Reminder..

How are you all going with the July 15th challenge? Need inspiration or are you stuck? Why don't you click HERE to see what our Design Team and Guest Designers did with the sketch and journalling criteria? 

I just wanted to remind you that you still have plenty of time to enter our current challenge. It ends at midnight (Australian Eastern Standard Time), Sunday July 31st. 

Journalling Criteria : your journalling has to be a quote (handwritten, printed, rub on etc. ). As an option you can include journalling in the lines on sketch but this is not necessary.

PRIZES

Here is the prize up for grabs from Manor House Creations for one lucky person voted by the Design Team as the winner of this challenge!

Imaginarium Designs have so generously offered this prize to our second winner as chosen by our Design Team..

...a pack of their latest and most popular chipboard. The best thing about this, is that the pack will be different each month and will be customised to fit the winners needs. So if you have girls, you will be sent girly chipboard etc. And don't forget that they also sponsor our entire Design Team so please see the examples above for all the creative uses of this awesome chipboard. 

Lastly our 3rd prize for our RANDOMLY CHOSEN winner. 

A Pink Paislee Queen Bee collection pack, which includes: 8 12x12 patterned papers, 2 die cut papers, 1 flip notes paper pad, 1 ribbon pleats pack, 1 borderlines rub ons pack, 1 press ons pack, 1 punch outs pack, 1 bella brads pack, 1 alphabet pack. 

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 our right sidebar 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 July 31st - Australian Eastern Standard Time. The Design Team will vote and the winner and the Top 5 projects 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

New Design Team Members announced!!!

Hi there everyone. 

Thank you SO very much to everyone that expressed interest in the Design Team positions I advertised. The roles I advertised were quite specific, but there was still an overwhelming amount of applications that came through but unfortunately there is only 2 spots. 

Initially I advertised a sketch artist position to take over my role of designing the sketches for the challenges. Thank you to ALL that applied, but at this point the interested parties were not what I was looking for and I will continue designing the sketches for the time being. So, because i did advertise 2 positions, 1 sketch artist and 1  regular design team member,  I decided to still invite 2 people to join our team since we got such a great amount of applications.

 I wish I could offer a spot to everyone but with these 2 additions, our teams comes to 20 outstanding Design Team members which for me is great because there I hope there is a variety of styles here to continue inspiring you. . A few people asked me when the next Design Team call will happen, and I wish to tell you that there are no plans for that until at least March of next year. 

So without further delay, and after much consideration I have decided to add these 2 brilliant artists to our Once Upon A...Sketch family. 

Please give a warm welcome to...

Patti Hamil from the USA

Hi there! I've been a SAHM for the past 21 years to 3 beautiful children, now almost grown. We only have our 21 year old son still at home, and it won't be long till it's just my husband and myself again! I miss my kids being little, but I know change is inevitable and should be embraced, but it's hard to let go! I love scrapbooking, my family says that I'm totally obsessed! We have 2 dogs, an English Bulldog and a Rottweiler. Besides scrapping, I love watersports and four-wheeling. I love talking about and sharing my hobby with anyone who will listen. I am very excited to be part of Once Upon A..Sketch and I have enjoyed playing along with most of the challenges.  

Here is my blog - My pieces of Time

Jeni O'Connor from Australia/Canada

Hi I'm Jeni. I'm thrilled to be a part of such a diversely talented group of scrappers working with the most wonderful sketches. I'm an Aussie with a Canadian dh, so we get to spend time in two beautiful countries, Australia and Canada. We have twins, a boy and girl who are growing up way too fast for me and my camera, and a dog Buddy.

Inspired by my Grandma's talent for crafts, I've always loved to create in some form or another. I've been a scrapbooker forever,lol. Even as a child I would take photos and write stories about them. I've been scrapbooking as we know it today for about 15 years. Although in the early days all we had were stickers! My style has changed over that time and with so many influences and fabulous products. Today, I guess I have two distinctly different styles Storybook/whimsical style usually in 3d, where I love to extend the photo and create a scene. I also like to create in a Shabby/arty/, sometimes messy kind of style. lol.

