In the Designer Spotlight this time is Sarah from Designs by Sarah.
Sarah is 28 years old and lives in Belgium, a small European country between France, Germany and the Netherlands. She loves photos and photography and always wanted to make digital photobooks from her and her boyfriend’s vacation/trip photos. But it was when she found out about digital scrapbooking in January 2010 that she found a much cooler way to preserve their memories, and fell in love with digital scrapbooking ever since! Encouraged by her boyfriend she took her first designer steps in June 2011, and has been learning a lot since then and can’t wait to show you what else she’s got in store for you!
What got you started in designing?
I started designing less than a year ago. The first item I ever designed was an alpha. I love alphas and I wanted to try and make them myself. Together with some digi-friends from the Dutch Scrapbook Board, we took our very first steps in designing and made our own blogtrain. I have to say… I learned a LOT since then.
Where do you do your designing?
We moved homes about 3 years ago and since then, my desk has had many places. We had put my desk in a spare room. Unfortunately, it got very chilly during the winter, so I moved my desk into our living room. At the end of November, my computer broke down and I borrowed my dad’s laptop. My boyfriend took my desk and I sat with my dad’s laptop at our living room table. I have my own laptop now, but I’m still at our living room table and that works out great!
What’s on in the background when you’re designing?
I do most of my designing in the evening, when I come home from work. I work full time during the day, so I do my designing when my boyfriend is home from work and watches the news, or any other show. He’s also a big fan of ‘Without A Trace’, so that’s often on in the background too.
What do you find to be the biggest challenge with designing?
Picking a color scheme is a big challenge for me. I sometimes don’t know which one to choose, because I get so inspired and can’t choose between so many options… sometimes I have a theme in my head for so long, but can’t seem to find the right colors.
What do you like most about designing?
There’s a LOT that I like about designing. Of course, I love designing itself. But I also love to see how a kit comes together, seeing how you start with a single element or paper and then seeing the result at the end. And of course, I love the reactions from my CT when I show them the kit, the reactions from fans, from scrappers all over the world. I love seeing layouts created with my kits appear in galleries.
How many hours a week do you spend designing? scrapping? community surfing?
A LOT. You can say I’m addicted to my computer. I put on my computer before I leave home to go to work and when I come home, putting on the computer is one of the first things I do. I try to design during the week and scrap during the weekend. During the week I spend +/- 4 to 5 hours a day designing and community surfing. I feel like Mouse Scrappers is my digi-home, so I check in at least 2 times a day.
What is your biggest source of creative inspiration?
I have to say Disney. I was a Disney fan as a child (weren’t we all?), but then I lost it a bit somehow. It was a dream for many years to go back to Disneyland Paris. When I finally got back there in 2010, I fell in love all over again.
But I also get inspired by seeing a color scheme or just a photo. For example: the color schemes for my Facebook Freebies inspired me a lot.
If you were one of your kits, which one would you be?
Lol, that’s a funny, but hard one! I think I would be Tiki Time. The theme, the colors, the elements and the papers… Seeing that kit makes me happy. I had so much inspiration that the kit turned out huge. I think it’s my favourite kit so far.
Who is your favourite designer?
Another hard one, I can’t just pick one! But there are a few that I would like to mention in this interview.
I’m on Lina’s CT (LDrag Designs) and I just love her kits. She has a gift for picking the right color scheme every time. Even though, her kits aren’t made for Disney, lots of them are just perfect for scrapping Disney photos.
Another designer close to my heart is my digi-friend Patty, from Scrappily Me. Her kits are beautiful and so easy to work with. It’s such a pleasure to be on her CT.
And both of them are such wonderful ladies.
Who would you love to collab with?
That’s an easy one. I would love to collab with Patty. We talked about it for a bit, but we never got that far. Unfortunately, she retired from designing. But who knows… maybe some day…
What is a piece of advice you have for scrappers?
Don’t forget to make a back-up once in a while. When my computer broke down in November, I lost most of my layouts made between May and the end of October, mostly my CT-layouts, layouts for challenges and the layouts I did for the Wish Families.
Hope you enjoyed getting to know Sarah a little better, and she gave me a little iNSD treat for the MouseScrappers readers, a free coordinating Chipboard Alpha to her latest release Crazy Little Monkey. And speaking of iNSD don’t forget to check Sarah’s blog and Facebook page for a bunch of Crazy Little Monkey freebies.
Here a small sample of what is in Sarah’s store
