September Challenge #1 + meet our Guest Designer *NATHALIE KALBACH*

Well the time is finally here!!! I am SO excited to announce to you that we have teamed up with Color Stories Inspiration (CSI) for the month of September, just like a few of you guessed already. 

Debbi Tehrani, owner of CSI and my self have worked pretty hard behind the scenes to coordinate everything so we can provide you with cool challenges and PLENTY of inspiration through out September. We have invited members of CSI as well as our main sponsor 7 Dots Studio to also be our guests at Once Upon A..Sketch this month. 

First of all , there will be FOUR challenges here at Once Upon A..Sketch for September instead of our usual 1 challenge . This is because CSI has 4 challenges each month. Each challenge will be revealed on Saturday morning (Australian time) to coincide with the challenge reveals at CSI in the USA and you MUST remember that you will have just 9 days per challenge to enter your layouts here on our side bar. As you know usually our challenges are month long. 

Now, we know that Once Upon A..Sketch is not a colour challenge site like CSI but...we thought we would give you something different and something more exciting to try. Why not right? 

Our winners here at Once Upon A..Sketch will be announced at the beginning of October and our Design Team will look at ALL the entries from ALL the challenges. So the more challenges you play along at, the more chances you have of being one of our challenge/prize winners or Top 5 Featured layouts. This is a little different to CSI who announce their "featured" layouts on a weekly basis. 

Lastly, everything will go back to normal in October and we will have a reveal October 1st as usual. So I hope you guys have fun and enjoy what we have planned for you. Don't forget that the entries for this challenge are due by 2:00pm Monday 17th of September Australian Eastern Standard Time

For this challenge, you must use :

*the SKETCH provided

* all the colours in the SCHEME

* at least 2 elements from the EVIDENCE 

* at least 1 element from the TESTIMONY!

It is with GREAT pleasure that I introduce to you one of my fave artists out there that has agreed to be our invited Guest Designer in September. Please help me welcome the super sweet and super talented ...

Nathalie Kalbach (Germany)

Nathalie Kalbach is a European Mixed Media Scrapbooker. Her layered work is an explosion of texture, dimension and jewel tone colors. In Nathalie’s workshops she shares her secrets for using paint and ink products to reveal texture, tips and tricks for embedding found objects and embellishments and how to unlock your personal creativity.She has taught workshops in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Israel, Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway. Also her Online Workshops are very well visited and a big hit. Nathalie works closely with several manufacturers as of now with Prima Marketing, PanPastel and Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L. She has been published in many Stampington Publications including her own column „Nathalie’s Studio“ with Somerset Memories as well as in numerous magazines from around the world and several idea books.  You can read more about Nathalie and find her work on the n*Studio blog: http://nathaliesstudio.com/

Here is Nathalie's take on our challenge. 

Now here is how the team from Color Stories Inspiration interpreted this challenge..

Britt Sviggum (Norway)

Adrienne Ford (USA)

Heather Jacob (Australia)

Michele Singh (USA)

Wendy Kwok 

Color Stories Inspiration special investigator Elaine Forum Shmidt 

We also have the team from our main sponsor at 7 Dots Studio who played along with our challenge this month. 

Tara Orr (Canada)

Anna Zaprzelska (Poland) 

Hege Lundquist (Norway) 

And here is some inspiration from our own team here at Once Upon A...Sketch..

Vicky Alberto (Canada)

 **Imaginarium Designs chipboard title, border and frame. Scrapbook Fantasies ribbon.

Cathy Cafun (Australia)

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard cogs. Scrapbook Fantasies ribbon.

Georgia Heald (Australia) 

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard alphas and leaves.

Kelly Foster (USA) 

***Imaginarium Designs chipboard border

Romy Veul (The Netherlands) 

**Imaginarium Designs chipboard border

We are so incredibly happy to welcome a brand new sponsor to our blog this month, one that is a fave amongst many of our designers including my self. Please help me welcome the incredibly stunning paper company 7 Dots Studio

7 Dots Studio is a polish scrapbooking company. It was created by a mom of 2 little children, who loves scrapbooking and cannot sit in one place for longer than a while :) Dream could come true, because of two friends - Finnabair (Anna Dąbrowska-Pękocka) and Anai (Anna Iwanowska-Pietkiewicz). Wonderful women, scrapbookers and designers, who love creating. We launched our first two lines in Autumn 2011 - they were extremely warm welcomed by scrapbookers from all over the world. 

We always choose best possible materials – we are also scrapbookers and we know, how important is the quality of products, which we use to make our memories live forever! We love working with many kinds of media and all our products are media friendly.

Our products are sold in many shops across the Europe and also in Australia and USA. You can find constantly updated list of our retailers on our website in section "where to buy".

We are delighted to also have one of our Design Team member's sponsor our challenge this month. Our super talented Evgenia Petzer has an awesome  Etsy Shop right HERE called Little Things For Cute Creations. 

Now here are our permanent sponsors for 2012. For more information please see our sidebar. 

How would you like to be our Guest Designer for the month of November?  The winner of the September challenges with the most points, as voted by the Design Team will be invited to be our Guest Designer in November and create along side our Design Team. 

This person will also win this fabulous prize from 7 Dots Studio...

2 complete collections from 7 Dots Studio - All I Ever.. and Domestic Goddess 

The next 4 winning entries will win..

Complete Hopefully collection from 7 Dots Studio

This stunning kit from Cést Magnifique kit club, shipped to you FREE of charge together with any other purchases from their store. 

A US$15.00 voucher to use at Little Things For Cute Creations

Our RANDOMLY CHOSEN winners will win the following prizes..

Scrapbooking Fantasies has donated ONE ribbon pack for each week in September. Each prize is valued at over $10AUS each and contains between 21 and 24 half metre lengths of ribbons, trims and lace in colours that co-ordinate with that weeks challenge from quality brands, plus FREE international postage!!

** The deadline for this challenge (FOR THIS MONTH ONLY )is 2:00pm Monday 17th of September Australian Eastern Standard Time . The Design Team will vote and the Top 5 layouts PLUS Top 5 featured layouts will be announced soon after the challenge has finished.

** To be eligible for a prize or a feature at BOTH Once Upon A...Sketch and Color Stories Inspiration you must enter both challenges by the due date. It is NOT compulsory to play along at both challenges. 

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

**You are free to combine Once Upon A..Sketch challenges with other challenges. We don't mind at all!!!

**You are allowed to enter only layouts  for our challenges

**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 right hand side of this blog 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.

**You may enter as many times as you like

**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.