Welcome November Guest Designer Debra Davison

Meet our November Guest Designer Debra Davison.  Debra says she loves Vera Lane Studio images !! "They aren’t like all of the other stamps you see every day.  They are quirky and unique and I love designing with them. The Vera Lane community is supportive and gets me out of my comfort zone !! The images challenge me to create unique cards . I’m excited to bring my style to the VLS images and create something new each week !!"

Debra will bring her eclectic style strengths to the team this month -- from traditional to odd, she loves the quirky and play with diverse patterns to the clean simplicity of a CAS design. Her TUESDAY posts will be fun to watch out for! Debra would like you to know a little bit about herself:

 I am 60 years young and have been a paper-crafter for as long as I can remember. As a  teenager, I made my own stationary with paper and stickers. Pretty simple but a lifelong love of paper was born !! I have been rubber-stamping for over 30 years and love the new world of digis !! My day job is as an RN  with 30 years of ICU experience. Presently I work in an area called eHospital, based out of the Telemetry Department. My guy and I have been together for 17 years and we have a cute and crazy cat named Pixie. I have one grown son, Carter.   Paper-crafting is my BLISS, I especially love making and sending cards !! Lately I have been obsessed with ATCoins - they are SO much fun !! I am in several Snail Mail / Postcard Swap groups and love creating postcards to send to friends all over the world !! Look for Debra's creations every Tuesday in November.

Our Design Team is Growing! Meet our new memeber Tasha!

We are moving into our fall season on Vera Lane and are happy to announce our newest Design Team member, Tasha Nez.  Our Design Team guest and talent coordinator Stephanie Eaton was our scout on this lucky find!  Tasha has been a Vera Lane Studio fan within her busy school schedule.  Having guest hosted for us in the past with favorable reviews we are so excited she is joining us full time!  Here is a little bit about Tasha: 

My name is Tasha and I’m a mixed-media artist, amateur
photographer/graphic designer and gallery assistant for a non-profit
art organization. I’m from a small city in sunny New Mexico! I
recently graduated from college and received an Associate’s Degree in
Human Services focusing on Substance Abuse. Alongside having a passion
to help others I also have a passion for creating art! I like to
dabble in so many different forms of art from acrylic painting,
water coloring, book-making, photography, jewelry-making to
illustrating just to name a few.
I first started creating art almost six years ago by making artist
trading cards with sharpie markers as my only medium. Who knew that
those small cards would lead me on such a grand adventure! It is my
hope that I can inspire others to seek and discover creativity in
their everyday lives and make their worlds as colorful as can be.

I hope you will all join us in welcoming Tasha.

Introducing Flip Book; digital image storage solution

Digi stamp collecting can be addicting and fun. Finding your favorite images as they are tucked in file folders can make you forget what you have or where your favorite images are located. Sometimes file names do not indicate what is in the folder!  Printing them all out and creating a catalog can be one solution; but your binder can become bulky and you may not always have it with you.

So I’ve come up with a better solution. And I call this “Flip Book”.   Flip Book is a digital storage solution that parks on your tablet.  It is completely visual and interactive.  Not only can you arrange, catalog and store your images, you can retrieve them and copy into your document for printing.

Flip Book is a PDF file that is imported into an annotation app like GoodNotes. If you are familiar with digital planners, Flip Book operates on the same principles.

Our first release of our “Citrus” Flip Book will be in our Etsy shop Saturday, July 21.   You can see it here in our introduction video.  I know you will love Flip Book - it’s the future in stamping and image storage. Our introduction video will give you a better idea of Flip Book’s versatility and function.

ATCoins on Vera Lane

ATCoin, Round ATC, ATC Coin – no matter what you call it it is a 2.5” (6.35cm) cardstock-like circle used as a canvas for small works of art.  Still relatively new in the social media craft world, if you have made ATC cards, inchies, twinchies or moo cards it is much of the same.  A small art creation  for swapping, particularly mailed art.

