Monday Motivational~Guest HoneyBee Amy Sheffer!

Good Morning!  We are very excited to have Amy Sheffer of Pickled Paper Designs as our Guest HoneyBee this week!   

Amy Sheffer

 Amy is a very talented crafter, and has served on several design teams, including Verve, Stampers Dream, and A Sketch For You to Try... as well as being a former Dirty Dozen Designer over at Splitcoast Stampers!  Here are some questions we've asked Amy to help us get to know her even better!

       Tell us about yourself:

I live with my husband and three children in Virginia on the far outskirts of Washington, DC. I've been dabbling in anything and everything artsy and crafty pretty much all my life, so when a friend introduced me to scrapbooking in 1997 and then rubber stamping in 2002, I was instantly hooked both times. I spent a few years stamping for classes, workshops, and sales as a Stampin' Up demonstrator, but it wasn't until I started my blog in the Fall of 2007 that I discovered the joy of stamping just for the pure fun of it. Stamping has been a big part of my daily life ever since. At the same time, I discovered that the online stamping community is much more fun to participate in than merely to stalk, and I'm truly grateful for the wonderful friends I've found through stamping. Along the way, I've been honored to serve on several design teams, including my two current teams, Stamper's Dream and Verve. Thank you, Honey Bees, for the opportunity to guest host at Betty Bee's Buzz!

How did you get started in paper crafting?

I got hooked on scrapbooking back in the late '90s when I saw a friend's scrapbook. I'd never seen anything like it and as a crafty type, I was hooked immediately. A few years later, that same friend came running into a Little Gym class that our boys were taking, wildly waving a card she had made the night before at a Stampin' Up party. It was love at first sight. When she had a workshop a few weeks later, I ordered my first of many, many stamping supplies and haven't stopped since {grin}!

Tell us about your crafting space...

I am blessed to have a dedicated craft room tucked into a corner of my basement. Large windows and French doors to the outside let in a lot of light, and the half wall between the craft room and the rest of the basement lets me see the television and keep an eye on my kids while they play. I tend to be a messy crafter and love finding inspiration and odd combinations out of whatever scraps and cast-offs are lying around. That said, every few days, when the clutter becomes stifling, I have to tidy up and start all over again.

Where do you look for inspiration when your mojo is missing?

Surfing papercrafting blogs and thumbing through papercrafting magazines and idea books sometimes helps, as does simply looking through my product stash. But what usually works best for me is to seek out inspiration elsewhere -- clothing, home decor, gardening, even cookbooks. I think it's also good sometimes to walk away altogether for a while, take a break, and do something else I love -- go on a hike, visit an antique store, take in a concert, read a book, play the piano. Anything to fill up on the beauty that surrounds us! I can then return to papercrafting refreshed, energized, and ready to create.

If you could give one or two crafting tips, what would they be? 

1. Try new things.
I think it's important to keep growing as artists/crafters, and one of the best ways is to try new things. Challenges are great for that, as they give you a starting point for something you might not have done on your own. Plus they're just plain fun! Classes at your local craft store could be good, too. I'm a pretty traditional stamper, not a technique stamper at all, so for artistic growth, I took a super fun, Claudine Hellmuth mixed media class a while back and had a blast learning new things and getting messy. To this day, I've yet to use a single technique in my card-making (shame!), but I left class that day feeling like an artist and couldn't wait to get home to create within my own style. Attitude is everything! Feel like an artist-->create like an artist!

2. Don't compare yourself to others and/or judge yourself through the eyes of others. This is such a trouble spot with me, and I know it is with many other papercrafters, too! Comparing your work to someone else's will only end up robbing you of the joy this hobby brings. As long as YOU'RE happy with your work, then "The End." Don't re-evaluate based on how many or few comments your blog post or gallery upload received. Now if I could do as I say! :)

Here is Amy's challenge for this week! 

With the recent Royal Wedding festivities still fresh on my mind and the upcoming "wedding season" approaching, I've come up with a wedding-inspired challenge this week. While you don't necessarily have to make something for a wedding, your card or project does have to include "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue." For "old," use an older product or trend, make something look old with distressing techniques, refurbish an outdated home decor item, etc. "New" is easy ... a new or trendy product, theme, or technique. For "borrowed," borrow a friend's tool, borrow another papercrafter's design (aka CASE), or borrow something from another craft, i.e., incorporate quilting or jewelry or fabric into your project. Mix a little blue in there somewhere and you're good to go! When you post your project, be sure to let us (and others) know what about your project is old, new, borrowed, and blue (although that last one will probably be a little obvious {grin}).
For my challenge sample, I've used the wedding theme for a non-wedding card. My new ingredient is the balloon paper from My Mind's Eye's new Lime Twist "Out of the Blue" collection. The "something old" is the sentiment stamp, which is from a May 2009 Verve stamp set called Dare to Be You. I normally love to add layers and embellishments, sometimes to the point of excess, so today I've borrowed the clean-and-simple style that I admire so much! And last ... blue skies, baby! This is going to our neighbor's daughter, who somehow just graduated from college, despite the fact that just yesterday she was a mere thirteen years old and earning her Red Cross babysitting certification. Miraculous, I tell ya!

Our thanks to Amy for sharing her challenge, and some about her life, with us!  We are so excited to have her here in the hive!  We look forward to seeing your projects later in the week!  On Wednesday you will see what the rest of the HoneyBees have created with Amy's challenge....

 Until then, Happy Creating!