I been lucky to have had many opportunities in scrapbooking. For the past 5 yrs I've been a design team member on the Colour Team for Scrapbook Creations. I've authored regular features and three year long series of published articles, "What's Your Style?"and "Scrapping with the Stars" (astrology and scrapping). More recently, "Reality Bites" (scrapping about real life issues). 
I've been published in the Australian magazines Scrapbook Creations, Scrapbooking Memories and For Keeps. Internationally in Canadian Scrapbooker, Memory Makers, and Creating Keepsakes. I was also a tutor at the Australian Scrapbooking Convention. I've been on a few teams over the years, recently, in 2010, Dusty Attic and in 2011, My Creative Scrapbook.
 
I'm a Midwife and Teacher by professions when I'm not scrapping. 
I'd like to say I'm a domestic engineer, but I'm not really all that domesticated...I'd rather be scrapping!

I'm so pleased for the opportunity to share my creations with you. Please drop in and say "Hi."
My blog: Moments of Time

I am so pleased to have these 2 ladies join us.  Both Patti and Jeni will be designing for us, while Patti will take over the sponsorship/prize coordinator role with the help of Jeni. 

Thank you all for taking the time to apply. 

Bye for now. 

July 1st challenge *WINNERS*

Hi there everyone..

It is simply overwhelming to have so many incredibly beautiful entries. Your support of our challenge blog is blowing us away! Thank you so very much! How...just how do we narrow down 110 GORGEOUS entries to just a few?  Just looking through them all, we could easily just pick 50 to be the winning ones.

So once again, I would like to feature more than just the winner and the Top 5. I think so many entries deserve to be recognised.

I repeat again something I always say when I announce the winners...PLEASE do not be discouraged if your layout is not picked as the winning one or it is not featured. We sincerely hope you continue to play along and feel inspired here somehow. It really is VERY hard to pick winners between all these amazing entries and unfortunately some really outstanding work has to miss out.

But without further delay, here is the winner of the July 1st challenge. Out of 110 incredible entries, the winner is...

Anita S from Australia


Anita, the stunning simplicity of this gorgeous layout of your sweet boy is what made this layout a stand out. Your use of flowers on a boy page is so well done that this layout does not look feminine at all. The title stands out so beautifully, while the photo is just perfect. Well done. For that you have won a Guest Designer spot on our team for the month of August as well as this amazing collection from Karola Witczak and The ScrapCake..



Please email Irma HERE for all the information on your Guest Designer duties and me, Nadia HERE with your details to claim your prize.

Here is your winners badge to display on your blog.




Now, here are our Top 5 layouts

Carla from The Netherlands


Anne Bente from Denmark


Susan Smit from The Netherlands



Melinda Thomson from Australia


Tina Dalton from Australia


Well done on being our Top 5 for this challenge...Here is your badge to display on your blogs..




Here are some more layouts that were also amazing!

Jolaine Frias from the USA


Shona Keehn from Canada


Rachael Funnell from Australia


Mona L Pendleton from the USA


Romy Veul from The Netherlands



Lizzie Crust from Australia


Tracee from The United Kingdom


Fi from Australia


Sarah Mullanix from the USA


Elaine Forum Smidt from Argentina


Well done! I see lots of stand outs from all over the world, particularly The Netherlands, Australia and the USA. Keep up the good work everyone. Your work is truly inspirational.

Lastly, our random draw for this complete collection offered by Karola and The ScrapCake..


The winner of this collection is...

#107 is Elizabeth Campau from the USA who entered this layout..

Well done Elizabeth! Please email me, Nadia, HERE with your details to claim your prize..

CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners and the featured entries. Please keep the good work coming :o)

Bye for now!

July 15th Challenge

Welcome to our July 15th challenge!

Journalling Criteria : your journalling has to be a quote (handwritten, printed, rub on etc. ). As an option you can include journalling in the lines on sketch but this is not necessary.

Guest Designers

Here is the work of our 3 winners from June. 

Sandi Taloumis 

Cathy Cafun 

Jeni O'Connor

Once again I am just amazed at this talent and you have all proved why it was SO hard to choose between the 3 of you! Thank you very much for your contribution to our challenge blog. We loved having you here and hope you enjoyed your time too. 

