Congratulations...

firstly to each and every one of you who took the time to put together your entries for our search for 2 design team members. The design team had the hard task of voting to select our new members.

So without further ado...introducing Vita Thai and Sheree Forcier our 2 new design team members!

Vita Thai

Vita is a 35 year old SAHM to Amanda (9) & Riley (3). She has been married to her hubby Yung for more than 10 years. Vita migrated to Australia in 1996, after a 1 year long distance relationship with Yung, an Aussie who she met at a symposium in Japan. They currently reside in Dandenong North, VIC.

Vita started scrapbooking in 2003, soon after Riley was born, she was a paper scrapper for 3 years, before finally deciding to venture to digital. It was a browsing at 2Peas that started everything, she was looking for a Rhonna Farrer digi frame to make a banner for her blog. Her first ever digi layout was completed 2 days after, but the banner was not until 6 months later. :0)

Now Vita enjoys both paper and digital scrapbooking. She does most of her paper layouts at crops, and digital layouts at home. It is the conveniency of digital that she loves the most as she can scrap a layout within minutes of downloading the photos into her computer.

Vita says 'Everything is only a few clicks away, and it is much easier to share the layouts with friends & family. And for me, scrapping digitally also takes the pressure of creating a layout in paper. So whenever I work with paper, I can put more thoughts into it. Now, it doesn't matter anymore if it takes me 3 weeks to complete 1 paper layout. While prior to digi scrap, I would have felt really bad about it.

Finally, I would like to say that I am very honoured to be part of Sketches OZ design team. I hope I can bring a new perspective to both paper and digital scrappers, because I believe there are so many good things from both world we can incorporate into our layouts.'

Sheree Forcier

Sheree is 34 years old and has been married to hubby Paul for 6 years, although they have been together since high school 17 years ago! They have 2 very active little boys – Ayden (4 ½) and Riley (2 ½), and their gorgeous new baby girl Madison (3 months). They live on the Gold Coast having moved here from the Whitsundays towards the end of last year and love it!

Sheree has been scrapping since just after Ayden was born. Her Mum started her off with stamping and cardmaking, but then she discovered some scrapping magazines and thought she’d make a baby album for Ayden – once she started she was completely hooked! Sheree loves the fact that her kids will have family memories recorded to look back on in years to come.

Sheree has had her work published in Scrapbooking Memories, For Keeps and Scrapbook Creations – the most exciting thing was having one of her layouts on the cover of an issue of Scrapbooking Memories last year, she still can’t believe that happened!

Sheree has always scrapped 12 x 12 pages but has just started to try the 8 ½ x 11 format which she is quite enjoying. Sheree loves to use colour on her layouts and, not surprisingly, has become rather obsessed with pink lately. Her favourite products are anything Heidi Swapp so many of the gorgeous patterned papers out there at the moment. Sheree doesn't quite feel that her layouts are complete unless she has either handstitched or machine stitched on them and she always include journalling somewhere on the page. The majority of her layouts are about her children, and she is having so much fun creating girlie layouts now after only scrapping boys layouts for years!

Sheree often makes her own quick sketches starting a page and is really looking forward to working with the sketches here on Sketches Oz!

So please join us in giving Sheree and Vita a warm welcome to Sketches Oz and don't forget to check out the prize for this fortnights sketch!