Sketches Oz - Scrapbooking Sketches Aussie Style

Monday, April 30, 2007

Sketch One - Kim Archer

After a couple of weeks of waiting here it finally is, the very first Sketches Oz Sketch, our guest artist is none other than the immensely talented and totally wonderful Kim Archer! I contacted Kim on the day of the first blog post and by bedtime that night she had provided us with the first sketch and accompanying inspiration layout! Thankyou Kim
Here is what Kim had to tell us about herself and Sketches Oz:
I live in Newcastle with my hubby Ken and our three kids,
Brandt, Jamison and Capri. I started scrapbooking in January 2003 after picking
up a scrapbooking magazine. In those days I had NO idea what I was doing and
pretty much just accumulated stuff as I didn't really know what to do with it
all. Eventually I did make my first page..and then I just kept on making
things!

I have been fortunate enough to have had a lot of
opportunities within the scrapbook industry over the past few years and have
been able to travel around teaching at many retreats, conventions and stores.
Lots of fun!

What a great idea this new sketch site is!!! I am
thrilled to have been asked to join in for the first sketch challenge and I look
forward to seeing the site evolve as it gets going and everyone joins in:)
So without further ado, here are the inspiration LO's from Kim's sketch!
Party - Kim Archer
The Secret Garden - Courtney Ferguson

Dude - Deirdre Heath
Held Near - Danielle Quarmby



You - Kathie Link


Quirks - Mardi Winen

Dress Ups - Sarah Mulder

Birthday Boy - Tammy Templeton

A Year With Miss Charlotte - Tatum Woodroffe

So there you go! Hope that you like them, and we can't wait to see the layouts that you come up with from Kim's sketch! When you have finished your layout you can share them with us by emailing them to sketchesoz@yahoo.com.au at the end of the fortnight Kim will choose her favourite for a prize which includes a seat at one of Kim's online classes (thanks again Kim :) )!

Layout's need to be sent in by 12 Midnight EST 14th May, before we upload sketch 2 on the 15th! Happy Scrapping!

Thankyou Thankyou

Are you all excited, waiting with bated breath to see the sketch and gorgeous layouts that have come from it? I know we can't wait to share them with you!

We want say a huge thankyou to all of you talented ladies who have spent the time putting together your entries for our DT search, each and every one of the layouts are totally awesome!

I also need to say a big thankyou to our DT member Danielle Quarmby who has done a fantastic job with the blog layout and banner, I totally love it!

See you again in a few hours :) !

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Just a Reminder

You have until Midnight WST Monday 30th to get you DT entries in! The entries have been fabulous and I can tell you that it is going to be very hard to pick a winner.

Then, as entries close our very first sketch is going to be uploaded and you are going to LOVE it, I know that we have all enjoyed working with it and have some fantastic layouts to share!

Have a great weekend, hope that you get some scrapping time in!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Introducing Our Digital Design Team Member!

How are your design team entries going? They are starting to pile into my inbox and I can tell you that judging this is going to be tough! I think our guest artists will have a tough job judging the fortnightly prizes too, there are so many talented scrappers out there! Don't forget that we are looking for one paper and one digital design team member, entries close 12 midnight WST Monday 30th April, for more details see here.

As I am sure you have gathered from our design team search Sketches Oz will be featuring digital as well as paper scrappers so I'd like to introduce you to our digital design team member-

Courtney is 37.5 years old, married to Mark and has two son's (her handsome twosome) Tim and Jacob. She works part time in an office close to home and in school hours for which she feels very fortunate. Courtney loves the ladies she has met through scrapbooking over the years and she says that ‘you can't meet anyone better than scrapbookers’.

Courtney tried lots of different crafts in the early 90's but when she started scrapbooking she knew that she was hooked for life. Courtney has been a digital scrapbooker since April 2005, she stumbled across a Photoshop disc on ebay, ordered it and it then arrived with no instructions so she just played and played until she worked it out. ‘I am still learning’ she says.
Courtney’s digital work has been published in Scrapbooking Memories, For Keeps, Scrapbook Creations and Creating Keepsakes. She won the Adobe 2006 Scrappy Awards for the section titled "Holiday" and was on a digital design team last year for an overseas digital designer. She was also asked by her son's school to do the graduation year book for 2006.
Courtney was a paper scrapper for 8 years prior to becoming a digital scrapper, she says ‘I love digital scrapbooking and I think my style tends to emulate a paper scrapper more than being overly graphic. I think my style is also ever changing, I don't tend to have similar pages as each one I create I want it to be unique. I love digital scrapbooking and find it really relaxes me and gives me purpose in life as I am creating memories to be remembered and art to be enjoyed. My goals lately have been to journal more and use those not so nice photo's - as there are plenty of those.’

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sketches Oz - Design Team Search

So, here it is, the design team search! We are looking for 2 more design team members to add to our team. We are looking for 1 scrapper who is predominately a paper scrapper and 1 who mostly does digi! We really want to cater to digi scrappers too and we will have digi scrappers included in our guest artist line up!
As a design team member you will get to work with the sketches of many Australian Scrap Artists with your work being regularly published on the Sketches Oz Blog. Your design team commitment will be up to 2 layouts each month.

