COME JOIN US AT THE HOUSTON CKC!

Hi everyone!

We are gearing up for the Houston Creating Keepsake convention next weekend and I wanted to extend the invitation to come out and check out this amazing scrapbook convention. We will be teaching two class (well actually three we are doing one class twice) the first one is an amazing little mini book inspired by our up coming Crazy Maniquins collage set and Echo Parks papers

And our second class will be a wonderful Cowgirl diva tag book which was inspired by our Cowgirl epehemeras

and every student recives a FREE gift worth $25 just for coming to the class....that is like getting your class practicly FREE! And as with all our classes there will be a doorprize given worth $100! And on top of these amazing classes there is an amazing dealers room with companies selling all kinds of crafting products, crops, make and takes and tonz of fun! So if you are in the Houston area around the 8th and 9th be sure to check it out....of you can visit there website and find out more...or even register to see for yourself!
http://www.scrapandpapercorner.com/events/ckc/houston/index.html

Now in celebration of our CKC classes we are giving away a free set of cowgirl ephemeras and Crazy Maniquin ephemeras absolutly FREE just leave a comment under this posting and July 10th we will draw a winner at random!
Good luck!

The New Gecko Galz Design Team Members!

The time has come for us to unviel our newest design team members, I have to tell everyone who applied that you made our desicions soooo difficult, you all are amazing artist and I celebrate you all!
So without further ado here are the newest members of the Gecko Galz Design Team;
Melissa Kirwan
Heather Huddson
Misty Rose Cramer
Cassandra Cushman
Joan Liddle
Hazel Harler
Paula Akers
and
Penny Walker
Congrats ladies and we cannot wait to see what all the ladies come up with! To keep up with all their work either visit Gecko Galz at http://www.geckogalz.com/ or at their individual blog sites!
Now for the prize giveaway in celebration of choosing our latest design stars we are giving one lucky follower $50 in Gecko Galz products......and the winner is.....LINDA HOFFMAN!!!!!!! Woo Wooo! Congrats Linda, just go to the Gecko Galz website pick out what you would like and email us at geckogalz@yahoo.com with your choices (you dont have to use the $50 all at once). Congrats to everyone!!! Keep checking back we will be holding blog challenges, feature spotlights on all of our design team members, we are doing our "Tricks and Treats" blog hop in October where you will get FREE EPHEMERA IMAGES and another chance to win an incredible prize!
Remember Gecko Galz is always changing colors!

Design Team Call Entry- Rebecca Farnham

Flowers, Fibers and Stamps Oh My....this discribes the beautiful paper art by artisan Rebecca Farnham!

Rebecca is a high school history/world geography teacher.  And as we can imagine her year has been a crazy, chaotic and hectic year with six classes and three preps (one a new AP World History class).  The one thing that kept me sane (ha ha) was scrapping with my friends and having my girl time. 

She started creating cards a year and half ago when she decided to make her wedding invitations (just a few because they were married in Jamaica) but when they returned she took on making the invitations for three receptions (in Texas, Iowa and Connecticut).  These invitations were very basic, but her interest started to peak.  She took a stamping class and learned the basics, but what really drew her into stamping and card making was an invite from a teaching partner to attend a birthday party at the store Archiver’s.  After that she started to meet new friends and just as her friendships blossomed so did her love for scrapping.    

Scrapbooking/card making for her is a release, it’s a time where she gets to let her inner child run free and be creative. 

She enjoys challenging herself and learning new techniques and inspiring others.

Here are a few of her amazing samples

Design Team Call Entry- Penny Walker

We have another wonderful paper crafting artist to introduce to you her name is Penny Walker and she is an amazing and talented paper crafter.
So lets talk Penny shall we? Penny has been scraping and stamping off and on for over 15 years. She moved to San Antonio in 2001, and in 2002 she started working a local scrapbook store and  she started out as a clerk and teaching stamping classes, then eventually moved into a  manager position. 
Penny continued teaching classes and became SDU Certified Instructor with EK Success. and though she left the business side of scrapbooking she continues to scrap and stamp with friends. She enjoy's teaching people fun tips and tricks and spreading the creative bug. I have never been on a design team with any company. What she hopes to do is continue blending creativity and fun then share with scrappers and stampers alike.

