Sharon Curtis is our latest member to join our Hochanda team!
Sharon is a keen papercrafter who has been creating all her life, and is a previous winner of Simply Cards and Papercraft's Designer of the year competition in 2012. We thought we would sit down with Sharon and ask her a few questions so you can get to know here a bit better.
Here's what Sharon Curtis had to say:
When did you first start learning to craft?
I've always enjoyed art and as a child I used to do a lot of drawing - pencil sketches of dogs and horses mainly. My interest in crafting started in 2002, when my sister asked me to make her wedding stationery for her. I created 100 invites, the order of service, place names, table numbers and a seating plan! Now I look back with some experience, I realise quite how ambitious that first project was, but thankfully they did turn out well! That was the beginning of my obsession. As I had to buy quite a few supplies to make the wedding stationery, I used the leftovers by making cards, and the following year I bought my first die-cutting machine - the Sizzix original red machine.
Where do you get most of your inspiration from?
Everywhere really! I watch a lot of crafting YouTube videos, and get ideas from Instagram, blogs and Pinterest. A lot of my colour and design inspiration comes from home décor and fashion. I often take photos when I'm out shopping if I see something I like.
What materials do you like working with the most?
I'm definitely a cardmaker first, so card and paper are my most-used materials. However, now I'm using a lot of Bigz dies, I do find I'm branching out and experimenting with different materials.
What's your favourite thing to make using die-cutting?
Cards are my favourite, but since working with Sizzix I've been dabbling a lot more in home décor and I'm really loving creating projects that are more 3D than a card allows. We've just had a new porch built and I've already made some cute little jars with die-cut flowers to put in there. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I plan to decorate the whole house, room by room, so I'm quite looking forward to seeing what die-cutting projects I can incorporate into the décor.
What are your top tips for feeling creative?
Whenever I'm stuck for ideas, I scroll through Pinterest. Something will always spark an idea, it might be a photo of a beautifully decorated cake, or a colour swatch, but something always sparks my imagination and gets my creative mind whizzing!
Any die-cutting top tips?
If you have any die sets that contain a variety of dies, challenge yourself to create something just using one or two of the smaller dies from the set - you'll be amazed what you can create by limiting yourself to a couple of dies you might normally ignore. You'll also get much more usage from your supplies doing this.
Look out for Sharon on the Hochanda channel Sky 663, Freeview 85 and Freesat 817.
For more inspiration visit the Sizzix blog here: www.sizzix.co.uk/blog