Guest Authors

About Sarah

I have been crafting since my great aunt first taught me how to cross stitch at age 6! I began scrapbooking about 6 years ago as a way to document all the activities my family does. Scrapbooking is a great creative outlet for me, along with the knitting, sewing and other crafts I do.

What inspires you to take pictures?  I have very active kids, so most of my photos are of their activities or family trips and adventures we all do together.

 

What kind of camera do you use?  I take photos with a Canon PowerShot sx210 ( I like the zoom on it for getting decent sports photos). Plus, this camera fits nicely in my purse or coat pocket. As a child, I remember using an instamatic camera with flash cubes!

Do you have a favorite Mosaic Moments™ Technique? I love the Mosaic Moments grid papers to help aid my design process. And I really enjoy creating layouts with 1x1 photo tiles/squares. They create such a unique finished look.

 

Tell us about A place you visited that has changed you. I took a raft trip through the Grand Canyon many years ago. What a gorgeous, awe inspiring place!!!

 

What is your guilty pleasure: Angry Birds

 

Favorite quote or motto: "I am successful because I am easy to start and hard to stop"

 

What one item do you ALWAYS have in your handbag/purse? Burt's Bees Lip Balm (and my camera)

About Beth

My name is Beth Glass and I live in upstate NY with my husband, 2 teenagers, 2 cats and 1 dog. We moved here 18 years ago when we decided it was time to get out of NYC and buy our own business. 

I take pictures of many things from the ordinary every day events to our travels abroad.  We've toured the wine country in areas of France and Italy, travelled through Israel and visited Vienna and the Czech Republic. Our most recent trip was to Barcelona, Spain where I was very inspired by the work of Gaudi, particularly the tile structures in Gaudi Park. His colorful mosaic reptile is truly a sight to behold in person. As you walk through the park, you are treated to an eyeful of interesting mosaic structures and beautiful gardens.

.I enjoy documenting our lives through photos and have found a creative outlet through scrapbooking these events. I use a simple Canon Power Shot camera and carry it with me all the time. My guilty pleasures (outside of scrapbooking) are chocolate and too many pairs of shoes!
I live by the motto, "one day at a time" since life can get overwhelming with a busy family and a hectic schedule. Instead of worrying about upcoming tasks, I take a deep breath and repeat this motto to myself. Sometimes it even makes me feel better!

I'm fortunate to have a rich and fulfilling life which includes working part-time, volunteering in our community and being involved in family activities. Whenever I have some free time, I enjoy quilting and jewelry making, but my favorite hobby is scrapbooking.

About Donna

My name is Donna Bossone, I am 47 yrs old, I live in Manasquan, NJ, and I have been Scrapbooking for 11 years. 

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I have been taking photos since I was 14 years old,  I have had many cameras throughout the years,and  I now use a Canon Rebel XTI. I mostly take pictures of my son in his many activities, and I am the official photograper at all of our family events as well. That is way you will rarely see me in any of my pages. I enjoy sports photography, mostly football & baseball.

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My guilty pleasure is going to the CK Convention every year and shopping up a storm. I love to take classes at the convention,(of course Mosaic Moments is always my favorite class).

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I ALWAYS have Wintergreen Life Savers in my purse, because you  just never know when you need a mint :}.

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I am very excited to be a part of the Mosaic moments Design Team, and I look forward to creating

inspirational pages I hope everyone will enjoy !

About Nancy

I’m a graduate of William and Mary (music education), and so I spent a lot of time in your back yard!  I also completed an MBA at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, finishing my last three classes in Connecticut, where I live now. I work full time for an insurance company, supporting the software that is used in the call centers. Needless to say, my “day job” is much different from all the creative things I enjoy in my spare time!  I love scrapbooking and card-making, and I also dabble in beading, painting, embroidery and quilting. My mother and grandmother started me in my crafting life. Mom taught me the basics of embroidery, crochet, knitting, as well as tons of general crafts growing up. I remember making Christmas decorations together almost every year. It’s kind of interesting how the roles flip-flopped as I got older and learned more about my favorite crafts, and I started teaching my mother!

