Meet The Creative Team

Over the next several months, you will be seeing some crafty goodness from the new super talented creative team! Before all those great projects started showing up, we thought it would be fun to get to know the ladies of Felicity Jane a little better.

First up is Suse Fish:

Q | What is your least favorite household chore?

A | I’m not great at any of them, truth be told (housework takes up valuable scrapbooking time, doesn’t it?) but I always put off doing the ironing until Mr Fish is down to his very last shirt.

Q |What's your guilty pleasure?
A | I shouldn’t like it when Mr Fish goes out to an evening meeting, but there is something rather lovely about putting on your jammies and climbing into bed with a fun show like Will and Grace or New Girl and a stack of pancakes!

Q | Favorite scrapbook/planner/crafty embellishment/product?
A | I’ve always thought flair badges are just the most delightful things ever. I think because when I started this thing I was on a tight budget, I could never afford them. Same goes for enamel dots - they don’t hang around for five minutes when I get any in a kit!

Q | What do you Netflix/binge watch?
A | Oh, this will be the most sad answer ever, ha ha! Now bear in mind that I’m a Brit who is well into her forties… I’d love to mention something cool, but the truth is, we don’t even have a TV, so my programme of choice to watch via the internet is - *whispers* - 'Escape to the Country'. Ha!

Q | What about you might surprise us?
A | Ooh, which secret to share? No seriously, I’m pretty much an open book. But one thing folks who don’t know me well might find a little surprising is quite how highly introverted I am - any sort of social gathering can be tough for me.

Q | What motivates you to create?
A | Hmm… several things, I think. Colour is one of them: I’ll spot colour combinations in magazines or in shop windows and just feel this pull to go and make something in those shades. Another is the thrilling sense of ‘flow' I experience during a making session - even if it’s just popping a few stickers in my Bible or planner, there’s a real joy there, isn’t there?

Q | When/why did you start memory keeping?
A | It was a few years ago when I was struggling with a shopping problem - I just couldn’t stop buying pretty things. I decided to start making a smash book of pictures of all the things I wanted to buy as a way of trying to overcome the addiction and it absolutely worked! Before I knew it, the kick I was getting from buying pretty things had been replaced by the thrill of cutting and sticking. Talk about good therapy!

Q | What project best shows off your style?

Next up is Marybeth Hancher:

Q | What is your least favorite household chore?

A | Laundry.  Hands down, it's my absolute least favorite chore.  But the thing is, it's not the actual washing part that is annoying to me- it's folding them and putting them away that I tend to avoid at all costs.  I'm not even sure why, but my husband teases me about it because at any given time there are typically more clothes in the dryer than there are in our drawers.

Q | What’s your guilty pleasure
A | There's this wonderful little thing called Cookie Butter that I admittedly will eat by the spoonful when I have it on hand.  I generally eat very "clean" and healthy... but give me a jar of Cookie Butter from Trader Joe's and you'll see a whole other side of me!  My other guilty pleasure is that I've been known to dance around when I'm alone to Daft Punk on more occasions than I'd care to admit.  Yeah, I know.  ;)

Q | Favorite scrapbook/planner/crafty embellishment/product?
A | I like my projects to be textured and give this "tactile experience" when you look through them (if that makes sense!!), so I love using all the bits and pieces in ephemera packs and paper clip things like that in place so they can be moved around when anyone looks through my albums/layouts... but there are also puffy stickers and flair buttons and tags and doilies and... Too many?

Q | What do you Netflix/binge watch?
A | Oh my goodness, I can't tell you how many times my husband and I have watched and rewatched The Office.  It's kind of our thing!  No matter how many times we've seen it, it's still the one show that makes me laugh and cry and feel all the feels each and every time.  So that's what I binge watch the most!  But there's also shows like Parenthood that have kept me up till the wee hours of the morning because I just had to watch "one more episode" for hours on end.  ;)

Q | What about you might surprise us?
A | I'm not sure I have any more surprises up my sleeve because I'm a pretty open book online... but anyone that's new to my little corner of the internet might be surprised to learn that I'm generally a homebody, and although I'm friendly and do my best to make conversation, I simply very introverted and don't like being in public and definitely not put on the spot!  Another fact about me is that I've always had severe cat allergies, but a few years ago when a stray scrawny unhealthy cat came to my door, I couldn't resist rescuing her and giving her a good home where she could be well taken care of.  Now I have 6 happy, healthy cats, and I am completely immune to their allergens.  :)  Oh, and last fact- I can't swim.

Q | What motivates you to create?
A | Life.  That probably sounds like such a generic and broad answer, but I know of no greater motivation that just that.  I love storytelling through photos and memory-keeping, and I've been given this wonderful gift of creativity, so I feel very  led to be my family's documenter.  I think it's important to record not just our good times but the low points, too.  I recently lost one of my sweet kitties, and one of my coping mechanisms that helped the healing process begin was getting my feelings of absolute hurt and devastation out on paper.  Now, I look back at those pages and see more beauty there than when I initially created them.  They show a tremendous deal of transparency and vulnerability.  Life isn't always sunshine & rainbows, and when I share my stories I always hope that whoever hears it or sees it will be able to relate on one level or another.  Sometimes I think we just need to know other people feel what we feel and have someone share that realness of their life with us.  But I think the opposite is equally as important- with all the hurts in this world, it's nice to also see someone else's joy and feel ok to share ours.  I love memory-keeping because it allows me to creatively express how I feel about life.  It's messy and beautiful and all around a tremendous gift that's not to be taken for granted.  So I suppose my biggest motivator is definitely knowing I can document my everyday unfiltered and authentic, and maybe just maybe I'll be able to encourage someone else to do the same.  :)

Q | When/Why did you start memory keeping?
A | I really started memory-keeping in February of 2012 when my husband left for his final deployment with the U.S. Navy.  Our daughter was only a few days shy of turning one, and I knew he would be missing out on not just her first birthday but many other milestones as well.  So I made the commitment to take one photo every day and write a little something about what we did that day- that way, when he came home he'd have one big book to look through that could help him bridge the gap.  There was nothing fancy about that book.  No pretty papers, no embellishments- in fact, I'm certain anyone would look at the book and think it's ugly as sin.  haha!  But it's the photos and meaning behind it that makes it one of the most loved albums on our bookshelf.  After doing that for 280 days straight, there was no turning back.  Memory-keeping was now part of me.

Q | What project best shows off your memory keeping style?

Come back tomorrow to meet two more ladies from the team!