Sunday Spotlight – Tanyariley!
This week I got to interview CT member Tanya Riley! She is so much fun! Check it out!
1. Your screen name? Your real name? tanyariley Tanya Riley I know that’s so original, but I like my name.
2. What is your main job/career? My main job is being a student right now. My goal is to be a counselor for families and children when I’m done.
3. Are you married/children/pets? I’m divorced but my ex is still one of my best friends. We have one daughter, Madison, she’s 9 going on 19. She has pretty severe ADHD and she’s been going through testing for Asperger’s Syndrome, but that isn’t definitive. We have too many pets, but my daughter finds them soothing and wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up so I tolerate it. We have 1 dog, Daisy. She’s a black lab that sleeps a lot and causes trouble when she’s not sleeping. Then we have 3 cats; Zoe, the fuzz ball with a girl name; Jake, the rescue with a funny personality; and Holly, the super sweet girl of the bunch that we love to pieces.
4. Where is home for you? Boise, Idaho by choice. My ex-husband had family here so we moved here when I was pregnant. I moved away after we separated to be closer to my own family, but I ended up coming back here. I missed the small town feeling that had all the amenities of a city. It’s a great place to live.
5. What are your 3 favorite foods? Goodness, what isn’t my favorite foods? I’d have to say that I love the empanadas at Tango’s in town, I delight in bbq pork vermicelli at the Vietnamese Deli, and there is nothing like a good juicy burger with the works.
6. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? That’s easy, Coffee Heath Crunch from Ben & Jerry’s
7. Snacks…Salty or Sweet? Can we mix them?
8. Beverage of choice? Water. I drink water from a Nalgene bottle 98% of the time but I enjoy raspberry lemonade Crystal Light from time to time.
9. What’s your least favorite food? Lima Beans. They are evil.
10. PC or Mac? What program do you use? I use a PC laptop right now. I have owned both Mac and PC and value aspects of each. I use Lightroom 3 to edit and organize my photos, Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create pages and enhance photos, and Illustrator CS5 to create drawings or tweak things.
11. How long have you been digi-scrapping? How did you get started? I have been digi scrapping since late 2003. For months I went to the library and checked out 10 books at a time so I could understand all the tools in the programs I was using. I came across a scrapbook website that is popular still, and felt like I had found the key. That’s when I met my friend LeeAndra. She ended up coming to visit my daughter and I in Washington for 2 weeks and we had a blast. I took a long hiatus from digi-scrapping when my life got really busy with my daughter’s needs and work. Last year (2010) LeeAndra urged me to come back into it. I started with products I purchased here at ScrapMatters and some freebies. I studied the techniques being used and what I liked. Then I went from there. LeeAndra really wanted me to compete in the Queen of Scrap contest and get me completely sucked back in, so I did. That went better than my wildest dreams.
12. What was your 1st LO about? My very first layouts were mostly default settings in Photoshop 7. A lot of them weren’t about anything, just learning techniques. Feathered borders, names, no journaling, poor photo editing. It was the beginning of learning how to use the program. I don’t have any of those very very first experiments but I do have one that I did in 2004 just a few months later. It’s equally bad.
I remade it during the DSD 2010 celebration for a challenge
13. Do you have any other hobbies besides digi-scrapping (are there other hobbies)? I have been an avid photographer most of my life. I still love to take photos with my Canon XSi DSLR and often find it the source of inspiration for layouts, even when I don’t use the pictures I take. I also read, a lot. I like to bake, but my new lifestyle changes have put baking to the side for awhile. I can’t wait for a holiday or reason to bake something for someone. After I’ve finished my cycle of allergy shots I hope to make gardening a hobby.