 

I got into scrapbooking and card-making/stamping about 10 years ago, shortly after my stepson got married. I don’t normally watch the shopping channels, but I was flipping through the channels one day, and QVC had a kit they were selling, and the colors matched my stepson’s wedding colors. So, I thought to myself that a scrapbook would make a great Christmas present – ordered two sets – one in each color they were offering, and made a scrapbook for my stepson and one for my stepdaughter. The rest is history – I was hooked! I took every class my local stores offered! I remember listening to a friend of mine who was into stamping and thinking what was so great about stamping? Just black ink on white paper, right? Boy, was I wrong!  I started working with mosaics several years ago. I taught myself from your book, but when you came to Hartford with CKC, I took your class as well.

 

What inspires you to take pictures?

Most of my pictures are of my grandkids, other family members, and my pets. I am an out-and-out cat lover and have three fur-babies! I love pictures of nature as well, when I am fortunate enough to have my camera handy and run into one of nature’s masterpieces!

 

What kind of camera do you use? 

The camera I use most often right now is an Olympus SP-55OUZ 7.1 megapixel with 18x optical zoom. I remember using my parents’ Brownie growing up – remember those flashbulbs? I love digital – it’s so nice to take as many pictures as you want to get that perfect shot, and not have to worry about paying for the extra prints! Not to mention being able to edit the pictures yourself, and resize them!

 

Do you have a favorite Mosaic Moments technique?

I just like having the ability to display my pictures in a variety of ways – 1” squares, in strips, or whole. I also enjoy doing the same with cardstock or patterned paper – using 1” squares, or various sizes of blocks. I want to use my term on the team to show how to include other crafts like beading and stitching on my pages.

 

Tell us about a place you visited that has changed you.

When I was in high school, I was part of an exchange program – 20 of us went to Germany for about 6 weeks. While there, we visited East Berlin. This was while the Berlin wall was still up. The first thing that was a “reality check” was when one of our group made a mistake on the information we filled out before crossing the border. For his birthdate, he had put the current year (1972) instead of his birth year. That alone held us up at the border for about 2 hours. We saw lines of people at the stores just waiting for things we took for granted, like bread. The family I was staying with had relatives in East Berlin, and had arranged for me to visit with them (they couldn’t). And then on my plane ride home at the end of the trip, I was sitting beside a man from the East who was joining his wife in the States. They had been separated for several years waiting until he could join her. As a teenager, this had a big impact on me. There is so much we take for granted in America.

 

What is your guilty pleasure?

Anything ooey-gooey salty/sweet like butter pecan ice cream with butterscotch topping! MMMMMM!

 

Favorite quote or motto:

It’s not about the destination, but about the journey.

 

What one item do you ALWAYS have in your handbag/purse?

Well, I wish I could think of some funny answer for this, but in reality, the one thing I always have with me is my inhaler and medication. I have asthma and bronchiectasis, and use oxygen. While it affects much of my life, it doesn’t affect my creativity, thank goodness!

 

www.NancysCreativeSpace.blogspot.com

About Debbi

I am 38 years old.  I am blessed to share my life with a loving boyfrend who is an amazingly talented woodworker.  We share our small-town Ohio home with four crazy dogs.  Scrapbooking (and scrapbook shopping with my sister) take up most of my free time.  My favorite thing to do is TRAVEL.  I'm always up for an impromptu roadtrip, but I absolutely thrive on vacation planning . . . dreaming of places to go and things to do.  I am novice at sewing, though I recently made five aprons in preparation for a cooking retreat I attended.   I grew up with a mother and a grandmother who could make anything I dreamed up.  Their creativity is one of my biggest inspirations in life.  

  

After I turned 35, I realized that it was time to stop thinking "someday" and start making things happen.  Now, I do more things just for the fun of it.   My mother and I recently started taking tap dance and clogging lessons, and the occasional hula hoop class.  You only live once and you can't say "I'm too old to do this" today because you're only going to be older tomorrow!

  

I have been scrapbooking since I was in high school (20 years ago). In the early 90's, there weren't a lot of scrapping options out there. My scrapbook pages have evolved greatly with the growth of the industry over the last twelve years or so. I am always interested in learning new techniques and I travel to scrapbook conventions whenever possible to see the latest products and learn the newest techniques.

