I haz a sad and a glad...

Happy September and back-to-school to you all :) I have to admit that I'm a bit of a happy momma due to my kids migrating back to their school this week as I got a little overloaded with the "Mom, I'm bored" syndrome that seemed to plaque my offspring ;) Enough about me and my giddiness though...you are all probably wondering about the title of this post right?

Well, I haz a big, giant sad because our dear Jenny Peterson has handed in her Secret Agent badge as of the end of August do to life being hectic but she is well aware and threatened with in an inch of her life that when her life slows down a bit that she is to re-join us here....or else. I don't know what the "else" is just yet as I'm figuring it out as I go but I made sure that I said it to her in my most fierce typing that I know ;) 

I know that you guys will be missing our angelic Jenny to so don't forget to visit her over on her blog :D Bye Jenny, we will miss you!!!!

Now, I know that you are wondering why I haz a glad :) Because sweet Jenny abandoned us, I looked to our faithful challenge participants for our newest Special Agent! Please help me in welcoming an iSpy All Star Leanne Whitby!

 Secret Agent Leanne reporting in from “Down Under” – Australia! I am really honoured and excited to be part of the fabulous design team at ISSC.  I love the “kick start” that a sketch can give to your card making and have loved playing along with ISSC since it began.  So naturally when Kim asked me to join the team I just jumped at the opportunity!

I have been a scrapbooker and card maker for over 15 years although card making has become my biggest obsession of late. I have been married to my wonderfully supportive husband for over 25 years and am a mother to my gorgeous 19 year old girl. Both are the biggest inspiration for my scrapbooking and supporters of my card making. I really like incorporating handmade flowers and embellishments onto my cards and love adding those special little finishing touches like hand stitching, buttons or vintage lace/seam binding and have a true shabby chic style with most of my cards and layouts.  If I am not edge distressing and inking it’s just not right.  I am lucky enough to have been working in retail scrapbooking stores as a class teacher, designer and customer service representative since 2002 both in Australia and the US. 

I am so excited to be part of the ISSC design team and look forward to sharing my creations with you and seeing your takes on the weekly sketches. 

Special Agent Leanne Whitby's blog: A Little Bit Shabby

Leanne's style is shabby, elegant, detail oriented and she just plain oozes talent! We are thrilled that she has accepted her mission and that she will be joining us for the ISSC32 challenge this Friday as her very first sketch as a Special Agent! Please join us then to see her in action!

Goodbye's and Hello's

Hi everyone! Today we get to play both the Bon Voyage Party and Welcoming Committee! Sadly, Kim O'Connell (one of our wonderful Special Agents) is moving on to another assignment and July marked the end of her term with us :(

Kim will be missed dearly for her amazing creations and because she kept us on our toes and in stitches most of the time behind the scenes! We love her dearly and we wish her well in her future endeavours! Kim, we are keeping a spot on the team warm for you should you decide to come back to us!

*sigh* Since Kim left us, we have some mighty big shoes to fill so we are filling them with one of out regular challenge participants! A huge welcome to Special Agent Arielle Gordon!

I'm Arielle Gordon, wife to Jeff and mom to Alex (4) and Maisie Grace (2 1/2)... we live in my hometown in southeast AL, and I work full time and craft full time (which translates to little sleep!). I started stamping and blogging five years ago, and it's such a great artistic release! I love cooking, playing with the kids, and taking tons of pictures. I look forward to the day (coming soon, I hope!) that I can be a SAHM & just enjoy every day with my family more! I run 2 challenge blogs, colourQ and RetroSketches, and also have fun as a DT member for a few others and "hybrid decorator" for a digital scrap company. It seems the more I have to do, the more I get done - so I stay busy and happy!

Arielle will be making her debut with us on August 3rd for the ISSC27! Please join us then to help us welcome her to the team :D

Ch-ch-ch-changes...and Winners for ISSC11!

 

Hi everyone! You will notice that today's winners announcement is being made on a Sunday rather than the traditional Thursday...this leads me to talk about some changes that I'm making to the challenge that I hope you all will like.

Normally the iSpy Sketches Challenge runs from Friday to noon on Wednesday. I have been noticing that it just isn't enough time for people to always get their cards in on time due to our slightly odd cut off time, so here goes change number 1 :D Starting next week for our ISSC13 post you will have an entire week to complete the challenge to make the cut off. So that means when our challenge is posted on Friday, April 27th you will have until noon on Friday, May 4th to enter the challenge! Does that sound good to you all? :D

Secondly, due to the change of the challenge cut off time an my lack of getting to post the winners in a timely manner (bad, bad, bad me), we will now announce the winners on a Sunday! This will allow me enough time from the cut off to both comment on all of your creations and pick a winner :D

Speaking of winners, let's get to the winner's announcement shall we? Here we go! This week's Top 2 Winners are:

Savannah O'Gwinn

Savannah has such an amazing knack for combining oodles of designer paper patterns to create such eye catching cards! Have you seen all of the paper piecing that she does? Talk about a lot of work that pays off so wonderfully in the end! 

Nancy Leppek

I adore the monochromatic theme of Nancy's card and I especially like here main image panel with the "floating" blossoms. They remind me so much of around here this time of year when the wind blows through the cherry blossom trees! Beautiful card Nancy!

Congratulations ladies! Please feel free to grab your badge by right clicking and saving them to your computer :)  If you would like to play along with the ISSC12 challenge then please pop on by this post as this is another fun sketch!

Thank you to all of you who played along with us this week and for those of you who are still playing along on your own :) I can't wait to see what loveliness that awaits for us at the end of this challenge!