Interview by Amy Kingsford
GIS Username: fcivira
Joined: September 2009
Most Active In: Scrapbooking with Fabric forums
Alum of: Scrapbooking w/ Fabric with Tania Willis, Life Captured Through the Lens by Katrina Kennedy, and The Street Where You Live with Jane Howden.
Personal Blog: Scrapfriends & Family (NOTE: Francis’ blog is published in Spanish, but you can paste the address here for translation)
Francis Civira is a happy wife to Henry who is her “soul mate and her sunshine everyday.” She’s a mom to children Paula (4 ) who is a crafty girl and loves all of mom’s supplies and is an artist all her own and Gabriel (1) who is a very happy baby and a sweet part of Francis’ day.
Francis lives in Caracas, Venezuela, a tropical country, where they only have two kinds of months: the sunny ones and the rainy ones! Francis is an information engineer and really loves her job, because she has the opportunity to travel, meet with different people, enrich her “life’s vision” and of course buy scrapbook goodies! In Caracas they have just have one scrapbook shop, ‘Scrap It!’. This store was how Francis came to learn of scrapbooking and eventually hooked on it!
We are so happy that Francis discovered scrapbooking and eventually came to find us here at Get It Scrapped! I have had the privilege of taking a couple of classes with Francis. I have always been fascinated with her attention to color and detail and her desire to always learn more! So as you can imagine I was very delighted to interview her for this month’s Member Spotlight!
When I asked Francis a few questions about her scrapbooking and her creative process here is what she shared:
I started scrapbooking at the end of the year 2005. It wasn’t long before I was hooked because when I was young I had organized my photos, memorabilia, and journaling and added details to embellish my memories. I was always a fan and lover all papers and cardstock, crayons, stamps, colors, and cute details for my school supplies. Today I think that scrapbook always was seeking me!
Most of my layouts are of or about my family. I really have the goal to create layouts that tell my daily routine and histories about me.
This year I scrapbook mostly on the weekends. For now I usually set all my supplies at the dining table, because I do not have a scrapbook room yet. In the next month, though, we are moving into a new apartment and I will have my own scrap room!
I am a traditional scrapbooker, because I love textures in my layouts and because digital scrapbooking has not yet caught my eye! In the short amount of time I have to scrapbook my memories, sketches help me to be more productive. I am somewhat of a “scrapbooker in progress” because I feel that I am still transforming my hobby into a passion! And I absolutely love to try new techniques all the time!
I always have alphabets and numbers for titles as well as flowers, rub-ons, ribbon, and buttons in all colors, handmade journaling tags, and fabrics on hand!
My wish list consists of (1) learning new techniques and trends about scrapbooking here at Get It Scrapped. GIS is such a talented community and It offers a great opportunity for scrapbookers like me, with limited resources to train locally; (2) a Digital SLR Camera, in order to improve my photography techniques; and (3) more dies for my Sizzix big shot machine!
I’d like to try sewing machine techniques in my artwork. Recently my husband gave me a sewing machine as a gift, but I have not tried to use it in my layouts yet!
I get most of my inspiration from blogs by amazing scrapbookers, my favorites are:
My favorite class at GIS was Scrapbooking with Fabric, with Tania Willis, because Tania surprised me a lot in each lesson. In this class she used resources accessible to me. Overall it was a really cool experience!
“Celebracion de Amor” (Celebration of Love) is my favorite layout because I think it shows our happy life together at the beach…I really enjoyed creating the squares with the thread around them!
Thanks for sharing Frances! I love learning about all of our friends all over the world…as I’m sure you all do as well!
