Designer Day: Come Meet Janine Koczwara

Welcome back to Designer Days! Today we have a very special lady to introduce you to. Janine is a mega-talented, absolutely wonderful designer who has been on our team for a few years now. We cannot wait for you to get to know her better!

Hi. I am Janine Koczwara and I have been scrapbooking for almost 8 years now! It is hard to imagine what life was like before scrapbooking! I have to confess it is a juggle at times with 5 kids, but it is just so refreshing to grab a couple of hours (ok, a bit more than a couple of hours, but I am not admitting to that!) of time to scrapbook a page. My husband of 15 years, has always been supportive of my "habit!" Thank goodness he was the one that wanted me to get a hobby, he just didn't bargain on it becoming an obsession.

This is the most recent photo I have of all the kids together! It is quite a feat to get them to all look at the camera and smile! Obviously I failed at that in this picture! My eldest is almost 13 (oh such a fun, insert challenging, age!) down to a 16 month old. They provide for a busy, fun and sometimes insane household, but I could never say it is dull. I was one of 2 children and always wished I had another brother or sister, so I was determined to have more children than 2, but I honestly never saw myself having 5!!

I live in the delightful city of Adelaide, South Australia! It is one of the smaller cities in Australia, but I love it here. Adelaide is known as the city of churches, and has the River Torrens running through the centre.

My home is situated in a gorgeous area of the Adelaide suburbs. There are so many parks and walking trails and trees everywhere! It is really beautiful, and there was a time when I would get up at the crack of dawn and walk an hour along these paths, but sadly that is not always feasible anymore, and I miss those early morning walks.

I have lived most of my life in South Australia, and have travelled to most regions within my own state. South Australia is known for it's wonderful wine regions, most notable of these are the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Penola areas. The image below is of a boutique winery in the Barossa. When visiting the region there are lots of pockets of green amidst the dryness of summer.

South Australia is such a contrasting state, but it is the driest state in the driest continent of the world! A weird fact I remember learning from my school days. With 5 children our family holidays are camping oriented with a lot of 4wd adventure’s! Here are some pics of the rugged beauty of South Australia.

This is a part of the Gawler Ranges. The red in these rocks is stunning.

These pics are from our trip to Pt Lincoln National Park. We have had some amazing camping holidays, and yes those dunes are fabulous for a bit of 4wd-ing!!

My family is always featured on my pages, predominantly my daughter nowadays, as I love to create more feminine pages. This extends now to my boy pages as well, and I often include a floral cluster on their pages as well! My motto being that the males of the species can appreciate the beauty of nature and flowers are part of nature’s beauty!! My style is definitely layered and feminine. I love to build a page, grabbing whatever I have around me and just seeing if it will work. I often say I am an opportunistic scrapper and am actually shocking at really looking through my stash, preferring to grab whatever is closest at hand to make my LO's work.

This LO was created for CHA and is a great example of my detailed layers, fussy cutting and feminine style. I was told by a fellow scrapper once that the difference between a good page and a great page is in the details, so I always like to pay attention to the small details. For example in this LO, the quote is cut from paper, but I have framed the scallop edge with brown to help lift it off the background and then around the actual quote I have followed the border inside the scallop and stuck down a lot of sequins, then sewn through them. Each of these steps is a little fiddly, but can make a huge difference to the overall impact of the layout.

Products Used:

542352 Flocked Rubons Melody
930042 Vintage Trinkets Hearts
548537 Marri Collection Madeline (flowers)
549053 Sugar Blooms Sparkling (flowers)
545017 Clear Stamps
544263 SIIC Swirls
842420 Madeline Collection -Parkway
842482 Madeline Collection - Ste Marie
842406 Madeline Collection - Rosalee
842383 Madeline Collection - Beautima
842024 Moulin Rouge Collection - Folies Bergere
Laces
Older Products
536152 Monarch Flower Centres
542191 Felt Gate

I created this LO for the Summer CHA last year, and again you can see the little extras I have included, like the machine stitching around the border to add interest and the hand stitching around the circles to help give each one greater definition on the page. I also hand twisted beading (candy gems) for the page to add a bit of sparkle and texture.

Products Used

841263 Raspberry Tea Papers – Icy Sweet
841249 Raspberry Tea Papers – Peach Cobbler
841270 Raspberry Tea Papers – Summer Break
841478 Flights of Fancy – Miss Pretty
841430 Strawberry Kisses Paper
538644 Fairytale Roses
539313 Belle Artes
539733 Flights Of Fancy Flowers
534998 Lace
534950 Lace

I hope you have enjoyed getting to know more about me, where I live and my approach to scrapbooking. ~ Janine

You may also check out more of Janine's work on her blog!

10 Comments

Stunning...the LO's and Australia!

Posted by: Martha Richardson | Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 09:01 AM

Your work is beautiful! And I love seeing pics of Australia. That's tops on my "bucket list" of things to do in my life. My fear is that I'd go for a visit - and never leave! Thanks for sharing!

Posted by: Amy Patterson | Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 09:33 AM