If you Google ATC COIN – you may see that it is a global decentralized payment.  It is a digital money source used for instant transfer with value anywhere in the world – I can assure you, these craft art coins are not the same!  So please adjust your search terms – you’ll find many ideas and samples out there.

History

Miniature works of art are nothing new.  Small works of art date back to the 15^th century Asia.  IN 1875 a cigarette company distributed sport cards for collecting.  The Fluxes movement (experimental art of the 60’s and 70’s) advocated art including found art from everyday life rather than museums and galleries. 

ATC’s are rectangular playing cards that were started by Swiss artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann in 1997.  The self-made miniature works of art measure 2 ¹⁄₂ by 3 ¹⁄₂ inches (64 mm × 89 mm) like baseball trading cards.  Srirnemann made the cards for collaboration and the cards were traded at the end of the exhibition. This type of  performance allowed people of diverse backgrounds and unknown artists to participate and exchange their art.  The idea was taken by a Canadian Artist and presented at Alberta Collage Art and Design in Calgary, Alberta and a trading session took place at a local gallery. Today the concept of ATC’s appear all over the world. There are no shortage of trading groups and sessions. 

The ATCoin is a variation of the popular rectangular ATC cards.  The dimension is the same as an ATC width but the circular shape presents a diverse format to look at your images in a diverse way.

Vera Lane Studio ATCoin trades

Vera Lane Studio will begin ATCoin Swaps on June 15^th , 2018.   Announcement of our monthly theme will be posted in our FaceBook group the 15^th of each month.  You will find ATCoin guidelines in our file section as well as collectable ATCoin backs for our monthly swaps. 

A new Design Team Member Welcome!

We have known for quite some time but we are now ready to announce Sylvia-Meppen-Rentenaar has joined the Vera Lane Studio Design Team!  We are all excited Sylvia has moved to our lane!

If you follow our FB group you have seen Sylvia's clean crisp style and bold dynamic colors.  Sylvia has been included in our team chat and I can tell you that her energy and synergy is a great addition to our talented group of loyal ladies.

Sylvia would like to share a little about herself:
Hello everybody, Today I introduce myself in the Design Team of Vera Lane Studio. My name is Sylvia. I live in the Netherlands in a small village called Opperdoes. I am happily married to Gertjan. And I have 2 beautiful daughters of 16 and 8 years old. I like mixed media applications in my projects. Everything I apply is self-taught. I like to experiment and I often play with my materials that I use on my projects. I mainly use a lot of bright colors. They make me happy! I hope that I can bring you a lot of inspiration to get started with VLS yourself! My text in life is: "Be the artist you want to see in yourself."

Please help us welcome Sylvia!  I'm sure you will adore her art and look forward to her Friday posts!

VLS May Guest Designer; Fran Chalmers

With our May theme " Blessings" we bring you another guest designer.  Fran Chalmers resides in the UK and is no stranger to Vera Lane Studio. She has been playing on the block for quite some time and is one of our most active ATC swap members, trading her cards all over the world.  Inspired by what others create with Vera Lane Studio images Fran is taking on the challenge of guest designer for the month of May.

Fran is 60 years young and is married with two lovely daughters and a handsome cocker spaniel named Angus.
Angus is a subject of many of Fran's photography shoots, and if you catch her on Instagram  you will see what a fabulous photographer she is!
Fran says she has no formal art training but loves to be creative and feels the "buzz" when she zones into her crafting mode.  Enjoying mostly creating cards and ATC's Fran looks forward to mixing it up and creating other crafty projects.

You will see Fran's creations on Sundays.  We are looking forward to Fran's creations this month!

A shout out and thank you to Stase Collins for giving us a great month of humorous inspiration with her creations in her April guest spot.  Our design team member Angie Jones will our hostess for our monthly ATC swap with the theme of "blessings."

