Team Spotlight: Luv Ewe Designs

It’s Saturday, YAY!  My name is April, and I’m quite new to the GingerScraps community but I am so excited to be here!  Today we’re going to take a moment to chat up Jennifer, owner of Luv Ewe designs!

 

She is currently hosting the grab bag this month (FREE when you spend $10 in the store), so get it while you still can!

 

I asked Jennifer a little bit about herself, about her family and some of her other interests:

I am married and had a wonderful wedding on a beach in Jamaica. I have three boys and four step kids. We also have six indoor kitties!  Hmmm we have a boring family life. LOL  I toy around with photography so my kids are getting bored with me taking pictures of them.  But you have to capture these moments because they grow up too fast!  My boys are teenagers now and that is just hard to believe! They were little just yesterday! Besides designing, I enjoy scrapping too. I spend too many hours on Pinterest and playing with my camera.

How did you come to be a designer?

 I started designing before I ever scrapped! I started making siggies in a forum and created some elements that I wanted to use or these, and there started my Photoshop addiction!

What inspires your designing?

What inspires me when designing…I do ask my CT for theme ideas.  That helps me get started so that I can come up with some kits that they are looking for.  Pinterest has a lot of inspiration too!  I am addicted to that site!  I found lots of color palettes on there.  I grab one that I like and it leads from there.  I jot down some ideas of what would be some great elements and such for the theme.  Sometimes I look at kits from my fave designers to get my mind rolling.

I then asked her about her kits, her very first, best selling and her most favorite.

Well I don’t have my first kit that I ever made. It is long gone! LOL It was horrendous! I do remember it was named Blueberry and Bubblegum. It was pink and blue. My fave kit right now is Friends For Life and my best selling is Now Showing.

Both of which are available in the shop (and totally now on my wishlist- look at how awesome they are!)!

In one word how would you describe your design style?

Versatile.  I love seeing my themed kits being used for non-themed layouts.  My kits can be used in so many ways!

I’d love to know what is the one thing you can’t do without when designing?

I design with PS CS4 (Photoshop Creative Suite V.4). I do all my designing while sitting on my couch. I hate sitting at the table! One thing I usually have to have while designing is my Dr. Pepper. I am addicted to that stuff!

Finally, do you have any advice for aspiring designers?

Just keep learning!  There is always something new to learn with your program, networking, marketing, etc.  This will help you grow as a designer! I am learning new things all the time and still have a lot of room to grow!

I want to thank Jennifer (super much!) for taking the time to talk with me, and having the patience to deal with my many emails the past few days!  All while feeling a bit under the weather, sure hope you feel better soon!  We can’t wait to see what you create for us next!

I hope everyone has a spectacular weekend and I can’t wait to for next Saturday when we talk with March’s Grab Bag designer… and no, I can’t tell you who yet! 🙂

 

Kit Spotlight- Skirts in the Dirt

I have a super fun kit to talk to you about today. It’s called Skirts in the Dirt by Tabby of Scrapberry Designs and is a softball themed kit… for girls! I just loved the bright colors of this kit. When we think summer, it’s usually baseball and boys right? Well girls play too! In fact I played softball in summer leagues as a kid for years! This kit is a must for anyone who has daughters or grand daughters playing ball. Some of my favorite things in this kit included a pink catchers vest, Word Art, silhouettes, splatters, and a pink baseball mitt. But there is so much more in this fun themed kit! Here is what the kit looks like, isn’t it fun? It has a total of 13 papers and 36 Elements plus an alpha and numbers! Visit this kit here in the GS Shoppe!

I like to ask our spotlighted designer a few questions and this is what Tabby had to say~

1. what was your inspiration for the kit, colors etc?

My lead CT’s daughter is a hard core baseball player. She’s been looking for a kit to scrap her with but couldn’t really find what she wanted so I made this kit for Ms. Catherine. The colors actually came from her uniform. Here’s a layout her momma made showing her off

2. What is your method for designing kits, papers first ellies first?

With this one I went back and forth. I worked on some ellies and got a feel of where it was going and did some papers and then I’d do some more ellies until I felt it was finished.
3. What do you design to? Music, tv complete silence?