14. What is the most challenging part of scrapbooking for you? I think most often the challenge for me is coming up with the theme or idea of my layouts. I’ll work on my layouts for quite awhile before I even realize what the title will be and what it will be about. I don’t scrap every layout with a story in mind before I begin. Since a lot of my photos are not candid shots of life happening, it can be really challenging to come up with unique ideas and stories for each one. I routinely do a photo shoot of my daughter every other month. Sometimes I have a purpose for that, other times we just play dress up and go with that. Most of my candid photos are taken with my cell phone. I have a point and shoot that I have been trying to keep with me. I’ve never really scrapbooked to memory keep. For me it’s just another expression of art that I connect with. I don’t always feel I have a need to have a story for something, but I do wish I had a bit more direction at times.
15. What would you like to learn to do (or do better) not related to scrapbooking? My goal in life is balance. I have only just begun to understand an actualize this concept and put it to work in my life. Balance between everything. I find myself learning new things all the time about keeping balance in my life. I would love to continue to learn new ways or have new insight to achieve balance.
16. What are your favorite movies/TV shows? True Blood, Big Love, Angel, Bones, Dollhouse, Dr. Who (the newer series from the 2000s), Glee, Parenthood, Lie to Me, Good Eats, BBC Robin Hood, Legend of the Seeker, and as far as movies go I have no favorites I like a lot.
17. Describe your “scrapping” environment. Music? TV in the background? Drinks? Snacks? Where? I have to say that I love having a laptop now. I can be wherever I want to be to scrap or study. Right now I’m in my bed with a laptop table, but I have a desk in my office I can use with a 2nd monitor to plug into. I usually play Pandora or have a show on Netflix going while I scrap.
18. If you only had 2 elements to use on a LO, what would they be? Paper flowers (3d not flat) and paint splatter brushes.
19. Would you like to share a little known fact about you…? I don’t know if I have any little known anything. I’m very open about my life. I suppose the only thing that a lot of people don’t know about me anymore , I used to teach Lindy Hop and run a dance team.
20. Can you tell us a little about your scrappin’ style? Eclectic and funky. I don’t like to box myself into any one style. I leave it open for experimentation. I tend to go towards paper style supplies and do paper style layouts regardless of how I do them. I also seem to have an affinity for clusters and paint.
21. Favorite LOs that you have done?
My favorite layouts are usually the one I’ve worked the hardest on and have taken the longest.
This layout is still probably my favorite. It describes what I think about on an average day and the idea for it came to me and it turned out just how I envisioned it.
This one I loved the theme and the photos. I took them with a P&S when my daughter was 4. I used a metal shop lamp clamped to a broomstick to give the light with a black polyester fabric that didn’t reflect light behind her. I was so proud of the way they turned out. They are blown out but it seems like it fit the look I was going for.
Finally, this layout I’m very proud of because It was a different style than I had done ever and it was a lot of work. I learned a lot in the process of trying to do a ‘fantasy’ style layout. The results I was really pleased about.
22. Where do you get your inspiration/motivation? Everywhere! I look through galleries, I look in magazines, my photos, websites, and finally the kits themselves. A lot of times I just start picking through a kit because I like it and putting something together and the rest falls in place.
23. Do you have any suggestions for kits you’d like to see in the SM store? I don’t really have any suggestions for kits I’d want to see. The SM store is pretty vast with variety and selection. I do want to see more brushed style alphas though. They are my go to product for layouts.
24. What is one thing you tend not to use on layouts? Fasteners, you know clips, staples, pins. I use stitches and sometimes tape but I rarely use the other fasteners.
25. What is your favorite childhood memory and have you scrapped it?
I haven’t scrapped most of my childhood yet. It’s something I haven’t been entirely ready to do. It’s not that it was a horrible childhood or anything. My childhood memories are scattered around and the feelings I have about some of them are confusing. I have been writing down my memories and thoughts about them to prepare for a time when I will scrap them. I don’t have many photos to correlate with those memories so the journaling will be extensive.
Thanks Tanya for letting us get to know you better! Check out her full awesome gallery here!
-Lisa (kelseyll)
