Oscraps

This month we are shining the Oscraps spotlight on Vicki Robinson Designs!  I cannot even begin to express how pleased I am to be hosting this designer spotlight.  I have always admired Vicki R. and, since we are namesakes and our birthdays are only a week apart, it just seems like so much kismet that we should work together as well.  Vicki R. is so very talented and creative and I love the sense of joy I feel from her designs.  Here are a few of my favorite products from Vicki R!

Let’s get to know Vicki a little better!

Have you always lived in California?

No. I was born in Washington, D.C. My Dad was in the Air Force, so we traveled quite a bit. I’ve lived in New York and San Antonio, Texas and spent almost seven years (all of junior high and high school) in Stuttgart Germany. When I stopped to think about this question, I realized that I’ve travelled through about half of the U.S. and most of Europe. My family returned to Texas after the Germany assignment in 1973 and I left home that year for California, where I have lived ever since.

Do you have other hobbies besides designing?

I took up golf when I met my husband, so that he didn’t have an excuse to be away from me!  We lived on a golf course for almost 20 years, and although I have now slacked off, I was an avid (and pretty good) golfer for a very long time.  I got interested in photography when I retired – that’s what led me to digital scrapbooking in the first place. Digital scrapbooking led to digital art journaling, which in turn led to my love affair with mixed media art.  The artistic side of me didn’t reveal itself until I was in my 50’s – I’m one of those that couldn’t draw even the most basic of stick figures and every face I tried ended up with a male anatomy part for a nose (lol!)!  My website is subtitled “An Unexpected Journey” because if you had told me twenty years ago, or ten or even five years ago that I would have a room in my house filled with paints and canvasses; and stamps; and stencils and gel matte medium; and gesso I would have thought you’d lost your mind – and then I would have asked you what “gesso” was! Many of my kit backgrounds and the textures of my elements and most of my Commercial Use products come from my own scanned art work. It gives me lots of joy to incorporate my art play into my digi work.

What’s your favorite thing to design?

As a digi gal, I LOVE Photoshop brushes! I did a search of my hard drive and found over 2500 ABR files!! So, it’s probably no surprise that I just love getting messy with my paints and making marks that can be turned into brushes! My neighbors are used to dropping by to find my dining room and kitchen floors covered with my drying art “adventures”! Then I get to take all those lovely bits and turn them into paint, clusters and “transfers” and incorporate them into my kits. Happy Vicki!

How do you come up with kit names and themes?

Whenever I hear a phrase or a song lyric or a quote that I like, I add it to a list I keep on my iPhone. I take pictures of all sorts of strange things (I’m always the one holding up a group of friends to capture moss on a rock or stain on concrete) and I have an album on my iPhone just for kit idea images.  Many times though, it’s my own experiences that form the base inspiration for a kit.  My “Time To Renew” kit is a perfect example of that. My personal life was undergoing some changes and I had decided to return to designing after retiring from it at the end of last year – hence “renewal”. During the few months I wasn’t designing, I immersed myself in art classes which totally sparked my creative mojo and one of my watercolor abstract florals inspired the color palette and some of the textures in that kit.

Tell us about the kit you are featuring this month “Express Yourself: Hope.”

Sometimes, words just reach out and grab me. Several of my friends were going through very difficult times and I was feeling a need to offer support. I realized I was repeating the word “hope” over and over in my personal art journals, so it made sense to me to create a digi product for others to use in expressing some of those same feelings. Here’s a little video I made that gives you an idea of what was on my mind when I created it. The video showcases some of the wonderful pages created by my Creative Team and several of our Cheery-O’s.

The collection includes each of the three Express Yourself: Hope kits. Click the image to see more detailed previews.

We hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know Vicki Robinson Designs a little bit better.

Here’s how you can connect with Vicki

• Shop Vicki’s designs HERE at Oscraps.
• Get inspired HERE in her Oscraps gallery and her monthly challenges in our Designer Challenge Forum
• You can find her on Instagram HERE
• You can find her on Facebook HERE.
• Check out her website HERE.
• Subscribe to her newsletter HERE.

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