Now, here is the amazing Natalie May, our permanent guest designer from Imaginarium Designs with her take on our sketch using Imaginarium Designs chipboard

Design Team

Bente Fagerberg 

 

Nerrida Mitchell

**Flowers, leaves from the Manor House Creations

Natalie Elphinstone

**Flowers, leaves  from the Manor House Creations

Heather Jacob 

**chipboard alphas and flourishes are from Imaginarium designs.

** flowers are from Manor House Creations

Carole Janson 

**Flowers, leaves from the Manor House Creations


Trudi Harrison

**Flowers from the Manor House Creations

Steph Devlin



PRIZES

We have a BRAND new sponsor and a VERY exciting one as well. Please welcome to Once Upon A...Sketch...

Most of our Design Team members were SO lucky to receive some of these packs to work with for this challenge! Just look at how BEAUTIFUL these flowers look on their work above!

Manor House Creations is a brand new Australian company specialising in wholesale scrapbooking and craft flowers.  Our flowers are expically made with scrapbookers in mind and are of the highest possible quality, but also provide good value with more in the pack for a similar or better price than current products on the market.

We are also the Australian distributor for The ScrapCake, a polish company who boast the talented designers, Karola Witczak and Kinga Spiczko. 

We hope you will love and embrace our new company and products as much as we do.  If you would like to purchase our products, please contact your local or online store and request that they stock them.

You can find us at www.manorhousecreations.com

Here is the prize up for grabs from Manor House Creations for one lucky person voted by the Design Team as the winner of this challenge!

A pack of their latest release flowers. 

THANK YOU Manor House Creations for supporting our blog!

Our second sponsor is the truly AMAZING...

Imaginarium designs,  is a new chipboard company founded in 2010. It is the combined collaboration of  a Mother and Son team who both work in the paper craft industry.

Please visit the blog for inspiration and to see what the design team has been up to   www.imaginariumdesigns.blogspot.com and you can  purchase this amazing chipboard  at Seriously Scrapbooking (they ship anywhere in the world at actual postage cost)

Thank you SO much to our lovely sponsor Imaginarium Designs. We couldn't do this without your support!

Imaginarium Designs have so generously offered this prize to our second winner as chosen by our Design Team..

...a pack of their latest and most popular chipboard. The best thing about this, is that the pack will be different each month and will be customised to fit the winners needs. So if you have girls, you will be sent girly chipboard etc. And don't forget that they also sponsor our entire Design Team so please see the examples above for all the creative uses of this awesome chipboard. 

Lastly our 3rd prize for our RANDOMLY CHOSEN winner. This prize will go to one lucky person that is chosen using random.org as we LOVE to encourage EVERYONE here to play along, no matter what your skill level!

A Pink Paislee Queen Bee collection pack, which includes: 8 12x12 patterned papers, 2 die cut papers, 1 flip notes paper pad, 1 ribbon pleats pack, 1 borderlines rub ons pack, 1 press ons pack, 1 punch outs pack, 1 bella brads pack, 1 alphabet pack. 

We are all anticipating your entries and CANNOT wait to see what you come up with!

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 our right sidebar 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 July 31st - Australian Eastern Standard Time. The Design Team will vote and the winner and the Top 5 projects 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

New Design Team members + **Design Team Call**

Hi everyone...you still have just over a day to enter your project for the current challenge..

It is with great delight that I announce to you 3 more additions to our current Design Team! Please give a warm welcome to..

Sandi Taloumis from the USA

Hi my name is Sandi. I was born and raised in the USA. I live in Massachusetts with my hubby, who is incredibly supportive of my scrapping obsession. We have three wonderful children and a dog & cat, all of which I love to scrap.I love art of all kinds and enjoy wood working, sewing, painting and photography. I am a huge vintage lover and try to incorporate this love of mine into many of my creations.I started scrapping about seven years ago when a friend of mine showed me a small scrapbook that the teacher had made for her about her son during his year of kindergarden. I absolutely fell in love with the book and immediately went out to the store to purchase items to do a scrapbook with my children...I have been addicted ever since!My scrapbooking adventure soon brought me to the internet, which ultimately brought me to Once Upon a Sketch, and opened the door to be part of the DT with Nadia and all these wonderful girls...what a honor!My scrapping style is colorful, artsy, simple, sometimes a deliberate messy, but over-all clean with crisp lines.

