Here's a look at CREATIVE SOUP's Q2 Creative Team http://creativesoup.forumotion.com/

Congrats to you all and I look forward to working with you all!!!!


Dana



Lives in: Florida
Blog: They Call me Tater Salad

My name is Dana Tatar, aka datatar, and I am a stay-at-home mom. I have two daughters, Claire (4) and Scarlett (2 1/2). I married my high school sweetheart in 2003 and have been happy ever since. I graduated from MSU with a B.S. in Biochemistry and worked in that field for about 3 years before I gave birth to my first daughter and decided to stay home full time. I have had many hobbies over the years, but scrapping is the one that really gives me satisfaction. I started scrapbooking to preserve memories after the birth of my first daughter a little over 4 years ago. I love to mix products from different manufacturers on my layouts and I frequently find inspiration in music, poetry and pop culture. I love fussy cutting and flowers and both can be seen on the majority of my layouts. I would say that my dominant scrappy styles are shabby chic and clean and simple, but I do like to mix things up a bit, depending on the paper or photos I want to use. When I'm not scrapping, I enjoy cooking and baking, reading, listening to music and spending time outdoors with my family and basset hound.


Jenny



Lives in: Virginia
Blog: Party of Five

Hello Creative Soup-ers!! I'm Jenny Dziekan, Jen, Momma, Mom, Mommy, Atchie (don't ask... it's a curse word according to my 3 year old twins). I've been scrapping for real since the birth of my oldest son, 10 years ago. I started playing with pictures and pretty papers and glue waaay back in high school. My ever growing up-way-too-fast brood of FIVE keeps me motivated to scrap so that we can always remember these deliriously foggy and mind numbing, I mean, precious days of ours. With a hubby who flies airplanes off an aircraft carrier in various warzones, making memories AND recording them is all that much more precious to all of us. I'm a former special ed teacher turned SAHM mom (or rather SAHM running kids to and fro in my bus) about to return to teaching kind of gal. My favorite manufacturer is Sassafras. I'm so serious in my love for this company that my younger daughter is nicknamed Sass, no, seriously! I can't wait to get started!



Jen



Lives in: Hong Kong
Blog: Cheeky bunny

Hey, I am Jen. I live in Hong Kong, but am originally from Canada. I live here with my fiancée who is Australian and one very cheeky bunny who thinks he is a house cat. I have been artistic my whole life, but only started scrapping 2 years ago. My goal this year is to focus on giving myself more creative time and working towards my dream of owning a creative business one day. Besides scrapbooking, I love anything DIY and have fun up-cycling and refurbishing furniture and other treasures I find around. Currently, I am
working on turning our rental house into a more comfy home while being as thrifty as I can. I am also working on the huge project of planning our wedding all the way over in Canada for Oct. 8th! When I am not being creative I work as an ESL teacher to some very funny kids! I am so excited to be part of the Creative Soup CT and can't wait to create with you all!!

Mette



Lives in: Sweden
Blog: Mettes Blog

Hello! I´m Mette! I live in a town called Västerås in Sweden with my DH and our son Adam - soon 17 years.
Our two daughters - Mye, 22 years and Emma, 20 years - have already moved away from home.
I´ve been scrapping for about 4 years now and loved it from moment one, and I just keeping on loving it more and more each day.
I really feel so good when I sit down in my scrappy-corner, and I love to save our memories this way.
I´m so excited to be a part of the CT here at Creative Soup and I can´t wait to start creating.



Returning CT's from Q1:

Jenifer (Thats Me)


Lives in: Nebraska
Blog: Held Scraptive

Hi, my name is Jenifer, I am a mother to 5 awesome kiddo's and I've been married for just over 10 years to my amazing Husband, who was also my high school sweet heart! I love love love scrapbooking and have a serious addiction to all things scrappy! I have been scrapbooking seriously for just over a year now, but have dabbled with it since 1999 after my first child was born. I am so honored to be a part of the Creative Soup Team and cannot wait for all the fun challenges coming up! I look forward to getting to know and work with you all!!



Katie



Lives in: Maine

Hi! I am Katie aka Kate, Katherine, Mom, Hon. I am a city girl at heart but life has lead me to the quiet lakes & mountains of Maine with my two beautiful girls, dear hubby, and our rescued, book-chewing greyhound. I am a creative girl by nature, loving all things that can be made with paper, scissors, sewing, and glue. Throw in some photography, cooking, book reading, entertaining, and running along with being a creative girl then you've got me in a nutshell. I am super excited to part of the inaugural Creative Soup team!


