know you've started following, and we'll put you in a draw to win a $20 gift voucher).

• Answer the 3 questions below on our Facebook Page to go in the draw a $30 prize pack. We will post this question as a separate post on Facebook so you can leave your answers on there.

1) How many cats are lazing around down the Gallery?

2)  Name someone who was on last year's team, who is staying on for another year.

3) Name the person whose style most closely matches yours.

• Finally, head to Saturday's blogpost and say goodbye to the team we are farewelling. (Each comment put you in a draw to win another $50 prize pack.)

Have a fun time checking out the new team, and don't forget to share the New Design Team blog link on your Facebook Page!