I invite you to visit me on my blog http://Scrappingasigo.blogspot.com/

Jasmine Shea from Australia 

I have 4 wonderful children (although sometimes …..lol) who I love to bits.  They keep me on my toes but I wouldn’t have it any other way (well maybe just for a little bit each week….oh ok, never)  Anyway, I have a very supportive and caring husband who I am very proud of who also runs our business.  He makes sure that between family, scrapping and a social life, I still have the time to do some work for the business…….mmmm, not sure how that works….

I just love this craft and I have been so blessed in the past year to meet so many fabulous girls on line and to be a part of so many wonderful Design Teams.  The inspiration from so many talented ladies has helped me grow within my work and I thank everyone who supports me.  This is the most awesome, crafty journey ever.  Thank you so much Nadia for asking me to be a part of your awesome team.

My Blog - 

Vicky Varvadouka from Greece

Hello everyone! My name is Vicky Varvadouka. I am a happily married 32 year old mum of two little girls (don't be fooled by the photo lol) and I work in a big company as an Investor Relations Officer assistant. Scrapbooking is my passion and a way to express myself! It all started in September of 2008, when I decided to make the guest book for my daughter's baptism on my own. However, layouts monopolized my interest in late 2010 and Ι have been obsessed ever since. I think my style is romantic-shabby chic but also fun and bright. I am currently designing for the Greek on-line shop "Enjoy Scrapping" , and for the  challenge blogs"The Scrappiest" and "Bird is the word" . I also had the pleasure to have 5 of my layouts published in "Scrapbook news and review"! I am really excited and thankful to Nadia for giving me this great opportunity! Joining this DREAM team is huge for me and much appreciated! I hope I will inspire and get inspired from all of you!!! 

 Feel free to visit my blog here: "My Embellished World"

Also announcing our Permanent Guest Designer, Natalie May from Imaginarium Designs. As you know Imaginarium Designs is sponsoring us for 1 year and we decided to keep Natalie our regular contributor!

Natalie May from Australia

"Hi! I am Natalie May - Wife to Trev, mum to Jessica, Scrapper and all round Happy Person! I live in Adelaide in South Australia, teach Scrapbooking & Cardmaking and love my life! I also design for Imaginarium Design chipboard. I am so excited to be a part of the Once Upon A..Sketch design team.  

My blog - Happy Daks

SO happy to have these talented people join us here at Once Upon A..Sketch. They have been contributing members since day one and we are just in awe of their talents and styles. They will all start at different times in the next month or so due to other commitments etc. but I just could not wait to announce them!!

Now moving on to some exciting news..

We have an opening for 2 Design Team members!! How would you like to be part of our Design Team here? 

Here is who we are looking for..

1. Sketch Designer- we need one person that can design sketches similar to the ones that have been designed so far. Things to consider:

- you can also design a project to go with your sketches but it is NOT required. If you only wish to design sketches thats fine. 

- you can design for other sketch design teams! I am not fussed at all. 

- you will be required to design 2 sketches a month and would LOVE for you to design at least 2-3 months ahead of time. 

- your term would be beginning of September 2011 - end of March of 2012

2. Design Team member - we need one person to be part of our design team but with a specific role in handling sponsorship. Things to consider:

- YOU DO NOT need to source ANY sponsors as we have sponsorship covered ALL the way until March 2012! Your role will be to receive the winners details and pass them on the sponsors. That's it!

- You will be required to create 1 layout, card or other projects a month, comment on entries received and vote at the end of the challenge ONCE a month

- You need to be FLUENT in English. This is a MUST as you need to communicate the right information between you and the winners/sponsors.

- you can create for other sketch challenge blogs and be on ANY design team. Again, I am not fussed at all. 

-Your term would be beginning of August 2011 - end of March 2012 

You have until next Wednesday 20th of July!

If this sounds like something you wish to do please email me, Nadia, here - samnadia@hotmail.com expressing which position you want (i.e. sketch designer or design team position) and a link to your blog. 

Can't wait to hear from you!