To be considered for the design team we want you to provide us with 3 layouts, 2 will come from the sketches below and the 3rd from your own sketch. I want to say a big thankyou to talented Australian Sketch Artist Cath at Little Book of Sketches for allowing us to use a couple of her sketches.

Once you are done email your 3 layouts, together with your sketch to woodroffesofisa@aapt.net.au with Sketches Oz - Design Team Search in the subject line! You are welcome to submit your layouts in either a 12 x 12 or 11 x 8.5, whichever is your preferred size and we are happy to accept applications from Kiwi Scrappers!
Good luck & we can't wait to see the work because there are so many talented Australian scrappers out there that I know this is going to be very hard to judge!
Entries close midnight WST 30th April 2007.

Out of the Dark, Into the Light - Introducing the Sketches Oz Design Team

So, without further ado, I would like to welcome the very talented Sketches Oz blog design team! Stay tuned in the next 24 hours, paper and digi scrappers alike, for your chance become part of this fabulous team.
Sarah is 32 years old, partner of 10 years to her best friend James. They have two children Rebekah, 6 and Harrison, 3. She works part time in a baby shop and loves all the inspiration that she get from working there. Sarah is also an ambassador for Fiskars Australia.

Sarah has been into craft for as long as she can remember, stitching, candle making, card making and stamping. It wasn't until she was pregnant with Rebekah that she ran into scrapbooking through creative memories. She became addicted - hook, line and sinker - and has not looked back. Not long after finding scrapbooking she told James that they had to build a house just so to get HER scrap room.

Sarah’s family and friends are the main subjects of her pages. She loves to record the little things, the milestones, the everyday. Through scrapbooking she has made many life long friends that just GET it. She says ‘they understand me taking the camera everywhere, taking photos through dinner at a restaurant, running after my kids at a playground arms flapping in the air just to get the perfect shot. The circle of friends i now have through scrapbooking i am eternally grateful for’.

Sarah likes to try anything and everything. She inks everything and loves patterned papers and, like many, they are her addiction. Her favorite manufacturers are Heidi Swapp, SEI, Heidi Grace Design and a little bit of Basic Grey thrown in. She is addicted to sketches.
Sarah says ‘I am excited by this opportunity and i hope that through this blog we inspire you to scrapbook your everyday and lifetime moments....’

Dee has 2 gorgeous children Aodhan, 2 and Ciara who has just turned 1. She is married to Glenn and lives west of Melbourne. She is a full time Mum, but also a nurse and does some casual work in a endoscopy centre.

Dee has been scrapping for about 2 years now, and feels that she has been very lucky with where her love of the craft has taken her. She has been published in two of the Australian magazines, and also has also had a few pages picked up for publication in the US. This year she made it into the top 50 of the Making Memories Idol competition, an achievement she is very proud of. She is on the design team at Scrap 'N Crazy and has recently started up the Aussie Scrapjacked blog, which is proving to be a lot of fun.
Dee loves working from a sketches, although she finds that the end result turns out completely different.

Danielle is a 26-year-old mum of 2. Daughter Sienna, age 3, and son Ash who is just over 1 1/2. She has been married to Ben, who is a computer programmer, for 8 years.

Danielle works part time as a website production assistant and is also self-employed casually as a photographer (babies, children, couples, families) as well as being a stay-at-home-most-of-the-time mum!
Danielle has been into photography since she was 12 and painting since she was 13. She started scrapbooking at 22 when she was pregnant with Sienna. Her sister Kelly had started and Danielle thought that it would be nice to share the hobby with her and it has since evolved into a passion and an art for her and a business for her sister.
Danielle is on the design team at 'Kiti Q Fresh and Funky scrapbooking' and has been published in For Keeps, Scrapbook Creations (SC) and Scrapbooking Memories (SM). She has some articles coming up in SC that she is really excited to be seeing in print!
Danielle has rarely used sketches in the past and is looking forward to taking up the Sketches Oz challenge and putting her creative and interpretive skills to the test.

Kathie is wife to Phil and Mama to Jamie. A few years back she was a hard working, stressed out Human Resources Manager and had been working for ten years in a big company where it seemed that she spent more and more of her time managing staff terminations, performance problems and investigating "issues" - lots of not-so-fun stuff. She was in need of some light relief, had just gotten married and decided to give scrapbooking a try. After all, she had a wedding album to make! So marked the start of her little hobby.

Since then Kathie has gone on to have the majority of her pages published in scrapping magazines, has been invited to work on fantastic design teams, and has met a bunch of lively and creative women who she now calls friends. She has also had a seachange - at first she went back to her original career as an occupational health and safety adviser, but more recently she became a full-time mum, her favourite career to date. She is due to go back to work two days a week in May.

Kathie is glad that I discovered scrapbooking before she became a mother as she loves capturing the everyday. ‘You know, those little moments that I'd forget about otherwise. I steer away from "milestone" pages. I guess they'll get done later. But at the moment those aren't the things that are important to me, my topics are far more mundane.’

