Monday, October 1, 2012

October Challenge + Meet Our Guest Designer *GABRIELLE POLLACCO*


Hi everyone! Happy 1st of the month. I hope you are all happily scrapping away somewhere in the world. 

Today, being the first of the month we reveal a new challenge! After all the excitement of September with CSI things go back to normal here. Don't forget that September Challenge #4 goes until the 8th of October (Australian time), while this challenge revealed today is not due till the last day of the month. 

Also once again, just reminding you that the winners of the September challenges will be announced soon after the last challenge finishes on the 8th!

So here is a bit of a different challenge for you this month and I am SOOOO excited to show you all the sponsors this month! SO lucky to have such wonderful people wanting to sponsor our challenges which means more chances for you to win too. This month we have some really beautiful things up for grabs :))


Theme: The following quote..

great life quote.

We would like you to create a layout based on this quote. You can interpret it ANY way you like. There is no wrong or right way to interpret this quote  but your layout must incorporate something from this quote AND the sketch below. Please make sure that we see some sort of journalling on your layouts and please tell us where your journalling is . Hidden journalling is perfectly fine.



I am also very excited to announce this month's Guest Designer. This lady was a very big inspiration for me when I first started scrapping and her style has continued to be timeless. It is with great pleasure I welcome the gorgeous...



My name is Gabrielle Pollacco, I live in Canada. I started scrapbooking about 8 years ago and fell in love with this art form from the very first page I made. I love that this art form is ever changing and find myself constantly inspired by all the wonderful new products that come out each year. I'm married to the love of my life Steve, who has been one of my biggest supporters in all I do. I have 2 daughters aged 9 and 13 and are most often the subjects of my pages....and now we have added our new Labradoodle pup named Zoe to our little family. 
I've had the honour to be on a number of wonderful design teams over the years, some of my past design teams being Daisy D's, Zva Creative, and My Creative Scrapbook and am presently on the Bo Bunny, Webster's Pages, Dusty Attic, Scrap365 (UK Magazine) and  Color Room Design Team. I've had my work published in Memory Makers Magazine, Creating Keepsakes Magazine, Scrap365 and Scrapbooking & Beyond Magazine as well as a number of online magazines. I worked for a Tradeshow Design company as a project manager before I had my babies and now that I'm a stay at home mom I'm fortunate enough to have a little time to enjoy this amazing hobby. I'm honored to be asked to be Guest this month at OUAS and play along with this talented design team! xo
Visit Gabrielle's blog HERE !


And here is Gabrielle's take on our challenge..


Many thanks Gabrielle for being a Guest Designer for us this month. I am sure you have inspired many!!




Romy Veul (The Netherlands) 




*Hidden journaling on the back of layout


Cathy Cafun (Australia) 
* Imaginarium Designs chipboard  leaves and butterflies and Scrapbook Fantasies ribbon threaded onto button **



Georgia Heald - (Australia)
*Hidden journaling on tag behind the photo




*Hidden journaling on tag to left of photo*
*Imaginarium Designs chipboard frame and Scrapbook Fantasies ribbon and twine




*Hidden journalling




Anna Zaprzelska (Poland)
**Hidden journaling on tag to the left of photo**



Renata Moni (Brazil)



**Hidden journaling on tag to the right of photos



** Journaling in Kraft envelope **



Florence Teixeira - France 


Svetlana Austin (South Africa)
*Imaginarium Designs chipboard hearts 






We are very fortunate to have a gorgeous Danish manufacturer with us this month. Please welcome..


Riddersholm Design is owned by Connie Riddersholm and was founded in 2010 in Denmark . Connie has a background as a graphic designer and has earlier been into Web design and worked as partly self employed since 2004. It all started with Connie designing digital scrapbooking kits for her selves and later moved onto a few digital prints in 12X12 to see how they looked for real. Connie then had a group of hardcore scrapbookers to look at her designs and asked for their “honest” opinion.
They liked it and believed in it. So she decided to give it a go and invested her spare money into Riddersholm Design!  Today Riddersholm Designs sells paper lines in 10 countries and launch their new collections every spring and fall/Christmas 

Go HERE to see where you can get Riddersholm Design paper from and visit the blog for lots of inspiration from the Design Team HERE. 



Our other equally beautiful sponsor this month is the gorgeous Etsy shop owned by Natasha Naranjo- Aquirre called..


Moments of Tranquility online store grew from the requests of the followers of Natasha Naranjo-Aquirre's Blog.  Natasha shows such passion and love for her favorite products in her work that her blog followers often asked if she sold it, or could sell it... and so the online shop was born.   Natasha stocks all of her very favorite items, specializing in Donna Salazar Mix'd Media Inx and Spellbinders Dies, Want 2 Scrap Bling, Dusty Attic Chipboard & Blooms and beautiful Pion Design Papers.  By specializing in a few select items she can always offer the best service to her customers.
Here is a link to the shop Moments Of Tranquility Shop



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 December The winner of this challenge with the most points, as voted by the Design Team will be invited to be our Guest Designer in December and create along side our Design Team. This person will also win this fabulous prize from Riddersholm Design, who tailored this stunning prize just in time for the holiday season...



The next four winning entries will win the following prizes
A prize package from Moments of Tranquility. 
Prize includes: 14 Sheets of Pion Design Paper, 3 Packs of Dusty Attic Blooms,  3 Packs of Dusty Attic Chipboard,  2 Packs of Mix'd Media Inx



A mini kit from C'est Magnifique kit club + FREE postage to anywhere in the world + add any other item in the store at NO extra postage cost from C'est Magnifique kit club. 








Now here are the 3 prizes that are being offered to our Randomly chosen winners..



25 half metre lengths in black, white and hot pink ribbon pack from Scrapbooking Fantasies





**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.
** The deadline for this challenge is midnight October 31stAustralian 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.
**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.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

September Challenge #4

Hi everyone!!!

WOW what an exciting month September has been for us here at Once Upon A ...Sketch teaming up with Color Stories Inspiration. Today we reveal the last of 4 challenges and I want to take a moment to thank Debbi Tehrani for all the hard work it took to coordinate these challenges behind the scenes and the professional way she dealt with everything. Thank you Debbi for this wonderful collaboration. It has been lots of fun!!

Huge thanks to my Design Team as well, for accepting this challenge even though I know that it can be tough working with colours and other prerequisites so THANK YOU so much for your fuss free attitude. Really helps out :)

Thank you also to all of you that played along in our challenges so far and embracing the changes this month. I appreciate the fact you all welcomed the twist in the challenges and enjoyed the idea Debbi and I had. I sure hope you all got to know Color Stories Inspiration a bit better and enjoy playing along there :)

So lastly, I wanted to tell you that our challenges here will go back to normal as of October, which means that on Monday October 1st, we will have a brand new Once Upon A..Sketch challenge go live for the month of October, while this challenge revealed today will close on October 8th. The winners for all the challenges will be announced soon after that. 

So here we go with out last challenge



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!





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

Annette Gearside (Australia)


Maiko Kosugi (Japan) 






Zeffy Konstantinidis (Greece) CSI Special Investigator





* Imaginarium Designs chipboard small alphas


Kay Fatula (USA)
* Imaginarium Designs chipboard frame. Journaling is inside booklet next to photo.




Solagne Marques (Brazil)
* Imaginarium Designs chipboard border





* Imaginarium Designs chipboard swirls 


Kim Jeffress (Australia)
*Journalling hidden under the photo




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 DÄ…browska-PÄ™kocka) 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 8th of OctoberAustralian Eastern Standard Time 
** 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.