You know we
love to keep big surprises until the end and this one was worth waiting for! We
have kept this quiet long enough and now it’s time to share. We are very excited to announce that our
friend Ali Edwards will be joining the SCT family as a contributing writer
starting with our summer issue. For
those that have followed Ali through the years you will know what an incredibly
kind person she is. She is a story
teller. A photographer. A business woman. A mother.
A daughter. A friend. She
documents all of life’s little moments and the big moments too. She is passionate for this industry and we
are thrilled to work with her. Having just read Ali’s first SCT article, we know you’ll be thrilled too. You are sure to learn many things about capturing your everyday life!
We thought this might be a great opportunity
to ask Ali a few questions and share some of her artwork style with you too!
What was your very first experience with papercrafting?
I
first started scrapbooking in 2002 when my son was about 11 months old. I
wanted to make a baby book and I couldn't find one I loved so I decided I would
try it on my own. I wish I could remember the exact moment I saw what I would
term "modern" scrapbooking online. I was searching for something else
and link by link ended up at Two Peas In A Bucket. I can honestly say that my
life has not been the same since. I started shortly thereafter doing 12x12
pages and really haven't stopped since.
Photography is such an important element of
your scrapbooking. Can you share your top tips for capturing a great
photo?
Here
are some of the things I don't do:
1.
Use a flash. I look for natural light sources (window) whenever possible. I've
gotten to be super conscious of light. Light is huge.
2.
Say to my kids, "smile" or "look over here." Okay, that's
not entirely true but in general I want to capture them as they are whether
that is looking down or looking at me. I want to capture them as they are
experiencing their life.
3.
Shoot in manual. I tend to use the AV mode.
4.
Always grab my DSLR. I've become a pretty big fan of my iphone and use it more
often than my bigger camera lately.
5.
Clean up my house before taking photos. I am a huge fan of everyday life
photography. To me that means including the messes of life and not cropping out
backgrounds (either when composing the shot or editing after the fact). I
want my photos to reflect our real life - sometimes it's super clean and
organized and other times it's a giant mess.
6.
Shoot from one position. I love to look through my lens from different
perspectives. Shoot looking down, shoot looking up, shoot eye level. I also
like to experiment with up close and with far away. I love how each tell a
different part of the story.
7.
Take myself too seriously. I love photos and I love photos that look awesome
but really I just play.
Are there certain colours that you gravitate
toward either in papercrafting, home decor, or fashion?
White.
White. White. On my walls and as the foundation of so many of my layouts. I
sometimes say that I'd love to have my whole house simply dipped in white
paint. I also love hits of orange, yellow, red and gray.
If you could have dinner with anyone, who would
it be and why?
To
be honest what I would love most is to have dinner with my parents, my brother
and sister and their significant others and all of our kids. All together in
one place. Yes, that's it.
Where do you find your greatest inspiration?
Right
now it has to be Pinterest. Hard to beat that instant gratification of design
and color and images. I'm still a huge fan of print magazines such as Martha
Stewart and Country Living.
Fast five...
Steak or sushi | Sushi, always.
Lake or ocean | Ocean
Button or brad | Brad
Pancakes or waffles | Neither, bacon.
Textured or smooth
paper | Textured
Of course a
great day full of inspiration should end with a fantastic prize right? We see you ALL nodding. Our friends at American Crafts, Spellbinders and Xyron thought so
too! Read on!
Our friends at American Crafts are wonderful. Truly wonderful. When we told them we were celebrating NSD, they suggested not one, not
two, but TEN of their favourite products to give to one very lucky SCT
reader! Have a
look at this fine prize package…
The TOP 10 prize includes:
1. A Project
Life core kit
2. Dear Lizzy
Lucky Charm Thickers
3. Party Day
Thickers
4. DIY Shop Photo
Overlays
5. Maggie Holmes
Mini Album
6. Maggie Holmes
Ephemera Pack
7. Party Day
Standouts
8. Basics
Cardmaking Pad
9. Maggie Holmes
Mini Album Supplement
10. Memory
Markers 5-pack
But of course, we have more! Our friends at Spellbinders didn't hesitate for a second to offer this special set of Nestabilities to add to today's final prize package!
And our friends at Xyron would love for one lucky winner to have this...
A Xyron XRN510 Creative Station! We have watched Beth Kingston demonstrate with this fabulous machine at Crop & Create Burnaby and the ladies are loving it! A perfect, versatile machine that provides edge to edge adhesive for anything up to 5" wide. Just think of the possibilities!
If you
would like to win all of these prizes, just scream ME, ME, ME at the top of your lungs!!! No, just kidding! Just leave a comment below by 6:00 p.m. on
Saturday, May 11th! Of
course, we would absolutely LOVE you to head on over to the American Crafts, Spellbinders and Xyron's facebook page and tell them “THANK YOU!”
for such an incredible prize prackage.
What a wonderful way to wrap up our day! Our sponsors very much appreciate hearing from you and we very much appreciate your taking your time to let them know.
We hope you
have been inspired, challenged and surprised today. We have loved spending this day with you and
if you are just joining us, you will want to start all the way at the
beginning…13 hours/posts ago. And if you
have not yet “liked” us on facebook, now would be the time as we are giving
away 26 copies of the spring issue when we hit 26K fans!
THANK YOU SCT readers for being the best readers out there. I say it all the time that we do what we do because we are inspired by YOU! Have a
wonderful weekend friends. See you next week! xoxoxoxox
~ Catherine