Ummm, whats music, tv, or completed silence? LOL. In a house with three little boys I pretty much here growling, crying, or fighting all day long. Now in a dream world I’d have an office with a door and my kids would go play in their play room and let me listen to some good old 80’s music and get into “my zone” and have some mommy time. But, as I said, that’s just a dream :P.

Poor Tabby, I like to design and scrap to music myself, but 3 boys sounds like a handful!

Here are some gallery stand outs I found with this fantastical kit!

This one is by Kimmiescraps. I love the attitude captured in the main photo!

And here is a feebie QP made with this kit! Snag it HERE

Kit Spot Light- Water Get Away by MandyMade

Every Tuesday, here at the Gingerscraps blog, I ScrappyCocoa AKA Stephanie will be doing product and designer spot lights. This  week I wanted to spotlight one of my new favorite summer kits- Water Get Away by Mandy Made. This kit is SO FUN! It is seriously loaded, with 25 papers and 88 {yes I said 88 not a typo!} elements and 2 alphas! This kit is perfect for pretty much all your summer LO’s! It has the usual summer elements such as fish, a boat, and all other sea creatures- but wait there’s more! Mandy has many creative summer elements as well. Including a kayak, jet ski, floaties, a rubber pool, paddles, goggles, snorkel, flip flops and my personal favorite, a water gun! See what I mean? This kit can last you all summer long! In addition to the 25 patterned papers, she also has a fabulous pack of carstock available!  Just look at this preview!!! Check out this kit HERE

I asked Mandy a few questions about this fantastic kit! Here is what she had to say-

What was your inspiration, ie colors, all those fun ellies etc?

I get my inspiration in all kinds of places. I may have a set of photos that I want to scrap so i’ll pull a theme and colors from there. Sometimes I surf the net looking through travel, wedding and craft sites. I find I work well when I’m assigned a color palette and theme such as GS collabs… I love a good challenge!

How do you make a kit start to finish, papers or ellies first? Make a list of ideas?

Well I used to start with the papers only because I find them so darn easy and fun to create as I love texture! These days I’ve been creating my elements first. My last couple of products are a part of the Getaway Series. Each kit uses the same color palette and has unique themed elements. So I’m finding that I’ve been inspired to create the elements first to nail down a theme. I have found my facebook page to be quite an asset lately. {Find Mandy’s FB Page HERE} We chit chat back and forth with ideas for my new kits and my fans have a chance to win my kits for free. The one I’m working on now is a camping/fishing themed kit and I have a long list of themed elements to create! I haven’t even begun to think about papers! This might end up as a mega kit!

What do you design to? music tv peace and quiet?

I have to design to music or a movie. I have duel screens for my computer so I either have Yahoo’s coffee House station playing or watching one of my many movies for the 100th time. I need to close my door so I have peace and quiet, I then I fill the room with noise! Oh I also light incense and candles, dim the lights…. and munch on some sort of candy! Once all my senses are pleased I can get so much done! Wow what a Diva… only Mariah Carey has more Diva requests!

Well there you have it! Lets look at some great LO’s with this kit!

Like I said, I have already done 3 LO’s with this kit. But I am just going to show you my favorite. Like I said I loved the water gun and I so happened to have the perfect pictures! Everything in this LO is 100% Mandy Made. Including the template!

Here are some gallery stand-outs with Mandy’s Fabulous kit!

Sarah-ICS made this adorable LO. {She made quite a few with this kit, it was hard to choose just one!}

And here is one from Mandy herself! I love the title work on this page!

Here is one from Cath. I love the simplicity of the pictures and the LO!

Thanks for reading In the Spot Light today! I will be doing this every week. I will also be cruising the GS gallery for standouts to post! So don’t be shy post those LO’s with Gingerscraps product! I’d love to show you off!

I have a freebie QP made with this super fun kit! {I also used a template by MandayMade! Yes she makes them too and they ROCK!} Don’t forget to check out this fabulous kit and others by MandyMade!

Get your Freebie HERE