Meet Vee!

As always, the close of the month means that we have to say goodbye to our current Guest Designer but it does also mean that we welcome a new one. March's designer, Glenda brought with her a remarkable sense of who she is as an artist in every one of her pages. I for one thoroughly enjoyed seeing her layouts every Friday and feel privileged to have had her with us for Birthday Month.

For April, we bring you Vee Jennings. If you've read a single copy of Memory Makers this year, you've likely seen her amazing artwork somewhere in the pages of the magazine. She's one of the Memory Makers Masters for 2009. I am super thrilled to have her as our Guest Designer this month and know you'll love her layouts as much as I do!

You can read below a bit about Vee in the interview below. Also, you'll find a few of her most favorite layouts in the whole wide world. You are invited to scraplift those pages and upload the link to them in the comments section of this post. This is a contest! A winner will be randomly chosen from the shared links at the end of the month so don't delay!



Q:Tell us a bit about you and your family.

A: I am a mother of two,love to spend time with family, love to travel and just enjoy life as much as I can. I live in the burbs of DC which inspires me daily.

Q: How long have you been scrapbooking and where did you get your start in this craft?

A: I started scrap-booking eight years ago after the birth of my son. The rest is history. I've been busy documenting life big and small ever since.

Q:What inspires your creativity when you are scrapbooking?

A: Life, fashion, family, friends and the Internet are all avenues of inspiration. But mainly I love creating for the "art" of creating. For me its all about getting my ideas and thoughts about life on paper. It's both therapeutic and fulfilling. My main motivator in the beginning was to document my children's life, but then I realized that my life in essence is theirs as well so I now create for me but with them in mind. I want my children to know who I am as a woman when they are grown.

Q:Describe your creative style

A: I guess my creative style would be a mix of simple and grunge.

Q:What are your three favorite products/techniques right now?

A: My three favorite products always are paint, cardstock and my pro pen.

Q:What project(s) are you currently working on?

A: It seems I am always working on something at the moment and I love it! If you were to see my desk right now, you would see projects for a GDT, dares, scrapjack and Polkadot Whismy.

Q:Describe your perfect day

A: My perfect day would be a day on the beach reading, enjoying the sun and watching my children play in the sand.

Q:What are your three favorite layouts of all time that you’ve created (published or not)?

A: A layout of my son that I made for my MMM submission last year, can't share it but it is one of my favorites.

Challenge 117

There's a certain delicousness that comes with Fridays, don't you think? The sense that there's no more work after today for a few days' reprieve and in theory that could mean that there's an opportunity for things like creativity. Perhaps your weekend includes some creative time and maybe - just maybe- you'll even get a chance to bust out a page or two for our challenges. That would be pretty close to a perfect weekend by my measure!

Oh, and for those of you who want to know, my birthday was absolutely fantastic (mustache party included!) and I want to thank all of you who sent me birthday love last week :) I wasn't expecting to read last week's post with a giant Happy Birthday on top. Made my day.

So this is the last week that Glenda will be our Guest Designer but hopefully not the last time she joins us with her incredible and inspiring layouts...and since this is her last week, that means that you have until April 3 to upload the links to your scraplifts of her work to THIS post.

For this week's layout, our challenge was to:

USE A TRANSPARENCY AS A BACKGROUND

and as you'll see below, the gang rocked it. I really liked this challenge as it forced me to see my transparencies in a new light. I often use them in small pieces as embellishments so this was a great new way to use something already in my stash. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is using more of what I already have in my massive stash rather than buying more stuff (as much as there is tons of new goodies I'd love to have!) Be sure to share your layouts with us in our Flickr Group. We choose three favorites every month that the public vote on as their favorites and that lucky winner receives a fabulous package bursting with scrappy goodness!

We're almost at 100 members in our Flickr Group...the 100th member will receive an extra special gift...tell all your friends and if they win, maybe they'll share with you! :)

Also, please take note of our latest announcement...we're looking for new designers to join us in the next Design Team session (June - November). Check out THIS post to learn more or follow the link on the sidebar.

Alrighty then...lets get to it, shall we?

