New Member

Unfortunately we've had quite a few of our lovely ladies from our Design team leave recently so today I would like to introduce a new member!
Here's a bit about her;

Anastasia Teologlou

 

Hello!

My name is Anastasia, aka Natasha or Astero, and I live in Athens, Greece with my three cats. I work full time as a managing consultant and that's why I travel quite often - great excuse for more layouts! 

Thankfully in 2010 I discovered the world of paper crafting and that really helps me to get my mind off work and relax. I first started with card making but as soon as my two nephews were born last year, I started making more and more layouts and these have been my main focus ever since. My main inspirations are my nephews (of course!), my cats, business trips, friends, even scrapbooking itself... and anything else that can inspire me in my everyday life.

I wouldn't say that I have a certain style - I start my layouts usually having a clean and simple idea but then I can't stop adding details, so at the end I'm far from clean or simple - although I do love white spaces. My favourite elements are flair buttons, wood veneers, colour splashes, doodling... and arrows in all forms.

What I love most is that thanks to scrapbooking I have met so many wonderful people and made many, many great friends. I'm so excited to be part of The Studio Challenges Design Team - one of the very first challenge blogs that have been inspiring me from the beginning of my scrapbooking adventure. I do hope I can add my little contribution of inspiration.

My blog: Astero's Crafty World

I hope you will all join me in giving Anastasia a warm welcome, I think she will be a great addiction to the team!

March Winner

Thought it was about time we announced another winner!
The winner of March challenges is....

Julie! With this lovely layout!

Julie has kindly agreed to be our guest designer for June. We look forward to seeing her lovely creations with along with the DT for the month.

18th May - 5 Things

We have a great challenge today to really get you thinking!!
Create a layout using 5 things only!
For example if you use a sheet of patterned paper that counts as one and washi tape counts as one as well!
(Photo, glue, cardstock for background, pen and stitching counts as nothing)
There's a little twist too, as we are sponsored by the lovely chipboard company Memory Maze please make one of the items is chipboard!

Here's what the design team came up with!
Anna

I found this challenge quite easy as I'm more than happy with some patterned paper and a pair of scissors!! I only used 4 things in the end, some white paint, a sheet of double sided paper, a chipboard frame and some chipboard Thickers!

Chantelle

my 5 ingredients are: chipboard, 2 x pattern paper, paper doily & badge
I loved this challenge - using a pattern paper background has brightened up the whole page and I've used some stitching and ink to add something extra!!

Daphne

This was not an easy challenge - but like Petra, I chose a patterned paper with lots of possibilities:

Echo Park Paper - Happy Go Lucky - Life is Good

I took the stripes (on the back side of the chevron bit), the word MAY and other bits from it to create my page. Also - the sticker sheet from this collection.

My five ingredients are:

Patterned Paper by Echo Park Paper

Stickers by Echo Park Paper

Stamp set by Studio Calico

Twine by My Mind's Eye

Mister Huey's Mist by Studio Calico

Hilde

I started off with a patterned paper which could be cut into part with different colors/patterns, a second patterned patterned paper (the yellow) and two different chipboards (Chipboards from this month's sponsor Memory Maze).

I later decided to add twine (alpha and background cardstock doesn't "count").
My main patterned paper was cut into smaller pieces, and the polaroid frame covered with the yellow paper.

My youngest son on the Stanstead Airport outside London. We don't have a Starbucks at home, so we surely grabbed the opportunity at the airport

Katherine

This was a tough challenge!  I went with some beautiful Websters paper - all the paper is from their Picnic Basket - I used a bit of both sides of the paper and created my own die cut too.

Websters Pages - Picnic Basket

Websters Modern Romance Circle Stickers

White Gesso

Liquid Pearls

Tando Chipboard butterfly

Petra

This was by far the trickiest challenge of all I have participated in during my time at the team. 

I used one week for thinking and planning and then I decided I need to find just the right piece of pattern paper to pull this off. And luckily the perfect piece arrived by post from Trimcraft via another of my teams.

It gives so many possibilities of fussy cutting and is perfect for this challenge. Actually I was pretty happy with my page before I added the 5th ingredient washi tape so it is really possible to do a challenge of as little as 4 ingredients.

My five ingredients were:
1) Mask from Crafter's Workshop
2) PP from Trimcraft
3) Chipboard
4) Flower from Webster's Pages
5) Washi tape

Guest designer - Anastasia

I first decided to use vellum paper and a black marker as these two alone would allow me to make a number of things - at the end I got the title, the camera embellishment, the borders on top and bottom of the layout and the faux-splashes only with those two items. I chose a double sided pattern paper with speech bubbles on the back side so I could use the bubbles as embellishments (I cut out the area behind the photos). My final choices for some additional touches were a large chipboard heart and a black polka dot washi tape.

Don't forget if you join in with this months challenges you could win a $20 from our lovely sponsor Memory Maze!

Memory Maze is Wholesale supplier of  Laser cut chipboard, glass engraving, 3D Stackums card making designs, for scrapbooking, cardmaking and paper craft.

Please link up your challenge entries in the side bar for a chance to win, you have until the end of the month to enter.

Hope you enjoy the challenge! Happy scrapping!

5th May - Sketch

A new month means a new challenge and today we have another lovely sketch from Valerie to share with you, she took inspiration from a layout DT member Hilde created for a previous challenge.

Anna

I found this sketch a bit of a challenge as it not my normal style but I like doing something different so it was good to be pushed!

Chantelle

When I do a sketch challenge I pretty much stay true to the design - for this challenge I've flipped the sketch over to it's side so that I could use a vertical photo.  I really enjoyed putting this one together and loved the cluster element of the sketch with the strips and embellishments.

Daphne

 I always love a good sketch. And with this one there was no exception! The background paper with the red, white and blue frame was also perfect and the page was done in a short time!

All the papers are by Simple Stories - Urban Traveler. I found the page Lets Go very helpful because it comes with all of those little chevron strips already! And for now - if you wish - you can call me a cheater ;)

Hilde

Journaling says: "More than just a place with a lovely view - it's engineer art as well!"

Some close up photos on the lovely chipboard from our sponsor Memory Maze:

Cogs and words

Cogs Corner & cogs

Katherine

Here is my take on the lovely sketch, and this is not the best photo, it was just after we had persuaded some of the kids to sit and have a little photo snapping done.  Then I noticed my son and the picture still makes me laugh every time - I think he was trying to make some of the littler ones laugh!

Petra

I decided to accept the challenge and add journaling to my page for the first time in a very long time. And that is not all, I also wrote by hand... and I do a lot to avoid that LOL.
The pic is from when we left my 2 boys on the bus to go their first ever gymnastics camp. 

May's Guest Designer - Anastasia

I am a fan of sketches as they usually inspire me for my layouts. I found this sketch very inspiring indeed and I knew which photo I wanted to use as soon as I saw it. As I loved the colours of the photo, I decided to use neutral background and papers to let the photo pop out. I added some small wooden embellishments which I painted in the colours of the photo to bring everything together.

 Our sponsor for this month is:

Memory Maze which is Wholesale supplier of  Laser cut chipboard, glass engraving, 3D Stackums card making designs, for scrapbooking, cardmaking and paper craft.

The lovely Sally has kindly said she will give a $20 voucher to the lucky winner so make sure you join in with us this month for a chance to win!

We look forward to seeing what you do with the sketch, happy scrapping!