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In this digital age, I take pictures of EVERYTHING.  You can always delete them later, though I rarely do!  I love sunsets, flowing water, fall leaves, etc., just like everyone else, but the majority of the pictures I take are either travel or my nieces and nephews, or a combination of both!  I love the way a photo can "become" your memory of something.  You remember the way you captured it in the picture.  The picture evokes the sights or even smells or feelings of the time of the picture!  Now that I make mosaics, I am a lot more aware of taking "big picture" pictures and close-up pictures.

  

I take 1,000's of pictures each year, but I am rarely ever IN any photographs.  I joke that the scrapbooks I make are "Charlie Brown" scrapbooks because it appears as though the children go everywhere and do everything alone.  Aduls in my albums are as blurry and non-existent as Charlie Brown's teacher!

 

What kind of camera do you use? If you can remember, tell us about your first experiences behind a camera.

I use a Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot, but it is my dream to buy (and learn to use) a Digital SLR camera.

 

When I was about three years old, my Uncle Rusty gave me a used camera that he had found in a car he was towing to the junkyard. I LOVED that little red camera.  I took pictures of everything - cars, dogs, flowers . . . anything that stood still and lots of things that didn't.   Those were the good old days of film and when we started getting my pictures developed, they were horrible.  Lots of them had this awful red spot in the middle of them.  But, it didn't matter to me.  They were mine, they were my art!  I still come across some of those pictures from time to time and I love seeing my old dog and the things that inspired me at such a young age. 

Do you have a favorite Mosaic Moments™ Technique?

Framing!!  I always want to take extra pictures to frame other pictures.  I play around with printing the "framing" pictures as 8x10s vs. 4x6's, etc.  I like using the matting technique to bring out the close-up details that might otherwise have been lost in "traditional" layouts. 

 

Tell us about A place you visited that has changed you.

 

New Orleans  - from my very first visit there, I knew that it was where my soul lives.  It is so rich with sights, sounds and smells.  It is such a unique place to visit.  I love the history and all the different cajun and creole cultural influences.  I feel like every time I turn a corner, I'm overwhelmed by some new (but oh so old) detail like the smell of beignets, the texture of all the wrought iron, the play of light and dark in the courtyards.  Rich, rich, rich!

 

What is your guilty pleasure:

 

Infomercials!  I VERY RARELY buy anything, but I love the way they can take a product that you have never heard of and in 30 minutes or less convince you that you have to have it! 

 

Favorite quote or motto:

 

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” - Chuck Palahniak

What one item do you ALWAYS have in your handbag/purse?

 

My Camera!  Never leave home without it!

About Linda

My name is Linda Holmes, and I live in St. Joseph, MO.  I just retired after 23  years as a State Farm Insurance agent.  Prior to that I owned a dress shop and taught high school Business Education.

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Scrapbooking became my hobby when I was 54, because I had recently located my birth mother and wanted to "do something special" with the pictures of that event.  My mother also became hooked on scrapbooking, and we spend much time together working on our various projects (and learning about the years of our lives when we were apart).  The first crop we attended offered a class on mosaics, and I have been creating all sorts of them since then--12 years.

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My favorite subjects are my 3 sons, 3 daughters-in-law, and 7 grandchildren, ranging in age from 6-14.  I can barely keep up with all their activities and antics.  I sincerely hope that someday they will love their scrapbooks as much as I have loved creating them.  My husband of 48 years, Phillip, is approaching retirement and has purchased a great camera (Nikon D5000) and taken some courses on photography at the local college.  We have been traveling more and have been able to get some super scenery shots to scrapbook.  It appears our hobbies may be the perfect match.

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We have done much traveling abroad and have especially enjoyed Europe, but my two trips to Israel have had the most impact on my life.  At the age of 9, I became a Christian, so I had studied the Bible for many years.  Being able to "walk where Jesus walked" was such a moving experience.  My Bible actually came to life before my eyes.  Fortunately, I took many good pictures!

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Two of my favorite mosaic techniques are:  doing silhouettes and using up to 20 pictures to create one large scene.  I have been teaching these techniques in classes at weekend crops and some scrapbook stores in our area, and my students like and employ both ideas.