Vanessa

Tania

Zoe

Kristin

Christi

Carol

Glenda

Calling All Designers!!

Have you ever thought to yourself, "gee, I'd sure like to be on that Lotus Paperie Design Team"?? If you have - or even if you haven't- this is your chance to submit your work for our Calling All Designers Open Call. May concludes the current DT session and the next is set to begin in June.


Read the stuff below to find out the details of the Open Call...
***********************************************************************
You are:
creative, passionate, committed and know the importance of deadlines and also that your best work is what you want others to know you by.

You scrapbook for fun or to save your sanity but you do so with conviction. You scrap because you love it and rise to a challenge. You are comfortable sharing your personal journaling and photographs without censoring (unless they're addresses- we don't need any creepy stalkers showing up at our front doors! or boob shots from those breastfeeding photos - or worse, the graphic birth photos...Eeew!) You don't take life or yourself too seriously and are an open communicator. You are sensitive to others' feelings but have a positive, easygoing attitude. You are moderately computer literate and are a regular blogger and enjoy sharing your work in the public forum.

We (Lotus Paperie) are:
first and foremost, a business but we understand that it's the people who make our business. We openly welcome constructive criticism (and random gifts during birthday week!) and are eager to make being on the Design Team as positive an experience as humanly possible for all involved. We are deeply committed to bringing creativity & joy to the lives of those who share in our passion for paper arts and all forms of crafting and have great respect for what others share with us. We are a warm and grateful group and eagerly anticipate growing the Lotus Paperie Team!

To make a submission you will need to email the following:
-3 of your best pages, one of which needs to be brand new (never ever published anywhere) and created from the sketch found at the bottom of this post. Please only submit this page to this call and we politely request that you refrain from publishing it elsewhere until you hear back as to whether or not you are invited to join our team. We want that page to be a big surprise to all our faithful blog readers.

technical sidenote: please ensure that your images are sent in .jpg format and please don't send humongous files.

-write a brief bio about yourself including your scrapbooking interests/experience, as well as links to your blogs/online galleries and other design teams that you are on currently or have been in the past. Please be sure to include your mailing address & email address in your bio. Also, a photo of yourself that you love, please to include that too! For our ease of file management, please include your bio as a Word file attached to your email rather than writing it in the body of your email. :)

-email the above items to info@lotuspaperie.com and put "Design Team Submission" in the subject line. Emails received after 9:00pm PST on April 26, 2009 will not be considered this time.

Here's the deal if you are invited to join the Design Team:
-You agree to make pages/projects reflecting each of the weekly challenges posted to the Yahoo group throughout the entire duration of your 6 month term (June 1, 2009 - November 30, 2009).

-Artwork can be created all at once or week by week, whatever works best for you. You will not be contacted if your submission misses the weekly deadline (thursday night, 9:00pm pacific time). If you miss more than two deadlines, your will be dismissed and your spot will become available to someone new.

-You will submit well photographed/scanned digital images of your artwork. You will make efforts to eliminate unsightly glare & shadows from your submissions. Poorly captured images will not be posted and will qualify as a "missed deadline", however, those who are invited to join the team will be given pointers to help them make the best possible digital reproductions of their work. Please request this information if you need it. Macro/detail images are welcomed to accompany your full-frame layout images.

-You will promote Lotus Paperie on your blog by either a link, gallery, weekly postings of your Lotus Paperie projects or all of the above. We politely ask that you maintain & update your blog weekly (or more if you prefer) as we link to you every time we post your pages and our readers do follow the links.

-You will not post pages created for the DT anywhere on the web (except for our private Yahoo group- see next point) until they have been published to the blog. NO EXCEPTIONS. If this is not respected, it will have the same consequences as a 'missed deadline' after two occurrences, you will be dismissed and your spot will be available to someone new.

-You will upload your pages to our private Yahoo group. You will receive an email invitation to join the group where there will be an album for you to upload your pages to.

-You will regularly visit our Flickr group and leave positive feedback on as many of the uploads as possible to keep everyone's mojo going. Everyone likes kind words said about their work and it's important for our challenge participants to know that we are seeing their contributions.