Laura




Lives in: Chicago

Hi! I'm Laura and I'm so excited to be a part of Creative Soup! I have always loved photography and been a sucker for sentimentality, so it was a match made in heaven when I received a scrapbook kit for a baby shower gift in 2000. I began doing pages in 2001, when my oldest was still a baby, but I didn't discover the "world" of scrapbooking until 2003 when I found my lss, the magazines, the blogs, and the message boards. Now I cannot imagine my life without it! I live in the Chicago suburbs with my husband and our two boys, Mason and Liam. By day I am a high school math teacher, but in my off hours I can be found scrapbooking, of course, reading, or spending time with my family.


Sara


Lives in: Florida
Blog: Confessions of a Scrapaholic

Hi there everyone! My name is Sara, Im 21 and I live in the Gulf of Mexico, NW Florida. I am a proud Air Force wife to my wonderful husband and mommy our two Fur babies lovingly named Stinky and Weenie. Scrapbooking has always been a huge passion of mine and I have been scrapping for nearly 8 years now! Being a fine arts major, bringing creativity into the world is what I live for. I started my arts education at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and am on the road to my degree. I work as a free lance artist painting and scrapbooking professionally. I have dreams of owning my own shop and designing my own line of scrapbook and paper crafting items. I have set out to provide those who either dont have the time, energy or creativity it takes to create a genuine personalized scrapbook with a custom crafted work of art, while throwing my two cents out there for all those folks who do!

CREATIVE SOUP'S MARCH MADDNESS CROP!!!!!!!! COME JOIN US FOR SOME FUN!!!!!!

Welcome to Creative Soup's March Madness Crop Party!!!



For the next four days we are gonna be hanging out and working on all those projects and challenges that we've been waiting to finish up!

We'll be chatting, working on great Creative Soup challenges and classes, playing some games, and having a great time!

Rules are as follows:

Grab a spot here in this thread for you to link all your projects, upload them to the gallery, and link it back here with your point total.

General point rules apply. (See the point thread for details)

Hang out during the weekend for impromptu ways to grab extra points!

There will be a drawing for a single prize pack for the crop winner, as well as random drawings throughout the weekend for assorted prizes!

Any questions, feel free to ask!

Repeat Layout's..........Get Out Of THe Same Old Rut!!!!!!!

Well I have been given a challenge from Jessica Bree over at CREATIVE SOUP http://creativesoup.forumotion.com/t1298-i-small-challenge-for-all-of-you

She urged us to take a look at our projects and see the things that seem to keep popping up in each of the layouts we create. This is a great challenge for me because I can definitely say I am horrible at this. I create 1 layout that I love and I recreate the hell out of it over and over, until it looks as if that's all I know how to do, lol. So I am going to except her challenge and examine my recurrences and see if I can push myself to start scrapping outside of the box a little less in my comfort zone! My goals from this challenge is to change up my pages, to give them a fresher look and show that I can do more than just one type of layout, lol use ALL of my supplies instead of hoarding them and to possibly find new products and techniques to work with so that I expand my options!!!

Here is a link to her blog where she has blogged about her own recurrence's: http://jessicabree.typepad.com/weblog/2011/03/what-things-are-part-of-your-style.html

This might be interesting so let's begin! I am going to look at just 35 of my pages and see what re-ocurrence's appear over and over. (Sorry in advance a handful of the pics aren't the best quality, but I'm to lazy to rephoto them right now and you can still she the obvious from the images)

First off I wanna start with the obvious....FLOWERS, my pages these days don't seem to stand a chance without them. I love em and I pile as many on as I can fit and when I can't use them I get the same feeling as you would walking down main street naked, lol!!! The few pages that I do create without flowers I usually end up HATING! However there has been a few pages I've done recently without flowers that I love, but not many. I'm not even sure if I have one GIRL layout in the last 5 months that omit flowers........

SEE FLOWERS FLOWERS AND MORE FLOWERS!!!! I even stuck flowers on my poor husbands page!!!!!

Here are the few non frilly pages that I do happen to love:

Another trend I notice is that I have to have black or brown as my base. You hardly ever see a white or soft color base on my layout's.

There's actually even more but they are either CT project's or out for pub and I can't post em sorry!


Another reoccurring trend is that I seem to place a photo in one or the other corner, flowers grace the edge and then more flowers at the opposite corner on top to balance out the page.

Doilies seem to be another go to for me, I love them so much, they make everything so soft, girlie and frilly.

                                     

I also have LOVE LOVE LOVE me some ribbon and a pretty bow, what screams feminine more than a bow???

Last but not least out of these 35 layouts I wanna divide them up by color to see what color(s) I go to most.


PINK'S

BLUE'S

BROWN'S

GREEN'S

ORANGE'S

OTHER

Ok so this was definitely an eye opener for me!!! I knew there would be alot of repeats on my pages as I said above, but there was MUCH MUCH more than I expected! I definitely plan to try some new stuff!!!! I hope I've inspired you to examine your own page's for reoccurring trends and maybe even blog about it too! I'd love to take a look if you do so leave me a link! Thanks for looking!!!!

Thanks Bree for the inspiration!