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I teach 3rd and 4th grade Sunday School and am a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for children who have been removed from their homes due to negligence and/or abuse.  Spending time with my family is my favorite thing to do, but my "guilty pleasures" are reading murder mysteries and going to scary movies with my neighbor.  Also, chocolate calls my name!

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I try, with God's help, to live by the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you."  It seems to work pretty well most of the time . . .

About Andrea

In the first 24 yrs of my life I bore the tags of daughter, sister, niece, student, Christian. The second 24 yrs I added wife, mother, home educator, friend. As I began the first year of what may be the final 24, I added widow, then a few years later, mother-in-law, and now looking forward to one additional one, grandmother. I see myself as a creative person. I love to play with color, paper, fabrics. I love to read and learn, to travel and photograph (just about anything)...sewing, scrapbooking and cardmaking are activities I have done longer than you'd care to know. In all I do I hope I will honor God. He has blessed me with so much and has never ceased to provide for me. Welcome to a little part of my world.

http://fivepinesdesigns.blogspot.com

 

What inspires you to take pictures?  People are important, holidays, birthdays, special events, but I have to say, things that have caught my eye for many years have been architectural features, stonework, metal work, etc.  I have really enjoyed the close-up feature on my camera allowing me to get in close and study the details of the flowers, we so often overlook close examination.  
However, above all, trying to capture beautiful scenery tops the list. I love to travel and getting those vistas and views recorded to look back at are amongst my favorite things. Moments in time and history is the way I look at what I shoot.

 

What kind of camera do you use?   I use a Cannon Power Shot A630  8 mega pixels. While in my younger years I dreamed of owning a "real" camera, and having been the owner of several different cameras over the years, I have found this one to be extremely versatile, wonderful zoom, excellent close-ups on flowers, even fireworks at night have all been  wonderful. Simple to operate, affordable, and great results! 

 

If you can remember,tell us about your first experiences behind a camera. This would be with my father's Argus 35mm camera and I would have been quite young, six or seven.  The first photo I took I recall vividly it is one I took of my parents on a trip to Kentucky in the spring on our vacation. It was our first venture into camping and Dad let me use his camera to take the shot. I was extremely nearsighted and found lining up the sides to focus the image to be a bit of a challenge, but I was hooked! I think it may have been that Christmas that I received my first camera...film...that was another story!  Oh yes, Dad took slides, so all our memories were in full color unlike many of our friends who were taking the less expensive B&W prints...guess that dates me! But oh, what memories they were!

Do you have a favorite Mosaic Moments™ Technique? I really like the paper blocking technique. Whether using  Paper Tiles or cutting my own using the Mosaic Moments Quick Grid Guide. This also allows me to make use of scraps from my card making, or patterned paper that may add another element that carries a theme.

 

Tell us about A place you visited that has changed you. Just about everywhere we have traveled to has changed me. Dad made a point of vacations being learning events, and the tradition has continued with my bunch. I think when my folks took me and my two brothers to Scotland to visit their families is probably one trip that made the biggest impact as a child. Meeting family, going places and spending two months living there began to put into perspective my family and their personal history, like a key that had been missing. I fell in love with the mountains and the sea. I longed to make a return trip one day and photograph everything...which just happened to be last year and I shot well over 3000 photos. Historic places, family homes tracked down on Census records through the 1800's, scenery, flowers, places I remembered from my trip at age 11 and family that are still living, oh yes and sheep, lots of sheep!  

 

What is your guilty pleasure: a pint of Haagen-Daz Ice Cream-usually Chocolate Chocolate Chip

 

Favorite quote or motto: I have a file full of favorite quotes, so picking one is a bit difficult. However, I've chosen one that kept pushing me forward six years ago when my husband passed away after a fight with lung cancers.

It is attributed to Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do then by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore. Dream. Discover." 

However when it comes to all things art, I quite like what Sir Winston Churchill , an artist himself, said: "  I prefer landscapes. A tree doesn’t complain that I haven’t done it justice."

 

What one item do you ALWAYS have in your handbag/purse? I have a small retractable 6' tape measure on a carabiner clipped to loop in my purse. You never know when you need to measure wood, fabric, furniture or a multitude of other items before you buy. Far more reliable than measuring with a hands span.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

andrea