Creative Imaginations Blog

Cari Locken Guest Designer for June!

This month Creative Imaginations design team had the privilege of working with Cari Locken, our guest designer for June!   We are excited to share her work and a bit about Cari!

Cari Locken started scrapbooking almost 11 years ago.  She has always had a love for papers, crafts of any kind and photography.  She currently designs for Canadian Scrapbooker magazine, Creative Xpress as well as her LSS, Urban Scrapbook Inc.  Her work has been published in Canadian Scrapbooker, BH&G, Paper Crafts, Simple Scrapbooks, Cards, Paper Trends, Memory Makers, and Creating Keepsakes.  She currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband, Tim and their three children, Kailyn (7), Ryan (5), and Jayden (3).  To see more of Cari's work and adventures visit her blog at My and My Thoughts.

Cari designed this page for her mother and father's 40th Wedding Anniversary!

{It's a Forever thing} Featuring Bloom Collection by Narratives

• Supplies:
• Floral Poppy Diecut paper
• Melonberry Hearts sticker collection
• Narratives Antique Titles swatchbook
• bloom sticker labels

Cari created this page of her youngest son take 2 years ago while visiting friends at their cabin by the lake.

{Off to Explore} featuring Narratives Melonberry

• Supplies:
  Tealberry paper by narratives
• Honeydew Chipboard Alphabet
• Felicity Chipboard by Christine Adolph

Cari's youngest son is a character...she used Marah Johnson's Marquis Collection.

{Mr Cheezie}

Supplies:

• Marquis small floral paper by Marah Johnson
• Marquis gold harlequin paper by Marah Johnson
• Marquis dark stripe paper by Marah Johnson
• Antique Titles swatchbook by Narratives

Cari created this beautiful BE Tag book to fill with her favorite scripture verses!

{Faith} featuring BE Brenda Tag Book and Felicity

Supplies:

• Bare Elements Brenda Tag Book
• Felicity by Christine Adolph
• Antique Titles swatchbook by Narratives
• Felicity Chipboard by Christine Adolph

Thank you Cari for joining our team this month! 

Spotlight Christine Adolph!

Christine Adolph has lived within steps of the ocean her entire life in a Southern California seaside village, where the coastal flora and fauna of her childhood playground gifted her with a lifetime reference for the natural forms and, on the opposite coast, the Rhode Island School of Design where she received her M.F.A. and was influenced by the historic ornament, surfaces and patterns she studied and was surrounded by as a student of textile design at RISD. 

Christine rounded out her education with a trip to Europe for an overview of architecture, historic patterns, and decorative arts followed by hands-on design experience working for textile converters on the East and West coast.

Making the transition into teaching, she wrote and developed curriculumn as a faculty member at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, and taught Surface Design courses at the Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles. 

When her children were born, Christine opted for stepping off the careerr path to be at home with her family until the children started school.  In an effort to stay creative she began contributing articles and artwork to a nearby magazine publisher where articles on her innovative foiling techniques, unique memory book pages and design process established her in the paper arts industry.  Her licensed designs for their rubberstamps have been best-sellers for the cmpany.

Since 2004 she has also brought her sophisticated fusion of current fashion and interior design trends, architechural elements and floral themes to scrapbook paper and accessories for Creative Imaginations.

"I use alot of flower silhouettes and desire an organic quality in my artwork" she explains.  Recalling her childhood references of nature, she explores a limitless interpretation of flowers, pods, leaves and shells, first sketching them in a botanical style to fully understand each part.  Currently she finds reinterpreting historic patterns and batik interesting themes to compliment her designs.

Christine's newest product releases Felicity and Tidepools both showcase her love of the ocean and beauty of nature.  The layout and project were designed by Cheryl Mezzetti.

Be sure to join Christine Adolph tonight at A Million Memories at 6:00pm pacific time - 9:00pm est.  This will be her second chat ever!  She has some fun hints to drop about her new lines that will be previewing at the upcoming tradeshow.  She also has a surprise announcment about a collaborative project that she will be involved in!

Spotlight Samantha Walker!

