Sunday Spotlight – Navaja77
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
I’m super excited to bring you today’s Sunday Spotlight. Today we are getting to know one of our scrappers here at ScrapMatters, Navaja77.
1. Hi, I love your screen name, how did you come about choosing it? Whats your real name?
My screen name, Navaja77, is based on 2 things. First, I’m Navajo and part of a Native American tribe located in Arizona. I used Navaja so it sounded more feminine. 77 is my birth year. My real name is Ophelia.
2. What is your main job/career?
I work full-time as a civil engineer for the U.S. Forest Service. I’ve been with them for the past 10 years.
3. Are you married/children/pets?
I’m married to my best friend, Jason, for almost 8 years. We’ve been together over 12 years since we first met in college. We have two kids – our 5 year old son, Memphis and 7 month old daughter, Olesya. We also have an 8 year old cat – Callie.
4. Where is home for you?
I live in Prescott Valley, AZ. I also considered Kaibeto, AZ as my hometown on the Navajo Nation.
5. What are your 3 favorite foods?
I love frybread, roast mutton and thai beef jerky. Roast mutton and frybread is traditional Navajo food.
6. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
New York Blueberry Cheesecake
7. Snacks…Salty or Sweet?
Depends on my mood…I can snack on red vines or goldfish crackers
8. Beverage of choice?
Definitely Starbucks Black Iced Tea – I brew it myself at home or grab one from Starbucks.
9. What’s your least favorite food?
I cannot stand lima beans! Yuck!
10. PC or Mac? What program do you use?
I don’t use either. I have Ubuntu 8.04 (Gutsy Gibbon) installed on my Dell laptop. It’s a Linux operating system. I use GIMP for my digi scrapping.
11. How long have you been digi-scrapping? How did you get started?
I started dappling in digi scrapping back in February 2009. I really got into it a year ago. I came across it while looking for scrap sketches online. I had started paper scrapping first but didn’t really get into it. Once I found digi scrapping, I left paper scrapping behind and never looked back.
12. What was your 1st LO about? My first LO was about my son and his cousins (my niece & nephew) as we were waiting for my sister to get out of a store. We were hanging out in her truck. I took pictures of the kids to past the time.
13. Do you have any other hobbies besides digi-scrapping (are there other hobbies)?
I try to read as often as I can. I love reading about the Tudor/Elizabethan era. My favorite author is Phillippa Gregory. I also have started sewing again. I’m making little stuff such as baby legs for my daughter, curtains, pillows and simple blankets.
Composition and title are the most difficult part. Once I have my photos and papers arranged, then the easier part is layering, clustering and journaling. I almost always journal.
15. What would you like to learn to do (or do better) not related to scrapbooking?
I would love to learn how to play the guitar or the piano. Of everything I’ve learned, I never had much musical exposure throughout my life.
16. What are your favorite movies/TV shows?
Bones, The Ghost Whisperer and Law and Order (both SVU and the original series) are my favorite TV shows. My favorite movie is The Orphanage. I’m a horror movie fan. Of all the horror/suspense movies I’ve seen, The Orphanage still amazes me because of how well the movie was made. They did a remake of the film here in the US but I recommend watching the original which is a foreign film.
17. Describe your “scrapping” environment. Music? TV in the background? Drinks? Snacks? Where?
I scrap on my laptop in the living room. The TV is usually on. I may be watching it but most of the time, it’s my brother or my son watching TV. I usually have my tea (iced or hot) and maybe a snack but not all the time. I’ll almost always have my daughter in my lap or playing right beside me. My layouts are usually sitting unfinished for a couple of hours before I finally complete it after the kids are asleep.
18. If you only had 2 elements to use on a LO, what would they be?
String and ricrac/ribbon.
19. Would you like to share a little known fact about you…?
A little known fact that most people don’t know about me is that I can talk ALOT! I tend to be quiet and observant but given the right moment or place, I can say a lot. My mom says over the years, I’ve learned to talk too much! It’s a cultural thing in my tribe to listen, be observant, talk when its your turn, be polite, don’t interrupt. Most conversations are not “quick” and have frequent long pauses. You have to allow time for the other to finish what they have to say. The longer I am married to my husband (who by the way is loud and talkative himself) and living off the reservation, I find myself becoming more talkative and social.
20. Can you tell us a little about your scrappin’ style?
I like to layer and cluster. I tend to fill up my layouts and fill in all the spaces. Its a stretch for me to do a white space layout. I like to focus on the pics. My pics tend to be medium-large. Rarely do I have a layout with small pics. I’ve been told I scrap paper style even though I never really got into paper scrapping.
21. Favorite LOs that you have done? I have two favorite LOs right now. The first is of my daughter. It’s a simple layout that borders on white space (hard to do for me). The main focus is the photo I took of her. It is one of my favorite photos of her.
The 2nd one is of my son. This one was difficult to scrap because it was a memory that makes me sad (even now). My son has his tooth extracted earlier this year. First, I couldn’t find a kit to match. When Stolen Moments and Plum Dumpling Designs came out with their collab Black & Blue, I grabbed it. It went perfectly with the pictures. It was still hard to scrap but I wanted to keep a memory of this experience.
22. How long have you been a member at ScrapMatters?
I joined Nov 2009 so about 11 months now.
23. Do you have any suggestions for kits you’d like to see in the SM store?
I’d love to see someone make a martial arts kit. I have pics of my son in his jujitsu class but it hasn’t been scrapped because it just doesn’t go well with anything in my digi stash.
24. What is your favorite part of being a part of ScrapMatters?
I love all the challenges! They are interesting and keep my scrapping mojo going. The group is great! I love browsing the gallery because I get so much inspiration or ideas. I learned a lot every day based on what I read or see in the forum, the blog and the gallery.
25. What is your favorite childhood memory and have you scrapped it?
My favorite childhood memory is all the fun places my parents took us such as trekking down the canyon near my dad’s childhood home, rounding up cattle, feeding the ranch animals, wood-cutting, etc. It was hard work but now when I look back, it was definitely rewarding to experience all that. I try to do as much of that for my kids so at least they can experience it, say they did it and had fun. I haven’t scrapped any because at first I didn’t have any pictures of those moments in my possession. Recently, I got a few from my mom that I have to scan in. When I go back to visit my parents, I’ll make some time to dig through her shoe boxes of photos to find more. The only recent one I have scrapped is of a road trip with my dad when I was a toddler.
Thanks Ophelia for letting us get to know you a little better. Be sure to check out Ophelia’s entire gallery here.
-Terin (Scrappyfrog)
Hello gals!! Wendy here with the last Tuesday Template of October! November is knockin’ on the door, which seems just unreal!! As always, there is no specific theme or set of rules for today’s template, just have fun!! Use the template as is, or switch it up…it’s all up to you!
