Whew, we’re back to normal around here, if there is such a thing.  Lets resume the indepth interviews we started in December, so you can get to know the current Design Team!

Today’s featured Design Team Member is Jeni Calkins.  You got a quick glimpse of her on Day 9 of the Frenzy, and now we get to sit her down and pick her creative brain.

Tell us how you got started crafting.
For me, the need to create stuff is a compulsion that started when I was a little girl. As a child, I would take discarded things and make something new out of them. At that time I didn’t know that it was called altered arts.

Do you have an art or design background?
I studied studio art in High School and College, although I received my degrees in other area.

What inspires you?
Trash. I love making trash into more trash (I mean treasures), just to save it from the land fill.

What is your favorite die template?
My favorite dies are the flowers, I love the Sunflowers, the detail is amazing, and I also love the Flower Creations and the Flying Beauties, the uses are unlimited.

What is your favorite Preferred Product?
Prism cardstock –first thing I reach for each project.

Do you have a favorite technique?
I love to layer up die cuts to create flowers. That’s what’s so great about Spellbinders’ Die Templates is you get so many size choices with each set.

Do you make cards or scrapbooks or altered?
Altered because it goes back to my obsession with recycling and re-using things, but I have three of the cutest kids and I also love to make scrapbook pages for them.

Tell us about your family.
I’m married to a wonderful man who is very supportive and a great father to our three kids. I live in Arizona. I find the Sonoran desert to be a huge inspiration in my art work. I feel blessed to live in such a beautiful area.

When do you get time to craft?
I like to get up early and do my art before the kids get up, but I’ll fit it in anytime I can.

Do you craft alone or with a group?
I love to work in groups, but mostly just when playing around or learning/teaching. To get serious work done I get into a zone where I’m anti-social.

Where do you shop?
My fine art supplies I get on line. I shop at my local scrapbooking store for scrapbooking/stamping and garage sales and thrift stores for the unusual stuff.

How would you describe your style?
Textured.

What have you been working on this week?
I have some new Spellbinders’ Die Templates, your going to love these!

Besides paper, what other materials have you used?
Acrylic Paint, watercolors, polymer clay, metals, fused glass, fabric, silver clay, assemblage.

Where do you look for inspiration when you are about to start something new?
I’m a task oriented person so I like to have an assignment or project that needs to get done by a deadline.

What has been the most difficult thing for you to learn?
How to keep it all organized. I am typing this with my keyboard in my lap because I have run out of desk space. (Psst Jeni, I think we were separated at birth! LOL Beth)

What do you find most  enjoyable about crafting?
The act of making it. It turns the buzzing in my head down to a nice calm hum.

Do you ever teach classes?
I love to teach, I get so excited about all this and it is so much fun to pass that joy on to others.

What else do you like to do aside from artwork?
Play with my kids. We love to go boating, hiking, to the beach, the Water Park, or museums.

What kind of workspace do you have?
10 x10 room with shelves from floor to ceiling filled with drawers of stuff.

Regarding a favorite piece: Can you outline the typical process behind making something like this? How long do you think it took to finish that?

This card was very quick, about ½ hour. I was ask to make something using “green supplies” I make altered books and have lots of pages that I have removed from the books. I stacked up a bunch of pages then laid out all the flower creation dies on the magnets. I was able to cut all the pages need for the flowers in one pass. I stacked them, mist them with water and crumpled them up. The Copic airbrush system made quick work out of add the color.

Here are 2 more samples of Jeni’s art:

One more thing to add to Jeni’s resume, at last month’s Craft and Hobby Association Trade Show, she won an award for her jewelry design at the Amaco booth, with donations and jewelry creations going to woman’s charities in Southern California.  I ran over and took this picture of Jeni’s pieces.  Congratulations Jeni!

To see more of Jeni’s work, please visit her blog, Studio Jeni.

Lets go to sunny California to visit with Linda Duke today.

As a child, Linda always had a pencil and paper in her hands and she doodled whenever possible. Her father was a very talented artist and was her first teacher. “I would sit and watch him make beautiful creations of landscapes, objects around the house, or anything that caught his eye,” she says. “I would then try to duplicate what he created”.  In school, art was her favorite subject and she decided at a young age she wanted to study animation. Fourteen years ago, Linda attended a stamping party and has been stamping ever since. This medium now trumps all her other art interests. She is a several year member of Splitcoaststampers.com and feels that her stamping abilities have improved tremendously through the talented artists that share their work there.  In April 2007, Linda became part of the Splitcoaststampers Design team, a.k.a the Dirty Dozen. For six months, she truly loved being a part of this elite team. Currently, she is a Redevelopment Specialist in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley. She can’t wait to retire and concentrate on full-time paper crafting.

You can still win today’s die template, along with all the previous reveals, by visiting Linda Duke’s blog Linda’s Works of Heart and sending in your entry.