-You will participate in the once-monthly request to select your favourite submissions to our Flickr group. You will be asked to email links to your favourite page to us so we can post a poll for our blog readers to vote on. You will be permitted to cast a vote.

-If you need to terminate your position, please try to give us as much notice as possible so that we can find someone else to take your place in the team.

Having said all that, we are regular folks just like you and sometimes things happen that get in the way of our plans. We are pretty flexible and understanding. We want this to work for you as much as we want it to work for us. We want you to be happy so if life gets in the way of something crazy has happened like the dog ACTUALLY ate your page, dude, let us know so that we can come up with a solution together!

international applications are totally okay! Bring it on!!. Please make all submissions by 9:00pm PST, April 26, 2009. The new DT members will be announced in Early May and will be introduced throughout May. We are also opening up a few more spots on the team so don't be shy, get those applications in the mail!

One more thing, if you are a new scrapper or you've never been on a Design Team before, don't let that stop you from applying. We want to see everyone's work! Show us what you're made of!

And the winner is...

So we've all cast our votes and the results are in! We had an astounding 417 votes this time...thanks to everyone who promoted this vote and everyone who took the time to stop by and cast a vote! The winner for February's Flickr Vote is Ald.Valdez for "Laugh". Congratulations!! Please email me with your mailing information at info@lotuspaperie.com so I can get your prize in the mail.

*******

On a side note, I wanted to draw attention to an anonymous comment that we received regarding the voting process. We were accused of cheating in the vote. It is impossible for us to "fix" the vote and we want to assure everyone that our voting system is handled as fairly as possible. Having said that, I also want to point out that we completely encourage our finalists to promote each month's vote wherever they want that might generate more votes for the finalists' layouts- forums, chat groups, whatever. The reason we are okay with this is two-fold...it's gonna happen anyway (there's no way for us to monitor it so it's a wasted effort to make it against the "rules") and the whole point is for more people (scrappers and non-scrappers alike) to visit this blog. We don't want to restrict how you all participate because that sucks the fun out of the whole thing. We also understand that not all our finalists are active on forums & chat groups. But that's okay because the people who are arriving here as a result of links being posted elsewhere on the web make their decision based on the three finalists. We can't force anyone to vote one way or another...seems fair enough. Look at it this way, the more people we get to look at the layouts in the finals, the more chances each one of those three artists has of being voted the winner.

If anyone has concerns with how we're handling this issue, I welcome your emails.

and of course, a big giant shout out to the all our contributors for February. Make sure to upload your work for the March vote and remember to tag your layouts!

Challenge 116

Happy Birthday Vanessa!!!

Today is one of my best buddies (Vanessa's) birthday. Go make her day and give her some birthday love. :)

We have been having a fairly relaxed spring break, probably something we needed to do. Spending time together and actually having dinner together every night has been wonderful! :)

There is still a challenge up to scraplift one of Glenda's fabulous layouts. You can find the layouts here, that is also where you should link up your scraplift.


On with the challenge. This week it's a sketch. I absolutely love the girls layouts this week, aren't they beautiful? If you'd like to play along load up your layout to our flickr group so we can pick a favourite and send out some scrap goodies. Please make sure that you include the challenge number in your title.


Enjoy...

Tania

Vanessa

Christi

Kirsten

Carol

Zoe

Glenda

Challenge 115

I don't know about you, but we have been fighting colds and flus back to back at our house. I'm starting to think that spring break is meant to give everyone a break from all the germs, yuck! We are definitely looking forward to that break. :)

Another Friday the 13Th! The challenge to you this week is to

Use 6 or more photos!

I know you can do it, lets see what ya got!

Show us your stuff by loading up your page on flickr and adding it to our flickr group, please remember to add the challenge number to your title so we know which one it's for.
Also, please help us decide who gets the RAK and vote on your favourite layout from last month, you don't need a blogger account to vote.

Our guest designer this month is the talented Glenda Tkalac. To win some extra scrap goodies just scraplift one of Glenda's favourite layouts and link it to this post.

Here's what the design team gave us...

Tania

Vanessa

Christi
Kirsten

Carol

ETA... sorry Carol, I missed your close-up :p
Zoe

Glenda

Time to choose your favorite!