Please look for our monthly new releases and creations from our team and our guest Fran!

April Guest Designer: Stase Collins

Our Guest Designer for April has been dazzling us with her creative creations by mixing and matching Vera Lane Studio images to create a wonky nursery rhyme book.  We've asked Stase to share a little bit about herself:

I am a 70 something year old who lives in the UK. I have been crafting for approximately the last 12 years and enjoy many types of craft. Mixed media, upcycling, making albums and cards to name just a few.
My latest obsession is the quirky and whimsical digital stamps from Vera Lane Studios, which I enjoy playing and having fun with. It keeps the brain active!!

Here are just three pages from Stase's book.  Please join us this month so you can view more of Stase's creations.  We have an active ATC swap also taking place.  If you are not part of our FaceBook community and like working with digi stamps look us up!

March Guest Designer : Sylvia Meppen-Rentenaar

Please welcome Sylvia Meppen-Rentenaar to Vera Lane Designers!

We took notice of Slyvia's work and asked for her to be a guest designer.  She wowed us with frequent and colorful mixed-media works using Vera Lane Studio images in her personal style.  We want to bring you more of her creations  as Sylvia guests for us this month!

Sylvia's work is fun with a little sass. She loves to get inky and messy with her mixes of media.  Her organization skills allows her to stay in a focused direction to create a unified piece although she can get messy in the process!

Sylvia would like you to know a little bit about herself:

My name is Sylvia. I am 41 years old. I am married, and I have 2 beautiful daughters.

I live in a small village in the Netherlands.

I have been creative since childhood.

I also worked a long time on a day care for the mentally handicapped, where I c

ould use my creativity well.

Unfortunately, I have been disapproved on medical grounds.

I spend my time with my children and husband, the household and of course being creative.

For me, being creative is a therapy that I like to do and apply in my daily life.

Please stop by and check out the designer teams creations for March and Sylvia's weekly posts!

February Guest Designer: "Tasha" Nez

Vera Lane Studio welcomes Tasha Nez to guest design for the month of February.  Tasha has been a fan of Vera Lane Studio and likes the quirkiness of our characters. Her design strengths are creative use of color, composition, mixed-media  techniques, and of course, her imagination.

Tasha has shared her whimsical works on our FB fan site.  Here are two examples of her creativity using Vera Lane Studio images.

Tasha would like to share a little bit about herself:

I am a mixed media artist, student, and amateur photographer from sunny New Mexico. I am currently studying to receive
my Associate of Science for Human Services and have a passion to help others. My other passion, of course, is art and making
fun projects to share with others. I first started out making artist trading cards with sharpie markers as my only medium. It
wasn’t until I saw mixed media artists and their stunning work that I ventured out of my comfort zone. It is my hope that I
can inspire others to look beyond the obvious and make their worlds as colorful as they can be. 

Please look for Tasha this month on our FB page along with the creations from our wonderful design team.  You can find Tasha's art on  Instagram: @pacotacorox  .

Collage Sheets on Vera Lane

Today we released our 15 image value bundle "Circles and Stems".  These images download in both png and jpg files.  The possibilities are endless with these graphic images to incorporate into your art journals, planners and all paper craft projects. The resize and distort to give you hundreds of variations -- link together to create a header for stationery or note cards.  Use as backgrounds.  Add a monogram.

Next week we will debut our Arthur Avenue collections.  These images are bright and bold, quirky and wonky!  Our team is having a blast working with the images and we are sure you will too.  In addition to the launch we will now be offering limited editions of collage sheets.  These sheets have multiple images pre-colored. Cut and paste for an easy craft fix or enhance with a touch of colored pencil or markers to blend into your art journaling and collages.

We've decided to add a collage sheet for the circle and stem set to introduce you to our new collage elements section. There are 27 colored images in this PDF file. For our limited license fee you may download repeatedly for your personal use.

Please check our shop regularly for weekly updates and new image sets!