november member spotlight

Since the introduction of our card kit, we've enjoyed seeing more and more beautiful cards in our member gallery. This month, we wanted to shine the spotlight on one of our talented cardmaking members! Please join us in welcoming Joy Taylor to the SC blog!

I have been crafting especially stamping on and off since 1994 and absolutely love it, although I love all crafts, stamping is my passion, I love to create and have fun with the craft, learning new techniques as I go along.

I have achieved many accomplishments since stamping, being on many wonderful design teams, being asked to do guest designing and best of all meeting so many new and wonderful friends.

My partner allowed me to take ownership of one of the spare rooms that we have in our house and he has built all of my craft furniture custom made for my passion for crafting.  I love that I have everything at my finger tips and come and go as I please, it really is my little haven and I adore my space.

I live in a small town, in Southern New South Wales, Australia with my partner Darryl and our furbaby, Roly. I currently work part time, but like all us crafters would love to see my passion for the craft to turn into my daily job…oh to dream!

What are your top 5 favorite products and why?

I would have to say that this is a hard question as I adore everything that is in the crafting industry right now, but to try and narrow it down, this is what I came up with:

• Stamps – I almost stamp onto every project when I create, so this would be my truly favourite.
• Inks – I love Dye Ink as it dries fast and I would have to say Versamagic Onyx Black ink for stamping out sentiments, as it gives a really crisp stamped image.
• 6 x 6 paper pads – I am addicted and think I need intervention as I just keep purchasing everytime something yummy catches my eye.
• White Cardstock – I am renowned for using white on almost every project, it is my go to colour and I have a huge stock pile that I keep stocked at all times.
• Bling – I have got a serious addiction when it comes to this, I like to add a little bling to most of my cards, I have 2 big drawers full of this goodness…yes I need serious help LOL.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I find inspiration in a lot of places, at times, like most of us I lose mojo, so in order to help me get that back or to even just get inspiration for a particular card, I have a few sources, mostly I blog surf - I generally have a list of my favourite card makers and surf through their blogs to find maybe, colour combos, design or layout or for that matter a particular stamp that they may have used and I wish to use..

The other types of inspiration I source out are web sites like, Pinterest…it is a huge and over flowing source of inspiration, if I am after a particular theme, colour combo or design, I just type in the search bar and start pinning.  This is also a good way for me to keep track of some fun and super pretty cards that other people may have pinned and that catch my eye.

What is your favorite color and/or color combo?

This kinda is hard for me, I am a girl that loves Blue and wear a lot of it..I do try to use this in my card making but I find, that I gravitate to many different colour combos…as I said in a previous question, my go to colour is white so I find anything can match with it.  At the moment though, I am really loving the Grey and Yellow combo and Aqua and Chocolate colours together….

Tell us a bit about your design process.

Sometimes, I am stumped as to what to create and find that just pulling maybe parts of a collection out I end up pulling together a card, by eliminating those parts that I don’t wish to use.

Other times and I know this is really strange, but hey! Whatever works for you right? Well I find that sometimes when I am in the shower, yes you read correctly (sorry if I am giving anyone nasty visualisations right now..LOL) I will be thinking about a particular card that I need to create and boom!!! It is like the water washes the cobwebs away and I have my design…crazy I know LOL.

Other times I take a stamp either colour in or paper piece and it just seems to come together..

Tell us a bit about what else you do since we know you are creative in more ways than just scrapbooking.

I enjoy doing lots of other things in my spare time..I love to garden and find that with work and my DT commitments I don’t always get a lot of that time to just potter out there.

I enjoy watching movies and just sitting back whilst watching them and surfing blogs and twitter chatting with all my wonderful friends from overseas…

I also love to cook and read wonderful recipe books…

Love to travel, when I get the spare cash and time LOL..

My latest passion would have to be dabbling in Photography, as a young girl I used to drive my Mum mad when I would use up a whole film (am I showing my age now by just stating that LOL) and take photos of the flowers in the garden the farm animals and just odd things…recently I have just purchased my first DSLR camera and about to embark on an online photography course, so I am excited to learn more about this..

I just want to take this last opportunity to thank the wonderful Studio Calico team for asking me to be here on their wonderful blog today, I am in awe of everything Studio Calico and have meet some wonderful people through this community…

I hope you all enjoy reading a little about me and having a giggle along the way.. Hugs, Joy

Thank you so much for letting us spotlight you, Joy! To see more of Joy's work, stop by her Studio Calico gallery or her blog.

Comments

[ShellyJ]

gorgeous cards, joy!

[Elisa Nishimura]

Beautiful cards, thanks for sharing your creative process, Joy!

[Char]

I have always admired your work Joy! Wonderful cards!

[Sandi]

Yay! So happy to see Joy in this blog post! I am a huge fan of her work:) supper sweet gal:)

[beaumama]

Joy is at the top of my favorite designers. Congrats to Studio Calico for asking her to design for you.