What an incredible month for contributions to our Flickr Group! You, our readers have been so inspiring with your work and we can't wait to show you who caught our eye this time 'round. We had so many amazing layouts to choose from and it was really hard to narrow it down to three!!


Below are the finalists. You will need to vote on your favorite layout and feel free to do whatever you need to do (like blog about it or post a link to a forum) to generate votes. The poll will close on my birthday, March 20. That gives you 11 days to tell the world! Anyone can vote, they do not need a Blogger account.

So without further ado, here are the finalists for February:

Stct08

ald.valdez
LG Ladygrace

Challenge 114

This week is really exciting...a bunch of stuff is going on. Today marks the beginning of a new month of challenges - which means that all your layouts for February need to be uploaded to Flickr by now and you can start sharing your layouts from the March challenges anytime- and we have a brand new Guest Designer joining us this month, Glenda Tkalac (read about and participate in the scraplift contest...upload the link to your page here).

Also, March is Birthday Month!! Hooray! That means that my annual Birthday Week package from my good pal Karen should be here soon. Can't wait to see the treasures in that box!

Oh, and if you live in the Whitehorse area or neighboring communities, please join our new Facebook Group where you can be kept in the loop about upcoming scrap-related events...I'll tell ya now, there's one in the works for May!

So here ya go, this week's challenge is a fun, easy sketch. Remember, if you're not feelin' it positioned this way, you can always rotate it 90, 180, or 270 degrees and you'll get a completely different layout!

Vanessa

Tania

Zoe

Kirsten

Christi

Carol

Glenda

Meet Glenda

Boy, things around here just get more and more amazing. The artwork being produced by our team & Guest Designers is awe-inspiring. I am so blessed to have all these incredible women committed to sustaining our little blog and keeping the injection of new creations flowing!

February was an incredible month and I'm so excited about March. You may or may not know that I love March because it's birthday month. I actually celebrate my birthday for an entire week so this month will be so much fun! We have the one and only Glenda Tkalac joining us this time. Oh boy! We are so excited to see what she brings to this month's challenges.

Don't forget that we want to see how Glenda's pages inspire you. We want you to scraplift any of the following three pages and share the link to your layouts right here in the comments section of this post. We'll pick one layout to be the lucky winner of a RAK for playing along. Let Glenda move you to create something amazing and in the meantime...let's get to know Glenda...

Q:Tell us a bit about you and your family.

A: I am married to my high school sweetheart (20 years!) and we have 2 kids, Michael (19) and Paige (14). We also have 2 fur babies (dogs) Sam and Skyler. I work full time but wish I could create and make stuff full time!! haha I love scrapping, making ATC's, mini albums and art journal pages. I love reading trashy hollywood gossip mags, hoodies, funky runners, baubles, purses, unicorns, rainbows, Coors Light and having a good laugh.

Q: How long have you been scrapbooking and where did you get your start in this craft?

A: I have been scrapping for around 10 years now. I started when it was very "creative memories" and very, very basic. When I look back at my early years I shudder at how many pictures I cut into star and circle shapes!! haha

Q:What inspires your creativity when you are scrapbooking?

A: I am inspired by anything and everything! I love reading scrappy books and mags, seeing other artists work, advertisements, anything can inspire me!

Q:Describe your creative style

A: When I get asked this I never know how to answer, seriously! I think freestyle and fun?? I'll let you decide!

Q:What are your three favorite products/techniques right now?

A: I am in love with stamping, paint and chipboard!! I'm also having alot of fun with Timmy's alcohol inks and love making ATC's (artist trading cards).

Q:What project(s) are you currently working on?

A: I am lucky enough to design for Magistical Memories and just got my shipment of chipboard so I'm going to start playing with it!

Q:Describe your perfect day

A: It would be a day where I had a nice time with the family, maybe a summer barbeque on the deck, and then when everyone went to do their own thing I would have a cold beer and lose myself in my scrap room. When I'm in my scrap room time stands still and my soul takes flight. No matter how crappy of a day I've had it all fades when I'm making stuff.

Q:What are your three favorite layouts of all time that you’ve created (published or not)?