Here are a few of her amazing designs

Design Team Call Entry- Melissa Kirwan

And now she may be last but but there is nothing least about this amazing paper artist! We would like to introduce you to our last design team hopeful Melissa Kirwan!

So lets get to know this wonderful paper crafter! Melissa is an avid paper crafter and has been for more than 13 years.  She really LOVES paper and finding new ways to create with it.  Some of her passions are to cover things with patterned paper, scrapbook, create gift boxes and gift bags, make ornaments, origami, kusudama, altered art, home décor, frames, wall art...you name it she loves to create it!  Being a fanatic for anything vintage or retro makes it easy to see where alot of her inspirations come from. She also has occasionally been known to give crafting tutorials to a small groups.  And as she says  "Inspiration finds me daily when I least expect it, and it usually whomps me over the head!" it is exciting to see what this amazing artist will create next!

So if you are intrigued to learn more about her just hop over to her blog at;
http://melissawithscissors.blogspot.com
So lets check out some of her designs

 

Design Team Call Entry- Paula Akers

When we read her discription of her style "My "style" is best described as straightforward, clean and simple, with experimentation" we knew we were about to enter what we can only imagine would be a paper crafting wonderland....and it was....we stepped through the looking glass and discovered our next design team hopeful Paula Akers!

Paula is a mostly stay at home mother of two wonderful children, a son who is 10 and a daughter who is 5.  She married her college sweetheart and now they all live happily in WV, along with an older beagle baby.  Paula has been crafting for as long as she can remember but picked up paper-crafting, especially with rubber stamping and card-making, passionately about four years ago.

 She also paints with watermedia, knits, and enjoy combining my interests in mixed media and art journaling.  She loves to learn new techniques and the thrill of letting the project and supplies guide her.

Her work has been published in Scrapbook News and Review magazine.

To see more about this talented artist visit her in "wonderland" better known as her blog;

http://www.whatspeaks2myheart.wordpress.com

Please enjoy her samples

Design Team Call Entry- Joan Liddle

What do you get when you cross a bit of vintage flair and some fun little inspirations? Why the next design team hopeful Joan Liddle!

So what can we tell you about this talented paper crafting artist?  Well she has been papercrafting for about 8 years and nothing makes her happier than to be in her studio, working away

on a project!  She loves to scrapbook, make cards and ATC's, altered art, mixed media, home decor items and do rubber stamping.
Anything that involves paper and embellishments gets her heart beating faster!!

Her work has a vintage whimsical flair to it with tonz of little details everywhere!
And you may have seen some of her lovely designs in the pages of some of your favorite magazines for Joan Has been published in Take Ten magazine, Stampers' Sampler magazine, Somerset Home magazine,
Somerset Holidays and Celebrations magazine, and Stamping, Stationery and Scrapbooking magazine to name a few.
to discover more treasures please take a moment and visit her blog at My blog address is:  http://joan-discoveries.blogspot.com
Now for some of her wonderful work

Design Team Call Entry- Erin Reed

Now let us visit our next design team hopeful Erin Reed!

Erin is a stay at home mom, she was a teacher (high school science) before I stayed at home, and her love for scrapbooking brought her to us here at Gecko Galz!! 
Erins first love is her family, they mean everything to her and she finds they inspire her paper crafting projects.  Her second love is crafting, especially scrapbooking and she started to scrapbook  in 2006 when her oldest child was 10 months old (everyone needs a muse and our children are the best muses of all).  So she started to dabble doing a few pages here and there for his baby book, but nothing serious.  Then a family loss drove her to focus her energies in the scrapbooking direction, it was her way of dealing with the tragedy, and as we all know it is far more theriputic than a shrink.  She created a haven for herself by making a permanent scrap room in my house, and then she started to teach classes at a local scrapbook store, then at her house, and now at her local Michaels and Jo Ann’s stores too. 

