Spotlight on Giselle

We have a fantastic Design Team and I hope that each of them will do an introduction about themselves. This week our newest member, Giselle Homer, tells us a bit about herself

I live in the South West overlooking the river Severn, with my long suffering husband Jim who has generously let me take over a whole room, complete with a 9ft purpose built scrapping desk. I suppose he thought it'd keep all the stash in one place.

We run our own business and have lived here for 10 years. Before then we were in Madrid for 5 years and I can still speak Spanish only now with lots of mistakes!

We have 2 daughters - one is a teacher and the mum of my two gorgeous grandsons. The other is a professional photographer - that's lucky for a scrapper! When I'm not scrapping you'll find me with my nose in a book or watching movies. I occasionally do a bit of housework but only when I really have to.I started scrapbooking about 5 years ago having seen it in the huge craft stores whilst on holiday in America. As my 1st grandson had recently been born I knew instantly that this would be the best way to document his life and the rest, as they say, is history! I now have 2 little grandsons and to date I have completed nearly eight 12 x 12 albums featuring everything from their first baths to losing a front tooth.

I studied graphics at college a long time ago but still stick to the design rules I learnt there - balance, straight lines and cohesion. My style is very clean and simple, though I have been known to tear and ink a piece of cardstock now and again! I've taught myself the basics of Photoshop, enjoy retouching my pix and using b/w photos in my layouts. I am huge fan of iMacs and love experimenting with typography. There are over 1,000 typefaces on my iMac though I tend to stick to a trusted dozen as most of them are illegible!I'm fortunate to have been published in all the UK scrapbooking magazines at one time or another, was one of the winners of the first Best of British Scrapbooking competition and more recently I was chosen to be on the American Crafts Design Team which is a huge thrill. I teach layout classes at my local crop and have taught at weekend events as well.I'm looking forward to doing lots of layouts for Jilly Beans and to being part of their Design Team :)Giselle (aka Queen of Straight Lines - as named by my fellow croppers!!)This is one of my favourite LOs: