October 1st Challenge

*For winners of our previous challenge please see below*

Good afternoon to all of you. Well ladies ..and gents (you never know!) today is a special day for me and for the rest of us here at Once Upon A ..Sketch. It is our 6 month anniversary ...it has been 6 months since we posted our very first challenge back on April 1st. What an amazing 6 months we have had. From me personally, a VERY BIG THANK YOU for accepting this humble little blog and adding it to your list of challenges to participate in every fortnight. I can speak on behalf of my team here when I say that we are all so humbled by your support, by the comments you all leave us here, by the amount of followers we have in just 6 months... We feel that what we are doing here is going pretty OK so far and above all we are indeed providing SOME inspiration for all of you out there. 

When I first had the idea about this blog, I was so scared of how it will be received and how was I going to get sponsors and what Design team will I have...and what if I fail? There were a couple of people that pushed me to do this, mainly our Design Team member Irma Peredne, and Lou Dahlstrom who is no longer with us at Once Upon A Sketch. They said they would help with everything and they did. Thank you SO much Irma and Lou for pushing me to do this. I am so glad you did. So I went for it and in a matter of hours in mid March of 2011, the most amazing Design Team was created. Everyone I asked to be on the team said YES without even knowing how this will turn out. Thank you girls for taking the chance with me and for supporting me and this site for the past 6 months. A few months ago, we added some new Design Team members and they have just been outstanding in the way they jumped on in and committed themselves to this. Thank you to you too.

Thank you also to our ongoing sponsor Imaginarium Designs, who decided they would sponsor us for a WHOLE year before Once Upon A..Sketch even started. Their support is invaluable! Thanks to all our sponsors who have supported us too.  

But of course, all this would not be successful if it were not for you. I don't know what else to say but THANK YOU although that does not seem enough. When we visit peoples blogs we always read how OUAS has become your favourite challenge blog, or that you love the Design Team or that you love the sketches. One way or another you have urged me..us ..on to create better layouts for you, better sketches, better prizes. With your help, we hope to continue for at least 6 more months and of course even longer because backstage we are all VERY happy to continue doing this for a while longer. 

This brings me to my next point. Many of you ask us ALL the time when we are going to have another Design Team call which is quite flattering I should say that many of you are interested in being on our team. I have said previously that we will have a Design Team call/change in February of 2012. But, I wish to advise you that it will actually be a lot longer than that due to the fact that I am expecting a baby which is due around that time. Therefore, our current team's term will continue on until further notice. In the meantime, I want to let you know that I have decided to add a few more people to the current design team which will start in November. I will introduce them to you in the next couple of weeks. As you know, we take our work here at Once Upon A..Sketch pretty seriously and we LOVE to visit everyone's entries and leave comments. We also LOVE voting for the best layouts and as you can imagine with the amount of entries we receive and the quality of work it is quite a hard task to do so. SO we are hoping that with the addition of our new members you will get MANY more visits from us! We also hope you get more inspiration from a bigger Design Team with more diverse styles and more variety! So stay tuned for the announcements in the next few days.


I would like to thank also, Steph Devlin and Nerrida Mitchell who due to other commitments have had to step down from our Design Team here. Thank you girls for all your hard work over the last few months. It has been such a pleasure having you here. 

OK. I guess we better get onto our October 1st challenge!

Before I announce the next challenge, I would like to remind you all that the main focus of this challenge blog is JOURNALLING combined with a sketch. It really is SUCH as shame for us to have to exclude some BEAUTIFUL entries when voting as some of them have none or very limited journalling. We are really looking for MORE than JUST statements or facts, but rather deep and meaningful journalling. We want to see the story behind the photos, or even the story behind your'STORY'. Please do make sure that you read the challenge requirements precisely and please do use the Google Translator to get an idea of those requirements. 

October 1st challenge

Journalling Criteria: WRITE  2 noteworthy (to you anyway) events of the past week. Your journalling can be as long as you wish. There is NO limit to how much journalling you include but in order to qualify as a winner for this challenge, we must see AT LEAST 1 SENTENCE of journalling on WHY each event was noteworthy. 

Guest Designers

It is with great pleasure that I announce that our Guest Designer for October is the incredible...

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer is a self-taught mixed media collage artist and avid scrapbooker. She has been making art for as long as she can remember and loves the process of creating. “I believe that mistakes are creative opportunities and hold fast to the notion that enjoyment of the process is just as important as the finished product! I like to think outside of the box — experimenting with paper, paint, and fabric — always trying to find a way to push my supplies further and see all the possibilities.”

Julie has been published in many magazines including Cloth Paper Scissors, Quilting Arts, Creating Keepsakes, Better Homes & Gardens’ Scrapbooks Etc., Memory Makers, Scrapbook Trends, Somerset Memories, Somerset Digital, scrapbooking m.m. (Sweden), Scrapbooking & Beyond, Simple Scrapbooks, Histories de Pages (France), Scrap Art Zine (Germany), books by Leisure Arts, F&W Publications, and Quarry (upcoming), as well as multiple e-zines. Beginning in January 2011 Julie will be writing a column in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine.

Julie is currently the co-host of Scrapbook Soup TV (PBS) and has appeared several times on Quilting Arts TV (PBS) and hosted the “Artist to Artist” segment on Scrapbook Memories TV (PBS). She will also be appearing on the upcoming season of Crafting at The Spotted Canary (PBS). Julie’s hour long instructional DVD “Collage Fast & Furious” was released in July 2010 by Interweave.

Julie and her husband live in a tiny apartment with a big art studio in the middle of New York City. Julie blogs her art adventures at www.balzerdesigns.typepad.com. Follow her Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/BalzerDesigns.

So exciting to have you here Julie! Now let's see Julie's take on our challenge.

Now let's welcome our next Guest Designers, who were the winners of our September challenge.

Isay Pablo

Aashild HR

Welcome Isay and Aashild ! It really is so exciting to have both of you here.

Design Team

Please click on their names to be directed to their blogs for further details on each project. 

Irma Peredne  (USA)

* I used Imaginarium Designs chipboard for the title.

Irini Liolia (Greece)

Imaginarium designs chipboard: "Our little man" , "Cherish"  and clock cogs.

Gerry Van Gent (The Netherlands)

Imaginarium Designs Chipboard: bird frame

Vicky Varvadouka (Greece)

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard: "tram!", "my girls", small button (on top), small butterfly and girl figure! 

Sandi Taloumis (USA)

Jeni O'Connor (Canada/Australia)

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard alpha and girl / Manorhouse Creations flowers

Patti Hamil  (USA)

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard title, balloon and silhouette

Sponsors

We are SO excited to announce the sponsors for this challenge! 

Welcome to Once Upon A...Sketch..

Nikki Sivils, Scrapbooker is a scrapbooking company specializing in premium papers and embellishments that will make you smile. From whimsical designs to cute, cuddly creatures, Nikki Sivils designs straight from her heart hoping to inspire creativity and expressions of love and life

Bibbys One of a Kind was established in 2011 out of my passion to create. I am a SAHM and spend each day creating something new, I have a facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Bibbysoneofakindwhere I do a lot of my advertising and updates ,and a small blog page which I am trying to grow. I make embellishment packs, crochet items, party favours and invitations to name a few. New ideas are born regularly. 

Prizes

How would you like to be our Guest Designer for November? This is the challenge where you have the chance to win a spot on our design team for the whole upcoming month simply by winning this challenge. As well as being our Guest Designer, as chosen by our Design team, you will also receive.....

This fabulous collection from the amazing Nikki Sivils 

 

Our second placed winner will  receive these beautifully, handcrafted embellishments from 
Bibby's One Of A Kind


 

I am sending the winner of my prize two of my previous embellishment packs and a 3rd mystery pack with a theme of your choice. This pack will be a 'one off' handmade pack created especially for you! Good luck everyone, Bibby.

Since it is our 6 months anniversary, I would like to send out some prizes of my own to 3 lucky RANDOMLY DRAWN winners. These will be something from me, Nadia,  but at this point I will keep them a surprise. 

 

Things to consider when playing along...

**This is an international blog, so anyone can enter

**You are allowed to create a card, layout or off-the-page item based on the provided sketch and additional journalling criteria. If you are creating a card or altered item you only need to include a quote.

**You are also allowed to flip or rotate the sketch or alter it to suit your needs, but please make sure its still recognisable.

**Post your creation on your blog or an online gallery and link it on the bottom of this post using the Link tool. Please provide a direct link to your post, not your entire blog.If the link tool is down, please leave a comment on the comments section and link your layout there.

** The deadline for this challenge is midnight October 14th, Australian Eastern Standard Time . The Design Team will vote and the winners and the Top 5 project will be announced soon after the challenge has finished.

**You may enter as many times as you like and combine this with other challenges.

**Also, please consider turning off word verification for comments on your blog. 


For a complete list of the rules please see the top of this page.