I am married to my "love-at-first-sight," Jonathan.  {good story, ask me about that sometime.} We are living happily ever after with our 3 children in Utah.  I've always enjoyed creating with any kind of medium...perhaps that is why my product line with Creative Imaginations changes so much season to season....I still love to experiment with a little of everything.  I enjoy photography, acrylics, collage, and using my computer to create one of a kind art.  I love to scrapbook, and I am slowly overcoming my addiction to scrapbooking contests,...of which i have won the 2005 Memory Makers Masters, Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooker of the Year finalist and a few others.  When I am not designing, I spent alot of time in my kitchen creating with my other favorite medium...food!  I love to bake artisan sourdough breads and bottle homemade jams, and create my own recipes experimenting with this and that.  On the weekends, you can usually catch me with my kids hanging out at the dinosaur museum where they like to get their hands gritty in the erosian table exhibit!

I wanted to share a few projects using some of my new lines.  The first project will be a make and take at CHA Summer using my Seashore and Holey Cardstock collection.  We will only be creating one of the postcards but I wanted you to see how much fun a collection of BE Talon postcards could be and how cute they would look gathered together in the BE Sydney mailbox.   

My second project is a sneak peek of a Recipe Box that i created with Sam's Kitchen line.  I will be teaching at Scrapfest in September...you will have to come take the class to see all the recipe indexes.  The best part of this class...is that you will be able to customize your recipe box with your recipes when you get home.

Join Samantha Walker for a chat tonight at A Million Memories at 9pm est.  To learn more about Samantha's pr see additional designs be sure to check out her Blog.

Green Contest Winners!

We were so pleased to see how creative the submissions were for our GREEN National Scrapbooking Day Contest!  Each artist showed ingenuity in the reuse and recycling of unexpected elements in a crafting project! But we had to select only two winners! Drum roll, please.........................

Congratulations to: 

Danielle LaFave for her layout GO GREEN.

• For Best Layout Design using Recycled items
• CI Products purchased from Two Peas and Scrapbooks, etc., Mesa AZ

Sandy Peppers for GUILTY

• For Most Interesting Recycled Item in Best Layout
• CI Products purchased from The  Scrapbook Village, Missouri City TX

Both of these ladies will received a $100 gift prize package from Creative Imaginations! Thank you to all who participated and we hope others continue to be inspired to incorporate used and found objects in their projects!

Be sure to check out the other entries here.

And have you heard the news??? For the month of June A Million Memories will be hosting weekly chats with a different CI Artist.  Join us tonight for a chat with Marah Johnson at 9pm est. We are also having another contest - this time one lucky person could win a guest design spot with Creative Imaginations for the month of August, a 3 month membership with A Million Memories starting with their August kit and a guest design spot with AMM for August.  Interested?  For more information click here.

Here is the line up of Artists Chats and times.

• Marah Johnson - Thursday, June 12th at 9pm est
• Samantha Walker - Tuesday, June 17th at 9pm est
• Karen Russell - Friday, June 20th at 9pm est
• Christine Adolph - Tuesday, June 24th at 9pm est

Retro Travel Collection

A couple of years ago, our family took a trip along the California coast.  When we travel by car, we always look for the more interesting spots to shop and take photos.  You know what i mean.....those spots on the side of the road where you might find a huge dinosaur, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox or perhaps a giant Redwood tree that your entire car can drive through.  When you see things like that, you just have to stop and take pictures, it's part of the experience of traveling by car.

Well, on that trip, we found two of those things.  We saw Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, but what really excited my son was the giant Redwood tree.  Seriously, we could drive our entire car through that baby, and it was alive and still growing!  I don't know why, but I had to have a picture of our car going through that tree.  Those pictures from our trip had been sitting in one of many photo boxes until recently.  Whenever I look at them, I smile and when the new Signature Retro Travel Collection came out, I immediately thought of our little road trip.  Check out the papers and some of the sayings on them.  I love the "retro" feel to the collection!

Whether you have photos for your vacation via train, plane or automobile you will find something in this collection that will have you smiling and reminiscing over your own vacation memories.

Layout and Luggage tag designed by Patty Lennon