Feb 24, 2016
Creative Team Spotlight: Meet Courtney, Shannon, Charmaine, and Stephanie…plus: a Giveaway!
It’s Wednesday, crafty friends, and we’ve got some exciting doings around here at TE! Next week is Release Week and we’ve got tons of new products hitting the TE Store shelves. Our amazing Creative Team is hard at work making magic and we will be sharing sneak peeks in the TE Newsletter and on our Facebook Page beginning tomorrow!
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We love our designers so much we would love for you to get to know them all a little better. Each month, we’ll introduce some of these lovely ladies and celebrate with a fun giveaway! Keep reading for details on how you can win a $25 Gift Certificate to the TE Store!
We thought we’d share a few of our favorite projects that really show off the wide range of styles of our Creative Team. Enjoy!
Courtney Kelley, Back to the Drawing Board
A longtime team member, Courtney moved to the Northeast from the West Coast 16 years ago, where she makes her home with her husband and a rather plump cat. She enjoys quilting and sewing while listening to podcasts and cross stitch while binge watching television! (But she’s no couch potato as she works and runs when not in her craft space!) She is also an avid reader — a new favorite is Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell and is currently reading the Outlander series. Her clean and simple style begins with her love of combining stamps and patterned papers to create her paper-pieced masterpieces. Her favorite TE product to work with is our Build a Scene line. Courtney began her papercrafting journey as a scrapbooker to preserve family memories. Then she discovered a card making magazine, which sparked her creative interest. We are so glad she picked up that magazine!
Shannon White, Enchanted Ladybug Creations
Shannon has been creating paper magic for TE for a while now, and she does it from her new home in Discovery Bay, California, where she lives with her husband, Greg. Alongside a longtime love of cardmaking, Shannon also enjoys painting, making handmade gifts, baking, home decor, and gardening! (She also finds time to sew occasionally, too.) A part-time Kirkland employee, Shannon currently spends much of her spare time setting up their new home, and also loves to sing, read, and spend time with friends. Shannon, too, is a big fan of our Build a Scene dies and loves to work with our many Cutting Plates, which she will work wonders with on her cards. Of late she has been playing with watercolor using Distress Markers to create lovely backgrounds for her projects. To relax, Shannon loves to vacation anywhere near the water, weather it’s a beach or a lake.
Charmaine Ikach, Oodabug Alley
Veteran team member Charmaine is mom to four darling kiddos: Savannah (12), Arwen (9), Isaac (8) and Isabelle (6) and she still has time to create wonderful projects for us! She makes her home just South of Pittsburgh in Washington, Pennsylvania with her husband of 15 years and their first puppy, a 4 month old Pekapoo named Maizy. A yarn gal, Charmaine enjoys crocheting and using looms and makes wonderful afghans, scarves and hats in her downtime. When not crafting, she can be found running her kids to dance, soccer, and rehearsals. And, as if she didn’t have enough to do, she also teaches Zumba or Aqua Zumba 8 times a week! (Don’t worry, Charmaine does get to go on vacation — her family loves going to Hilton Head, SC.) It’s hard to believe that she didn’t always consider herself crafty, but lucky for us she decided to try it out during a choir picnic 15 years ago! Charmaine loves to work with dies and is a huge fan of TE’s Embossing Folders, which you’ll see prominently featured in her fabulous work!
Stephanie Kraft (Creative Team Coordinator), HandKrafted by Stephanie
We honestly don’t know what we would do without our fearless Creative Team leader, Stephanie! She may be the most organized person on the planet and she keeps our design teams running smoothly. Two years ago, Stephanie gave up the sun and warmth of California and Arizona to move to Brandon, South Dakota (just outside Sioux Falls) with her husband, Dan, lovely daughter, Sabrina (12), and fur baby, Bella. It was a huge change, but now they are closer to family. (She doesn’t like to brag, but she now has an amazing garden in the wide open space of her back yard!) Rarely without a camera, Stephanie loves photography and also enjoys reading, crocheting, quilting, and sewing (she is the stitching queen at TE). Her true passion still lies with scrapbooking, and pocket scrapbooking is her current favorite way of documenting family memories. Of late she’s been trying out all the different mediums used in watercolor. Maybe we’ll see a painting someday of her favorite place to vacation, which is Yosemite — one National Park in the long list of parks she and her family love to explore!
Are you feeling inspired by these fabulous projects from our team? Well, we’re giving away a $25 Gift Certificate to the TE Store to help you get crafty!
How to Enter: Leave a comment below leaving the designers featured today some love by Friday, February 26, 2016 at 11:59 pm PST. We’ll choose one lucky winner at random to win $25 Gift Certificate to the TE Store! We’ll announce the winner next week here on the TE Blog.
