Checkout our Crafters’ Spotlight! This is where we turn the spotlight on you, our crafting audience, who keep us inspired by your passion and allow us to keep doing what we do. Last month, we celebrated the work of the lovely Alan Anderson, if you missed it, check it out here.
Now, let’s find out who our star in the spotlight is this month…
Say hello to this month’s Crafter’s Spotlight, Craftaholic, Julie Rankin!
Thanks for joining us Julie, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thanks for choosing me to be part of this months Crafter’s Spotlight! I live in Dumfries Scotland with my husband Frank, Labrador Retriever Willow and our black cat KitKat. I‘m part of a DT Group for Artisan Design which I am loving being part of it has given me the confidence to share a lot more of my makes and it`s so much fun seeing the samples on Hochanda from all the DT ladies and how different we all are.
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I`ve always been crafty one way or another. My mum who is also a crafter taught me how to Knit, cross-stitch and sew (in turn I`ve taught her paper crafting). My real love of crafting came about when I found Scrapbooking. I love photos… they have so many precious memories. Way back then, when we didn`t have digital cameras, I loved getting my photos back from being developed, excited to see how they turned out (yes I still have all my negatives) and they went in a box, so while channel flicking came across scrapbooking and the rest is history, my love of papercraft began. I got to keep all these beautiful papers and make memory albums telling the story of each of the photos, I must have made 20 12×12 albums now and still going. YES I`m addicted to beautiful papers, YES I stroke them and they smell amazing (LOL). Then came cardmaking, and past few years mixed media. There are so many wonderful products out there now that we didn`t have back then, (yes I`m old) we spent a lot of the time fussy cutting and drawing round templates.
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My favourite thing I`ve made recently? Ohhhh that’s a good question, maybe my 12×12 Art Nouveau shadow box mixed media piece, or my two 6×6 steampunk shadow boxes, or my 12×12 canvas lady face with all the butterflies. I`ve made so much while on Lockdown earlier in the year I can`t choose.
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These past 7 months or so I`ve tried a lot of new things, mostly mixed media products like pastes, waxes which I now love love love and paints… Oh and lots of MDF, and I`ve loved every bit of it.
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Where do I get my inspiration from? Hmmm, another good question. My weird head!? LOL. Everywhere, I guess. I haven`t got a particular style, or at least I don`t think I have. There are a lot of things I love, like Art Nouveau/Art Deco, Steampunk, florals, butterflies, dragonflies, wings (I could go on and on), but I do know I`m an O.T.T crafter so love different textures and elements on my creations. With lockdown happening earlier in the year I have to say I`ve had a lot of inspiration from all the fabulous crafters who have been giving their time to do live demo`s for us all, they have just been and are still being amazing, and I just want to say a big thank you to them all.
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I`m very lucky to have a craft room and a walk in attic for all my crafty stash. My craft room is wall to wall units and I use 12×12 and A4 storage boxes for everything, my craft products are precious to me so I would hate it if they got damaged, especially my scrapbooking papers.
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Thanks for joining us in the Crafters’ Spotlight this month! We hope everyone is feeling inspired to do some crafting – remember, there’s only one place to get your craft inspiration and top crafting brands with Hochanda!