August 1st Challenge + Meet Our Guest Designer **ANABELLE O'MALLEY**

Hi again everyone. Thank you once again for your continued support of our challenge blog. We are all so very honoured that so many of you find some kind of inspiration here to play along and join us for our challenges. Welcome to our brand new followers!!

So how about another challenge for the next fortnight? 

AUGUST 1st CHALLENGE

Journalling Criteria: Finish this line "A PERFECT DAY IS....." . Your journalling has to be at least 2 lines long, and with the theme of a whatever a perfect day for you is or a perfect day that you have had already e.g.  a birthday, a holiday, a childhood memory, a wedding day, graduation day etc. Your journalling can be ANY type : handwritten, typed, etc...

You MUST combine our journalling criteria with this sketch...

GUEST DESIGNERS

Please give a VERY warm welcome to the lovely 

Anabelle O'Malley from the USA

Hi everyone, I am Anabelle. My love for paper crafting is at the core of my desire to design scrapbook pages, cards and projects. This passion, along with my creativity and enthusiasm pushes me to learn new techniques and apply them to my work. My goal is to inspire others through my work with design teams and freelance opportunities. I am flexible, driven and professional. I work well under time constraints and as part of a team. Most importantly, I am constantly challenging myself and truly love what I do!My style has been described as 'bold', 'fun', 'glitzy' 'a bit shabby' and 'detailed'. I pay close attention to the design elements on my pages. While the photos are the main focus of my layouts, I enjoy highlighting products and telling a story though my work. I enjoy using a variety of techniques including sewing, stamping and using computer software as I create scrapbook pages, cards, mini-albums and altered items. Fashion and home accent trends definitely influence my work and I find inspiration in ads, catalogs and clothing. I am currently designing for Webster's Pages, Vintage Street Market and Emma's Paperie.

Here is my blog - Bits and Pieces...

SO happy to have this talented scrapper here. She is SUCH a sweet person!

And here is Anabelle's GORGEOUS layout based on this sketch and our journalling criteria.

Now here is a layout from our last challenge winner, who is also this month's Guest Designer..

Anita S. from Australia. 

"A perfect day for me is making sure I am around people I love. Have used Glitz Designs papers. Thanks to Nadia for a great sketch!"

DESIGN TEAM 

Sandi Taloumis (USA) 

Vicky Varvadouka (Greece)

Jenni O'Connor (Australia/ Canada) 

Patti Hamil (USA) 

Irma Peredne (USA) 

Nerrida Mitchell (Australia) 

Irini Liolia (Greece) 

Helen Tilbury (South Africa) 

SPONSORS

I am so incredibly happy to FINALLY have Tidbitz In Time sponsor one of our challenges. You might have noticed that Tidbitz In Time has been inviting 2 of our DT members each month to be Guest designers at the website and their kits have been featured here too. I am excited that one of you will get to receive the FABULOUS August kit from our good friends at ...

Tidbitz In Time is a US based monthly scrapbook kit club designed to bring you the latest papers and embellishments every month -- right to your mailbox.  Your pages will go together easily but your creative opportunities will be endless! Our goal is to make each and every kit an incredible value jam packed full of new products and wonderful ideas. 

                

Pretty Paper Petals is an Australian based, online blog store that started out a year ago. A simple tissue paper flower started it all off.......one was made for a layout and people kept asking where they could get it.....All of our flowers are carefully handcrafted by Vicki (the founder), and we are adding new items to the store every month

PRIZES

Our winner, as voted on by the Design Team, will get to come back in September as our Guest Designer and will receive the August 2011 kit from Tidbitz in Time which looks like this..

Crate Paper - Potrait Collection - Papers, Alpha Labels Stickers, Border Stickers, Custom Trims, 

Prima - Flowers and Say It In Studs packs.  

This month we will have 2 RANDOMLY CHOSEN winners who will receive the following 

One randomly chosen winner will receive this EMBELLISHMENT KIT from Pretty Paper Petals 

and one randomly chosen winner will receive another Crate Paper - Portrait Collection pack.        

..which includes Portrait Border Stickers, Portrait Layered Chipboard, Portrait Collection Kit -  16 Pattern papers, border stickers, phrase stickers and designer die cuts

So there are 3 prizes and 1 Guest Designer spot up for grabs!

Before we go I would like to show you a few layouts from the Design Team members from our sponsors. 

Wendy from Tidbitz in Time, using the August Kit from Tidbitz in Time 

Vicky from Pretty Paper Petals  using flowers from Pretty Paper Petals. 

Chloe Nielsen from Pretty Paper Petals, again using flowers from Pretty Paper Petals. 

Things to consider when playing along... 


**PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ENTRIES ARE NOW TO BE LINKED ON THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST***

**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 to 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 AUGUST 14th (AUSTRALIAN EASTERN STANDARD TIME (Sydney Time) ) . The Design Team will vote and the winner 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.

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