Kathie’s style tends towards vintage but really, for her, the look of each page is inspired by the photos and the story. The one thing that is consistent across her pages is journaling - she always has a story to capture. Kathie rarely uses sketches and when she does, you'd usually never know by the end, as her layouts end up completely different to when she started.

Tammy Templeton


Tammy is 37 and lives in Morphett Vale, SA, with husband Jason and 3 kids, Dwayne 15, Talissa 5 & Conner 2, who are the main subjects of her layouts. Everyone that knows her, knows that she is addicted to pink.

Tammy is a self confessed "craft-a-holic" and has dabbled into everything crafty since she was about 13. She have boxes full of "stuff" that she now finds quite come in handy with scrapbooking, which is now her main hobby. She has been scrapbooking for about 5 years and is self taught, never having had any lessons. She is very excited with how her scrapbooking has developed over the last 12 months, and feels that she has finally discovered "her style". She describes her style as 'cartoonish/eclectic, I love doodling and mixing it up'. Her favourite products are chipboard, ribbons and flowers and she likes to scrap in a variety of sizes, including 8.5 X 11, 8 X 8 and has just started with 9 X 9.

Tammy enjoys all aspects of scrapbooking whether it is chatting online with friends, sharing, trying out new ideas with photography or online shopping and is soon to be published in For Keeps and Scrapbooking Memories.

Mardi is married to her big sweetie Ian (for over 20 years now) and has three teenagers; two boys Brent, 18 and Mitch, 16 and her gorgeous girl Briony 13. They live in the Riverland region of SA and love to camp and take the boat out on the River.

Mardi is a fulltime Paramedic which means her days are varied some days are exciting and others she’d rather forget. She finds that scrapbooking is her release tool, her de-stresser. She is also lucky to have the advantage of shift work giving her day time, child free scrap time.
Although she has always been into craft she is relatively new to Scrapbooking, beginning about 2 1/2 years ago. Mardi couldnt believe that this whole new world was out there and was instantly hooked. If she’s not scrapping she is annoying the kids with my camera, pouring through magazines or glued to the internet.

Mardi has been published many times in the various magazines including commissioned layouts as well as some Design team and Guest Design Team spots. She is grateful for all of the opportunities scrapbooking has given her and particularly grateful for the wonderful friends she has made online.

Mardi loves to use colour and a mix of patterned papers, she usually stitches and loves both quirkiness and ‘white space’. Mardi finds that her style continually evolves and is always looking to try different ideas.

Lately Mardi has been scrapping the everyday things more often, using more than one photo to a page and also using those 'not so hot' photos. She also loves to journal sometimes its hidden, but it is always there, because every layout needs to be a story told.

Tatum Woodroffe

I am Tatum Woodroffe, mum to Charlotte (10/8/02); Lillian (26/1/04) and Sebastian (4/12/06). My husband is Steven, married on 16/12/2000.

We have been living in Mount Isa, Queensland since December 1999 and are originally from Adelaide, we are both mining engineers and I am a Senior Mining Engineer for Xstrata copper in that professional side of my life. I have been scrapbooking in earnest since mid 2005 when I was really inspired by Emily Falconbridge’s work in Scrapbooking Creations. Although my work looks nothing like Emily’s I love the philosophy behind her work which to me is creating art and documenting both family and self. Most of my layouts feature my kiddies but I do try and scrap myself, my husband and our friends too.

My style is still developing and I don’t expect it will ever rest in a single area because I love to challenge myself and try new things. I love colour…I am not someone who has a favourite colour, I love them all (except purple)…and it features strongly in my LO’s. I never feel that my LO’s are finished until I have journalled something!

I started this blog because I love to work with sketches, I use them often as a starting point for my layouts, although like the others my layouts usually end up quite different to the original sketch. I thought that it would be a great way to provide inspiration to others and showcase Australian talent, whilst having a bit of fun. I would love for it to become a resource that people come back to for inspiration, ideas and a bit of fun!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

What a day!

So...what more can I tell you now? The first sketch & LO is done and the design team have the sketch in their hot little hands to weave there magic on! You'll have to wait until May 1st to find out who our guest artist is but I can tell you that you will love her LO and her sketch! I love all of her work and I am sure that you do too!

To kickstart this little place of inspiration we would love to find another member to add to our design team. Watch out for a couple of sketches that will be uploaded in the next couple of days. We are asking you to complete a layout from each of these sketches and submit them for our consideration. From the entries we will be choosing a design team member to join us here at the Sketches Oz blog....and I can tell you that we have some fabulous scrap artists lined up to work with!

Something New Is Coming!

We all love sketches! They are a great starting point for overcoming scrapper's block or for just getting started on a Layout! Starting on 1st May the Sketches Oz Blog will be bringing you fortnightly sketches from Aussie girls and providing you with inspiration from our Aussie design team!

There will be prizes, there will be challenges and there will be lots of fun! Keep checking back through April as we bring you more little tastes of what is coming!

Can't wait for the fun to start!