 Erin would say mher favorite types of layouts are shabby chic, distressed, and elegant styles , but she also like to make clean layouts, fun ones that are cute and kid-ish with fun elements like clouds and animals on them.  She loves to work with flowers, lace, ribbon, ink, paint, mists, chipboard, plus anything else she can get my hands on.  thus she has never met a scrapbook product that she did not like, and she is always on the lookout for other fun techniques and products that she can learn and pass along to others.   Scrapping is her hobby turned into a little career for her since now she is a stay at home mom.

You can discover more about this talented paper artist and all her wonderful pages at her blog;  http://scraps-of-reflections.blogspot.com/

We hope you will enjoy her work as much as we did!

Design Team Call Entry- Barbara Bird

So here is another wonderful paper artist trying out for our Design team, Barbara Bird!

So lets find out a little bit about this fun loving lady!
Barbara has been into Paper Artistry for about 8 years now.........it has become her obssession !!! She does not hesitate to say it saved her life when her husband moved her to Texas away from her home and friends. Through paper crafting she has met the greatest bunch of ladies and  have become such good friends thru this art !
Her passion and love is making cards and has gotten more into the scrapbooking side of her art now that she has her first grand child.And just lately she has gotten into altering and is enjoying that very much !!!
 She was on a vintage design team called Vintage Faire that had just started up and was really enjoying it - but the lady that started it up was having a hard time getting people to join in so had to let it go and now she finds she misses it.
Another passion she has is old post cards, she used to run a post card show and loves collecting vintage cards and most of all loves using them in her card making.
Her work is charming and beatuiful and her cards are inspired by a romantic vintage flair.
You can visit her at her blog site: http://mdstrwbery.blogspot.com

or at anothergallery:

www.tallyscrapper.com

 

So sit back and enjoy the works by this amazing artist

 

Design Team Call Entry- Hazel Harler

From across the pond a brilliant paper artist comes, let us introduce you all to Hazel Harler!

Hazel has been a stamper for 15 years and though she is rather new when it comes to using digital images we think she has taken to it quite well!  Hazel is a member of the online comunity Bella Creations and her work has graced many of their challenges. 

 

Her favorite style is the distressed grungy look but she does many other styles as well and will have a go at anything as long as paper is involved.

 

Todiscover more about this awesome artist we invite you to visit her blog where like an english garden it is full of amazing and stunning works.

www.hazelscreativemoments.blogspot.com

 

And here are some of her lovley works

 

 

 

Design Team Call Entry- Sharon Rogers

Let us introduce another wonderful paper artist, but this one comes from down under...thats right Sharon is from Glenelg South Australia.


And what can we tell you about this talented lady? She has been crafting and cardmaking for over 20 years and ejoyed doing card making so much she owned her own Wedding Invitation Business in the past.
She belongs to a Local Stamp Group where gets to create and chat with like minded people once every few months. So to sum it up in a nutshell in her spare time crafting and getting involved with the online communities and with people who share her passion is her favorite things to do!

An “interesting” fact about Sharon is that she is a “Turf Management Contractor [Greenkeeper]” and if she doesn’t have ink and glue on her hands you can bet she has grease and dirt from working on turf and operating machinery – so she is a bit of a contradiction as she is not a girly girl but she loves pink and to create beautiful things!!

Her favorite forms of creating is a very wide range of styles including arty, vintage, collage, digi & rubber stamps, construction, altered art, art dolls, sassy, quirky, cute, fabric creations, ATC’s, jewelry, modern, asian, decorated notebooks, boxes, bags, paper embellishments, candles etc......so she really really loves crafting!! 

  

with her “quirky” sense of humour and fun hip creations she is always trying to look outside the square when creating her art.

You can check out more about this spunky Aussie artist at her blog site

http://sharonshowcase.blogspot.com/

And please enjoy the following samples done by Sharon